Anyone familiar with me knows I have a low opinion of libertarianism. Like its leftwing twin, anarchism, it is a utoppian idea which falls apart quickly. The big difference between the two is that libertarianism wants to get rid of regulation and let the oligarch foxes run the chicken coop.
That said, this shows how the utopian ideal doesn't work.
The best part is that they defunded the police with the obvious consequences.
I am going to change my previous post where I said " I think she would be more of an ICE supporter."
She's not a symbol of resistance, she's a racist authoritiarian.
The Joke's over. If they think that the British police are authoritarian, then they are truly deluded with this bullshit.
Although, when George describes a television presenter as "That posh bird that gets everything wrong" in Hard Day's Night seems appropriate.
For those who have been lucky enough to have missed this trend, Amelia is a character from the educational game "Pathways: Navigating
the Internet and Extremism". The game was designed for the British government to help young people recognize and
avoid online radicalization. However, she has become a viral meme,
often associated with far-right ideologies, which has shifted the game's
original intent. Amelia parrots right-wing, often racist, talking points, connecting her celebration of stereotypical British culture with anti-migrant and Islamophobic tropes. Her England is that of an American who has never visited the place.
For example, she likes eating fish and chip in a pub, which is wrong on several levels. Traditionally, Fish and Chips came from the chip shop, or "chippie". And pubs didn't sell food back then. Well, at least not like the ones like Wetherspoons does now. Even more importantly, Pubs are quickly vanishing for economic reasons:
The UK is experiencing a significant decline in the number of pubs, with projections indicating that one pub is set to close every day in 2025 due to rising operational costs and reduced consumer spending. This trend has resulted in thousands of job losses and highlights the urgent need for government intervention to support the struggling pub industry.
Next comes her accent, which is rather posh since she is supposed to be from Yorkshire (Pathways mentions East Riding amd Bradford). Something like Jodie Whittaker's accent n the clip below would be far more appropriate. I can't imagine someone talking like Amelia and lasting long up there. Amelia belongs in Downton Abbey, not Yorkshire. And Highclere Castle, which poses as Downton Abbey, is in Hampshire, which is in the South of England.
But there are so many things wrong with the Amelia memes it's hard to get upset about, such as her in this D-Day landing craft full of Americans. Or are they Danes? Since I see a Danish flag in the background. Toss in another vid has a giant Danish flag in it!
Someone mentioned something about her and Minnesota, but I can't see Amelia shedding tears for people who are fighting people deporting furriners. She is definitely more of an ICE supporter than opponent.
I believe the memes have her fawning over Nigel Farage. So, she's a definite loser, unless she secretly hopes for England to become the 51st State: after Wales and Scotland devolve and join the EU.
Well, as another line from the scene I mentioned from Hard Day's Night goes: "The new thing is to care passionately and be right wing."
And she does like dogs: although for seriously silly reasons.
There's a reason those 1,000 "Christian Influencers" didn't visit Bethlehem. That trip was such propaganda that it's not worth thinking about.
What's worth thinking about is how they can let other Christians be persecuted.
And this comes from the Instagram page forgotten_christians:
Palestinian Christians living under Israeli occupation face daily hardships: movement restrictions, checkpoints and permit systems that limit access to work, schools, hospitals, and holy sites, alongside land confiscation and settlement expansion that squeeze livelihoods and community life.
In Christian villages like Taybeh, residents have faced repeated Israeli settler attacks and intimidation targeting homes, farmland, and church property, creating fear and insecurity with little accountability.
For some reason, Christian Zionists neglect Palestinian Christians and their persecution by the State of Israel. Unless it blows up in their faces the way it did for Mike Huckabee, but even he turns a blind eye to the persecution of Christians and the destruction of churches.
The real problem here is that the Palestinian Christians are the "wrong sort of Christians" to get support from Evangelicals who support lsrael. we need to bring back the 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379.
13. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
I've gone on ad nauseum about how the current interpretation is an ultra vires act that has no historical basis. After all the complaints in the Declaration of Independence were:
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
This gets into the real history of the mindset behind the Second Amendment which is the conflict between a professional, full time standing army and a part time force (the militia).
