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Patrick says

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will confront the Chinese regime’s growing military ambition for the first time

Hardly. They will just have some ramped up discussions, and dump money into the 3rd world countries to "counter CCP influence."

HeadSet says

What does the Chinese writing say? It does resemble the typical "Made in China" 中國製造 except for being upside down and two characters are different.

Most likely another word choice meaning the same thing? I would hate to fall for a gag. Anyone here know Chinese?

Good observation. I asked a trilingual friend whose native language is Chinese. He says the Chinese words part of the label means "is making China" or "is in the process of making China (great)"; the word "in" (pronounced "zai") in Chinese denotes both spatial and temporal "in the middle of," and the Chinese language doesn't have tense difference such as "made" vs. "making," or passive-voice vs. active-voice (the two words/tenses/voices are exactly the same in Chinese), so the meaning (consequently the tense in English translation) has to be context-dependent. The implicit "(great)" at the tail end is a common linguistic practice among languages/cultures rich in sub-text communication such as Japanese and Chinese; they often skip the most obvious part in expression.

Yep, control the framing, right on Pat. Don't operate in their frame.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/woke-ideology-mimics-precursors-to-totalitarian-slaughter-experts-say_3865035.html?utm_source=patrick.net&utm_medium=patrick.net&utm_campaign=patrick.net

Woke Ideology Mimics Precursors to Totalitarian Slaughter, Experts Say

BY PETR SVAB June 21, 2021

Some of the core tenets of the “woke” ideology spreading around the country mimic ideas used to justify many of the most horrendous atrocities of the past century, according to several experts.

A recently released documentary exploring the topic, called “Better Left Unsaid,” concludes that the self-identified “radical left” endorses four fundamental “truths” that they “hold to be self-evident,” noting that these tenets have also been used to justify and incite many of the worst massacres of the 20th century.

The first of the four claims is that “the world is best viewed through a group oppression narrative lens.”

The “woke” ideology is based on a set of quasi-Marxist theories that divide society into “oppressors” and the “oppressed” based on characteristics such as race, sex, class, or sexual proclivities. “Woke” is sometimes used interchangeably with Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is one of the more prominent ideologies that operate within this framework.


The second claim is that “evidence of oppression is the inequality between groups,” the documentary says. If the designated “oppressed” group does on average worse in some regard than the designated “oppressor” group, that is taken as virtually unassailable proof of “oppression.”

The third claim is that “peaceful dialog and understanding between the groups is impossible since the dominant group’s strategy is to retain its power.”

Woke theorists have posited that the “oppressed” have a uniquely valuable perspective on reality unavailable to the “oppressors.” Meanwhile, they say, “whiteness” or “white heteropatriarchy” can’t help but to try to maintain its “hegemony.” Even if it does things that benefit members of other groups, such as by abolishing slavery or giving women and blacks the right to vote, it’s still done out of self-interest and in order to further entrench its institutions and norms and thus ensure the “privilege” of its members.

Proponents of the ideology engage in dialogue between themselves, but with everybody else the communication is supposed to generally flow in one direction—that of acceptance of their views. Any challenge to the ideology is labeled as self-serving or even as an assault on the “oppressed.”

Finally, the ideology at least implicitly acknowledges that “because of the above, violence is justified to eradicate the inequities,” the documentary says.

“From my experience, they (to the degree they can be grouped together enough to call them ‘they’) tend to advocate for violence against those oppressing and equate it to laudatory behavior; hence, ‘punch a Nazi,’” author of the documentary, Curt Jaimungal, told The Epoch Times via email.

“I have catalogs of tweets, written statements, and videos of people ranging from students to [professors] explicitly calling for violence and downplaying the violence of those on the left when compared to the right,” he added, not because of intensity or frequency of such violence, but because of the so-called “nobleness of the extreme left’s position.”

These four tenets, Jaimungal demonstrated in the documentary, are common to many of the most brutal massacres and regimes of the 20th century, from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to communist China and the Rwandan genocide.

