Just like families, shared ethnicity is not necessarily the optimal choice:
Hong Kong: China limits parliament to 'patriots': China has passed sweeping changes to Hong Kong's electoral rules which will tighten its control over the city. The number of directly elected seats in parliament has been cut almost by half, and prospective MPs will first be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee to ensure their loyalty to the mainland.
The aim is to ensure only "patriotic" figures can run for positions of power. Critics warn it will mean the end of democracy, fearing it will remove all opposition from the city parliament. [Of course it will mean the end of democracy --- that is the whole point.]
Suez Canal: Ever Given container ship finally freed: A giant container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week has been freed after a huge operation. Tug boats honked their horns in celebration as the 400m-long (1,300ft) Ever Given was dislodged on Monday.
Traffic is set to resume in both directions through the canal at 20:00 local time (18:00 GMT), officials say. Hundreds of ships are waiting to pass. Suez, which connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea through Egypt, is one of the world's busiest trade routes.
TV personality Sharon Osbourne has left US chat show The Talk after a heated on-air debate [squabble?] about racism earlier this month. Osbourne defended broadcaster Piers Morgan over his criticism of a high-profile TV interview given by the Duchess of Sussex. That led to a clash with co-host Sheryl Underwood [black], who accused Osbourne [white] of giving "validation" to "racist" views.
[I'm confident that, if the opponent's skin colors were reversed, the outcome would have been different. I have never seen either participant in action, so I don't have a personal opinion about either participant. However, I do maintain that character counts and pigmentation shouldn't.
Racism comprises unjust victimization of individuals purely because of skin color or ancestry. Racism also comprises unjustified exoneration of individuals purely because of skin color or ancestry.
When an individual lies and manipulates for personal gain or attention, the duplicitous behavior should not be exempt from criticism because of false race-card claims of victimization [whatever the individual's pigmentation]. Those individuals who behave badly because of personality defects and/or self-serving motivation should be judged on their behavior, not on irrelevant features such as of skin color or ancestry. Historic and current racially-motivated attempts to deprive individuals of civic rights damage society.
I suspect that caving to cancel culture mob-rule pressure will ultimately evoke a justified backlash. For example, bigoted wrong-wingers gleefully condemn cancel culture along partisan lines, while new-racists seek revenge rather than emotional maturity.]
I would not trust either of the self-serving Independent Kingdom "SNP-style leaders" to salvage Scotland's fortunes from the carrion crows that would gather around a small, isolated mini-nation ...
[Disgraced] Former SNP leader Alex Salmond has announced the creation of a new pro-independence party which will contest the Scottish Parliament election. The former first minister said he would be among the candidates who will stand for the Alba Party on regional lists. Salmond claimed the aim was to build "a supermajority for independence" at Holyrood after the election in May. Other parties described Salmond as "discredited" and questioned his suitability for public office. [Yup!]
The Authoritarian Personality "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the 'F scale' (F for fascist)." The personality type Adorno et al. identified can be defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of childhood experiences. These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.
Though strongly criticized for bias and methodology, the book was highly influential in American social sciences, particularly in the first decade after its publication: "No volume published since the war in the field of social psychology has had a greater impact on the direction of the actual empirical work being carried on in the universities today."
...
Authoritarianism was measured by the F-scale. The "F" was short for "pre-fascist personality." Another major hypothesis of the book is that the authoritarian syndrome is predisposed to right-wing ideology and therefore receptive to fascist governments.
...
The F scale targets an authoritarian, anti-democratic personality profile that makes a person susceptible to Fascist propaganda. The items were written in accordance to fascist propaganda materials as well as priory held TAT protocol data and interviews with ethnocentric participants.
Conventionalism: Adherence to conventional values.
Authoritarian Submission: Towards ingroup authority figures.
Authoritarian Aggression: Against people who violate conventional values.
Anti-Intraception: Opposition to subjectivity and imagination.
Superstition and Stereotypy: Belief in individual fate; thinking in rigid categories.
Power and Toughness: Concerned with submission and domination; assertion of strength.
Destructiveness and Cynicism: hostility against human nature.
Projectivity: Perception of the world as dangerous; tendency to project unconscious impulses.
Sex: Overly concerned with modern sexual practices.
...
The study employs both quantitative and qualitative components. The first part of the research resembles a survey type of research with structured questionnaires. Based on the scores on the questionnaires, a smaller number of participants was elected for clinical interviews and administration of the Thematic Apperception Test. Interviews were coded with the techniques of content analysis.
...
A number of studies have examined the external criterion validity of F scale, with various demographic and political groups. Such groups included: German cosmetic factory workers (Cohn and Carsch, 1954); English fascists and communists, compared to 'politically neutral' soldiers (Coulter, 1953). Both studies found high scores (>5) in F-Scale.
