Angry residents of the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima ran riot and drove out Venezuelan immigrants on Saturday after a local restaurant owner was stabbed and beaten, residents and government officials said.
The demonstrations forced hundreds of Venezuelans to flee back across the frontier on foot and residents set fire to the belongings they left behind and to tires to block the only road crossing between the two countries, video images released by the state of Roraima government showed.
The outburst of anger was sparked by the robbery and severe beating of a resident in his home on Friday night by four Venezuelans, Roraima state security secretary Giuliana Castro said by telephone.
The four Venezuelan suspects stole 23,000 reais ($5,800) from the restaurant owner, identified only as Raimundo. He suffered head injuries and was taken to hospital unconscious but was reported to be out of danger, said Castro, who is also head of the state's police force.
After crossing back into their country, Venezuelans migrants attacked a group of 30 Brazilians who were shopping across the border and who had to be taken to a shelter, Castro said.
Venezuela's government expressed concern about reports of attacks on its citizens and a "massive eviction" of Venezuelans, and asked Brazil to guarantee their safety. A foreign ministry statement said the violence was fueled by xenophobia.
Its funny, Mexicans do this kind of shit in America literally all the time and nobody rises up against them.
A star of the Netflix show "Queer Eye," Jonathan Van Ness, is getting heat from the left after he sent out a tweet calling for Democrats to stop demonizing Trump supporters.
Yep, a member of a sacred protected group, gay men, is being ShirtStormed for daring to suggest that not all Republicans are Eeeeevile incarnate. Really, that's all he said, and they're hating on him like a house on fire.
I'm all for it, myself. Rage on, dipsticks. Next thing you're going to hear is that this Van Ness dude has deleted his Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and he's added his name to the #WalkAway list.
I've been saying this for a long time now, white gays and lesbians are going to be the first under the Lefty bus, then all East Asians, closely followed by straight black men and all Hispanics. After that, things will start to get interesting.
SEATTLE - Washington state's penchant for getting high is trashing the place.
Plastic "doob tubes" and small Mylar bags used to package pot are moldering in gutters, bleaching out in landfills and bobbing in waterways.
Concentrated nutrients and fertilizers left over from cannabis growing operations are being dumped in public sewers and making their way past wastewater treatment plants into Puget Sound. And millions of pounds of weed harvest waste that could be composted are instead getting trucked to landfills.
This, in a part of the country that prides itself on being environmentally friendly.
"We're seeing a lot of marijuana packaging in our public spaces," said Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, which organizes litter cleanups. "Cannabis packaging is adding to our load, which then gets washed into our lakes and Puget Sound."
Oh, the humanity! Plastic packaging! Oh noes, plant waste! Quell horreur, FERTILIZERS!!!!! [boo, hissss!] Make it stop!
Really, these people are absolutely shameless. Is there anything more objectionable than a Lefty enviroNazi?
The Phantom
Update: Welcome Instapunditeers!
Upperdate: Welcome Kate McMillan's monkeys! Small dead animals!
If you ever wondered what the World is coming to, the German Federal Police has some clues for you.
As a part of modernizing and expanding their fleet of armored vehicles they have ordered 42 pcs. of the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann FLW100 remote-controlled weapon stations.
The turrets will include the Heckler & Koch MG5 A1 machine gun, and will be mounted on their MOWAG Eagle IV and LAPV Enok 6.1 protected vehicles.
The MOWAG Eagle IV is a wheeled armored vehicle, designed by the Swiss MOWAG corporation.
The project is planned to happen around mid-2019, which also includes an additional amount of ENOK 6.1 protected vehicles.
To my knowledge this is the first time a German Police force, in modern time perhaps I should add, have commissioned a Machine Gun. The use is said to be mainly for Airport Security, but the ENOK 6.1 is also to be used in serious situations like terrorist attacks.
The FLW 200 can also take 12.7 mm Heavy Machine Guns and 40 mm Grenade Launchers, but this is not the case for now. Not yet anyway, perhaps I should add.
I will add again, for emphasis purposes because some people are living in denial, that this is the Federal German Police we're talking about here, not the Army. They've decided that spending a LOT of money on what is basically an armored Mercedes G-Wagen with a machine gun turret is something they want to do. The MOWAG Eagle is similar to an American MRAP armored truck.