In each case, an entire class of society is painted as unfairly privileged and as such inherently oppressive, with little regard to specific actions of the individual members of the group. Meanwhile, disagreement with or mere disinterest in this classification is taken as support for the perceived oppression. With reconciliation through dialog taken off the table, the only remaining recourse is conflict—a “revolutionary” action where violence is seen as inevitable and, ultimately, preferable.

“Too few people know about the ceaseless carnage that took place under the masthead of the isomers of equity,” Jaimungal narrates in the documentary.

He said he avoided using examples of atrocities committed as a consequence of the totalitarian nature of the various regimes.

“I am careful to only list or only talk about the deaths associated with the philosophical doctrine of group guilt and class guilt,” he said.

Proponents of socialism commonly argue that the movements that led to these tragedies were commandeered or hijacked by people that didn’t really believe in the ideology. But they have tended to level the argument retrospectively, after they or their like-minded predecessors initially endorsed the movements and nascent regimes, the documentary points out. Also, proponents usually stop short of detailing how the next attempt will prevent any supposed nonbelievers from taking over.

The comparison between the preludes to past massacres and the current manifestations of the woke ideology is a fair one, as long as it’s not taken as an absolute, according to Erec Smith, associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania.

“We’re not saying [a massacre] is definitely going to happen, but we need to be cognizant and remember our history and be careful about what’s going on here,” he told The Epoch Times.

Jaimungal’s conclusions were also recently endorsed by several scholars of totalitarianism, all of whom are critical of woke ideology. They were invited to comment on the film by Pat Kambhampati, chemistry professor and head of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship at McGill University in Canada.

“The same ideas that gave rise to Curt’s movie and the discussion of communism, we see a lot of parallels and isomorphisms taking place in the West and within academia,” he said during a May 31 panel discussion on topics raised by the documentary.

Janice Fiamengo, retired English professor at the University of Ottawa and self-declared anti-feminist, backed Jaimungal’s argument during the panel discussion. She was also featured in the film.

“As soon as one establishes these oppressor groups and oppressed groups, then when you are speaking supposedly on behalf of the oppressed, you can do nearly anything,” she said.

Gad Saad, evolutionary psychology professor at Concordia University, put forth the point during the panel that people professing utopian goals have a tendency toward eliminating those who oppose them.

“Utopians believe that the world could be a perfect place except for this one group that is stopping the world from becoming a perfect place,” he said.

Another panelist, retired New York University professor of liberal studies Michael Rectenwald, linked the woke ideology’s potential to unleash totalitarian force to its postmodern roots.

Postmodernism introduced the idea of fundamental relativism, professing that there is no objective truth, but instead the powers that be establish as true whatever is in their interest.

While the documentary notes that this notion is itself a “truth claim” and thus undermines its own validity, Rectenwald pointed out that adoption of the notion has serious real-life implications.

“The problem with this is not simply that we have no criteria for truth claims with this kind of notion, but rather it leaves open the possibility that when it has the requisite power behind it then anything can be asserted and can be asserted with force,” he said.

He gave the example of the ideology behind the transgender movement sweeping through government institutions.

“The force of the state is behind it and they can say that if you don’t accept that your child is a boy or a girl when they are the other then you could go to jail for this … or you could lose custody of your child,” he said.

“So when my truth becomes as good or better than any objective truth then we get to this point where the requisite power is applied and therefore we get the kind of authoritarianism and totalitarianism that we saw in the Soviet Union where people were forced to maintain things they knew to be false.”

Jaimungal defended in his film not only physical truths, but argued that just as there are “preserved genes” in human DNA that stand virtually unchanged through time and would be catastrophic to meddle with, there are also “preserved memes”—ideas that stand true throughout history and are similarly crucial to maintain, timeless lessons one can find in many religious scriptures and ancient stories.

These ideas are ingrained in humans, but have also been “externalized,” meaning imprinted on the external world in the form of the written word, art, rituals, and so on, he says in the film.

“Our survival depends on these ‘externalized memes.’”

