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Internet loses its mind over 'racist' Dior perfume ad featuring Johnny Depp & Native American dancer


RT
Sat, 31 Aug 2019 12:08 UTC
Johnny Depp
Dior has pulled posts promoting its 'Eau Sauvage' men's perfume after a new ad for the fragrance triggered the PC cyber police. The ad's unspeakable crime? Featuring a Native American grooving to Johnny Depp's guitar.

A clip of the promotion, called 'We are the Land', was posted on Dior's social media accounts on Friday. The teaser shows Depp, clad in a poncho, shredding on an electric guitar as a Native American, decked out in full ceremonial garb, performs a tribal dance.

In an apparent attempt to preempt internet outrage over alleged 'cultural appropriation', Dior noted that the spot was filmed with the help of Native American consultants. In a caption to a now-deleted Instagram post, the company wrote that the film was made in "close collaboration" with Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) "in order to respect Indigenous cultures, values and heritage."

However, what some would argue was the brand's attempt at preemptive damage control did little to help Dior escape the internet's wrath, spurred by accusations of cultural appropriation and outright racism.
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Eye 1

Court rules airline passengers can sue TSA agents for abusive searches


RT
Sat, 31 Aug 2019 12:01 UTC
TSA searches man
© Reuters / Carlos Allegri
A federal appeals court ruled travelers can sue Transportation Security Administration officers for "abusive conduct," stripping the controversial agency of the government immunity that has protected it thus far.

The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia declared TSA screeners act as "investigative or law enforcement officers" when searching passengers, meaning they can be subject to civil claims for intentional wrongdoing under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The decision reverses a controversial 2018 ruling by a three-judge panel from the same court that effectively gave TSA officers immunity under the law.

The "intimate physical nature" of the screenings classifies them as a law enforcement act, the court ruled in a 9-4 decision on Friday, meaning the government's immunity from lawsuits does not apply in cases where TSA agents abuse their power.

"If you think you are a victim of intentional misconduct by TSA agents, you can now have your day in court," exulted lawyer Paul Thompson. His client, Nadine Pellegrino, sued the TSA over a 2006 incident in which she was imprisoned for 18 hours and charged with crimes including assault and making terroristic threats, after objecting to an especially invasive screening as she attempted to board a US Airways flight at Philadelphia International Airport.

Comment: See also: Shameful: TSA slammed for 'invasive groping' of triple-amputee US veteran

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Info

Straw men and viewpoint manicheanism

Rick Repetti
Quillette
Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:01 UTC
scarecrow
© AdobeStock
The fallacy of special pleading — also known as the double standard — occurs when one offers a special excuse for one's own violation of a standard that one continues to apply to others. At a buffet, one person says to another, "Let's stock up before all the hoarders get here," as if preemptive hoarding is different from hoarding. This move resembles the fundamental attribution error, which occurs when one attributes the negative behaviors of others to fundamental features of their character, while attributing one's own negative behaviors to circumstantial factors.

When opposing parties adopt these attitudes toward one another's views, a vicious cycle results: Each "side" sees the other's behavior as evidence of evil, and their own behavior as justified on the ground that we good folks must defend ourselves against them. This suboptimal and highly contagious cognitive condition, which unfortunately characterizes much of our contemporary political landscape, is what I'll call "Viewpoint Manicheanism."

People on the collectivist Left often discount the evils historically associated with socialism, attributing them to totalitarianism or dictatorship, while attributing the evils historically associated with capitalism to its very nature, which they identify as the selfish profit motive. People on the libertarian Right, meanwhile, often dismiss the evils historically associated with capitalism, attributing them to corruption or government interference, while describing the historical evils associated with socialism as the inherent features of an evil ideology that tramples over individual rights.

Comment: Ideally, this is how all arguments, political or otherwise, would be engaged in. However, in the current landscape of reactionary hot takes and point scoring, this argument style is unlikely to get much traction. Twitter is limited to only 280 characters, after all.

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Mr. Potato

Cornell study: Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro 'infect' people with alt-right beliefs

Corinne Weaver
MRC NewBusters
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:33 UTC
jordan peterson dave rubin ben shapiro
A study from Cornell University claims YouTube channels that feature prominent conservative figures are "infecting" users with alt-right beliefs.

"Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube," written by five academics, concluded that "channels in the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and the Alt-lite would be gateways to fringe far right ideology." The study, released August 22, linked The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, Dr. Jordan Peterson, comedian and host Joe Rogan, and host Dave Rubin to fringe racist figures like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor.

The study concluded that YouTube's "recommender system enables Alt-right channels to be discovered, even in a scenario without personalization." Four Brazilian researchers — Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Raphael Ottoni, Virgilio A. F. Almeida, and Wagner Meira — joined with Yonsei University Professor Robert West to analyze how many viewers from three different groups on YouTube have moved to watching alt-right content on the platform.

Comment: The study, as reported here, basically views individuals as complete, unthinking, authoritarian follower automatons, unable to reason and discern for themselves or think about the content they're watching, just sitting by ready to accept wholeheartedly any ideology that happens across their screens. This is how leftist academics think of human beings - more or less as a reflection of themselves.

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No Entry

Portland State U punishes professor for proving gender studies is a joke

Peter Wood and David Randall
The Federalist
Fri, 30 Aug 2019 00:01 UTC
portland state university
© Visitor7 / Flickr
Portland State University is punishing Peter Boghossian for demonstrating that grievance studies are nonsense. Dr. Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State, joined two other academics to hoax the purveyors of gender studies and kindred fields committed to turning personal gripes into taxpayer-funded "studies."