These are the kind of things you use in open warfare against large numbers of enemies armed with rifles. No use if there are RPGs or mines, but just the thing for mowing down tightly packed rioters in the middle of a German city.
That's what they're buying in Angela Merkel's Germany. Forty two (42) of them. M'kay?
"Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own." Jay Austin
A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men's Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back, and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill "disbelievers."
This Austin guy was a type I've met before. Very committed to "loving the world," very devoted to all kinds of trendy notions like the Tiny House Movement, very eager to abandon any kind of common sense behavior, like locking his bicycle. If (when) it got stolen he'd probably say something like "they needed it more than I did" and shrug off the loss as "karma." I never met the man, but I've met plenty like him. They're doves, energy thieves. Fake Buddhists, I like to call them.
"With...vulnerability," he wrote, "comes immense generosity: good folks who will recognize your helplessness and recognize that you need assistance in one form or another and offer it in spades."
Jay Austin, from this story, appears to be one of those people who moved through the world employing an aggressive, even ostentatious vulnerability to blackmail those around him into behaving generously. Moral judo of the most questionable sort. Like a beggar making himself as pitiful as he can, to get more sympathy.
But then he met up with ISIS, and they killed him and his girlfriend for being White. I bet his last thought was "Are you kidding me? Can't you see what a good person I am?!"
Fake Buddhists will deny the existence of Evil, capital E, literally to their dying breaths. Which leaves them easy meat for evil men. Like the guy who ran over four people for being White, and then made a video bragging about it.
That wouldn't be so bad, but part of their belief system is that it isn't enough for -them- to be vulnerable. Everybody else has to be vulnerable too. Then the violent people will have no reason to attack, and we'll all live together in Love and Peace in our Tiny Houses.
The problem is that Evil is fairly rare. Most people, 95% of them, really will behave themselves and be extremely generous. You can see it happening every time there's a hurricane in the USA. People step up and fix everything without even being asked. So Fake Buddhists can breeze through life like everywhere in the world is Sunny Southern California, every night's a Friday Night and every day is Saturday.
But sometimes the Fake Buddhist finds the one evil man in the remote mountain town, and dies from it.
Because Evil, capital E, really does exist. So if we take nothing more from Jay Austin's stupid story, we at least should be assured of that.
2017 saw a Black-authored publication rate of about 4.5%, which is essentially double what it was two years before
Half of 2017's authors are new to this set of magazines
More debut stories by Black writers were published in this set of magazines than in 2015 and 2016 combined
Fiyah Magazine published close to the same number of debuts (10) as the pro magazines in this dataset (12) in 2017, despite being significantly smaller in number of stories published (22 versus 1,112; about 2%)
5 of the 23 pro-rate magazines in this dataset are publishing Black writers at rates approximating U.S. population levels or greater
9 of these 23 magazines published over 80% of the field's stories by Black authors (when adding Fiyah Magazine, it's over 90%)
These same 9 magazines collectively published Black authors at rates approximating U.S. population levels
These 9 magazines constitute 26% of the field by number of stories published
The fact that the top quartile of pro-rate magazines is currently publishing Black writers at levels approximating U.S. population figures strongly suggests that it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so.
The field is segregated16, and whether that's due to variable submission rates, variable acceptance rates, and/or other factors, the data expose a clear instance of structural racism.
In order to assist Black writers navigating17 the submissions process and to measure magazines' progress according to parameters that aren't available in this report, Fiyah Magazine has created the Presence of Blackness score; see L.D. Lewis' upcoming "POB Score: Growth and Accountability" for a retrospective on creating this metric.
Once again this year, I'm left asking these same questions:
How is it not the most purulent racism to tally up science fiction authors by skin colour?
Once again, there's no baseline, no real information here. Its all self-report. How do you get meaningful information out of that?
How many of these authors self-identify as conservative, or had conservative themes in their work?
But now there's something new, as mentioned in the report there are a few magazines actively seeking new black authors, and those magazines were responsible for most of the increase in black authors getting published this year. My new question is:
Is it selling? Did those magazines do well with their new push?
Because the authors of the study made this conclusion: "The fact that the top quartile of pro-rate magazines is currently publishing Black writers at levels approximating U.S. population figures strongly suggests that it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so."
To which I must add, yes it is perfectly possible for the field as a whole to do so, but only if it sells.Fiction magazines are not charities, you know. So if those magazines with lots of new Black authors did well, awesome. Go you guys. But if they didn't, then they won't be around long. Too bad so sad, but that's how Capitalism works, kids.
