The Mali Empire is particularly fascinating. Mansa Musa, who ruled that empire c. 1324, remains by some estimates the richest man who ever lived. His net worth is estimated by historians at around $400 billion USD. Elon Musk's net worth today is around $280 billion, for comparison.
Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves, who were forced to mine gold and made up much of the Empire's military. Slavery in Mali continues to this day with an estimated 200,000 people held in direct servitude to a master [1]. Maybe that's why we don't hear so much about the Mali Empire, or the Ghana Empire for that matter. Personally I think it's history worth knowing, all the moreso if it shatters the myth that any one race is especially prone to the evil of slavery.
'Leftist: A person belonging to the political left and usually identifying with the radical, anti capitalist, or revolutionary sectors of left politics. Includes anarchists, marxists, communists, socialists, and all other explicitly radical left ideologies.'
There are absolutely conservative commentators who describe all Democratic Party voters as 'leftists', just as there are left-leaning commentators who describe all Republicans as 'fascists', but these descriptions are commonly understood to be hyperbole. I think when using words like 'leftist' among non-American company, we can agree that the current Presidential adminstration doesn't fit that label. Compare the current White House policy agenda to that of Germany's political party Die Linke, translated as "The Left":
>In 2021, people are forced from employment over authoritarian (and bad) vaccine mandate, created in secret in 2021 by so-called leftists
Is Joe Biden really a 'leftist'? He supports the private ownership of capital. I think most in the US would describe him as a liberal, and most self-identified leftists would describe him with unkindness.
QAnon isn't even really a 4chan meme, at least not for a while and not at the Jan. 6 peak of its fervor. The "official home" of QAnon has been 8chan/8kun for years, since shortly after the meme's first appearance [0]. Several jouranlists believe the 8chan owner and his son to be the main users of the QAnon account [1][2][3]. There's a contingent of regular QAnon posters on /pol/, but they're regularly mocked as mentally-ill "boomers" who need to "take their meds."
The influence of the Israel lobby on the 2003 Iraq invasion is not an anti-Semitic trope, it is recorded and acknowledged history. The final decision to invade lay with George W. Bush, and the Israel lobby was far from the only factor in his decision, but their influence was significant and cannot be denied. From the London Review of Books on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby":
>Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.
>According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
Consumers can buy similar off-the-shelf "smart" rifle scopes, marketed primarily for hunting:
>The Eliminator LaserScope is the most innovative and effective hunting riflescope in the world. With the push of a button, the Eliminator IV ranges and displays the distance to the target (factoring in angle). It instantly calculates and displays the exact aiming point and wind data all inside the scope for complete situational awareness.
>The built-in laser rangefinder is now capable of ranging out to 2,000 yards. Trajectory compensation is accurate at any magnification, and the integrated inclinometer compensates for shots at any uphill or downhill angle.
"...because Israel is not actively attempting to advance its nuclear technology capabilities."
Says who?
>Retired in the 1990s, the Jericho-1, like its successors, was intended for nuclear delivery.
>From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, Israel developed a longer-range version by extending the Jericho’s length to 15m and increasing the diameter to 1.35m. Designated the Jericho-2, this system has an estimated range of 1,500–3,500km, with the same 1,000kg payload.
>According to several analysts, Israel also has an intermediate-range missile, possibly called the Jericho-3. Reports of testing – in 2008, 2011, 2013, 2019 and (possibly) 2020 – related to a longer-range system support this assessment, but it has not been verified.
>The planned economic system of USSR means that wartime production is a net economic loss serving no financial purpose.
It's a net loss under capitalist systems, too. Both systems can and do commit huge amounts of resources to pointless, destructive forever-wars. The political/military/security bureacracy of the USSR watched out for its own interests and sought ways to justify its own existence just as the military-industrial complex does in the USA.
The Soviet invasion enriched fewer bureacrats, but it also (compared to the NATO invasion) killed 10x more civilians and 3x more invaders in half the time, so in that sense I suppose we can say it was more efficient.
On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes [2], and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists [3]. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo [4] after a real-world mob attack sent him to the ER with a brain hemmorhage, an event which "ACAB Twitter" continues to celebrate and remind him about.
The trolls on Twitter blend in by being a few medium-sized fish in the ocean. The trolls on Kiwi Farms are more visible as big fish in their own small pond. They're ideologically flipped compared to Twitter trolls, but fundamentally alike in their methods, moral posturing, and disregard for basic human decency. They're all an enormous net-negative for humanity.