Clinical psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson touched upon this topic during the panel discussion, noting the damage to the Western mythos inflicted by certain scientific theories, particularly Darwinism, and the subsequent substitution of the religious underpinnings of Western culture by an ideological ersatz.

“I could say to the atheists among the group, you know, ‘You’re not too fond of religion. How are you feeling about its replacement?'” he said.

In an “intact culture” a person is “inculturated” by the age of about 18 into “a religious belief that saturates the entire culture,” he said.

“It’s granted to you, it gives you an identity, and that’s what your identity is.”

Western culture has become in this sense fragmented, he argued, as it now lacks such a comprehensive unifying ethos.

Students still come to universities with a “messianic” urge, craving an initiation of this sort, but what they’re offered instead is an ideology, which he described as “a parasite on an underlying religious structure.”

“A proper religious structure gives you a balanced view of the world, there’s characters for that negative part of nature, there’s characters for the positive part of nature, for the negative part of culture, for the positive part of culture. [It] gives you a view that enables you to look at the world and it’s existential permanences, I guess, in a manner that allows you to live a balanced life.”

Ideology, he said, doesn’t serve this purpose.

“You get indoctrinated into an ideology and you find where Satan is, you know, it’s not in you, it’s out there in the patriarchal oppressor, let’s say. And the thing about that is that it rings true mythologically and it is also true because every culture is oppressive to some degree and we’re all crushed as individuals by the dictates of arbitrary society. And kids get into the university and they’re taught this one-sided, lopsided doctrine with a utopian end and it matches their developmental needs perfectly,” he said.

If an ideology is accepted as an intimate part of one’s identity, it becomes difficult to let go of as it provides the person’s life meaning, Fiamengo noted.

“They would actually rather die than admit that they’re wrong,” she said.

Part of the solution, the panelists agreed, would be to restore universities to their original purpose of pursuing objective truth.

Trying to get the ball rolling by driving around shooting White people.

God help us if they ever spend some time at the range and actually learn to shoot.

Only Strong White people can defeat Strong White people. And the Faggidy ass White Liberals are far from fucking Strong?

They only thing protecting them now is laws. When they create a system that has no laws, there will be no laws to protect them from what will follow.

The first shots of the Liberals long awaited Race War, will take place at the White Elites who have agitated everything, bedside.

After that, everyone else will just look at each other and ask... 'So Are we COOL?"

and that will be that!

Tenpoundbass says

Only Strong White people can defeat Strong White people. And the Faggidy ass White Liberals are far from fucking Strong?

They only thing protecting them now is laws. When they create a system that has no laws, there will be no laws to protect them from what will follow.

The first shots of the Liberals long awaited Race War, will take place at the White Elites who have agitated everything, bedside.

After that, everyone else will just look at each other and ask... 'So Are we COOL?"

and that will be that!

Let me know when it starts.

Fortwaynemobile says

I don’t know man. Jews were killed in WW2 regardless of the side.

Jews were a scattered minority, firearms ownership in Europe was low. Whites are a very, very concentrated majority, and gun ownership in the US is high.

We can simply siege the cities, nothing in or out by land at least.

Many of the fully equipped units are abroad, the number of active and trained units like the 82nd or 1st Armored Cav are geographically isolated and few in number, most of the Reserve/NG Armories are in Rural/Suburban Red Territory. Same with Army Aviation. USAF Airbases with combat aircraft are also mostly in deep Red territory, easily overrun if they give resistance in the very first days, they also have much of their Personnel needed to guard bases and sustain operations with maintenance in the reserves and Air Guard.

There aren't enough tanks and troops ready to go in a week to control New York City, much less control wide swaths of Ohio or Mississippi. Remember we had almost a quarter of a million to invade Iraq, and no less than 4-5 divisions plus many smaller units for the first few years; Anbar province and several cities were lost to insurgents during that time, despite overwhelming airpower and many months of preparation with uninterrupted call up and transportation of Reservists and Guardsemen - that won't be the case on US Soil.

