US news for December 8th 2016 weighted by the five-race model, one word for every 640,000 people (compiled before the death of John Glenn became the top story):
White (319 words, Democracy Now)
Trump Picks Oil & Gas Advocate Scott Pruitt to Head EPA
President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has been one of the EPA’s fiercest critics and has led a legal effort to overturn parts of President Obama’s climate change policies, including his Clean Power Plan. Pruitt claimed the science of climate change is “far from settled.” He is also seen as a close ally of the fossil fuel industry. …
Trump Picks Retired Gen. John Kelly as Homeland Security Secretary
Trump also announced he’s picked retired four-star Marine General John Kelly to be secretary of homeland security. … Margaret Huang, executive director for Amnesty International USA, said of Kelly, “We’re particularly concerned that while chief of U.S. Southern Command, Kelly oversaw Guantánamo during periods of extensive hunger strikes and forced-feeding that was unsafe and inhumane.” Kelly has repeatedly testified to Congress that the U.S.-Mexico border represents a threat to national security, leading many to worry he will escalate the militarization of the border and U.S. immigration policy overall. …
Trump Attacks Carrier Union Leader Who Says Trump “Lied His Ass Off”
Trump attacked union leader Chuck Jones on Twitter on Wednesday … Last week, Trump appeared at the Carrier air conditioner plant in Indianapolis and boasted that he’d saved 1,100 jobs from being moved to Mexico. But Jones, who represents the workers, says Trump “lied his ass off.” Jones says Trump helped keep only 730 jobs in the U.S., not 1,100. In response to Jones’s criticism, Trump tweeted, “Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!”
HRW: Remnants of U.S. Weapons Found at Site of Yemen Airstrike That Killed 30 Civilians
SC: Testimony Begins in Murder Trial of Dylann Roof
Report: Border Patrol Uses Desert as “Weapon,” Leading to Death & Disappearance
Latino (82 words, Univision)
Trump meets with Rep. Raúl Labrador
It seems likely they will work together on the future of Dreamers, who Trump has threatened to deport, but yesterday said, “They were brought here at a very young age, have worked here, studied. Some were good students.”
Labrador, a Hispanic Republican Congressman from Idaho, took part in immigration reform in 2013 and campaigned for Trump in Florida and Arizona in 2016.
Trending: The horns of Trump and other mysterious details of his Time cover picture
Black (61 words, The Root)
Felony Charge Dropped For Jury Foreman as He Served On Michael Slager Trial
Dorsey Montgomery, the lone black juror who also served as foreman during the Michael Slager trial, had a pending felony charge against him that was mysteriously dropped by prosecutors during the Slager trial.
Popular: If You’re a ‘Pretty’ Racist, You Can Get Cupcakes From Trevor Noah
Asian (25 words, AsAmNews)
Three Asian Americans Among Dead In Ghost Ship Warehouse Fire In Oakland
Vanita Gupta To Leave Civil Rights Division Of Department Of Justice.
Native (4 words, Indian Country Today)
Energy Transfer Partners tanks
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Posts related to story topics:
- The Trump Era
- Dylann Roof
- Walter Scott – killed by Michael Slager
- Trevor Noah
- #NoDAPL – protests against the pipeline being built by Energy Transfer Partners. The protests have cost it millions.
- demographically weighted world history
- The Vast Talking Machine
- voice of colour
- The world according to the New York Times
- June 29th 1916
Hey Abagond, I like your blog! You have so much info and good oversight of many topics.
A bit off topic, but… I want to ask you something about the definition of racism. I hate the definition that most people think defines racism, that it is just hate for someone with another skin color or ancestry.
This opens the gate for the apologists or the “everyone else does it” crowd, saying: “Blacks are just as racist as whites.”
Or…the defeatists saying: “Racism is natural to humans.”
Or worse yet, the white nationalists or “race realists” who will say things like:
“I’m not racist, because I don’t hate other races, I just believe all races should be kept separate.”
There are even people who say that Hitler, of all racists, was not a racist, he just loved and fought for his own race (yeah right, read Mein Kampf and see how he viewed Jews and Hottentots).
That gets my blood boiling. That’s why I have come up with my own detailed and strict definition of racism, and beliefs that are determining it.