However, the Coulter study also found the Communists scored higher in F-Scale than the politically neutral group. Eysenck (1954, ref. by Brown, p. 80) commented that Coulter's results indicate that the F-Scale actually measuresgeneral authoritarianism, rather than fascist tendencies in particular. (see Left-Wing Authoritarianism).
"Officials say it is still too early to know whether the attack, in which six Asian women were killed, was racially motivated. The suspect may have been a patron and claimed to have a "sex addiction". Robert Aaron Long "apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate," said Capt Jay Baker, adding that Long was caught with a 9mm handgun and did not resist arrest. The attack comes amid a sharp uptick in crimes against Asian-Americans. Four of the victims have been identified as Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Yan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44. Elcias R Hernandez-Ortiz was identified as having been injured.]
More on authoritarian obsession with sex:
Atlanta Suspect’s Fixation on Sex Is Familiar Thorn for Evangelicals CONservative Proselytizing Pseudo-Christians: The man accused of killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent, blamed “sexual addiction,” a disputed term used in parts of evangelicalCONservative proselytizing pseudo-Christian culture.
When man who grew up in a strict evangelical CONservative proselytizing pseudo-Christian "community in Southern California that emphasized sexual purity heard that the man accused of a rampage at three Atlanta-area spas told detectives that he had carried out the attacks as a way to eliminate his own temptations, the claim sounded painfully familiar.
The man had "spent his teenage years ... subjected to "a militant vigilance: Don’t let anything in the house that will tempt you sexually,” the man, now an associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College, recalled.
The evangelical culture he was raised in, he said, “teaches women to hate their bodies, as the source of temptation [unsurprisingly, this is also a common issue for females who were sexually abused as children], and it teaches men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and sexual immorality.”
Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the massacres that left eight people dead, told the police this week that he had a “sexual addiction,” and he had been a customer at two of the spas that he targeted. He was so intent on avoiding pornography that he blocked several websites on his computer and had sought help at a Christian rehab clinic. [Instead, clinics it would be healthier to establish clinics to help the indoctrinated to recover from CONservative proselytizing pseudo-Christianity]. A former roommate said that Long agonized over the possibility of “falling out of God’s grace.”" [So much for "thou shalt not kill", "go forth and multiply" and "created man in His own image".]
"The long history of anti-Asian racism is rooted in the history of U.S. American expansionism amid wide-ranging legal, cultural and military projects across the Pacific. These colonial projects hypersexualized Asian women, through forced sex and sex work, casting them as docile creatures that brought comfort. [I suspect that, in addition to culturally-inculcated obedience, a subset of American males prefer Asian women because their smaller, neater facial features and shorter stature resemble those of young girls --- in other words, legitimized pedophilia.] They also shaped Asian men as submissive and feminine, objects to be conquered, dominated and consumed. Even the humanitarian interventions and the religious outreach that helped to shape much of white imagination about Asian women’s bodies overseas were then continuously reproduced here in America."
...
"The fear of temptation the killer is reported to have had was born decades before his birth. Absolute moral ideals of virginity or marital sex have long been linked to conservative CONservative white [pseudo-]Christian attempts at what is sometimes called “sexual containment” or more popularly known as purity culture. This contributed to a theology that taught the salvific power of marital sex (as well as a critique of extramarital sex). Though more and more people of faith have questioned the psychological impact of purity culture, shame around sex persists. The Asian women murdered in Atlanta were an explicit threat to the purported ideal; their perceived entanglement with sex work justified this violence."
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely authorised attempts to influence last year's US election in favour of former UNpresident DUHnocchio, intelligence officials say.
20-9-10 Russian hackers target US election again - Microsoft:
[Like Putin's Puppet, Putin is probably afraid of the consequences should Cheat-in-Chief fail to rig the vote in his execrable favor.]
"Russia is now attempting to help Agent Orange again this November, according to American intelligence assessments reported in The Times. For any normal president, that would be a top-of-mind concern, and he or she would be marshaling all available resources to thwart it. What has Traitor-in-Chief done? On Sunday night, he retweeted Russian propaganda that the U.S. intelligence community had already flagged as part of that country’s efforts to skew the election.
On Monday, Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Idiot-in-Chief administration, wrote that the UNpresident “showed vanishingly little interest in subjects of vital national security interest, including cybersecurity, domestic terrorism and malicious foreign interference in U.S. affairs.” He added, “the country is less secure as a direct result of the UNpresident’s actions.”
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again."
Wēnaþ þā dysiġan þæt ǣlċ mann sīe blind swā hīe sind, and þæt nān mann ne mæġe ġesēon þæt hīe gesēon ne magon. = Fools think everyone is as blind as they are, and that no one can see what they cannot.
