2019.02.04 – back again

Slavoj Zizek — Eurocentrism & the European Legacy

Slavoj Zizek — Eurocentrism & the European Legacy


‘If UK Media wrote about the UK like it does Latin America’

‘…A massive bribery scheme to buy the loyalty of Far-Right Northern Irish lawmakers and the support of pariah state Saudi Arabia are now all that keep the embattled autocrat in her Downing Street base.

Theresa May, flanked by loyal security forces
The UK “Prime Minister” who styles herself on 1980s predecessor and ally of murderous Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet, Margaret Thatcher, seized power in the aftermath of her party’s referendum on European Union membership, which opposition groups allege was rigged, and neighbouring states declared illegitimate…’

http://www.brasilwire.com/if-uk-media-wrote-about-the-uk-like-it-does-latin-america/


We Are Drowning in a Devolved World: An Open Letter from Devo

Gerald Casale writes:

‘…Forty-eight years ago, on May 4, 1970, as a member of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), I was front and center being fired on by my fellow Americans in the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, as we peacefully protested President Nixon’s expansion of the cancerously unpopular Vietnam War into Cambodia without an act of Congress. I was lucky and dodged the bullet, both literally and figuratively, but four students were killed, and nine more were seriously wounded by the armed, mostly teenaged, National Guard troops. Two of the four students killed, Alison Krause and Jeffery Miller, were close acquaintances of mine. Less than a year earlier, as an Admissions/Curriculum counselor to incoming students, I had admitted them to the Honors College program.

May 4 changed my life, and I truly believe Devo would not exist without that horror. It made me realize that all the Quasar color TVs, Swanson TV dinners, Corvettes, and sofa beds in the world didn’t mean we were actually making progress. It meant the future could be not only as barbaric as the past, but that it most likely would be. The dystopian novels 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World suddenly seemed less like cautionary tales about the encroaching fusion of technological advances with the centralized, authoritarian power of the state, and more like subversive road maps to condition the intelligentsia for what was to come…’

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqek5/devo-open-letter-devolution-rock-hall-trump-2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo


Cave That Housed Neandertals and Denisovans Challenges View of Cultural Evolution

‘…Deep in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia sits a very choice piece of real estate. It’s nothing so newfangled as a ski lodge or one of the traditional wood houses that dot the local countryside. Rather it’s a primeval limestone cave, called Denisova, that overlooks a rushing river and the surrounding forest. Multiple human species, or hominins, have sought shelter in this cave over the past 300,000 years, such is its allure. Artifacts, bits of bone and ancient DNA found in its chambers testify to the presence of these peoples. The site thus offers a rare window on a particularly fascinating period of human evolution, one in which other human species coexisted with our own kind….’

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cave-that-housed-neandertals-and-denisovans-challenges-view-of-cultural-evolution/


The Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules....
/jd

Bank of England urged to give Juan Guaidó Venezuela’s gold
– Interim leader has asked UK to send £1.2bn reserves to him rather than Nicolás Maduro

‘A UK foreign office minister has suggested that the Bank of England grant access to £1.2bn in Venezuelan gold reserves to the self-proclaimed interim leader Juan Guaidó rather than Nicolás Maduro…’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/juan-guaido-bank-england-urged-give-venezuela-gold-reserve-interim-leader-rather-than-nicolas-maduro

UAE’s Noor Capital says it bought 3 tonnes of gold from Venezuela

‘…bu Dhabi investment firm Noor Capital said on Friday that it bought 3 tonnes of gold on Jan. 21 from Venezuela’s central bank, at a time when President Nicolas Maduro is seeking to keep his crisis-stricken government solvent…’

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-gold-idUSKCN1PQ5TV


Google’s Sidewalk Labs Plans To Package And Sell Location Data On Millions Of Cellphones

‘…If Sidewalk Labs has access to people’s unique paths of movement prior to making its synthetic models, wouldn’t it be possible to figure out who they are, based on where they go to sleep or work?…’

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/28/google-alphabet-sidewalk-labs-replica-cellphone-data/


The Chinese Were White – Until White Men Called Them Yellow
– Europeans referred to East Asians as white until the end of the 18th century
But as the Chinese and Japanese resisted cultural assimilation they darkened – both in Western eyes and their own

‘…Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised).

[….]

“Yellow” was thus a racial marker that had meaning only in relation to the other colours, all of which were defined as against white “normality”. In Blumenbach’s case, Europeans were in the centre of a racial tableau flanked by “Mongolians” and “Ethiopians” with “Americans” and “Malays” in between (Malay was a new, fifth race, comprising the inhabitants of the South Pacific and Australia, only recently discovered). The yellow race became invested with associations that insured that its physical and cultural features were different (or, rather, deviant) from the white European norm. And for other thinkers far more racially virulent than Blumenbach, the races became part of an explicit hierarchy with European white at the top and African black at the bottom, with the “intermediate” races somewhere in the middle. The problem was exactly where in the middle they were, and how to measure that supposed distance…’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chinese-were-white-until-white-men-called-them-yellow