this is one of the biggest misconceptions about slavery. people think slavery was about race; it wasn't, except in a very small time window in a very small area of the united states. what slavery was actually always about was religion.

why did the british enslave the irish? the reason is that they were catholic.

on the other hand, why were the ethiopians never enslaved, and not even colonized until the late nineteenth century? the reason is that when the portugese got there, they realized they were christians, and they consequently had no authority to enslave them. ethiopian christianity appears to be egyptian in origin, and to stem from the middle byzantine period.

why were the indigenous people of the americas enslaved by the spanish? because they weren't christians.

and, why were the slavs and balts of eastern europe enslaved by almost everybody, christians and muslims? because they converted to christianity relatively late. the word "slave" in english is derived not from a word about africans but from the continuing ethnonym for eastern european; slave and slav are the same word.

the history of slavery in the new world begins with a papal bull that gave the european explorers the explicit right to enslave non-christians:

We grant you [Kings of Spain and Portugal] by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property [...] and to reduce their persons into perpetual servitude.

that is from a statement issued by the pope in 1452, 40 years before colombus, but well after the circumnavigation of the cape. it was partially directed at africa.

however, what it was really directed at was the turks, who were in the process of conquering constantinople, which fell in 1453. the pope realized he would likely be targetted.

however, there's fundamentally a concept of reciprocity underlying it, as it was essentially a restatement of existing turkish policy. the era of dangerous turkish pirates raiding the european coasts (which ended only with the french invasion of algeria in the nineteenth century) was still a ways away, but (and this is contrary to a popular myth) there was a longstanding practice in the muslim world of enslaving just about anybody that wasn't muslim - and this included africans, europeans, indians, asians and really anybody else they can get their hands on. i think it's well known that there were large slave networks moving from africa into arabia as early as 1000 ce, but there were also networks moving from india and also from the ukraine. those fair-haired ukrainian women were a special prize for arab slave traders, as they fetched good money.

so, european slavery started in 1452 as a consequence of a papal bull, was based on religion (not race) and was actually an emulation of existing muslim practices, not an original innovation.

england, of course, went through a process called the reformation in ways that mainland europe didn't. in the process, it ended up with it's own church. it also went through a period of puritanical fundamentalism that culminated in a short dictatorship under the control of a fascist called oliver cromwell. throughout these various power struggles, catholics faced various types of persecution, over quite a long period; it wasn't the irish that were enslaved specifically, so much as anybody that was catholic, which included the irish. catholic emancipation was still a political issue in the uk until the late nineteenth century. while the authorities and legal statements shifted all over the place, the ultimate authority for slavery in england did come from the papal bull, even if it ended up with protestants enslaving catholics.

so, when the various european countries started transferring african slaves across the ocean, the legal justification for it was never that they were black, but always that they weren't christians. as mentioned: ethiopians were never enslaved, because they were already christians.

and, the reality is that there was a period where conversion to christianity was actually a way out of slavery.

eventually, however, the system began to collapse. there is of course a contradiction between christianity and slavery, whether the slaves are christian or not. the africans were also increasingly being christianized, which put the slave owners in a bit of a quandary. it was actually the christian authorities that reacted to this by citing biblical passages that condemned africans to slavery; there was the bit in the noah's ark story about ham, specifically. now, this was always totally ad hoc, just thrown together to prevent an uprising. in the end, it didn't work, but the long term consequences have been pretty devastating.

so, people can't understand the premise of irish slaves. they were white. what? well, they didn't have the right religion, which is the actual reason that africans were enslaved, as well.

"but, i don't care about white people."

then, why would you expect white people to care about you?

and, no, servitude isn't ok if you sign a contract. a contract requires an exchange of something - you can't sign yourself away. the english legal system would have no patience for that, whether the right argument is unjust enrichment or something else.

i don't think you need a clever analysis of this - bernie means what he says, here.

but, let's think about this. what would actually happen if you handed out a $50,000 check to every black person in the country?

i'm not going to complain about the debt; you can print the money. but, the immediate result of this is that you're going to produce an underclass of poor white people that are all of a sudden at a disadvantage in things like housing.

"but they have privilege."

riiiiight.

worse, you're going to send a substantial amount of money to people that actually don't need it at all, and that is money that could be spent on infrastructure, instead. if the result of the policy is functionally a large tax break, we're essentially talking about a race-based tax cut. that gives progressive taxation a new meaning.

listen - poverty might be correlated with race in the united states, and especially in the south, but racism and poverty are fundamentally not the same thing, and it is wrong to erase the identities of poor white people in the drive towards a poverty strategy. race is the absolute worst way to target a poverty strategy.

the media wants to hit him on this, is reporting it as a liability, is trying to expose it as a weakness...

the truth is that bernie is right, and that most people are going to agree with him.

if we are to be fully fair about this, the descendants of the enslaved irish (and, yes, the british enslaved the irish), as well as the descendants of indentured servants of german and other descent, ought to have some consideration, as well.

and, if everybody gets a check, why not just look at a ubi, instead?

https://truthout.org/articles/bernie-sanderss-personal-reboot-on-racial-justice-may-not-be-enough/

dammit, jim.

no, he's right. that's what i've been saying from the start...


https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/warren-trudeaus-error-was-in-not-picking-loyalists-to-cabinet

they should convert them into homeless shelters.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/losing-churches-canada-1.5046812

i'm not convinced people really care much about this, given the other options.

but, there is going to come a time when the data comes in, and to suggest that the discussion is out of bounds is disingenuous. nor, would this be precedent setting, as it is exactly what happened to chretien, to mulroney and to the elder trudeau, as well - all were replaced due to fears that they would lose the next election.

