Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Shoes are what's important to the media.

The New York Times continues to wonder why we mock them.

When is a shoe not just a shoe?
When it is a pair of very high, needle-thin heels worn by the first lady of the United States on her way to the site of a natural disaster. Then it becomes a symbol for what many see as the disconnect between the Trump administration and reality; another example of the way in which this president and his family continue to define "appropriate" their own way; and an excuse for partisan name-calling.
Or so became apparent Tuesday morning when President Trump and his wife left the White House to fly to Texas for a briefing on the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, and Mrs. Trump appeared on the lawn in black pegged trousers, black shades, an olive green bomber jacket — and her stilettos, now a trademark. Very much the same kind of shoes, in other words, she has been wearing since long before she joined her husband on the campaign trail.
They are complaining about what the First Lady is wearing when she's getting on Air Force One in Washington.

Did Melania, who was most certainly not going to be bucking sandbags or ladling soup, wear the offensive heels at the disaster?

Though by the time the plane had landed Mrs. Trump looked altogether more grounded, in white sneakers and crisp white shirt, with a ponytail pulled through a black baseball cap emblazoned with the word "FLOTUS," during her time in the air the original shoes went from being mere footwear to objects of vilification thanks to social media's specific kind of alchemy.

So that's a no, then. Why even bother writing the article?

It is precisely the superficial nature of clothing, the fact that garments are immediately accessible to all, that makes them the go-to stand-in for more nuanced, complicated emotions and issues.

Translation: they hate Trump and they'll use any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to take a shot at him.

Dear Media, this is why your circulation numbers continue to circle the bowl. There's a Biblical flood wrecking a major city, and you worthless assholes are wasting everyone's time with bitchy high school girl gossip.

The Phantom

Update: Kate McMillan's comment on this farce is way better than mine.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Denmark to cut taxes.

This is a fairly big deal in Western governance. Denmark, the highest taxed country in Europe, is cutting taxes.

Denmark's government proposed a broad range of tax cuts that will hit all income groups, make it cheaper to save toward retirement and reduce levies on cars.

The center-right coalition of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen wants to shrink the country's tax burden by 23 billion kroner ($3.7 billion), with the proposed measures to be phased in through 2025, according to a statement published on Tuesday. The administration also said it will "monitor" the corporate tax rate to ensure Denmark stays competitive with its trade partners.

"With this proposal, we're tackling a number of concrete challenges," Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said in the statement. "We're increasing the gains associated with working, we're making it more attractive to work more and we're ensuring that it's more worthwhile to save up toward retirement."

A fast-growing economy has pushed down the jobless rate to just 3.5 percent, prompting concern about potential labor shortages. An aging population is also weighing on the state's coffers.

Translation: They can't sustain the welfare state they have, because nobody is paying more in than they are taking out. They can't take in a bunch of Mooselimb immigrants, because the Danish people aren't having it. Finally there is a large swell of Baby Boomers retiring, and there's not enough money to keep paying their retirement plus everything else the Danish government currently pays for.

Solution, economic growth! Shazam! To do that, they have to cut taxes.

Everybody knows the solution to a crappy economy is tax cuts, even socialist freak jobs. They just find tax cuts inconvenient, because there's less money for them to steal and the voters complain about not getting their "free" stuff anymore.

The Phantom

My review of Monster Hunter Siege.

Lela Buis was kind enough to post my reviw of Monster Hunter Siege by Larry Correia on her blog.

https://lelaebuis.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/guest-review-of-monster-hunter-siege-by-larry-corriea/

Spoiler, I liked it. ~:D

The Phantom

Monday, August 28, 2017

Christian bookstores vanishing rapidly.

More book retailers on the chopping block.

Over the last decade, Christian bookstores across the nation have been shuttering. In some cases, consumers are just less interested in the stores' God-blessed inventory. But plenty of others are just opting to purchase religious items from online retailers, with Christian bookstores humbled before the same digital market forces that felled secular mom-and-pop bookstores.