Iraq is about the size of Texas. The whole of the US is much bigger. DC couldn't militarily occupy more than a handful of states without a draft and uninterrupted, total control of the country to draft millions of people - even if they were given a huge advantage with a few months of uninterrupted call ups and outfitting of all Reserves/Guardsmen.

European aid for Globohomo Occupied DC would be months away; it took the Germans two weeks to find enough functional Panzers to outfit a company for a training mission in Lithuania to show NATO flag to Russia. Canada? Don't make me laugh. Canada doesn't have a single Ocean going navy ship for their entire Pacific; Canadian military forces are counted in battalions.

Wall Street would probably sell US Assets to finance the Globohomo Occupied DC Regime, but that's solved by having Real America declare any sales of US assets abroad null and void and promising embargoes and trade barriers to any country that takes up the offer.

When the real insurrection arrives, it won’t be stopped by a police force or some razor wire or even a few thousand condescending tweets from celebrities.

YOU HAVE NO STANDING!!!!

It's the only place out of reach where they can't jump on the poles and pleasure themselves.

By what right does, say, the San Jose airport fly the flags of sodomy and sexual mutilation?

They will come down when someone claims the right to fly rainbow flags implies the right to fly Confederate flags.

Thanks, that's an interesting idea.

The Confederate flag is also a pride flag.

They actually can’t according to law. Government only allowed to have city, state or federal flags.

Fortwaynemobile says

They actually can’t according to law. Government only allowed to have city, state or federal flags.

@Fortwaynemobile Thanks! Got any link about that?

Patrick says

Fortwaynemobile says

They actually can’t according to law. Government only allowed to have city, state or federal flags.

@Fortwaynemobile Thanks! Got any link about that?

No, however this was reason LA city council had to remove pride flag. Someone put it up, and it was removed for that reason.

It was la times article

I can't find a link about that right off. Let me know if you find one.

Found this excellent op-ed letter though:

To the editor — Just a simple request.

As I did my walk downtown today, I noticed the LGBT pride flag at our City Hall. The flag was attached to the same pole as our Stars and Stripes. I am sure that a segment from our city made this request for flying their flag on the same pole. I am making a request to remove it and hang it on a pole separate from our flag. I am making this request on behalf of my comrades who gave their lives for our freedoms. Their coffins were draped with the flag, this flag is sacred to me and to many others. The county has the POW/MIA flag on the same pole remembering the prisoners of war and the missing in action.

JOHN VAN BELLE

Yakima

https://www.yakimaherald.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-pride-flag-should-be-separate-from-sacred-u-s-flag/article_7e0e332b-2c5e-5d3f-975e-db4ebce07a73.html

Wow, Pat, you must have a lot of cash saved up. Watch out if you have Wells Fargo!

I worked at Wells Fargo for a year as a contractor and learned enough that I never want to have an account at Wells Fargo.

Fortwaynemobile says

LA city council had to remove pride flag. Someone put it up, and it was removed for that reason.

It was la times article

I did find this one about Roseville:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-18/california-city-refuses-to-fly-pride-flag

A high percentage of the people there were young people that probably have never experienced local government,” she said. “Now they have witnessed it themselves. I think maybe we might have some new activists born.

I think they are generating more activists against the sodomy flag as well, lol.

What's prevention you from removing the gay flag and running off with it?

Seriously, leave the cellphone at home and use public transportation, or a bicycle to wherever you want to do this. Stuff the offending flag into a backpack and dispose of it later (not in your personal trash). Do this at night if you can.

Patrick says

Who made these horrifying decisions? Do decent people have the right to object to such pure evil?

Maybe the majority of support for the sodomy and sexual mutilation flags comes from women who falsely think they are supporting people who were "born that way" when they are actually supporting pedophiles, anal cancer, and early death.

They think it's about love, but it's actually about gay sexual gratification at the expense of others and themselves.

Are you personally selling this, @NoYes ?

He's referencing a condo that collapsed on Collins ave in Miami Beach this morning.

Oh, lol, didn't see the second link.

Of course I own it.....would I fib? Prices are 'falling' fast!