You know how the SJW/EcoFreak/Femminazi Left is always demanding "community based solutions" and "think global act local" and "reduce/reuse/recycle" and all that happy horseshit? And every time some new initiative comes, we all roll our eyes because we really don't believe anything they say?
They've been crammed into toilets, tossed off balconies and set on fire. They've even been adorned with dangling bags of dog droppings.
As cities from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills struggle to control a rapid proliferation of electric pay-per-mile scooters, some residents are taking matters into their own hands and waging a guerrilla war against the devices. These vandals are destroying or desecrating the vehicles in disturbingly imaginative ways, and celebrating their illegal deeds on social media — in full view of authorities and the public.
"They throw them everywhere: in the ocean, in the sand, in the trash can," said Robert Johnson Bey, a Venice Beach maintenance worker who regularly comes across scooter parts on the Venice Beach boardwalk, Speedway and adjoining alleys.
"Sunday I was finding kickstands everywhere," Bey said. "Looked like they were snapped off."
A pay-per-mile electric scooter you can take from the side of the road where its lying, slide your credit card, and ride for as far as you want, then leave it at your destination. That is a hell of a fine service. I have a bad knee, getting around in a city is hell for me. One of those scooters would be amazing.
But people are smashing them, setting them on fire, driving their cars over them. Hundreds of them. Seems unreasonable, doesn't it?
When Hassan Galedary of Culver City sees a Bird scooter, a knot in his stomach begins to twist and his teeth clench, he said. The 32-year-old film producer describes the sensation as one of "violent bitterness."
"I hate Birds more than anyone," Galedary said. "They suck. People who ride them suck."
He loathes the scooters so much that he waged what he calls an "insurgency" against them, tossing the contraptions into trash cans on Abbott Kinney Boulevard and down the Culver City Stairs. He even designed a T-shirt of a chick perched on a scooter being shot in the head. Many of his anti-scooter antics have been featured on the Bird Graveyard account.
So where does all this scooter scorn come from?
Galedary grew up on the Westside and said he hates how kids there are paying to ride scooters instead of honoring the local traditions of surfing and skateboarding. He hates the traffic accidents they cause — "Bird on Bird," "Bird on person" and "Bird on car"— and he hates how they can be left anywhere for pedestrians to trip over.
"The city is already losing so much culture due to gentrification," Galedary said.
Yes, those goddamn rich people with their goddamn money, GENTRIFYING everything, and those goddamn kids having fun the wrong way. There oughta be a law!
Clean, cheap transportation, available to all, getting people out of their cars and back into Nature, all that exercise and fresh air for the poor and needy who can't buy their own scooters? Yeah, screw that! Because GENTRIFYING and SURFING!!!
They're insane. They're fucking well insane. You give them -exactly- what they want, I mean perfectly what they said they wanted, every single parameter met, and they freak out and burn it down like a bunch of rabid chimpanzees.
So let this be a warning to any of y'all Moderates who are doing the "feed the crocodile so he eats you last" plan. They'll lose their shit and eat you first. That's who they are. Mentally ill destroyers of life.
Parkdale, a rapidly gentrifying Toronto neighbourhood, was the scene
of a protest Saturday against its latest interlopers—vegans.
Around
250 people turned out to the meeting, called Parkdale Isn’t Vegandale,
to express their concerns over the branding of a cluster of vegan shops
and restaurants that have dubbed themselves Vegandale around Queen and
Brock streets. Their issues centred on capitalism, gentrification, and a
perceived moral self-righteousness on the part of the vegan businesses.
The timing isn't random. In recent weeks, a group of progressive activists has dialed up efforts to pressure these distribution platforms to drop Infowars. That pressure, which comes at a time when court proceedings against Jones have finally begun in earnest, created the momentum that led to this decision. This has been mentioned in passing in much of the coverage, but these folks deserve much more credit and recognition for the work they've been doing in trying to fight right-wing disinformation campaigns.
Salon spoke recently with Jared Holt, a researcher from Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way. Holt's work has been instrumental in getting social media and other internet platforms to give Infowars the boot. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This is my favorite part right here:
Youwork at Right Wing Watch and People for the American Way by tracking right-wing misinformation sites. Why is it so important to go after these guys? What danger do they present to the public?