The flailing Christian bookstore industry reached code red status earlier this year when Family Christian Stores, touted as "the world's largest retailer of Christian-themed merchandise," declared it would shutter all of its 240 stores across America and lay off 3,000 employees. The 85-year-old chain said that "changing consumer behavior and declining sales" left it no choice.

What happened?

The rise of online retailers created stiff competition for brick-and-mortar stores. The absence of rent, real estate, and large staffs allowed these emerging distributors to offer deep discounts that traditional booksellers simply could not match. The internet also created options for authors to affordably self-publish their work and distribute it straight to consumers. This, combined with a sharp decline in book sales generally and the rise of reduced price e-books, ate into publishers' profits.

These converging trends decimated the print publishing industry. And retailers, which form the industry's front line, bore the brunt of it. Many prominent chains, such as Borders, B. Dalton, and Waldenbooks, floundered and eventually folded. Others, including industry giant Barnes & Noble, teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

So, the usual. Just more of it.

It won't be long before retail space starts getting really freaking cheap, my friends.

The Phantom

Victim update: Nazi victim guy stabbed himself!

Wow, the news just keeps getting stupider.

Sheridan police arrested a man after he admitted cutting himself and making up a story about being stabbed by someone who asked if he was a "neo-Nazi."

Joshua Witt, 26, told police on Aug. 16 that he was stabbed in the hand by a man who approached him outside the Steak 'n Shake restaurant at 3502 River Point Parkway.

Witt told police the man asked if he was a neo-Nazi and then tried to stab him. Witt claimed his hand was injured as he tried to protect himself. Witt, a U.S. Navy boatswain's mate who lives in San Diego, posted photos of his injured hand on his Facebook page and shared the fake story about being stabbed.

Previously mentioned here in the Phantom Soapbox. Just goes to show the level of bullshit this year is getting deeper and deeper.

The Updated Phantom

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Book shenanigans!

Well well. It seems that a company decided they wanted to be Number One!!! on the New York Times bestseller list.


NEW YORK (AP) -- A novel called "Handbook for Mortals" had a very brief reign at the top of a New York Times best-seller list.
The paper confirmed Friday that it had pulled Lani Sarem's book from its young adult hardcover list for Sept. 3 because of "inconsistencies" in the reporting of sales. The announcement came after online complaints that "Handbook for Mortals" had benefitted from so-called "bulk sales," when hundreds or thousands of copies are ordered by a single buyer. On Twitter, young adult author Phil Stamper and others had questioned how a book they knew little about could reach No. 1 on the Times list.
"After investigating the inconsistencies in the most recent reporting cycle, we decided that the sales for 'Handbook for Mortals' did not meet our criteria for inclusion," the Times said in a statement issued through communications director Jordan Cohen. "We've issued an updated 'Young Adult Hardcover' list for September 3, 2017, which does not include that title.

Of note in this story are two things. First, that getting on the NY Times best seller list -can- be finagled like this. The books have not even shipped, all that has happened is that electronic orders have gone through. Check out this very last part waaaaay down at the bottom:

Placement on a Times best-seller list is highly valued by authors and publishers, and efforts to manipulate sales through "bulk" purchases have occurred over the years. An "About the Bestsellers" note on the paper's web site reads that "Institutional, special interest, group or bulk purchases, if and when they are included, are at the discretion of The New York Times Best-Seller List Desk editors."

This little get-out-of-jail-free clause is so that people like Hillary and Barack can write a coffee table book that NO ONE BUYS, and still be on the best seller list. Incidentally you can tell that no one bought it when it shows up at Barnes and Noble on a pallet in the middle of the store for five bucks. That's called "remainder" where they blow out the whole print run below cost so they don't have to store it.

The difference between some US Senator's book and this "Handbook for Mortals" is that author Lani Sarem doesn't have a "friend" on the New York Times Best-Seller List Desk. The Goodreads review page is on fire with one-star reviews.