And you can show me where the US Constitution explicitly mentions "self-defence", or any other non-military use of arms if you think I am wrong.What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Now, it must be evident, that, under this provision, together with their other powers, Congress could take such measures with respect to a militia, as to make a standing army necessary. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins. This was actually done by Great Britain at the commencement of the late revolution. They used every means in their power to prevent the establishment of an effective militia to the eastward. The Assembly of Massachusetts, seeing the rapid progress that administration were making to divest them of their inherent privileges, endeavored to counteract them by the organization of the militia; but they were always defeated by the influence of the Crown. --Elbridge Gerry, House of Representatives, Amendments to the Constitution 17, 20 Aug. 1789, Annals 1:749--52, 766--67
See also:
And unlike a lot of people out there: this blog has been pretty consistent about carrying weapons to a protest as being a no-no.
I'm sorry I can't say too much if Alex Pretti was going to show up with a firearm and get in the way of police. My experience is that is an incredibly bad idea from my long career of dealing with the police in various capacities.
But, as the quote from My Cousin Vinnie goes: "It's your ass not mine."
I know that some jurisdictions make it illegal to carry a weapon during a civil unrest (e.g., 18 Pa.C.S. 6107), which is why I said that I am surprised the real militia (national guard) didn't shoot Kyle Rittenhouse for walking about armed in Kenosha.
I had a manual on protesting from the 1960s which made it clear not to bring weapons to a protest, that I can't find. And there are states which prohibit this activity.
As does common sense.
To quote the Everytown page where I got the graphic:
White supremacists and anti-government extremists have sought to undermine our institutions with armed protests that too often escalate to violence. An 18-month study of 560 events where demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, or other individuals or groups were present and carried or brandished firearms found that at least 18% of these events occurred on the grounds of government facilities, with more than 100 reported at legislative buildings and vote-counting centers. The study also found that armed demonstrations are nearly six times as likely to turn violent or destructive compared to unarmed demonstrations.
That comes from Armed
Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Armed Assembly: Guns, Demonstrations, and Political Violence in America,” August 23, 2021.
The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law pretty much agrees with this:
The right to peacefully assemble is enshrined in the First Amendment and has driven political progress in the United States since its founding. While the overwhelming majority of recent protests in the U.S. have been peaceful and have not involved weapons, a growing number have included individuals with firearms—whether participating as protesters, counter-protesting, or claiming to provide security.
Armed individuals undermine protests’ core democratic nature: They intimidate and discourage people from exercising their rights to speech and assembly, and they have interfered with basic democratic processes like voting and lawmaking. Amidst unprecedented political polarization and heightened fears of political violence, the presence of firearms at protests today threatens to be a particularly combustible trend.
I could quote extensively from that report on how stupid Pretti was for being armed and how counterproductive it was, but he learned that lesson at the cost of his life. It's worth reading. https://www.icnl.org/wp-content/uploads/Guns-at-Protests-Briefer-vf-02.2022.pdf
So, you may not like what I say about Alex Pretti getting shot, but someone needs to toss some cold water on the practise of carrying weapons, particularly firearms, to protests. Pretti was "too soon oldt and too late smart" when it comes to this. And, like Rittenhouse, his heart was in the right place, but his head was up his ass.
Unfortunately, Pretti DID get killed for his ignorance.
See also:
OK, the "Gun Violence Prevention" types should be upset about the guns on the street, but they are getting way ahead of where they should be in this process: especially if they are serious about cutting back on how many people patrol the streets. Getting the guns off the streets should be priority number one for the people who are going to float this crazy concept. Not to mention they should be really careful about how they frame the issue in regard to people who carry guns. Guns are not the problem in Europe and most of the rest of the world that they are in the US.Acquiring guns illegally in the US is not much harder. About 57% of this year’s deadly force victims to date were allegedly armed with actual, toy or replica guns. American police are primed to expect guns. The specter of gun violence may make them prone to misidentifying or magnifying threats like cellphones and screwdrivers. It may make American policing more dangerous and combat-oriented. It also fosters police cultures that emphasize bravery and aggression.
While people might want to say that Alex Pretti wasn't armed, as that quote points out you're taking your chances having anything in your hands in an encounter with the police.
But, I'm going to let this sheriff explain this to you and maybe you might not do something stupid which gets you killed.
As I said in the other post:
I witnessed the police beating someone resisting arrest. It was about 4-6 police officers on one small, skinny person.
Was it a bunch of white racist cops in the US?
Nope, it was someone who refused to leave a bar on Gandy Street in Exeter, England in 1991. The person who was being beaten was white, as were the police. The issue was that the person was resisting arrest.
Getting in the way of police doing their jobs is taking a serious risk: whether you agree with what they are doing or not.
