Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Coughdrop addict]

Thomas has made it clear that he thinks ALL the Constitutional Amendments are unnecessary and invalid because the Constitution was perfect in its original form. So we should scrap all that liberal nonsense and go back to the times when only wealthy white men were allowed to vote, women were sex toys you smacked around whenever you felt like it, subhumans of inferior skin colors were chattel, and America will be Great once again.

[Axalon]

"In other news"…

A mob of angry Muslims have stormed the Swedish embassy in Iraq - twice – and clearly damaged it in the process (obviously, the personnel had to be evacuated too). Not mention that a bunch of Swedish flags have been burnt (to dust) all over the “Muslim world”/Mena-land. And to top things off, Hizbollah(!) is pissed and the Irani statepriest/ayatolla Khamenei has supposedly declared that Sweden is on path of war with the Muslim world, or something along those lines...

Personally, I am rather angered by the actions and disrespect of these Muslim-activists who storms and demolishes the Swedish embassy like a bunch of orchs – while the other Muslim activists elsewhere just have my unreserved disdain for burning my nations flag (yup, I am a Swede), for reasons that are rather debatable at best. Personally, I am super fed up with the “righteous” indignation of Muslim activists and their (oh so important) religious feelings and the horde of demands that typically comes with it. BTW, Reuters have more…

https://www.reuters.com/world/swedis...ss-2023-07-19/


Any thoughts on all this?

- A

[Lord Thesaurian]

I feel sorry for the Swedes but it’s difficult to cheer on the book burning performance art when American polling companies keep better track of the number of Muslims in Sweden than the government does, to the extent the country is a significant exporter of jihadists.

I have more Swedes in my family tree than most Americans but if I wanted to stay there for longer than a few months I’d still need to apply for a residence card by paying fees, filling out documents, showing proof of income, acceptable health insurance, and a return ticket, before entering the country.

Meanwhile the country is like 8% Middle Eastern refugees now? I don’t get it. Can you guys just send me my card and some cash at this point? I could use an extended vacation someplace below 25 celsius but I’d rather not spend 2-300 dollars a day plus airfare and hotel doing it. Just cover my expenses and you won’t even know I’m there. I bet I’ll even end up learning and using more Swedish while I’m there than at least 8% of “Swedes.”

[Lord Thesaurian]

How it started:

Unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children have been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.
The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, in a statement.

Indigenous communities have long believed that residential school students were buried in unmarked graves, and proving it has been a decades-long process. “It matters because the story of secret residential-school mass graves is an urban legend,” said a column in British Columbia news outlet TheTyee.ca.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...en-mass-graves

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the discovery of more than 200 children buried at a former Indigenous residential school was not an isolated incident.

The prime minister's comments were made on Monday as Indigenous leaders called for an inquiry into every former residential school site across the nation, the Associated Press reports.

The Canadian government set flags at half-staff to mourn the children who died, and Mr Trudeau said he will be conferring with ministers to determine further action to support the survivors of the schools.

Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the opposition New Democrat party, called for an immediate debate in parliament over the discovery.

He said the discovery was "not a surprise" and that it was the "reality of residential schools."

"215 Indigenous kids were found in an unmarked mass grave," he said. ''Anytime we think about unmarked mass graves, we think about a distant country where a genocide has happened. This is not a distant country."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b1857206.html

A series of vandalizations, church arsons, and suspicious fires in June and July 2021 desecrated, damaged, or destroyed 68 Christian churches in Canada. Coincident with fires, vandalism and other destructive events damaged churches in Canada and the United States, primarily in British Columbia.[4] Of these, 25 were the results of fires of all causes. Canadian government officials, church members, and Canadian Indigenous leaders have speculated that the fires and other acts of vandalism have been reactions to the May 2021 reports of alleged discovery of over 1,000 unmarked graves at Canadian Indian residential school sites.

How it’s going:

In May 2021, the leaders of the British Columbia First Nation Band Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery of a mass grave of more than 200 Indigenous children detected via ground-penetrating radar at a residential school in British Columbia. The radar found “anomalies” in the soil but no proof of actual human remains.

Minegoziibe Anishinabe, a group of indigenous people also known as Pine Creek First Nation, excavated 14 sites in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church near the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba during four weeks this summer.

The so-called “anomalies” were first detected using ground-penetrating radar, but on Aug. 18, Chief Derek Nepinak of remote Pine Creek Indian Reserve said no remains were found.

Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, told The Post Wednesday that he sees the issue as a “moral panic” similar to the hysteria over repressed memories and alleged Satanic cults in schools in the US in the 1980s and ’90s.