It's in the name of Infowars. It's not an attempt at legitimate reporting. It's a, quote, "war" for your mind.
Unfortunately, their war for the American mind is to stuff it full of conspiracy theories. That ultimately debases people from reality and polarizes them to the extremes of right-wing politics. Historically, we've seen that can be very harmful for the vision of America as a free and open democracy.
I think it's important to realize that people like Alex Jones are using these platforms in bad faith.
Yes, that's right. Alex Jones has an opinion, and him expressing his opinion is using the internet in bad faith. Because Jared Holt doesn't agree with Alex Jones, and that's what makes it bad faith. If Jared Holt agreed, then it would all be totally kewl, bro.
I'm going to laugh my ass off if it turns out Jones is right about Sandy Hook. I don't think he is, but watching little bitchez like Jared Holt twist in the wind would be -awesome-.
But here's a question: who funds People For The American Way? From Wikipedia:
To be clear, for the army of outrage seeking dickheads out there, this is not posted for the purpose of mocking Trans people. Those people have enough trouble in their lives without me making fun of them. Leave the Trans people alone, ladies and gentlemen, it is the proper Christian thing to do. Being merciful is never wasted, as somebody besides me should have said a long time ago.
But I am most certainly mocking someone:
Dr. Zhana Vrangalova is an NYC-based sex researcher, writer, and educator. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University.
Yes, I am mocking Dr. Zhana Vrangalova for being a fraud, and I am mocking Cornell University for giving this moron a PhD. Why? Behold:
Two Canadian researchers recently asked almost 1000 cisgender folks if they would date a trans person in a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This is the first study to ever attempt to quantify the extent of trans discrimination when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships.
958 participants (all but seven cisgender, ranging in age from 18 to 81, with an average age of 26) were asked to indicate which genders they would consider dating. The options included cisgender man, cisgender woman, trans man, trans woman, or genderqueer, and participants could select as many genders as they wanted.
Only 12% of all participants selected "trans woman" and/or "trans man."
Shock and surprise, most people be they gay or straight won't date the Trans person. Here's what Dr. Zhana Vrangalova makes of that:
The high rates of trans exclusion from potential dating pools are undoubtedly due in part to cisnormativity, cissexism, and transphobia — all of which lead to lack of knowledge about transgender people and their bodies, discomfort with these unknowns, and fear of being discriminated against by proxy of one's romantic partner. It is also possible that at least some of the trans exclusion is due to the fact that for some people, sexual orientation might be not (just) about a partner's gender identity, but attraction to specific body types and/or judgment of reproductive capabilities.
Now, I've not bothered to look up the research. But, sight unseen, I would wager that the majority of people if given the choice of dating a person with one leg or two will pick the person with two legs. I do have some prior experience here, -very- attractive young women in wheelchairs have less luck with getting dates than they do without the wheelchair. Same girl, two different responses. That state of affairs remains constant across race, religion, ideology and gender. Nobody picks the wheelchair.
People like what they like. Generally they like whole, healthy, attractive members of the opposite sex. If you ask them what they want, most will choose that. Some will lie about their choice of course, and claim the virtue signal of Openness, which is probably why they got 12% open to dating a trans. The actual number is probably a lot less. A double-blind test would sort that out.
Why? Because that's how Humans are, not because of "lack of knowledge about transgender people." Knowledge of gay people hasn't changed the percentage of gays in the population in the last 30 years, and it hasn't made straights any more likely to date them. More "education", by which I actually mean browbeating and propaganda, will do nothing positive and will probably make things worse.
People like what they like. Fashions change, but the ground state of dating choices does not. Anybody tells you different, put a hand on your wallet and #walkaway.
The Phantom
Update: Welcome, tsunami of Instapundit readers! Sarah Hoyt linked me again! Woo hoo!
Amid the vast waste of anodynes, platitudes and non-sequiturs, it was difficult to pick out a winner — the most tired, numb and vacant verbalism. But I struggled and chose, from her opening sentence, her claim that Laurier "has been at the centre of the campus free-speech conversation during the past year."
Just like there are two genders plus academic bullshit, there are two kinds of speech. There is free speech, and there is coerced speech. Otherwise known as shutting up if you know what's good for you.
The Infowars app is rising in the Apple store's rankings after a number of other major digital platforms cracked down on its content.