Second is how few copies a book has to sell to get on the best seller list. This is pretty interesting for aspiring authors. It seems 5000 sales will get you on the list. I'd take that number with a large grain of salt, because the Pajiba site its on has a "Resist/Persist" t-shirt for sale, we're talking the Full SJW here. But, it does put the on-going bunfight over Science Fiction awards in a certain perspective. These are very small numbers of sales. People really are not reading this stuff.

The Phantom

Update!: According to the Mad Geniuses, and verified by the International Lord of Hate, Larry Correia, the measurement is 5000 sales, in a week, from the special super-secret stores that send their sales data to the New York Times.

Canadians will be chagrined to learn the true size of our market,  according to Super Fabulous Canadian Author via private e-mail, 5000 sales in Canada makes you a Best Seller. Holy crap.

So, if you write a fairly decent book and release it into the Canadian market, you can reasonably expect -dozens- of sales. Yay.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

John A. Mcdonald, NAZI!!!!11!

You just knew this was coming.

As U.S. legislators mull the removal of statues seen by many as painful reminders of the darker moments in American history, a similar debate is playing out in Ontario over whether public schools should bear the names of Canadian figures associated with this country's legacy around the treatment of Indigenous communities.

That debate hit the floor of a meeting by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario days ago, ending with a resolution to urge school boards across the province to consider removing the name of Canada's first prime minister — Sir John A. Macdonald — from public schools.

What did Sir John A. ever do to deserve this?

Widely lauded as the father of Confederation, Macdonald is credited with having joined the eastern and western parts of Canada together through the creation of a transcontinental railway.

Pareja says he acknowledges Macdonald's foundational role in the country's Confederation, but that having public schools bearing his name leaves out his role in the starvation of Indigenous people along the railway to facilitate its construction — along with Macdonald's "central role as the architect of, really, what was genocide of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island."

Funny how there are still Indians all over Canada, given the genocide and all.

Sir John A. is guilty of being dead, white and there's statues of him, pretty much.

Home schooling is the future, my friends. Save your children's minds, keep them away from these loons until they're old enough to fight back.

The Phantom

Sunday, August 20, 2017

My only comment on the Charlotte riot.

This will be my one comment on the Left vs. Right rioting in Charlotte NC, Boston, and any other frigging place these assholes show up:

Man stabbed after haircut gets him mistaken for a neo-Nazi

Witt says he'd just pulled in to the parking lot of the Steak 'n Shake in Sheridan, Colo., and was opening his car door.
"All I hear is, 'Are you one of them neo-Nazis?' as this dude is swinging a knife up over my car door at me," he said.
"I threw my hands up and once the knife kind of hit, I dived back into my car and shut the door and watched him run off west, behind my car.

That's what's going on out there. Plan accordingly.

The Phantom

Update: It is dumber than we thought. This guy stabbed himself.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Bubonic Plague fleas found in Arizona.

I know that as a Straight White Male I'm not allowed to talk about illegal immigration. Tough shit, I'm going to anyway.

One of the most important reasons for having borders and immigration controls in place is to prevent the spread of contagious disease. Back in the old days, if you caught tuberculosis or something like bubonic plague, you died. So countries like Canada and the USA made a very large and very expensive effort to keep people with those diseases out of the country by screening all prospective immigrants.

When you have people sneaking into the country, those screens are obviously not done. Diseases spread, and people die.

Enter the humble flea. One of the things fleas do is jump from rodents to people. Another thing they do is carry the Bubonic Plague bacteria. They can live for a long time after being infected, and their bite transmits the disease.

One of the things that happens to people when they sleep outside is they can get fleas. You lie down a few feet from a hidden mouse nest or prairie dog hole, you get fleas on you.

In a situation where hundreds or even thousands of people are moving through the desert from Mexico, some of them are going to get flea bites.

So what? So fleas carrying the Bubonic Plague have been found in Arizona.

Health officials are urging people to take precautions after a second Arizona county in two weeks confirmed that fleas in the area have tested positive for plague.

The announcement by Navajo County Public Health officials on Friday comes one week after Coconino County officials found prairie dogs in the area to be carrying fleas with the plague -- the infectious disease infamous for killing millions of Europeans in the Middle Ages.