“People believe things that are not true or improbable and they continue to believe it even when no evidence turns up,” Flanagan said. “People seem to double down on their conviction that something happened.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/31/still-...ren-in-canada/

Yet another wave of fiery but mostly peaceful political violence sparked by disinformation peddled by the liberal establishment.

[Lord Thesaurian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7OCgMPX2mE

Never forget.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I thought we’d reached peak anti-intellectualism, er, I mean, antiracism when Hannah Nikole Jones, the honorary PhD and racist ideologue who believes African sailors discovered America, had her falsified version of American history developed into a public school curriculum. But now it appears to have spread across the world, and British kids are being taught Britain was a “black country” where black people did things like build Stonehenge. I have to wonder if there’s anyone on earth who hates real African people and history more than these so-called antiracists.

Atinuke, whose new book Brilliant Black British History targets children ages seven and above, says that the neolithic monument in Wiltshire was built by Black people and that Britain was a 'Black country' and 'every single British person comes from a migrant.

The book also claims that Britain was a predominantly Black country “for more than 7,000 years before white people came, and during that time the most famous British monument was built, Stonehenge.”

“Did you know that the first Britons were black? Or that some of the Roman soldiers who invaded and ruled Britain were black, too?” the blurb continues.”Join this fascinating journey through the ages to meet those first Britons, as well as the black Tudors, Georgians, and Victorians who existed in every walk of life here.”

https://www.bet.com/article/ilh5nc/s...childrens-book

[Muizer]

British kids are being taught Britain was a “black country” where black people did things like build Stonehenge.

May be referring to this ?

Of course, any implication that these people's culture can be appropriated based on skin tone would indeed be racist.

[mishkin]

Now I am remembering a Northern Irish user warning about the danger of foreigners eradicating their British culture.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Funny the quoted post remembered me, how many bs posts of the so called exclusive best of the best members of this site about history or any political theme i'm missing and how stupid i am, if i do a random click somewhere outside of the writing and screenshot subfora expecting a different outcome.

[mishkin]

you are a wise woman Morticia, stay on the healthy side of TWC

[Lord Thesaurian]

May be referring to this ?

Of course, any implication that these people's culture can be appropriated based on skin tone would indeed be racist.

Probably, but given the viral story was debunked shortly after it was published several years ago (well before the book in question was published), its inclusion is part of a deliberate work of disinformation and propaganda. Research also indicates Stonehenge was built by people who had migrated from Anatolia across continental Europe, which means the story is still false, even if it were true that Cheddar Man was darker than today’s Britons.

A Briton who lived 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes. At least, that’s what dozens of news stories published this month – including our own – stated as fact. But one of the geneticists who performed the research says the conclusion is less certain, and according to others we are not even close to knowing the skin colour of any ancient human.

https://www.newscientist.com/article...y-not-be-true/

In much the same way that “antiracism” merely co-opts the themes and narratives of white supremacy to grant a pseudo-intellectual veneer to longstanding black nationalist conspiracy theories, this latest wave of “black people discovered/invented/did everything first” seems to be a mirror image of the way fake science about Atlantis and lost civilizations was used by white supremacists to explain technological advancement in non-white cultures in the 19th and 20th centuries. Difference is, the latter is acknowledged as fantasy.

[swabian]

you are a wise woman Morticia, stay on the healthy side of TWC

My long-standing feeling is that she is unfairly ignored by the dude population of this page (which is 90%+) - maybe because the gentlemen don't want to look bad in a discussion with a female? That does not mean she can't be wrong, however. @Mortitia: You have a unique take on things a lot of the time and many like it without speaking out much.

[Muizer]

Probably, but given the viral story was debunked shortly after it was published several years ago (well before the book in question was published)

Are you sure it was debunked? Perhaps it wasn't conclusive at the time, but evidence that western european hunter gatherers were dark skinned with light eyes seems to be becoming more solid as time goes on. Here's an article from this year that includes much more than just a few isolated cases.

Anyway, whatever the truth of the matter is, it fundamentally makes no sense for anyone alive today to somehow lay claim to those long gone people's cultures.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Are you sure it was debunked? Perhaps it wasn't conclusive at the time, but evidence that western european hunter gatherers were dark skinned with light eyes seems to be becoming more solid as time goes on. Here's an article from this year that includes much more than just a few isolated cases.

By “debunked” I mean clarified as inconclusive by one of the geneticists who developed the model that made the prediction in question. Which to me says one would only refer to “possibly darker skin” as “dark as dark can be” if he or she had an agenda. The model looked at 16 genes if I understood correctly. I didn’t count how many were compared in this other link, but there are well over 100 that affect melanin production and pigmentation, with presumably more being discovered as we speak. I don’t understand how it’s possible to determine skin color without the full population of relevant genes to draw a predictive sample from, so I find the idea we can’t do that yet compelling. This caveat to the skin and eye color of the Oberkassel cluster some associate with darker skin seems to be reflected in a separate study of the group from this year.

