The only region in the world that has proactively tried to incorporate western culture in its societies is East Asia — Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, which was a grotesquely oppressed, poor, Third World country not too far in the past, notwithstanding its many struggles today, has furiously tried to copy the West.
Western culture, which developed organically over at least the two and half millennia, starting from Greco-Roman philosophers, is not easy to duplicate. This culture requires thrift, honesty, hard work, liberty, individuality, dispassionate reason, objective justice, loyalty, honor, stoicism, a desire to rise above oneself, and many other factors that perhaps cannot be seen or isolated but must be absorbed subliminally in all their complex interactions. These are reflected in social, religious, and political structures of the West — the three independent branches of government, the rule of law, compassion for others, charity, family system, etc.
The West and East Asia, including China, comprise a mere 2.5 billion people.
"The Rest," the Third World, comprises 5 billion out of 7.5 billion people on the planet. The cultural factors underpinning the West sound like clichés until one who gives up political correctness for the truth starts to see that the Third World, despite its several centuries of interactions with the West, simply fails to understand them.
The Third World is blind to what makes the West a civilization. It is as if the Third World cannot rise above animal instincts — craving for food, power over others, sex, and for the material.
Over several centuries of western colonization and missionary activities, an attempt was made to infuse Western cultural factors into the Third World. It was only a marginal success. Since the third world countries achieved political independence, without constant Western involvement, all has been lost. Christianity became voodoo, and the political system became a tool for tribalism and tyranny.
Focus on Materialism
The Third World is tempted by only the physical products of Western society. They are pleasure-centric. When they look at the West, all they see is entertainment, an easy-going lifestyle, freedom from responsibility, liberal governments, free health-care, consumerism, social welfare, and good salaries. They either want to be economic migrants to the West or copy the Western lifestyle, without an iota of an understanding that they must have wealth-generating capabilities first and that there is something at the foundations of Western culture....
Ease of travel made the situation worse by enabling the emigration of the best people from the Third World.
Post-Colonial Regression
Since the departure of European colonizers, the Third World has been culturally and institutionally regressing to its pre-European dark ages. None of these societies are sane, stable, or sustainable by themselves. It is the fear of America that keeps their tyrants behaving better than they otherwise would and their nations from falling into forever wars between their tribal units.
Despite this cultural and institutional regression, the free-gift of Western technology and the green revolution, and peace imparted by America still enabled economic growth, which alas has allowed more cultural problems to accumulate before Malthusian equilibrium kicks in again....
Absence of Rationality
Tools for development and growth in the West have failed in the Third World, and often had the opposite effects. The question is, why is it that the Third World has failed to absorb and even notice the cultural qualities of the West? What went wrong? Why did the Third World fail to maintain the benefits offered?
The fundamental problem of the Third World is that the concept of reason is conspicuous by its absence. Without "reason," intellectual and financial capital is not accumulated. The operating system in their minds is tribalism, superstition, magical thinking, and irrationality. This operating system makes them impervious to absorbing Western intellectual capital.
Without the rationality, civilization is not possible. Irrational societies must vacillate between dogma, hedonism, and savagery, never stumbling on another dimension, rationality.
A society of irrational people, particularly in a democratic system, where the most tribal, least-competent 50% people decide on who rules, eventually has to disintegrate into tribal units, who will then enter into never-ending wars. This is what will happen to 5 billion people living in the Third World, a humanitarian catastrophe never seen before. 100s of millions, perhaps billions will perish, once their problems have become too large for the West to contain.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/27/2020 8:34 Comments ||
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#6
Sounds like the direction the US is headed. The libs are deliberately trying to destroy our history and civilization, thinking that’s how they get to socialism. What they will get is what the author describes.
[Study Finds] BALTIMORE — Crowded city streets, subways, and buses have been considered the most likely places to become infected with COVID-19 over the past few months. Surprisingly, however, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concludes that densely populated spaces aren’t actually linked to higher infection rates.
Even more confounding, the study’s analysis indicates that crowded, dense locations are associated with lower coronavirus death rates.
In all, COVID-19 infection and death rates were assessed across 913 U.S. metropolitan counties. After researchers accounted for additional factors like race and education, the population density within each county was not significantly linked to infection rates. As mentioned, denser counties, as opposed to more rural, sprawling areas with smaller populations, were associated with lower death rates. The study’s authors speculate this is because denser, urban areas often offer better healthcare services.
Instead, higher coronavirus infection and death rates seem to be linked to a metropolitan area’s size, not its density. So, cities that are very big and stretch across multiple counties that are "tightly linked together through economic, social, and commuting relationships" appear to be most at risk of high coronavirus infection rates.