I posted about this last December, but I am posting this again since part of Trump's insane expansionism is based upon a continued reliance on fossil fuels. Energy independence makes more sense if we are talking about national security than relying on fossil fuels coming from other nations.
And Uruguay proves it can be done.
I've been thinking this for a while, but I will let this guy speak. He has another, longer video out, which I haven't seen, but I am interested in seeing. Toss in that I have said that Fred Hampton was dangerous to the powers that be since he worked on racial cooperation.
So, I am really glad to see this video say what needs to be said.
Here's the longer video:I've already said that cryptocurrency is shady. This is a really good run down on why that is so.
The US government needs to look into Trump's corruption and how cryptocurrency enables crime.
Trump has gone well beyond what should be legally acceptable for a US elected official, yet he has somehow managed to remain in power despite an strong lack of popular support. But, it is impossible to get rid of politicians who do not serve the people.
So, stop pretending that the US Constittuion is somehow a sacred document: even the founders knew it would need tweaking or they wouldn't have added a process to amend the thing. And it has been controversial since it was conceived: Hell, they wrote the thing in secret.
The problem is that "checks and balances" doesn't really work when the judiciary is really a rubber stamp for insane policies. Or that the legislature really is not the representative for the people.
Representative Government is a system of government where citizens elect leaders to carry out and make public policy. It is usually characterized by institutional guarantees like periodic elections of the leaders of government, a free press, freedom of public debate, freedom to associate and some degree of governmental accountability.John Stuart Mill considers representative government the ideal form of government. One of the more notable ideas Mill puts forth in the book on the topic is that the business of government representatives is not to make legislation. Instead, Mill suggests that representative bodies such as parliaments and senates are best suited to be places of public debate on the various opinions held by the population and to act as watchdogs of the professionals who create and administer laws and policy. In his words:
Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating to public matters, both great and small; and, along with this, to check by criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high public officers who really conduct the public business, or who appoint those by whom it is conducted.
The fact is that the US Constitution has become a joke outside of the United States. It's also becoming questioned within the United States. Well, other than by the people who want to believe the Russians stole the US elections.
Sorry, it's pretty obvious that was the founders for creating the electoral college who have been responsible for the problems in US elections. After all, Gerrymandering became a word when Elbridge Gerry created the thing in 1812.
On the other hand, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was written around the time the US Constitution was has proven resilient through 5 French republics and some Empires as well. But it provides a much better framework for a bill of rights to build a government upon. After all, it does allow for peaceful changes in the structure of government.
Maybe we should look to that when the US Constitution is rewritten.
I like to point out how we already have a British North America: Canada. This points out some of the ways that the War for Independence could have fizzled: besides the ways it also came close to fizzling in on its own.
Independence wasn't as much of a certainty as people would like to think. The Colonies would have lost had it not have gained support from European powers: in particular, France. I would also add that there were some people in England who supported Independence for the Colonies.
Interestingly, most of the Loyalists who left the colonies ended up moving to what would become Canada.
It was a pleasant surprise for me to realise that I was in a cooperative.
And it came after seeing dogs in the stores. Although, I have gotten accustomed to seeing them in restaurants.
Unfortunately, mine were left at home for various reasons: the major one being this was a ski vacation. We were usually out all day.
Anyway, the quality of the items was great and the prices were reasonable.
But the best part is that the workers, and some customers are members. I'm not sure what my membership with REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) is, but I have belonged since I lived in Washington, DC in the late 1990s. REI brands itself as a consumer cooperative.
So, Cooperatives aren't totally alien to the US. They definitely aren't to the UK.
And here are a couple of happy pups in Cortina.
I'm tossing in this video about Scotland's Community Wealthbuilding law, which sort of ties into the concept of cooperatives.
Yet another way to distract you from the US uniparty to give an illusion of choice. The people who scream socialism and communism would freak if either system were anywhere close to being implemented in the United States.
Knowledge conquers ignorance. The founders intended for the United States to be a secular state: including those who most people would consider the "religious right". This was because they knew the effects of governmental interference and entanglement with religion.
The problem with this situation is that the Zionists, Christian and Jewish, have framed the situation as a "Holy War" between Jews and Muslims, which couldn't be further from the Truth in the Holy Land. But the Zionists neglect to mention that Christians have borne the brunt of the persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Nakba.
"Often we accept something because it is part of our culture. They make us think it's the only possible world. The factory is closed and you have to look for another job. The end.
I invite a person who lives in America to try and question their own system, because if we don't question our system, we cannot change our system."