The fleas in Navajo County were found near the town of Taylor.

Health officials have notified the residents whose property will be treated. The area will be closely monitored to determine if further action is required.

People are advised to take certain measures to reduce the risk of exposure to this serious disease, which can be present in fleas, rodents, rabbits and predators that feed on these animals.

The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea or by direct contact with an infected animal.


It is not unlikely that a migrant or two may end up catching the plague, if the fleas are having a good year and spreading widely. Bugs do that. Some years their numbers increase.

Why do we care? Because this is the Plague we're talking about here. This shit is fatal if untreated and as contagious as the common cold. Picture if you will an overcrowded holding facility full of men, women and little kids, all happily swapping germs in the not-very-sanitary government facility, then being put on trains and buses and airplanes for delivery to small towns all over America.

If you wanted to kill a whole lot of people by disease, that would be the best possible way to do it. That's the current US Immigration system. The one that Trump is a Nazi for trying to change.

The Phantom

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Why do women bully each other at work?

The Atlantic, oddly, has an interesting article about workplace bullying. By women, to women. It begins thus:

The bitches, as Shannon saw it, came in three varieties. She categorized them on her personal blog, in a post titled "Beware the Female BigLaw Partner."

First was the "aggressive bitch"—a certain kind of high-ranking woman at the firm where she worked who didn't think twice about "verbally assaulting anyone." When one such partner's name appeared on caller ID, Shannon told me, "we would just freak out."

Next was the two-faced "passive-aggressive bitch," whose "subtle, semi-rude emails" hinted that "you really shouldn't leave before 6:30." She was arguably worse than the aggressive bitch, because you might never know where you stand.

Last but not least, the "tuned-out, indifferent bitch," Shannon wrote, "is so busy, both with work and family, that they don't have time for anything … This partner is not trying to be mean, but hey, they got assignments at midnight when they were associates. So you will too.


Its a fairly long article. The take-home is:

A) Don't work for a woman if you can avoid it, and
B) When women are horrible, and they are, it is MEN who are at fault.

Of course, right? It's The Atlantic. The author had to stick it to the men, otherwise her piece wouldn't have been published.

Spectacularly absent is any mention of the quaint notion that people, including WOMEN, are responsible for their own behavior. When a man is horrible, it is his fault. When a woman is horrible, isn't it her fault?

Nope. Its some man somewhere, pulling her strings. She's a victim of the Patriarchy. Can't be expected to stand or fall on her own merits, the poor thing.

Only men can do stuff like that. So unfair!

Saturday, August 12, 2017

The Google Memo tempest in a teapot.

Seen at Small Dead Animals, I think this is the best comment yet on the Google Memo.

As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

The Google memo, saying women aren't very into engineering, reached a similar conclusion.

That's the headline. This article is hilarious. I laughed my ass off.

No, the reason I left is that I came into work one Monday morning and joined the guys at our work table, and one of them said "What did you do this weekend?"

I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: "I built a fiber-channel network in my basement," and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.

That is pretty much the entire "Women In STEM" argument in a nutshell. They can do it. But they don't want to. Because it is boring and stupid.

The guys who are good at computer engineering are few and far between. They are rare. Weirdos. Nerds. The kind of dorks that see a computer and can name every chip on the motherboard, know where it came from, who made it, what it does, and a bunch of other boring shit that no sane person would ever care about. They build computers at home. For fun. They enjoy it.

Because they are weirdos.

There ARE women out there like that. I can think of two right off the top of my head, Grace Hopper and the woman that runs Adafruit. So, clearly, they exist.

But here's the other side of the argument. Out of all the women I know or have ever heard of, I can think of two that are as massive computer nerds as men. Two.

That truth puts the guys who fired this kid in a very unflattering light. Women, clearly, are different than men. The Left in general and Google in this particular case are loudly and obnoxiously claiming there is no difference, women and men are the same. Which is self evidently untrue.

Question: Why would they do that?

The Phantom

Monday, August 07, 2017

Even Atheists don't trust Atheists?

