[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Disclaimer: This post is on sensitive topics of sex and power. I try to make it clear when I make a claim; beware drawing indirect inferences; I rarely value signal.
As promised in my last post, I now return after a civility pause to the topic of comparing sex and income inequality and redistribution. This post will be unusually long, as I’m trying harder to speak carefully.
If a feature of individuals can be compared across individuals, and ranked, then we can say that some people have more of it than others. We can then talk about how equally or unequally this feature is distributed across a population. Some features are seen as good things, where most people like to have more of it, all else equal. And the values that people place on some good things exhibit diminishing marginal utility (DMU). That is, people put a higher value on getting a bit more of it when they don’t have much, relative to when they have more.
For good things, we usually seek policies (including informal social norms and formal programs by government, charities, and other organizations) that can raise its distribution, all else equal, and get more of it to more people. And for good things with DMU, unequal distributions are regrettable, all else equal, as any one unit is worth more to those who have less. Any policy that changes a distribution is by definition said to “redistribute” that thing. (If you doubt me, consult a dictionary.) A policy that reduces inequality more might be said to do “more” redistribution.
Eddie Murphy has how many children with how many different women?
Of course all else is usually not equal. People vary in their ability to produce things, in the value they place on things, and in how much those people are valued by their society. Both the things that people value, and the arrangements that produce them, tend to be complex, multi-dimensional, and context-dependent. “Income” and “sex” are both labels that point to such complex, multi-dimensional and context-dependent good things. Both are usually produced via unique pairings, sex between a man and a woman, and income between an employer and an employee. The value of these pairings vary greatly across possible pairings, and also with a lot of other context.
Welfare not only provides money, but frees up the precious resource of time, for people like Desmond Hatchet to have 30 children with 11 different women.
For income, centuries of effort has resulted in several simple accounting methods by which we can define each person’s “income”, though we know that these measures miss a lot of what we care about. For example, regions vary in living expenses, people vary in their health-induced medical expenses, some jobs are easier and more enjoyable than others, some people have more expensive tastes than others, some assets are illiquid and unique, and there’s a key difference between what people own and what they consume. All these issues make it hard to say exactly who has more “income”.
This complexity makes it harder to analyze policies that influence income. Even so, when arguing about policy, people often mention income redistribution advantages or disadvantages of policies, such as regarding taxes, schools, medicine, housing, immigration, and much more. (Such policies usually let either side veto each particular employee-employer pairing.) Reducing income inequality is widely seen as a legitimate policy goal, even if people don’t agree on its priority relative to other goals. Income, and our related informal norms and formal policies, have changed greatly over the last few centuries, though less so over the last half century.
On sex, we might in principle compare individual counts of simple sex acts to get a rough indication of sex inequality, though we know that such a measure would miss a lot that matters. But even though sex is complex, hard to specify, and varied, it is also clearly important to many (both male and female). As is income. People often explicitly mention effects on sex when arguing for and against policies in many areas, such as marriage, prostitution, dating, birth control, nudity, pornography, drugs, child care, housing, and recreation. In the last half century, we’ve seen big changes in both informal norms and formal policies related to sex. People seem to be more sensitive today on the topic of policies related to sex, relative to those related to income, perhaps in part due to recent changes being bigger.
In my April 26 post, I noted that recently some people (self-labelled “incels”) have explicitly and publicly sought less sex inequality, a few via violence, and I wondered why they are so few relative to, and overlap so little with, those seeking less income inequality. I mentioned a few specific possible policies, such as cash transfers conditional on individual sex rates, legalized prostitution, and stronger support for monogamy and marriage. (I did not support or oppose any specific policies.)
But these were just examples; the fact that sex is so complex and integrated into so many social practices implies that a great many policy levers must exist. Who has how much sex with who is influenced by what we count as status and beauty, where people live, where and how they meet, how they talk to each other, what they can learn about each other, and especially by where and when they can talk and meet privately.