Here it is:
1. Believing that the human behavior, psychological traits, customs, beliefs and culture of an ethnicity or people are all inborn and determined by their biology, and is tied to their phylogenetic traits and phenotype.
2. Believing in extreme exclusivism (also racial purism), that an individual can never be incorporated into another ethnicity, not even by marriage, meaning that someone who has one native parent but one foreign parent will always be a “half-breed”.
The white nationalists especially apply the latter to themselves, and another thing I have heard is:
“Well, everyone is allowed to have nationalism and preservation of their people, the Pakistanis, Somalis, Koreans etc., just not whites.”
I point out that most ethnicities have exceptions or ways of accepting individuals into their fold. Some Native American nations even adopted war captives and incorporated them into their people and they became FULL members! To racial purists that would be “contaminating the blood”. The countries they often mention also have naturalization laws for immigrants. Racial nationalism and racism indeed can seem like paranoia.
Abagond, please tell me what you think of the above criteria for real racism?
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@eric
after following abagonds thought-provoking blog for a while, my definition is—
Prejudice-(racial, ethnic, or other) is the dehumanization of the “other”. It can be a) unconscious(without knowing), b) conscious/cultural, c) and/or “Systemic.
……and it (possibly) occurs from an improper paradigm/world-view in which the concepts of “equality” and “human dignity” are not well defined or well understood.
Systemic prejudice is the exercise of power with the intent to harm (from the definition of evil by Philip Zimbardo of the Stanford prison experiment)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg)
…as Zimbardo notes—people think of prejudice as individual—but the worst prejudice is when it is systemic (communal/national)—in that, the institutions of power are operating with intent to harm (oppression). The communal/national aspect is intertwined with the power structures….thus two power structures (institutions) that contribute are nation and religion and a combination of this leads to extremisms such as ISIS (Islamic Caliphate), Zionist (eretz Israel), alt-right,(white (christian) nation), Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), 969 movement (Buddhist nationalism)…etc (ofcourse various other factors also contribute …such as particular circumstances, environment …etc)
What makes systemic prejudice interesting is that because it is anonymous (nameless, faceless institutions) it evades responsibility and scrutiny.
a micro example of such a phenomenon might be gamergate?—
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/01/gamergate-alt-right-hate-trump
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@anon
“”What makes systemic prejudice interesting is that because it is anonymous (nameless, faceless institutions) it evades responsibility and scrutiny.
Good point. That is true whether individuals within a particular system are consciously prejudiced or not.
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@anon
Interesting!
Yeah, it is a complex issue that can be seen from many angles.
I think I’m mostly focusing on the aspect of underlying beliefs and doctrines that lead to (especially politically based) racism. This is what I find the most frightening, and therefore I have tried to identity the most important principles that extreme racists hold to, so that it can be repudiated also.
But you are right, the rationalizations and underlying principles could also just have arisen as a justification for petty prejudices already there in the psychology. But I just think it is false and dangerous to say that prejudices are “just there”, pre-existing, and then defining that as racism. I am one who likes to search for the causes of such prejudices or causes of why people blindly believe the way they do.
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I think anon and Eric are the same poster
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@michaeljonbarker
“I think anon and Eric are the same poster”
What is the tell?
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I don’t understand this post. nevertheless…
Trending: The horns of Trump and other mysterious details of his Time cover picture
I don’t see the points as devil horns. the time cover seems to suggest trump is batman.
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I dont get this one. Is there a couple paragraphs missing?
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The Trump outline looks like Batman. Has anyone noticed, Donald Trump is a comic book character. A histrionic billionaire who lives in skyscraper in Gotham, with his own name on it. Hillary Clinton would have been a great comic book villain. They could have had her married to Lex Luthor. Trump wouldn’t even have needed a name change.
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@ v8driver @ nomad
Instead of being a White presentation of the news, like the New York Times, CNN, or even Democracy Now and The Young Turks, it gives space to non-White sources according to their proportion of the population. It is an experiment, something I wanted to try out.
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The Time Magazine cover with the horns of Cheeto Satan. Hilarious.😂😂😈😈😈
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eric and anon do not have the same IP address. They are not even in the same country. Anon has been commenting here since 2013 and does not appear to be using a proxy server.