From the "Another amaaaazing study!" department, another amazing study.

A unusual social study has revealed that atheists are more easily suspected of vile deeds than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists -- strikingly, even by fellow atheists, researchers said Monday.
This suggests that in an increasingly secular world, many -- including some atheists -- still hold the view that people will do bad things unless they fear punishment from all-seeing gods.
The results of the study "show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct," an international team wrote in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
And it revealed that "atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous."
Myself, I would not go so far as "morally depraved and dangerous" but I might extend to "deluded and extensively disinformed try-hards."

The thing I notice most about "professional" atheists these days is that they don't dismiss God. A proper atheist is somebody for whom God is not an issue, because they don't believe in
God. The same way that ghosts are not an issue for me, because I don't believe in ghosts. If other people do, that's their problem.

Lately, atheist leaders actively and loudly DIS-believe in God. That's not the same thing at all. They -hate- God, and they want to fight you about it. They want to run around and dismantle all the churches, temples and what have you. People can't be allowed to believe in God. (Except Mooselimbs, see Dawkins.)

Its a little religion, really. The religion of "God is Bad!!!" The ultimate in Leftist retardation. Impossible even to lampoon, due to being too ridiculous already.

And they wonder why nobody likes them.

The Phantom

Update: The AFP link at the top died, here's a couple more: The Guardian, the BBC, the original article in Nature.


Friday, August 04, 2017

Professional. Cuddling. Because Trump.

Times when you wish you were kidding, and you wish it was the Onion, but it isn't. Its Rolling Stone::

The reasons one seeks out a professional cuddling experience range from average adults seeking connection, those on the autistic spectrum, those healing from sexual trauma, adults dealing with sexual dysfunction or for older virgins to practice touch in a safe environment. The elephant in the room during some of these sessions, though, is the current state of the country's affairs. Since November – and the election of Donald Trump – professional cuddling services have seen a spike in client interest.

"The holiday season was the first time that since Trump won the election that a lot of people were seeing their family," says Adam Lippin, co-founder and CEO of Cuddlist, which provides training services to professional cuddlers and allows clients to search listings of "Cuddlists" nearby. "People with different political views were going to be in the same place with relatives. That was the first hit of people having to confront it in a significant way. We saw an uptick around that."


$80 bucks an hour, each, because the DemocRats lost an election.

Its worth reading the whole thing for the inadvertent hilarity:

To be considered a certified Cuddlist, one must enroll in an online course, attend a Cuddle Party group session and pass a video or in-person evaluation.

That is some extensive professional training, right there.

The Phantom

DC comics TV show goes full retard.

You know the old saying, 'you never go full retard'...

From the article Kathy linked:

DC Comics superhero Isis will be joining DC's Legends of Tomorrow in its upcoming third season under her real name of Zari Adrianna Tomaz (played by Tala Ashe), and the fact that the character is a practicing Muslim is a choice show producer Marc Guggenheim said was made specifically in response to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

"You might have heard there was this election," said Guggenheim during this week's Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills (as quoted by Variety). "Not to get political, but something that we all gravitated toward in the writers room was making this character Muslim."

"Representation is a really powerful thing," added Ashe. "When I was growing up watching television, I didn't see anyone who looked like me. When I think of the kid version of myself, I think it broadens your perspective. What I think is so lovely about this show is that the Legends are this tapestry that represent America today."

Full disclosure, I am a recovering comic book nerd with a basement full of comic boxes. Seriously, I used to buy Marvel and DC's full output every week. For years.

I do not watch Legends of Tomorrow on TV. It is so bad that I can't, even though I really want to. The staging, the dialogue, the plot, are cringefully bad. A character says something and I wince, its so bad.

So now, these geniuses bring in a Muslim character named Isis because Trump got elected?

Isis? Really?

Even for dipshit Hollywood hipsters, this is bad.

The Phantom

Thursday, August 03, 2017

Yes, they CAN use your webcam.

Remember the good old days, when people thought you were crazy and paranoid for putting a sticker over your laptop camera or webcam when you weren't using it?