Boghossian and his colleagues submitted articles including an analysis of "canine rape culture" and an extract from "Mein Kampf" translated into the language of feminist theory. These were accepted by what counts as "major" journals in these pseudo-disciplines. In 2018, Boghossian and his colleagues made public these hoaxes, which elegantly and hilariously made the point that these fields' "scholarship" cannot be distinguished from applesauce and horsefeathers.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

'This place is only for Jews': The apartheid springs of the West Bank

Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
Haaretz
Fri, 30 Aug 2019 20:53 UTC
illegals settlers apartheid israel west bank springs
© Alex LevacSoldiers at a West Bank spring. More than 60 such sites have been seized by settlers as part of a project of plunder there that began 10 years ago.
Settlers have taken over dozens of springs in the West Bank, all of them on private Palestinian land, and are keeping the owners away. Rina Shnerb, a Jewish teen, was murdered last week at one of them

What could be more idyllic than the sight of a natural bubbling spring amid craggy boulders, welling up from the hills, its crystalline waters flowing silently into a small pool where people are cavorting in delight? What could be more innocent than parents and children splashing about in a natural pond of greenish water, the gurgling of the water mingling with yelps of joy? And what could be more moving than the sign next to one of these springs of salvation: "Dear hikers, Welcome to Anar Springs, built thanks to an intensive effort by the youth of [the nearby settlement of] Niria. Lovers of this place, we have one small request: to dress in a way that respects all visitors, based on consideration for the needs of the Other. We built the site for your sake and for the sake of the people of Israel. Our goal is for everyone to hike and enjoy the springs together."

The heart swells at the words "lovers of this place," "consideration for the needs of the Other," "enjoy the springs together." Mankind is happy, nature is spectacular, but this spring, like all the others like it in the West Bank, was stolen from its owners. Robbed. Plundered. With a stomach-churning crudeness and violence. The "everyone" and the "consideration" - those words refer to Jews only.
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Evil Rays

Russian telecom giant MTS teams with Huawei to blast population of several Russian cities with 5G technology


RT
Fri, 30 Aug 2019 11:07 UTC
5G planet
Russian mobile operator MTS has teamed up with Chinese tech giant Huawei for a 5G pilot scheme in Moscow and Kronshtadt, where for the first time the super-fast network will cover almost the entire city.

The agreement between the two parties was signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Russia in June, when he met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and took part in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The network became operational at the VDNKh (All-Russian Exhibition Center), one of the major attractions in the Russian capital, on Thursday. Functioning on the 28GHz and 4.9GHz frequency bands, it will test so-called Smart City technology, designed to improve security and urban services management, as well as helping to develop the transport system, according to MTS.

Comment: While Russia has shown foresight in banning GMOs, it clearly has not fully evaluated the the risks of subjecting an entire population to 5G. Russians will likely see an explosion of disease and debilitating conditions as 5G blankets these test cities. See:

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Compass

Twitteri confused as IDF promotes Israeli-made navigation app by referencing alleged Hezbollah missiles


Sputnik
Fri, 30 Aug 2019 17:56 UTC
Waze google
© CC BY 2.0 / Travis WisePopular mobile app, Waze
The Israeli military believes Tehran is working with Hezbollah to retrofit unguided Lebanese missiles with GPS navigation. The IDF Spokesman's Unit could not miss an opportunity to sneak in a bit of product placement amid rising tensions.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published a video on its English Twitter account, condemning Hezbollah for allegedly retrofitting missiles with GPS tracking technology, comparing it to the Israeli-made Waze navigation app.

"What's more dangerous than a missile pointed at Israel? A missile with @waze," the tweet says.

Comment: Never miss a chance to make a buck, even by naked fear-mongering.

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Megaphone

'His psychological torture is unabated': John Pilger reveals Assange's appalling prison conditions


RT
Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:09 UTC
pilger assange
© REUTERS/Neil Hall
Australian journalist and BAFTA award-winning documentary filmmaker John Pilger says the "psychological torture" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues "unabated" while he remains in British custody.

Pilger tweeted that he recently spoke with Assange and said the journalist had lost even more weight than previously reported; he has also been denied a chance to speak to his parents on the phone.

Comment: See also:

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Question

160 years into Darwinism, and human speech is still unexplainable

Barbara Kay
The National Post
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 17:16 UTC
Charles Darwin
© WikipediaCharles Darwin
Darwinism's puzzling Achilles' heel is its utter failure to account for, alone amongst the species, humans' large brains and capacity for both abstract thought and speech.

Back when the world was young, I was taught that four visionaries' theories shaped modernity: Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. Of them, only Einstein's could be subjected to scientific scrutiny. The rest remained hypotheses, resistant to such standard scientific tests as falsifiability, replicability and predictability, but so beautiful in their comprehensiveness that the intelligentsia accepted them for what they were not: settled science.

Time has proven unkind to Freud's and Marx's theories, but very kind to Darwinism. Why? Shhh. If you dare to ask, you invite ridicule. Because the minute one expresses doubt about Darwin's basic premise that all life-forms, including humans, descend from a common ancestor through the simple processes of random, heritable variation and natural selection, one admits the possibility of a counter-theory — Intelligent Design — that is considered anathema to the intelligentsia, since it implies, you know, the G-word.

Comment: Professor Gelernter in conversation with other Darwin sceptics:



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