It's very fishy, they don't seem to be scrambling to get the debris out of the way, and They haven't updated any counts.
When I look at the side of that building and the lack of Steel reinforcement. It looks like a building built in India.

https://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=d583f967-44cd-4585-a9da-257ee5be1578&SiteName=Newsmax&maxsidesize=600

Rumor is that they hired some 'undocumented' workers to shore up some support walls in the below level garage. Ya gets whatch pay fors.

And I have to wonder if it was intentional by someone. Jared and Ivanka lived just a block away.

NoYes says

Rumor is that they hired some 'undocumented' workers to shore up some support walls in the below level garage.

It looks like it flooded and undermined the foundation. That's why there's so much water in the basement. And why it pancaked so flat.

Here's the real question. What other buildings did this POS build?

I wonder what every cable guy, carpet guy, and anyone else, who has been to that building and drilled a hole with a hammer drill, in the last week, is thinking.

Yeah... it will probably take years to establish the cause to collect insurance on. But my insurance agent just gave me more bad news.....because I was rude and insensitive, racist and homophobic to him in our previous conversations, he cancelled my policy last week and sent me a mail notice, but the building collapse probably destroyed the letter, so I am out of luck.

NoYes says

Yeah... it will probably take years to establish the cause to collect insurance on.

It was built on reclaimed wetland and was sinking a few mm every year. Over 40 years, that's enough to sheer and erode the steel support at the Elevator shaft.
The elevator shaft pancaked first, leaving 1/3 of the portion shade in orange, near the station logo and time. That stood free for about 5 seconds, then pancaked as well. There's a video from a security camera.

I suspect a sink hole under the garage, and compounded by the rain and runoff in the elevator shaft, as well as the sinking building.

Sadly that's not rubble, that's a flat solid pile of concrete no voids or pockets anywhere. It looks like it was built to be easily demolished for future projects. Like a cheap building to throw up to occupy the reclaimed wetland, before they made it a park.

Jeffrey Prather thinks it was bombed/demolition. Insurance scam? 9/11 was an insurance scam, too. Where are our perspiring nail biting, paranoid conspiracy theorists when we need them most to spin a delectable ouvre?

HunterTits says

It is shoddy construction, pure and simple. Not even Soviet era apt housing was this crappy.

---

Really? That's just so boring. Who is giving those now homeless naked waifs tea and sympathy?

They haven't found another body in over 24 hours. Come to think of it, there isn't even a scrap of any home furnishings or decorations. Does a building collapse like this really become so abrasive and destructive, that it pulverizes everything as it collapses and falls?
I'm shocked also at how thin the structures walls foundation, and elevator shaft was. It looks like 4 inches across the board. All of the buildings I worked in on Miami beach during the late 80's throughout the 90's, back when I was doing flooring. All had 3 foot exterior walls, and the elevator shaft usually located in the center of the building, were about 6 feet thick. The columns under the garage, had 5 feet thick concrete columns. I don't know of those building floors could ever pancake or not.. But I would expect the exterior walls to hold and the elevator shaft to still be standing, as well as pockets under the parking garage due to the thick support columns.
This building fell through a couple floors it looks like and filled up the whole void under the parking garage.
If the building was sagging, I would wager it was sagging in the center, where the elevator shaft was. That whole structure was sinking, but not the outer end that free stood for a couple seconds before collapsing after the parking garage collapsed. It all went down through the basement into the parking garage.
But what's really shocking is how little steel there was to keep big sections of walls and floors intact. That building looks like it was build with some shitty India standards. Not even China, at least China makes buildings that can topple over without breaking apart.

As it broke apart and fell, it chewed up everything on the way down, they should start preparing the families, that there wont be nothing to bury but a few fingers and toes.

This collapse also shows the 911'ers, that you don't need planted explosives to bring a building down.

Tenpoundbass says

This collapse also shows the 911'ers, that you don't need planted explosives to bring a building down.

That's right! If you set those steel framed buildings on fire they will collapse into their own footprint.

If you don't have a hijacked jetliner to start the fire, a sinkhole under the garage will do.