Anyway, whatever the truth of the matter is, it fundamentally makes no sense for anyone alive today to somehow lay claim to those long gone people's cultures.

The juxtaposition with Stonehenge in the book’s narrative strikes me as eerily similar to the way cherry picked information about Indo Europeans and the “Aryans” generated alot of pseudoscience about an ancient civilization of pale blonde superhumans.

[swabian]

By “debunked” I mean clarified as inconclusive by one of the geneticists who developed the model that made the prediction in question. Which to me says one would only refer to “possibly darker skin” as “dark as dark can be” if he or she had an agenda. The model looked at 16 genes if I understood correctly. I didn’t count how many were compared in this other link, but there are well over 100 that affect melanin production and pigmentation, with presumably more being discovered as we speak. I don’t understand how it’s possible to determine skin color without the full population of relevant genes to draw a predictive sample from, so I find the idea we can’t do that yet compelling. This caveat to the skin and eye color of the Oberkassel cluster some associate with darker skin seems to be reflected in a separate study of the group from this year.

The juxtaposition with Stonehenge in the book’s narrative strikes me as eerily similar to the way cherry picked information about Indo Europeans and the “Aryans” generated alot of pseudoscience about an ancient civilization of pale blonde superhumans.

The blue-eyed dark skinned hunter gatherers are genetically almost irrelevant. These hunter gatherers were remnants of the Mesolithic Era and do not constitute enough of the Euopean genome, so that neither "racists" nor "antiracists" could possibly be concerned about them. They are truly ancient.

Modern Europeans are a product of the migrations during the late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age, which were characterized largely by the movements of the "Pit Grave"-Culture", or "Kurgan"-Culture (also known as "Yamnaya-Culture").

There were no ancient Afroamericans with rap music from Ancient Egypt 'splaynin. In fact the "Yamnayas" were pobably at least in large parts red haired and blond haired and struck with the 'Caucasian' look that dominates the beauty ideals worldwide today. Deal with it B's

[Muizer]

By “debunked” I mean clarified as inconclusive by one of the geneticists who developed the model that made the prediction in question. Which to me says one would only refer to “possibly darker skin” as “dark as dark can be” if he or she had an agenda.

"Inconclusive" is a double-edged sword in this discussion. The Cheddar man article went viral because it challenged hidden assumptions people were making before. Now I think it is a pretty human thing to somehow unquestioningly assume the way things are now is the way they have always been. But these articles at the very least shine a light on our ignorance. As a general public, we cannot go back to subconsciously assuming Western European hunter gatherers of the Neolithic were white. And a conscious decision to assume it anyway without proof ..... well that is political too, isn't it?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Sure, lots of things are justifiable under the umbrella of “challenging subconscious bias.” That’s supposedly how we got black Cleopatra on Netflix, even though we can be fairly certain she wasn’t. There are other portrayals of these dark skinned, light eyed Europeans based on genetic sequencing. So no, considering there’s still plenty of variation among the skin and eyes of native Europeans today and I consider many of them non-white, I can’t think of an apolitical use case for asserting that Cheddar Man was black as night as a thought experiment.

After all, I don’t think anyone would care to discuss challenging biases if I were to publish a storybook about “great white African history.” In fact I’m certain that would be the end of my permission to participate in polite society. I’m no more inclined to assume systemic efforts to portray famous Europeans as black are any less nefarious, and endorsement of these efforts by the social and political establishment of the Anglosphere makes the idea they’re confronting that establishment ridiculous to the point of parody.

[Muizer]

Sure, lots of things are justifiable under the umbrella of “challenging subconscious bias.” That’s supposedly how we got black Cleopatra on Netflix, even though we can be fairly certain she wasn’t.

I don't think that statement is relevant to the discussion of the appearance of Neolithic hunter gatherers in western Europe.

There are other portrayals of these dark skinned, light eyed Europeans based on genetic sequencing.

Indeed there are.

So no, considering there’s still plenty of variation among the skin and eyes of native Europeans today and I consider many of them non-white, I can’t think of an apolitical use case for asserting that Cheddar Man was black as night as a thought experiment.

Yeah to me that last statement is a complete non-sequitur. I don't understand where you get the 'so', from when you first concur that there is more evidence for dark skinned, blue eyed people and then go on that any such assertion must be political.
Those seem incompatible statements.

After all, I don’t think anyone would care to discuss challenging biases if I were to publish a storybook about “great white African history.” In fact I’m certain that would be the end of my permission to participate in polite society.