WikiLeaks released new documents on Thursday within the Vault 7 documents, which contain information on CIA's hacking tools from the Dumbo project.

"Dumbo is a capability to suspend processes utilizing webcams and corrupt any video recordings that could compromise a PAG deployment. The PAG (Physical Access Group) is a special branch within the CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence); its task is to gain and exploit physical access to target computers in CIA field operations," WikiLeaks said in a press release.

Funny how nobody thinks that anymore.

The Phantom

Morality is good when Communists do it.

Reversing the sleaze trend, the Grammys are looking to start awarding more wins to good, wholesome entertainment. Like Pat Boone.

The organiser of the music industry's annual Grammy Awards on Thursday said it would respect China's media curbs and only promote artists with a "positive and healthy" image, in its bid to break into the world's second-largest economy.

The Recording Academy, which is behind the Grammys, the industry's biggest awards show, plans to launch a tour in China in 2018 featuring award-winning artists, or nominees, performing live shows.

China has launched a campaign to cleanse the entertainment sector of content it deems inappropriate and unhealthy, a vague term the authorities also frequently use to justify censorship of politically sensitive topics.

"If there are restrictions and things in that nature, we have to be respectful," Neil Portnow, president and chief executive of the Recording Academy, told Reuters in Beijing, the capital.

Yeah, they have to "be respectful" because the Chicoms won't let them play, otherwise. What are they having to be respectful of, specifically?

Stars blocked from performing in China include Lady Gaga, Bjork and Bon Jovi, who have all met or expressed support for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Recently a Chinese state office barred Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, citing his bad behavior and urging him to improve his conduct to become a singer "truly loved" by the public.

Don't talk about the Dali Lama, and lay off the gangsta shit. I can't really argue with the guy about Bieber or Lady Gaga, but Bon Jovi?

The thing is, here's a supposedly iconic brand in American music quite openly changing its behavior to please a totalitarian regime. Will they change their behavior because an American group objects? No. If Americans object they're SQUARES, baby, and the little twerps just do it more. Bieber, seven Grammys. Next year, live sex on the awards stage! Woohoo, stick it to the squares!

But let a Communist complain? Oh yeah, they'll get right on that.

Sadly, I cannot boycott them any harder than I already am. No TV, no radio, no Top 40s music.

The Phantom

Tuesday, August 01, 2017

When 'banned' isn't, and 'invasion' isn't either.


Once upon a time, The Phantom started getting his comments deleted on a blog. This is not surprising, I get my comments deleted all the time. Always on Lefty sites like Ms., Vile770, or The Mary Sue. They just love them some censorship, those kids.

This time it was Camestros Felpatron, mostly famous for being banned at According to Hoyt and Mad Genius Club for idiotic trolling. MGC usually lets him have a few free ones before they shut him down, but he's been sent to sit in the corner quite a few times.
Anyway, because I dared suggest the Holy Temperature Record might be a bit dodgy, good old Floppy started deleting me. Which is fine, its his blog.
Every once in a while, he posts something so egregious that I drop a comment in his spam filter, because I know he reads them. This is where 'banned' isn't really banned. Sometimes he makes blog posts out of them.

I don't blame him, really, the Leftosphere is all Trump all the time these days. There's only so many post you can make out of astrologers portending Trumpian doom before is all begins to seem a little pointless.
This brings us to the 'invasion.' It seems it has become populat in certain Lefty circles to refer to the settlement of Australia as an "Invasion." The Floppy One posted about it here.

This is the typical Leftist wordplay, when they substitute the word for "invasion" for "settlement" because it makes victims out of the Aborigines, or the Indians, or whatever group they are trying to claim victim status for.
This balderdash culminates with:
"To accept that the events 1770 and 1788 amounted to an invasion would require them to accept that modern Australia owes a debt to the people whose land was taken."

My comment, which was of course deleted because inconvenient:
“Australia owes a debt to the people whose land was taken.”
Those people died a long time ago. Nobody stole from the ones alive today.
By the way, where are my reparations for the Highland Clearances? I’m sure somebody owes me a bundle, by your reckoning.