#5
So, cities that are very big and stretch across multiple counties that are "tightly linked together through economic, social, and commuting relationships" appear to be most at risk of high coronavirus infection rates.
#6
Yes, this is Big Urban Planners trying to justify their agenda of dense, high population Cities with Public Transit, no cars, all packed together. That model sucks Covids' balls
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/27/2020 11:14 Comments ||
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#7
Hopefully, the only ones who buy this will be urban dwellers.
#9
^ "Well, if we disregard everyone not tested cuz we were incompetent and overwhelmed and call the Nursing Home deaths from patients placed there during the pandemic as pneumonia, our stats look pretty good"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/27/2020 16:27 Comments ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] It has been six months since The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... entered the fray in war-torn Libya. In early January, the Ottoman Turkish parliament, at the behest of President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... , voted on deploying troops to Libya to support the country’s Government of National Accord (GNA), the transitional body created in 2015 to govern the embattled nation.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
It also threatens NATO, if there is anything left to threaten.
[American Thinker] America’s not the only country that sometimes looks at its upcoming generation of young men and worries. In China, the military has such a hard time finding young men capable of serving that it’s had to issue a long list of healthy living recommendations, including telling its recruits to cut down on masturbation. The self-love problem seems like a predictable result of China’s one-child policy, which eventually saw the Chinese abort 9.6 million girls. The guys are on their own now.
It’s no secret that, in America, our young men, even if they want to serve in the military, are often physically unprepared:
A full 27 percent of young Americans are simply too overweight to join the military, says Mission: Readiness. "Many are turned away by recruiters and others never try to join. Of those who attempt to join, however, roughly 15,000 young potential recruits fail their entrance physicals every year because they are too heavy."
Nearly 32 percent have other disqualifying health problems, including asthma, eyesight or hearing problems, mental health issues, or recent treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Due to all of the above and other assorted problems, only about two out of 10 American young people are fully eligible to join the military without special waivers, according to the report.
Previous generations of young men did more physical labor. Our young men sit in classrooms, sit in front of computers, sit in front of televisions, and sit in cars. It’s not conducive to physical rigor.
What’s surprising, though, is to learn that China is having the same problem — although with a twist, because the Chinese military also says young men need to keep their hands out of their crotches. This concern emerged when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army put up an online post saying that the failure rate for recruits had hit an "alarming high."
To help redress this problem, the PLA had some suggestions for potential recruits. Many of these were sensible suggestions for general good health: cut out sodas and alcohol, limit screen time, get more exercise, and sleep better. Some of the recommendations were unique to China:
#1
Nearly 32 percent have other disqualifying health problems, including asthma, eyesight or hearing problems, mental health issues, or recent treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Klingon 'sheep dipping' provides waivers for a broad category of dysfunction including issues of lagging fidelity and inter-agency, circular wanking.
#2
So, all that action on the border is for future 'comfort girls'? The Himalayas are tough ground to work through. I'd recommend the Philippines as being an easier nut to crack (so to speak).
...which really is not brief at all. And then there is Part II, linked below...
[GatestoneInstitute]
Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups.
Antifa's stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.
A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then "proves" Antifa's claim that the government is "fascist."
Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right. — Bettina Röhl, German journalist, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020.
"Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums." — Bettina Röhl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2020.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blamed Antifa ...the armed wing of the Democratic Party... — a bully boy "anti-fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... " movement — for the violence that has erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States. "The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly," he said.
Barr also said that the federal government has evidence that Antifa "hijacked" legitimate protests around the country to "engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses, and public property assaults on law enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent." Earlier, U.S. President Donald J. Trump had instructed the U.S. Justice Department to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.
Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure. Mark Bray, a vocal apologist for Antifa in America and author of the book "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," asserts that Antifa "is not an overarching organization with a chain of command."
Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.
In the United States, Antifa's ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.
WHAT IS ANTIFA?
Antifa can be described as a transnational insurgency movement that endeavors, often with extreme violence, to subvert liberal democracy, with the aim of replacing global capitalism with communism. Antifa's stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa's immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.
Antifa holds the Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism ...a political system developed in Italy, symbolized by the Roman fasces -- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. Its distinguishing philosophical feature is the Corporate State. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about... which equates it with capitalism. "The fight against fascism is only won when the capitalist system has been shattered and a classless society has been achieved," according to the German Antifa group, Antifaschistischer Aufbau Munchen.
"The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others." — Mark Bray, "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," 2017.
"They're coming from other cities. That cost money. They didn't do this on their own. Somebody's paying for this.... What Antifa is doing is they're basically hijacking the black community as their army. They instigate, they antagonize, they get these young black men and women to go out there and do stupid things, and then they disappear off into the sunset." — Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department.