likewise, there's all kinds of precedent for turfing rowdy ministers from caucus. these women are clearly acting maliciously, and the pmo appears to be too stupid to figure it out.

what i might rather point to is the question of whether the tactic of replacing a pm to save the election was ever actually successful.

john turner got completely destroyed by brian mulroney. while the elder trudeau was clearly in trouble, it's hard to argue that john turner saved any seats - and easy to point out that he no doubt lose a lot of them in quebec.

a few years later, kim campbell got completely ripped apart by jean chretien. there were other factors at play, certainly, but going from a majority to two seats is hardly an inspiring example.

likewise, it's hard to argue that martin saved the government. chretien won huge majorities, and martin eventually lost to harper.

do i think trudeau should go? the lavalin issue aside, which i think is a triviality, i am uncomfortable in the direction he's taken the party and would like to see somebody more representative of the trudeau-chretien years take over and steer it back. i don't care about their gender or background; kathleen wynne would be a good choice. but, i'd like to see a convention and a proper process, not a resignation and ad-hoc replacement.

and, if the bigwigs think going into an election with an unelected pm is a good idea, i'd just remind them of what happened the last three times a party tried that. it's not a good tactic; that's not going to work.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-should-justin-trudeau-resign-thats-not-up-to-you-to-decide/

the future of the left is, of course, also a kickass post-punk band from cardiff.

i've never been sure if this is about condy or hillary.

it may be the case that bernie sanders is the only leftist candidate that makes sense right now, and that he's a kind of necessary stop-gap. the left, overall, is a gerontocracy. i mean, we're just escaping from 40 years of conservative consensus, so we've had an entire generation stolen from us in terms of experience-building.

it seems like he lived a lifetime ago, but michael dukakis is only 8 years older than bernie sanders. ralph nader, who is known for his trolling of the nixon administration, is the same age as michael dukakis. geraldine ferraro, who died at the age of 75, would only be seven years older if still alive. if ted kennedy were alive today, he would only be ten years older, although he would no doubt be wheelchair bound due to the now catastrophic effects of gravity on his gigantic head. and, he is even only 13 years younger than noam chomsky.

the clinton/gore/kerry/obama/clinton years that followed had the democratic party firmly on the right of any reasonable spectrum. but, the dominance of the narrative means there's nobody to turn to except the academy, which is the real reason we've got the left-wing party pushing harebrained academic theories about identity that nobody really actually believes in; if there was any kind of movement on the left at all during those years, nobody would be talking about identity politics.

whatever happens in 2020, something here has to break. even if biden ends up winning, and somehow serves eight years, it's going to be a completely different electorate on the other side of it.

the future of the party is bernie sanders.

but, stated tersely, i don't think that the future of the democratic party is a coalition of teenage girls that are tied to identity politics, are openly religious and think jews run the world.

rather, i think the future of the democratic party is a multi-ethnic, technocratic, post-religion party rooted in liberal concepts of equality.

the actual truth is that these kids are the future of the republican party.

that they would freak out in minnesota.

first, they came for the jews...

did you say anything about it?

why not?

and, i always forget that parenti rewrote the article.

the initial version makes a better point:
http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Parenti_Tibet.htm

periodic reposting of the excellent parenti article:
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

see, here's the thing: i actually agree that religion (and islam is kind of the last religion left standing in a lot of ways, so it is often going to get singled out for that reason....) is a mental illness.

so, i don't really have any particular aversion to a social program designed to help the uighurs modernize their society, and discard their religion as obsolete.

further, i know that the atlantic isn't even a good source of information about dissident movements in north america; this is a publication that routinely smears everybody left of hillary clinton. i would expect that they're exaggerating a little bit.

my bigger concern here is whether or not something like this is actually going to work. if you compare the chinese attempt to modernize tibet (which was largely successful) to the russian attempts to modernize the slavic heartland (which was a disaster), you'd think the chinese would learn lessons from their own model - that this is a carrot & stick operation that needs to be carried out very carefully, and not something that can be pushed down too violently from the top. even genocide, as ghastly as it is, would be unlikely to actually be effective as the few that escape are going to attribute their good luck to being chosen.

the left really needs to learn the lesson: you can't wipe out religion with force. this question of if it's right or wrong is tricky, but it largely doesn't matter, because it just doesn't work. you have to actually convince them.

so, i worry that the chinese are repeating the error that the soviets made, and that in the end the religion comes out stronger.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental-illness/568525/

this is what she was talking.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/International_Jewish_conspiracy

ok, so i think i now understand the (bad) logic working it's way through these nazi apologists around ilhan omar, who, once again, is quite clearly projecting a debunked conspiracy theory about jewish bankers controlling the world that was at the core of nazi propaganda.

it seems like almost nobody is actually defending what she said, excluding a few palestnian nationalists, which is not surprising. there is a kind of blanket condemnation, however milquetoast.

rather, the apologism seems to be fundamentally rooted in a kind of hierarchy of oppression. the argument appears to be that, while her views may be toxic, her placement in a lower rung of this hierarchy of oppression means that criticizing her for being oppressive is itself oppressive. this goes beyond a double standard, and is really a different set of rules.

i find this whole "hierarchy of oppression" thing to be so poorly reasoned through that it's hard to deconstruct. it's a fundamentally illiberal way to interpret the world, that places people in these rigid categories, whether they want to be in them or not. so, i'm not going to try to deconstruct this here, because i fully comprehend that i don't understand it well; my claim is that i don't understand it well for the reason that it is incoherent.

but, functionally, what that means is that you can't criticize her on this because she's black.

i have a different take on this. my empirical observation is that the democrats made the mistake of opening up their party to muslims, and the first thing they did was go after the jews. why is anybody surprised by that? nothing could be more predictable. and. the next thing you should expect is for them to go after the gays...