For those not up on their history, the Highland Clearances were land seizures, where they basically took farms and kicked off the people living there. The Scottish people were dispossessed and scattered across the world.
I'm pure blood Scots on both sides of the family. I've never seen Scotland. As a mater of both moral and legal principle, nobody owes me any money for the Highland Clearances. The End. Any effort top cast -me- as a victim of that two hundred and someth9ing year ago crap would be farcical.
What happened in Australia (and Canada, New Zealand, most of the USA except the West, and other places,) wasn't a war. It was a migration. Europeans moved to North America and started farming.
Where is something like that happening right now... oh yeah. Europe! People from the Middle East are "migrating" to Europe in their millions. You don't dare call that an invasion, do you?
But now Mr. Flopatron needs something to talk about, so he uses my deleted comment to generate an entire new post:
When Conservatives Accidentally Destroy Capitalism
Wherein Mr. Floppy tries to make a case that the British Crown owes money to the Aborigines of Australia because the British Crown stole their land, which somehow destroys capitalism.


Really, it is idiotic. He's got the magic of inherited blood in there, Capitalism, inheritance taxes, some Scottish tenant farmer guy killed himself, and Conservatives are stoopid. At the end he comes out with Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice:
Agrarian Justice essentially argued for a kind of Universal Basic Income funded by inheritance tax. The moral justification being one based on notions of property and justice.

Having not read the book I can't say for certain, but I think Mr. Paine was more concerned that people not die of starvation from the Crown selling off the common land they were grazing their sheep on. If the land is in use by the subjects of the Crown, then the Crown should bloody well look after them when the land gets sold. In Feudalism, the Crown has -responsibilities- to its subjects, right?

Essentially, "The Rich" of Britain should pay me, The Phantom Foreigner, by way of inheritance tax. Because my ancestors lost a war to the English. (It wasn't a war, but never mind.)

But then, shouldn't the French be paying for the Norman Conquest? And shouldn't the Swedes be paying for the Viking raids? Shouldn't the Spanish be paying South America and Mexico? And shouldn't the Italians be paying EVERYBODY because Rome took over the whole of Europe? (I should be getting bucks from Italy because Hadrian's Wall!!!) Japan should be forking over large for World War Two, right? That was practically last week.

Oh, and shouldn't the Russian and Chinese Communists be paying a shitlocker full of money for killing a hundred million people in the 20th Century and taking over everything behind the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain.
Yes, they should. Or, you know, not.
Because there is a place on Earth where this kind of accounting has been taken to a high art. The Balkans. Those guys remember every goddamn sheep that was stolen for a thousand years. They've been doing war on each other off and on since Rome left. The Mooselimbs invaded at some point and got sucked into the maelstrom, as we saw from the most recent Balkan War. Ethnic cleansing from a three sided triangle of hatred that never dies.

There's another place on Earth where they keep score, the Middle East. You've got two kinds of Mooselimbs killing each other over ancestral grievances, Christians getting killed because they're those pain in the ass minority types (who were there first, but never mind) and then the Jews, of course, who are "invaders" despite having been there longer than the Xtians or the Mooselimbs. (The Jews are bad because shooting back is cheating!)

On the whole, I think keeping track of shit like the Highland Clearances and demanding restitution from the descendants of those armies is a really, really bad idea and we shouldn't do it. Otherwise we will get Syria and Sarajevo.

But practical matters aside, what this really is down to is racism. The Scots don't get reparations because we are White. We are successful.

We left the Highlands, moved to the howling wilderness of North America, and Australia, and every other Godforsaken shit hole the English could find to dump us, and now we OWN the place. Our people invented the entire Modern world. Name a modern device or product, 80% of the time it was a Scot that invented it.

What have the Mooselimbs invented lately? Suicide bombers. The Aborigines? I can't think of anything. The Indians? Nothing springs to mind.