The app has surged in popularity in recent days from the 47th to the 4th most popular Apple store news app in the United States. That position places Inforwars over CNN, Fox News and The New York Times's apps, according to app analytics site, App Annie.
In Google Play's app store for Android, the Infowars app currently sits at the 11th spot for the most popular U.S. news app, up from its previous spot at 31st.
Everybody is getting on this bandwagon. Spotify, Apple, Pinterest, MailChimp, are kicking Jones and Infowars off their platforms.
There's really only one thing to say to this: You want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.
Exhibit A on getting more Trump, closely contested Ohio congressional seat went to the Repooplicans last night, even though they probably didn't deserve to win. The Republicans as a party SUCK these days. Its just that the DemocRats have gone far beyond sucking and passed into the "active enemy of the Republic" zone.
Lincoln police are looking for a man who exposed himself to another man while wielding a sword early Saturday morning.
The other man, 26, told police he was sitting in his car at West South and Southwest Ninth streets around 4:30 a.m., after walking his dog, when a naked man approached him with a sword.
The naked man tapped the driver's side window with the sword, and the 26-year-old grabbed his rifle from the vehicle, chasing the man into a wooded area nearby, Lincoln Police Officer Angela Sands said.
Here we have the typical thing that happens these days, a man who is clearly crazy and/or wasted on some sort of drug has a sword, and he's menacing people with it. A quick Google Maps reveals that the address is a suburban neighborhood next to a controlled-access highway.
Because I know that lots of anti-gun people read this type of thing, I'm going to point out a few items they'll miss.
First, some random 26 year old redneck scrub in Flyover Country, fricking Lincoln Nebraska, has a rifle in his car at 4:30 AM, and NOBODY DIED. Okay? What was the best possible outcome here? Armed crazy person, attempting assault with deadly weapon (and close in there is no weapon deadlier than a sword, my gentle flower children) and nobody died. It doesn't get better than that. A -cop- would have most definitely shot that guy. No question.
Second, despite everything the government does at all levels from top to bottom in the name of public safety, there's an insane person with a sword. Was the random 26 year old hopelessly paranoid to keep a gun in the car? No, apparently not. Because insane naked man with sword, tapping on his window. The chances of winning the lottery are very small, but somebody always wins it.
Third, how does this turn out if 26 year old doesn't have a gun? Hmm? Maybe he gets away clean in the car, or maybe he has to use the car on this guy. Chances of casualty are much higher. So he gets away, crazy guy still has his sword, now he's on the hunt for a new victim. Again, chances of injury or death are higher.
Fourth, how does this all turn out if the victim is less robust and less aggressive that a 26 year old male? Badly, right? Very, very badly. Even if nobody dies, lifetime PTSD for the victim.
Apple, Facebook and YouTube clamped down on content by Alex Jones Monday.
Apple confirmed on Monday that it had removed five out of six podcasts, which includes Jones' infamous "The Alex Jones Show" as well as a number of other InfoWars audio streams. The news was originally reported by BuzzFeed News.
Facebook and Google made similar decisions later on Monday. Facebook removed four pages controlled by him, while Google removed the official "Alex Jones Channel" on its platform. The YouTube channel for InfoWars, the media company owned by Alex Jones, still remains live.
I'm not going to defend Alex Jones here, because that's not the point. He has an opinion that differs from the management of three big California tech companies, and they are using the power of their platforms to shut him down.
Lots of people have opinions that Big Silicon Valley technocrats don't like. For instance, every single American who voted for Donald Trump.
That they would even consider taking this sort of step now, against a small fry like Alex Jones, speaks volumes about their arrogance and their mindset.
Imagine what they're going to do in October, when the election determines whether Trump will be impeached or not. Imagine 2020.
Possibilities: How about every iPhone and Android device suddenly won't play Republican election ads? How about if all the data that Facebook has been scraping from the web for years suddenly becomes available to Antifa? Names, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, workplace, etc. They could actually do that. Its physically possible. Probably pretty easy. Couple of hours work, I would think.
And the political will is clearly there, they -want- to do it. Strike down the Nazi-voting Trumpers in one blow, a high-tech Kristalnacht.
I strongly think we are nowhere near paranoid enough, my friends.
The answer is quite obviously yes, they are working together. Possibly without even formally doing so. Same culture, same goals, they're all going to be on the same page pretty much.