The Catholic ChurchPedophile Protection Agency and Homosexual Refuge does not have the power to bless same-sex unions, the Vatican office responsible for doctrine has said. It is "impossible" for God to "bless sin", the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said on Monday.
1) There is no good evidence for the actual (as distinct from merely conceptual) existence of a "God" of any of the tens of thousands of invented descriptions.
2) If there were a "God", then it behooves that deity, not the Pedophile Protection Agency and Homosexual Refuge, to manifest and clearly declare whether or not She/He/It is unable to bless unions. Claiming to speak for "God" is not sufficient authority.
3) Claiming that "God" labelled homosexuality a "sin" is false. No biblical verse explicitly describes homosexuality as a "sin".
4) Claiming that a particular activity/propensity is a "sin" constitutes a circular argument in so far as the definition is not independent of Church "teachings".
No wonder the Pedophile Protection Agency and Homosexual Refuge is focusing its proselytizing on developing countries were educational levels are inadequate to equip religionist-targets with the power of logical, critical assessment of the utter lack of incontrovertible evidence and cogent arguments to support the claims of Hypocritical Princes of "Universal" Delusionism.
I expect that BrexTWITs foolishly expected co-operation from 27 rejected nations, rapid smooth "divorce", and an instant fix to woes that they falsely attributed to EU membership ... just as tRUMPsuckers stupidly assumed that a lying, bragging, orange crook was the answer to their having voted for increasingly vile, wrong-wing obstructers for decades ...
UK goods exports to the European Union fell 40.7% in January, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), while imports tumbled 28.8%. The figures show the biggest drop since records began in 1997, and are the first since new trading rules between the UK and the EU came into force. The ONS said temporary factors were likely to be behind much of the falls.
Both imports from and exports to the EU fell "markedly" in January, the ONS said. The value of goods exported from the UK to the EU fell by £5.6bn in January 2021, while imports from the EU dropped by £6.6bn. The ONS said the fall in goods coming into the country were largely seen in machinery and transport equipment, and chemicals from the EU. Car imports, as well as medicinal and pharmaceutical products, were particularly affected.
Accountancy firm KPMG pointed to Brexit BrexTWIT as the likely culprit for the plunge in trade between the UK and the EU. In contrast, the UK's trade with non-EU countries grew by 1.7% in January.
KPMG said intense stockpiling in December 2020 had brought some trade flows ahead of the Brexit deadline. Meanwhile, new data showed the UK economy shrank by 2.9% in January amid the third [exacerbated by delayed action] lockdown. The economy is 9% smaller than it was before the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Labour MP Jess Phillips listed all women killed in the UK over the last year where a man has been convicted or charged, in a debate to mark International Women's Day. She told Parliament that “killed women are not vanishingly rare, killed women are common”. The Birmingham Yardley MP was given dispensation by the deputy Speaker to break time limits to read the list of victims. She ended with the name of Sarah Everard, who disappeared a week ago, for which a serving male police officer is being questioned on suspicion of murder.
[Men killed by women in incidents of domestic violence? Probably zero.]
[Unsurprisingly, comments have been turned off and the video has been excessively down-thumbed (presumably) by males triggered by the temerity of an MP daring to list the 118 women (plus some of their children) killed by a dangerous subset of males.]
Labour's shadow domestic violence minister, Jess Phillips, has said society has "just accepted" dead women as "one of those things". She read out the names of 118 women and girls killed in the UK this year, where a man has been charged or convicted as the primary perpetrator, in an International Women's Day debate. Ms Phillips said there was currently no government research into the data. Ministers say they have prioritised support for victims during lockdown.
A translator from Spain says his version of a poem read at US President Joe Biden's inauguration was rejected because he had the wrong "profile". Víctor Obiols was commissioned to work on the Catalan translation of Amanda Gorman's The Hill We Climb last month. But after he completed the project, the publishers said they wanted a translator who was "a woman, young, activist and preferably black".
Dutch publisher Meulenhoff described poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld as a "dream candidate", who at 29 became the youngest author to win the International Booker prize in 2020 with debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. Amanda Gorman had selected Rijneveld herself, as a fellow young writer who had also come to fame early, said the publisher. Outspoken on issues including gender equality and mental health, Rijneveld identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them. [Denial of biological realities is not really a recommendation, imo, but nor is it a reason for cancellation.] But there was an outcry because the renowned author is not black.
[Unfortunately, vengeful, virtue-signaling victimhood-wins whiners are inviting a backlash against their bigoted hypocrisies.]
Here's the thing. Considering her recent petulant performance, it seems much more likely that Meghan has encountered dislike based on her behavior, rather than on her skin color. Unfortunately, those who falsely and conveniently attribute all resistance and criticism to unrelated superficialities (such as pigmentation) are unlikely ever to grow up into responsible adults capable of learning from experience.