If you can prove Africa was inhabited by white skinned people before they were either replaced by or evolved into black skinned people then by all means. Politics would just have to deal with it.

I’m no more inclined to assume systemic efforts to portray famous Europeans as black are any less nefarious, and endorsement of these efforts by the social and political establishment of the Anglosphere makes the idea they’re confronting that establishment ridiculous to the point of parody.

Whatever. But just because there are people doing that who also point to the skin tone of Neolithic western europeans does not mean they got that fact wrong too.

In short, people pointing to that research as political motivated are mistakenly (and revealingly) defensive about the wrong thing.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I don't think that statement is relevant to the discussion of the appearance of Neolithic hunter gatherers in western Europe.

Yeah to me that last statement is a complete non-sequitur. I don't understand where you get the 'so', from when you first concur that there is more evidence for dark skinned, blue eyed people and then go on that any such assertion must be political.

Whatever. But just because there are people doing that who also point to the skin tone of Neolithic western europeans does not mean they got that fact wrong too.

Research into the appearance of Neolithic hunter gatherers in western Europe has been deliberately misrepresented to assert they were black and did unique cultural stuff like build Stonehenge as part of a “black country” before white “migrants” came along. That’s the discussion. I don't understand where you get the 'but', from when you first concur that is a false and racist narrative, and then go on that any such assertion must be “revealingly defensive.” If you can think of an apolitical motive for that misrepresentation, I’m all ears.

If you can prove Africa was inhabited by white skinned people before they were either replaced by or evolved into black skinned people then by all means. Politics would just have to deal with it.

The evidence for dark skinned ancient Europeans and light skinned ancient Africans is similarly based on genetic predictions.

The team also found variants of two neighboring genes, HERC2 and OCA2, which are associated with light skin, eyes, and hair in Europeans but arose in Africa; these variants are ancient and common in the light-skinned San people. The team proposes that the variants arose in Africa as early as 1 million years ago and spread later to Europeans and Asians. “Many of the gene variants that cause light skin in Europe have origins in Africa,” Tishkoff says.

https://www.science.org/content/arti...man-skin-color

Politics made one of those two ideas into a mythology wherein black people are just as or more indigenous to Britain than today’s Britons are. Nobody would call the inevitable and viscerally negative reaction to a storybook about the “original” great white Africans “revealingly defensive.”

In short, people pointing to that research as political motivated are mistakenly (and revealingly) defensive about the wrong thing.

Nobody pointed to the research into Cheddar Man as politically motivated. If there were a researcher who went out of his or her way to conclude he was black based on the conjecture we currently have, that almost certainly would be. The idea that objection to racist mythology is a defensive reaction motivated by bias is the same “no u “ we are supposed to take seriously every time a Hollywood or BBC producer reinterprets the appearance of European historical figures for clicks and views.

[sumskilz]

I don't think that statement is relevant to the discussion of the appearance of Neolithic hunter gatherers in western Europe.

Mesolithic hunter gatherers. Neolithic tech, such as agriculture, arrived from the Near East along with white privilege. This periodization is based on material culture, so the transition doesn’t have the same absolute date everywhere.

The reason for the uncertainty about the complexion of the Mesolithic Western European hunter gatherers is that the structure of their relevant genes was different from any modern population, because they were almost completely replaced. The Mesolithic hunter gatherers lacked the variants of SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 that are primarily responsible for lighter skin in West Eurasians and North Africans. So using a model based completely on the phenotypes of modern individuals, it was predicted that Cheddar Man was 76% likely to have dark skin. The scientists involved in this where aware of the limitations of the model, hence the response to the way the media ran with it. East Asians, such as Japanese people for example, also lack the aforementioned variants of SLC24A5 and SLC45A2, but I doubt anyone would characterize them as having dark skin. This is because lighter skin evolved independently in East Eurasians, so they have different variants. A model based solely on West Eurasian populations would predict that they have dark skin.

Since hunter gatherers didn’t have the greatest access to vitamin D supplements, and I’m not aware of any vitamin D deficiency having been observed in their skeletal remains, I suspect that they weren’t very dark. Although, this would have been less of a problem than it would have been for agriculturalists, so they may very well have been brown to some degree. The version of HERC2 they had is a depigmentation gene, although it mostly effects the eyes. It also effects circadian rhythm regulation. In any case, they looked quite different than modern Europeans. They were very different from any modern population, although more closely related to Modern Europeans than to any other population.

Incidentally, the modern population genetically most similar to the people who built Stonehenge are Sardinians. Despite this, modern Brits do partially descend from them. This is probably obvious, but there is a difference between descent and genetic similarity. I’m 1/128th Native American by descent, yet no one ever seems to notice this by looking at me.