The coordinated violence raises questions about how Antifa is financed. The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous radical left-wing initiatives, according to Influence Watch, a research group that collects data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors.... The Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund have all made contributions to AFGJ, according to Influence Watch.
One of the groups funded by AFGJ is called Refuse Fascism ... an offshoot of the Radical Communist Party (RCP).... The group's slogan states: "This System Cannot Be Reformed, It Must Be Overthrown!"
[Insider] The producers of "The Simpsons" said on Friday that they would stop using white actors to play non-white characters amid a broader discussion about systemic racism in the media and entertainment industry.
"Moving forward, 'The Simpsons' will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters," the statement said.
The statement did not elaborate further but comes five months after white actor Hank Azaria said he would step down from voicing Indian-American character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon after heavy criticism.
It is unclear whether Apu or any other characters would remain on the series.
Other non-white characters in "The Simpsons" who are voiced by white actors include Homer Simpson's best friend, Carl Carlson, who is also played by Azaria, and the Simpson family doctor, Dr. Hibbert, voiced by Harry Shearer.
Shearer also voiced Sanjay Nahasapeemapetilon, Apu's brother.
"The Simpsons", which is broadcast by Fox Network and made its series debut in 1989, has faced years of criticism for reinforcing racist stereotypes.
The show's announcement comes amid a wider consideration of systemic racism in media and entertainment, following country-wide demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police.
#9
Who's going to voice the main characters? They're not white, they're bright yellow.
It gets even worse: The character of Bart Simpson is currently voiced by Nancy Cartwright, a person of the female persuasion. You are, no doubt, as horrified by this as I am.
I gotta ask: WTF is the matter with people for them to care about such nonsense?
I suspect, like all the anti-Trumpers who swore they’d leave the country if he win the election in 2016, but are still here preaching at us, all of those talking about Blaxit will somehow never leave as well.
Forgive us, because we sold them,' says African ambassador on possible slave ship find
The moment was a profound one for Posset. Not only does he hail from Benin, once known as the Kingdom of Dahomey, where the Clotilda captives were first captured by fellow Africans and then sold to the Americans, but Posset is actually a descendant of the nation's royal family. By the 1800s, the King of Dahomey was making about a quarter of a million dollars a year selling Africans to Europeans, Americans and Brazilians, according to historical records. To put that number in perspective, a quarter of a million dollars in 1860 would be worth roughly $50 million today. The prosperous kingdom was notorious as a hub of the slave trade, and home to the door of no return, through which millions of slaves, including perhaps the Clotilda captives, passed as they were transferred to slave ships for the middle passage.
Asked to explain the words he spoke over the wreck, Posset covered his eyes for a moment as he regained composure and stifled a sob.
"I am just begging them to forgive us, because we sold them. Our forefathers sold their brothers and sisters. I am not the person to talk to them. No! May their souls rest in peace, perfect peace. They should forgive us. They should," Posset said, wiping tears from his cheeks. "Qualified people will come and talk to them in due time. I feel so sad.
"I am a prince of Dahomey," Posset explained later. "It was my ancestors who did this. We have ancestors who came here to this country forced. Forcibly, they didn't choose. I am not insulting those who came here who were forced to come, because they were forced. I am insulting those who sold them back home. No means, no money, no articles, no stuff can buy life, but we sold our people. Brothers sold brothers and sisters. Fathers sold kids and wife. I will never blame those who came here. I will always beg them for forgiveness."
Posset said that even today, people in Benin do not like to sit beside a door when visiting friends.
"That was how you ended up sold. Your friend, your relative, he would already have sold you before he invited you over. He would sit you by the door so when they came at the appointed time, they opened the door and grabbed you. This was even how the heirs to the king would move ahead in line to the throne, selling off rivals," Posset said.
The journal of William Foster, the captain of the Clotilda, provides a detailed historical document regarding the slaving operations in Dahomey at the time of his journey.
"Having agreeably transacted affairs with Prince, we went to the warehouse where they had in confinement four thousand captives in a state of nudity from which they gave me liberty to select one hundred and twenty-five as mine, offering to brand them for me, from which I peremptorily forbid. Commenced taking on cargo of negroes, successfully securing on board one hundred and ten."
#9
Lived and worked in Togo for 2 years. The 2 major ethic groups there (Mina and Ewe) are still pissed at each other over the slave trade. I doubt anyone is moving to West Africa. They wouldn't last a month.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
06/27/2020 11:32 Comments ||
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#10
Hint for American blacks: In Africa you are not black.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.