>The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they have done to harass people, updates on past targets, ideas for future hate, and justification about why this person deserves it.
I'm glad you've never heard "goyim" used in a derogatory manner, whereas I have. Tone is difficult to infer from plain text. To avoid confusion, I recommend you use other groups and races' preferred labels when speaking about them in public. This is advice I follow and have found to be a good rule.
Just so you know I'm not making this up; Merriam-Webster lists "goy" as "sometimes disparaging":
I doubt you meant to use it this way, but that word is seen by many as an offensive slur against non-Jews. It's frequently used in a way that has racist and derogatory undertones. Googling "goyim" returns some colorful results.
Google's Knowledge Graph info boxes are automatically-generated and littered with errors. I've been burned twice on operating hours, once for my local bank and once for a convenience store, driving over each time only to find the place closed. In both cases, the correct hours were posted on the business's website. I've also seen bad KG results for medical conditions, listing the wrong symptoms or describing easily-treatable maladies as "Incurable". Now I actively ignore the info box and intentionally click through to an authoritative non-Google website.
To a non-technical user, I'm sure the box looks like a human-curated result which they're more likely to trust. Maybe that's the goal of Google's UI choices. Couldn't be further from the truth.
(Considered not replying, but then looked again at the link title...)
The view of law enforcement as going easy on the far-right may have been true in 1970s America, but it does not appear so 2021. Far-right militia movements have been subject to intense scrutiny and violence (and some allege, entrapment) since their growth in the 1990s [0][1]. In the case of the Capitol riot, 525 people have now been federally charged [2]. Arrested rioters have been "savagely beaten" in jail by prison guards, to the point of skull fractures and permanent blindness [3].
It's true that fringe Congressional Republicans such as Josh Hawley or Marjorie Taylor Greene have tried to blame antifa for the Capitol insurrection. They hold no powerful Senate or House positions, and appear "prominent" mainly due to the attention the the press gives them. The actual Republican Congressional leadership swiftly denounced the insurrection, and placed blame for the attack on President Trump [4][5].
In contrast, President Biden and prominent Senators such as Jerry Nadler have repeatedly denied the existence of organized far-left violence at all [6][7], describing events such as the month-long nightly siege of the federal courthouse in Portland "a myth" and "imaginary." Speaker Nancy Pelosi has acknowledged antifa gangs' existence in the past, after they vandalized her house and sprayed it with pig blood.
As rioters threw Molotov cocktails and firebombs at the federal courthouse in Portland, attacked federal agents with hammers, lasers, and bricks, beat and stabbed journalists, set fire to the Mayor's condo building, and were arrested carrying illegal firearms, the Washington Post gave them a glowing photo shoot [8]. They were praised as morally virtuous freedom-fighters. In Seattle, anarchists occupied several city blocks for weeks with assault rifles, and shot dead an unarmed black child [9] before destroying the evidence and concealing the killer's identity. These stories disappeared from the Washington Post, NPR, and even Fox News within days, yet we still get frequent updates on the Capitol insurrection.
Finally, it makes no difference whether cops arrest more left-wing rioters if the local DA and US Attorney decide to release them and dismiss all charges [10][11]. There's been little such leniency applied to violent actors in the Capitol insurrection. This has not gone unnoticed by either the far-right or far-left.
The exasperation I feel watching this unfold as someone on the center-left is a shadow of what I sense from the actual right wing. I think anger at the leniency given to far-left violence last summer is what propelled a lot of people to attack the Capitol, in a "if they can get away with it, why can't we?" sort of tantrum. This emotional potential still remains. The risk of an eventual organized right-wing backlash, which so far has not reached the level of burning down buildings, executing people in the street, or occupying city blocks with armed militants, is what worries me most about the chance of more far-left violence. The extreme right is watching the extreme left get away with it, and they are taking notes.
The battle has very much leaked off-campus, and not just in sports. One intense area of disagreement involves the rights of trans children to medically transition without their parents' knowledge or consent. Research consistently shows that most children who identity as trans revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]. However, more states are now enabling children to seek and obtain irreversible gender transition care on their own, without parental consent, to include surgery and hormone therapy [1]:
>[Seattle] minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for “sensitive” conditions, which include both “gender dysphoria” and “gender-affirming care.” Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of “gender-affirming treatments” from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.
>Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up.
Similarly, in a Canadian family court case involving a 14 year old trans child [2]:
>Attempting to persuade AB to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria; addressing AB by his birth name; referring to AB as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.
In the event where the trans child de-transitions post-puberty, these procedures may leave them with severe body dismorphia or render them unable to produce or bear children.
I don't have kids (yet), but I had body dismorphia as a young adult. It almost killed me, but I grew out of it in time. Fortunately, it wasn't the kind that compelled me to seek life-altering medical procedures. I fear that my future child may suffer from a similar case of temporary body dismorphia, seek and obtain permanent life-altering procedures which I am legally unable to prevent, and later come to deeply regret the damage done to their body by these procedures. Again, the best data we have on trans kids shows that most choose to revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0].
>The situation for college students, at least a certain segment, is that people with the transgender identity are far more common than they once were. That's the base reality, not the product of any ideology. And whatever it's point of origin, this reality for these isn't going to change.
A significant number of people who identity as trans later return to their original gender identity. This is known as "detransitioning:"
It's a controversial topic, as many trans people see the existence of detrans people as a threat to the validity of their own identity. For their part, many detrans people resent the medical practitioners who they feel didn't adequately provide council or obtain informed consent before facilitating their transition, sometimes involving expensive, painful, and irreversible medical procedures. Some research also indicates most (!) children who identify as trans abandon this identity post-puberty:
The Blocked and Reported podcast, which I generally find to be fair-minded and evenhanded, recently interviewed a detrans person who had worked at a SF gender transition clinic. I found their experience illuminating:
Sounds like he had an interesting relationship with the CIA, to say the least:
>"At the time, I was conspiring against the Latin American dictatorships and wanted help from the United States", he recalled. "I was a good friend of Allen Dulles."
>"Anyway", Mr. Figueres went on, "the C.I.A.'s Cultural Department helped me finance a magazine and some youth conferences here. But I never participated in espionage. I did beg them not to carry out the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which was madness, but they ignored me."
>Figueres backed the leftist Sandinista revolution in neighboring Nicaragua that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. He railed against U.S. policy when the United States supported Nicaragua's Contra guerrillas.
It also reads as though his 1958 testimony before Congress [0] shamed the CIA into facilitating the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, a bloody right-wing dictator who Figueres all but named:
>"If you’re going to speak of human dignity in Russia, why is it so hard to speak of human dignity in the Dominican Republic? Where is intervention and where is non-intervention? Is it that a simple threat, a potential one, to your liberties, is, essentially, more serious than the kidnapping of our liberties?"
>With Figueres as sponsor, Bosch and Ornes agreed to form a coalition government in anticipation of the overthrow of dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Such a fascinating figure. Amazed I never knew his name before now.
>Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police
Communities which experience more crime tend to interact more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those crimes, who generally come from the same communities as their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in proportion to their rate of criminality. Most murder in the US is committed by black men [1], and mainly concentrated in a handful of poor urban areas: St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, etc. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) [2][3], widely seen as the gold standard for data on criminal victimization, confirms that violent crime is simply a larger problem in America's urabn black communities compared to the white, Asian, and Hispanic communities. Rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration reflect this.
It is no longer the 1960s. Body cameras and smartphones are everywhere. Racism has been taboo for decades. Police know that if they unjustly shoot or abuse a black person, there's a good chance their careers and lives as free citizens will be over. The notion that law enforcement arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by evidence.
Tracing back through history, the forces which led to the present situation such as slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and redlining were undoubtedly racist and systemic. However, these systemic forces are now gone. They have even been replaced in many areas by systemic counter-forces, such as in university admissions [4], law school admissions [5], med school admissions [6], access to government debt relief [7], and access to the COVID vaccine [8]. The problems which bedevil many black Americans today- disproportionate poverty, broken families, drug addiction, all resultant criminality- would appear to be the results of historical inequities, not ongoing systemic racism.
Mansa Musa's wealth was built almost entirely by slaves, who were forced to mine gold and made up much of the Empire's military. Slavery in Mali continues to this day with an estimated 200,000 people held in direct servitude to a master [1]. Maybe that's why we don't hear so much about the Mali Empire, or the Ghana Empire for that matter. Personally I think it's history worth knowing, all the moreso if it shatters the myth that any one race is especially prone to the evil of slavery.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mali