Fuck Today, Continued

general topics
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The debate over the teaching of racial history in education began to boil over in 2020 amid parental unrest over Covid lockdowns, distance learning for children and “anti-racism” trainings. And last year, organizations like the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which produces model bills for Republican causes, held webinars that warned that teaching what they called critical race theory in schools is un-American.

I don’t know which is worse, the think tanks that come up with new fears to sell to those susceptible or the lawmakers that play along. A cheap way to get votes for sure, but comes with an awful long term cost.

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Oh I know. I hate cop speak though. I’m pretty sure something sus was going on if dude is driving around wearing an explosive vest on a hair trigger.

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It’s Australian for hair shirt. He was very devout.

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For whom?

Seems to me like mostly yet another divide and conquer strategy, that is, a type of strategy that has long provided the opposite of costs to TPTB.

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Wolf hunt in Kuhmo

Helsingin Sanomat has a story on a wolf pack in Kuhmo, eastern Finland, which is to be hunted this year. Permission was granted for all eight wolves in the pack to be shot, but that decision is being challenged.

The pack is in one of the most isolated locations in Finland, with a 25km-wide habitat straddling the border with Russia and only one road that’s cleared in winter. That is the road that leads to the border.

HS talks to nature photographer Atte Haataja, who says the wolves have not become bolder around humans — he says he has accidentally scared them off many times in recent years while walking or skiing, and was unable to take photos unless hidden.

Wolves in Finland are protected outside of reindeer herding areas in the north, but permits are still issued to shoot them every year. That is to manage the population and to increase people’s willingness to live among wolves, but this particular pack is in as wild a location as it’s possible to find in Finland.

Haataja therefore wonders where it’s possible for wolves to live in Finland, if not in places like this. The permits were granted, according to the Finnish Wildlife Agency that grants them, because the wolves are not counted among the Finnish population as they live partly in Russia.

Therefore their loss will not appear in statistics for Finland, and so the hunt can proceed without reducing the officially recognised population.

Northern Finland Administrative Court is to rule on the appeal against the hunting permits.

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That’s some incredible “not my problem” reasoning. “Hey, they’re not our wolves! Kill away!”

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Instead of “they aren’t our wolves, so we don’t have the authority to issue a permit to shoot them.”

Also, who the fuck set their sights on this pack living in the middle of the wild?!

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I traced this article remembering a report that a case was studied where culling dingoes in :australia: increased conflict with farmers. The reasons came down to loss of dingo social structure, where young dingoes basically learned from the pack not to eat domestic animals because they had dangerous ape-masters for backup. I have to wonder whether similar effects would be seen because of a wolf cull.

I’ve not farmed near such beasts, but in casual encounters never had a conflict with them either.

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Ultimately, I reckon quite costly for all.
Division distracts from the global warming crisis and ensures nothing meaningful be done about it.
This distraction and division helps perpetuate a health care system that optimizes shareholder value over patient outcomes The lawmakers that most benefit from fabricated fear are often ones that are quite happy to undo what little progress has been made with equality and justice.
But hey, it does serve TPTB and they do seem quite fine with it so far.

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I honestly don’t think so. IMO, the US and the UK wanted to get rid of Gaddafi at all costs, and didn’t want a warlord to replace him. France has a power play in action, which Sarcozy started, and Libya was a key hindrance for that, so they wanted the country relegated to an unimportant backwater - of course without Gaddafi. They may even have been at the root of this. You have to understand that basically every ECOWAS country was heavily influenced by Libya. They paid for infirmaries, schools, police stations, gas stations, they even supported or delivered architects and engineers.

I think France, the UK and the US entirely miscalculated the outcome of resolution 1973.

Also, I think Russia and China were playing the long game here. I would bet they wanted Libyan oil to stop pouring, and Gaddafi to stop supporting governments, to gain influence. I would also bet they had nothing against the US and most western allies getting some troubles there, and in West Africa. Everyone knew that the moment Gaddafi was gone, his disbanding army would cause weapons to exfiltrate to West Africa. (Hell, even I knew this would happen the moment I realised that the western allies were at war, and I am no political analyst, at all.)

The western allies had two options after this: either sit back and watch the ECOWAS region descend into chaos, or intervene and try to stabilise the region.

What I missed is the point when the US decided that Burkina Faso wasn’t worth stabilising as a democracy. Let me be clear about this: this is an active decision they must have made at some point. The US and Canada have been relatively quietly invested in Burkina (as was Japan, and Taiwan). That a coup can happen there means they no longer care.

Oh, and then, there’s some rumors which basically tell as much. Reported by the Daily Beast:

Fuck this.

I was so hopeful for Burkina, for the people I know and value there, and for democracy.
This sucks. Massively.

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They probably never opened the book and only saw the cover. “We keep hearing that swastikas are bad. This book has one right on the front, so it must be bad!”

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Nah, it’s the exact opposite: the book portrays the Nazis as bad. We can’t have that.

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Unfortunately for the indigenous marine mammals around here, they’re called “California sea lions”

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“Might make white people feel bad. Must go.” That’s pretty much the entirety of the argument.

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can-you-ever-forgive-me-kidding-me

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Is there a transcript of the board’s discussion prior to the vote? It would be interesting to hear what they had to say.

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I guess not honoring Nazis is discrimination in their book?

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Confused Thinking GIF by Olivia Rodrigo

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