Narcissistic personality disorder? Thispersonality disorder might explain Meghan's seeking attention for the airing of her bullying-denial and perceived slights. Narcissism manifests as an inflated sense of own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.
Since NPD and its comorbid manifestations have been in the news for four years, although individuals don't fit into singular either-or boxes, these categorizations are interesting:
Subtype
Description
Unprincipled narcissist
Deficient conscience; unscrupulous, amoral, disloyal, fraudulent, deceptive, arrogant, exploitive; a con artist and charlatan; dominating, contemptuous, vindictive.
Amorous narcissist
Sexually seductive, enticing, beguiling, tantalizing; glib and clever; disinclined to real intimacy; indulges hedonistic desires; bewitches and inveigles others; pathological lying and swindling. Tends to have many affairs, often with exotic partners.
Seeks to counteract or cancel out deep feelings of inferiority and lack of self-esteem; offsets deficits by creating illusions of being superior, exceptional, admirable, noteworthy; self-worth results from self-enhancement.
Feels privileged and empowered by virtue of special childhood status and pseudo-achievements; entitled façade bears little relation to reality; seeks favored and good life; is upwardly mobile; cultivates special status and advantages by association.
Normal narcissist
Least severe and most interpersonally concerned and empathetic, still entitled and deficient in reciprocity; bold in environments, self-confident, competitive, seeks high targets, feels unique; talent in leadership positions; expecting of recognition from others.
As predicted, she's whining and lashing out:
21-3-8 Meghan 'didn't want to be alive any more' [Yeah, right! That's why she made no suicide attempt, but broke up the family.]
In a deeply [nauseatingly] personal [victimization-whining] TV interview, Meghan tells Oprah Winfrey that she did not get help when she asked for it. [Yeah, right!] Skin colour remark 'not Queen nor Duke' - Oprah . The prince said they were not the ones behind comments on "how dark" their baby would be, says TV host. [And, of course, hinting at racial victimization appears to be a red herring to deflect from the much more believable accusations that Wanna-be-Princess bullied her staff.]
Buckingham Palace has said it's “very concerned” by reports that the Duchess of Sussex was accused of bullying her staff during her time at Kensington Palace. The claims were made by former staff of Harry and Meghan and the Palace says it will investigate the circumstances. For her part the duchess is said to be “saddened” by reports of a bullying complaint which is seen as the “latest attack on her character”. [Saddened? I expect that she's actually furious.]
Whom to believe? What possible reason could staff and royals have for "inventing falsehoods" about Harry's mistaken choice of wife? After all, palace policy is typically to downplay scandal, not to invite it.
More than 250 people have been identified by the government as suspected participants in the tRUMP-encouraged insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January. The trials of those who have been charged began last month and will probably last months.
Richard Barnett, self-proclaimed white nationalist, pictured sitting on a chair with one foot on the desk of the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was told by a judge on Thursday that he is to remain in jail until his next court date in May.
Barnett was arrested in January in Arkansas, his home state, and faces a series of federal charges over his alleged pictorially-memorialized role in the insurrection, including violent entry, disrupting official proceedings and disruptive and disorderly conduct.
Upon leaving Pelosi’s office on the day of the riot, Barnett was seen by a New York Times reporter holding an envelope which displayed Pelosi’s letterhead. He told the Times that he “put a quarter on her desk” in exchange for the letter. He also said he “wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk”. Barnett is also facing charges of theft of public property.
He yelled at US district judge Christopher Cooper, claiming “it’s not fair” that he should remain in custody as he awaits trial. “Everybody else who did things much worse are already home,” he whined to Cooper during the virtual hearing, according to court records and reporters listening in. “I’ve been here for a month, they’re going to set it for another month, and everybody else is getting out."
In a statement to NBC News, Joseph D McBride, Barnett’s attorney, denies that his outburst was directed at the judge. [Attorneys for insurrectionists must fall back on denying the obvious.]
[NB Severe, early, prolonged childhood physical and sexual abuse promotes reactive behaviors +/- DID in victims.] A nine-year-old girl has died in Sri Lanka after she was beaten with a cane during a ritual locally believed to drive away "evil spirits". Two people - the child's mother and the woman who performed the ritual - have been arrested, and appeared in court on Monday in connection with the death, Sri Lankan police say. The mother believed her daughter was "possessed by a demon", police said. The girl died in hospital after losing consciousness during the ritual.
Police said that oil was poured on the girl's forehead and she was beaten because her mother claimed a "demon" needed to be "expelled", according to Sri Lanka newspaper Adaderana. Some of the girl's neighbours tried to step in when they heard her cries, but were unable to save her, reports AFP news agency. Police have warned it is not the first time exorcism attempts have been performed in the area, leading to physical injury or death.
[Tragically, ignorant superstition is widespread.]