Camestros Felpatron thinks that we, the White people, the ones who work our asses off and invent everything, make everything, do everything, should help the poor brown people because they are just helpless victims and can't make it on their own.

That is racism. They fucking well can make it on their own, and they do. All the time. The joke around here is that the richest people in Ontario live on the Indian reserve. There are at least five families there with ten-figure (billion) net worth. Oh yeah. Quite a few Lamborghinis on the Reserve these days.

Now, all of the above is based on Group Politics. The Flopatron Conjecture fails even at the group level, because Sarajevo, but where it really fails is when you cast aside these sweeping inclusions and get down to individuals.

Really, lets talk about who, in particular, should be paying me, in particular, for the Highland Clearances. Ultimately there is only one person alive today that could even remotely be considered inheritor of that action. That person is Queen Elizabeth. Did Liz order the Highland Clearance? Nope. Was it even one of her family? Nope. She's a Windsor.

Did the English crown even order the Clearances? Nope. It was economic forces.  (And, hilariously, anti-Celtic racism. Those Celts, they're LAZY y'know. Good for nothing. Not like good AngloSaxon stock.) The land owners went broke, sold out, and the newcomers changed the type of agriculture. Everybody forgets the same thing happened in England, just happened earlier.

So really, can we stick tottery, 91 year old Liz Windsor with this mess? No.

But she's rich! So lets stick her anyway. Make the rich pay. Hellz yeah.
What does the Queen owe me? I'm a Highland Scot! Family comes from the Highlands, for real. I've never seen the place of course, but my great-great-great- seven freaking generations ago Grandad had to leave the Homeland and break sod here in Canada, because of whatever nightmare was happening to him at the time. We don't even know what it was. I can't even remember his name. My mother does, if I need to know I can ask her. But I better hurry up, Mom's 90.
I have zero connection to that time, that land, those concerns. Can I legitimately demand restitution for those things that drove Great-to-the-7th Grandad to flee? No. I don't think so. If the Queen offered me some free money I wouldn't turn her down, but otherwise, I have zero claim. It wouldn't be much anyway, her whole fortune divided among every Scottish descendant nets me about a buck-fifty if I'm lucky.
Can some Indian guy here in Canada claim restitution from me for a transaction his Great-to-the-7th Grandadhad had with mine when the old Indian sold the farm to the old Highlander? Because money did change hands at the time, the deeds and papers still exist. My mother has the original deed for the family farm, duly signed off by the Indian chief of the time. Do I owe that guy money? Especially considering my Grandmother sold that farm when I was a tiny baby?

Because there are a bunch of "Indians" around here (some of them are almost as Scottish as I am) claiming exactly that. Every time they take it to court, they lose.  In 2006 they resorted to guns and burning shit down, and we had the Caledonia Unpleasantness. Eleven years later, there's still a busted hydro tower beside the road where there was supposed to be a suburban building project. Every time somebody sticks a shovel in the ground around here, the extortionists show up with a crowd and try to jack up the developers for money. Lately they aren't getting much play, since the Department of Highways evicted them from the bridge on Highway 3.
Probably they'll burn some more tires at some point, maybe torch the power station again, then more extortion money will flow for a little while.

Funny to see Australia has the same problem.

Oh, and by the way. Did the aboriginal inhabitants of these places that got 'invaded' by the horrible racist British Empire get any -benefits- from being 'invaded?' Things like the Germ Theory of Disease, or in the case of Australia, the wheel and agriculture? Indoor plumbing, and a life expectancy better than 40? Beer? Railways and steam engines? Mail? Email?

No, they still live in the Stone Age. Don't they? They don't have cars and stuff, right? Indians on the reserve still live in longhouses, right? Sure they do. I was just over there yesterday, I'm sure I saw a guy with feathers in his hair standing next to a longhouse. Oh wait, that was a cigar-store Indian standing next to an illegal cigarette shack. My mistake.

The Phantom

Scrub-update! Mr. Floppy has deleted the link to this rebuttal from his blog. Thereby showing the type of sportsmanship and fair play we have all come to expect from Puppy Kickers and Lefties in general. Classy!