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@ eric
I agree with #1, more or less. #2 appears in more extreme forms of racism but in my view it is not a necessary feature.
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@ abagond
Yeah, I forgot to mention that. 1 and 2 don’t have to go together. A person is a racist if he believes either one.
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@michaeljonbarker and his Afrofem
Give up the detective schtick. You apparently suck at it.
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The sock puppet resw is _______ ?
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Isn’t it funny how the self-admitted white supremacist michaeljonbarker constantly derails threads pretending to know the identity of other commenters, and abagond just lets him get away with it because they both supported and love the same presidential candidate.
And once again he’s been proven wrong, this time about eric and anon. But instead of apologising and admitting how wrong he was, he continues his asinine assumptions. And no surprise his fellow irish klansman with a failing blog is here to back him up.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
“And no surprise that a pro-Trump troll”
michaeljonbarker is not a Trump troll. He supported and loves your girl almost as much as you.
“resorts to slandering ethnicities”
And no one did that, but white irish supremacists like lord of mirkwood have wild imaginations.
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My apologies to anon and Eric. In rereading what they wrote I misinterpreted what was written.
You seem a little touchy Rsew. Anger and insecurity issues.
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@michaeljonbarker
“You seem a little touchy Rsew. Anger and insecurity issues.”
Awww, poor white supremacist michaeljonbarker’s feelings got hurt again. Where’s abagond with the Kleenex(R)?
Well, if you didn’t derail the thread pretending to know other commenters’ identities then you wouldn’t have been called out AGAIN for being wrong.
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I’m not going to play resw. No point in giving you a venue for your amusement.
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@michaeljonbarker
Right, you’re the one who derailed the thread as usual, you’re the one who was wrong as usual, and you’re the one getting upset because I told you what biased abagond should have said several months ago when you first started derailing threads playing detective.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
“I was talking about you, troll. You know that.”
Too bad you have no evidence to actually back that up. And no, I don’t know what goes on in the mind of a white Irish supremacist like you.
“you went and did an anti-Irish ad hominem”
Too bad that never happened. It’s a shame the klan never taught you reading comprehension skills.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Resw is calling you names to get under your skin. He is a troll. He WANTS you to get angry. He WANTS you to answer him. Please ignore him.
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@abagond
Who called names first? Your master, lord of mirkwood.
But if you weren’t so biased, you’d know that.
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If it was so hard for the white irish supremacist lord of mirkwood to not engage, then he would not have started it.
My initial comment was addressed to a different white supremacist and his lackey, so if lord of mirkwood didn’t want to be involved he should not have involved himself.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
He is a TROLL. He is doing it ON PURPOSE. You are taking him WAAY too seriously.
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And abagond is a paid shill and propagandist.
He’s still upset that I told truths about the presidential candidate he was paid to support, and because I frequently point out his bias, hypocrisy and lies with facts.
But instead of striving to be fair, honest and factual, like a serious blogger, he just goes after those who tell the truth and call out his lies.
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http://www.thespoof.com/spoof-news/world/126254/study-finds-that-americans-are-exposed-to-dangerous-levels-of-stupidity-from-the-news
A recent Harvard study shows that Americans are exposed to five times the recommended level of stupidity when they tune into mainstream media broadcasts. The findings show that watching the news has extremely damaging consequences such as decreased IQ and increased willingness to put up with Congress’s bulls**t.
cientists have long known that alcohol and other substance abuses can kill brain cells. However, they were stunned to find out that watching an hour of Fox News a day is as harmful to the brain as smoking copious amounts of crack every day.
Head scientist Reese Urcher explained, “Watching the anchors on Fox or CNN sensationalize some bulls**t and blow everything out of proportion has a tremendous affect on the cerebral cortex, which is the area of the brain responsible for decision making and problem solving. Basically this overflow of bullsh**t to the brain inhibits it from rational thinking.”
We reached out to CNN, otherwise known as Crisis News Network, but they declined to comment on the story. They said they were busy preparing a story on the next highly unlikely potential disaster that could scare the s**t out of America.
Fox also didn’t respond to our accusations of hurting people’s brains, but they did report breaking news that some bulls**it is in fact happening somewhere.
Fascinating!
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