I’m far from the first person to consider such policies. Historically, societies have passed laws to discourage premarital and extramarital sex, and to limit how many wives or concubines each man could have. Informal gossip and propaganda has tried to lower the sex appeal of rakes, foreigners, and the promiscuous, and to raise that of soldiers. Policies have limited where and when people might meet in privately, such as segregating student dorms by gender, and prohibiting unmarried couples from renting hotel rooms.
the Fed’s relaxed liquidity rules have made it easier for state and local governments to set up their own publicly-owned banks. (Photo: Phillipp/cc/flickr)
Congress seems to be at war with the states. Only $150 billion of its nearly $3 trillion coronavirus relief package – a mere 5% – has been allocated to the 50 states; and they are not allowed to use it where they need it most, to plug the holes in their budgets caused by the mandatory shutdown. On April 22, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was opposed to additional federal aid to the states, and that his preference was to allow states to go bankrupt.
No such threat looms over the banks, which have made out extremely well in this crisis. The Federal Reserve has dropped interest rates to 0.25%, eliminated reserve requirements, and relaxed capital requirements. Banks can now borrow effectively for free, without restrictions on the money’s use. Following the playbook of the 2008-09 bailout, they can make the funds available to their Wall Street cronies to buy up distressed Main Street assets at fire sale prices, while continuing to lend to credit cardholders at 21%.
If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that the Fed’s relaxed liquidity rules have made it easier for state and local governments to set up their own publicly-owned banks, something they should do post haste to take advantage of the Fed’s very generous new accommodations for banks. These public banks can then lend to local businesses, municipal agencies, and local citizens at substantially reduced rates while replenishing the local government’s coffers, recharging the Main Street economy and the government’s revenue base.
The Covert War on the States
Payments going to state and local governments from the Coronavirus Relief Fund under the CARES Act may be used only for coronavirus-related expenses. They may not be used to cover expenses that were accounted for in their most recently approved budgets as of March 2020. The problem is that nearly everything local governments do is funded through their most recently approved budgets, and that funding will come up painfully short for all of the states due to increased costs and lost revenues forced by the coronavirus shutdown. Unlike the federal government, which can add a trillion dollars to the federal debt every year without fear of retribution, states and cities are required to balance their budgets. The Fed has opened a Municipal Liquidity Facility that may buy their municipal bonds, but this is still short-term debt, which must be repaid when due. Selling bonds will not fend off bankruptcy for states and cities that must balance their books.
States are not legally allowed to declare bankruptcy, but Sen. McConnell contended that “there’s no good reason for it not to be available.” He said, “we’ll certainly insist that anything we borrow to send down to the states is not spent on solving problems that they created for themselves over the years with their pension programs.” And that is evidently the real motive behind the bankruptcy push. McConnell wants states put through a bankruptcy reorganization to get rid of all those pesky pension agreements and the unions that negotiated them. But these are the safety nets against old age for which teachers, nurses, police and firefighters have worked for 30 or 40 years. It’s their money.
It has long been a goal of conservatives to privatize public pensions, forcing seniors into the riskier stock market. Lured in by market booms, their savings can then be raided by the periodic busts of the “business cycle,” while the more savvy insiders collect the spoils. Today political opportunists are using a crushing emergency that is devastating local economies to downsize the public sector and privatize everything.
Free Money for Banks: The Fed’s Very Liberal New Rules
Unlike the states, the banks were not facing bankruptcy from the economic shutdown; but their stocks were sinking fast. The Fed’s accommodations were said to be to encourage banks to “help meet demand for credit from households and businesses.” But while the banks’ own borrowing rates were dropped on March 15 from an already-low 1.5% to 0.25%, average credit card rates dropped in the following month only by 0.5% to 20.71%, still unconscionably high for out-of-work wage earners.
Joel Davis, Richard Spencer et al. in a recent podcast (not the podcasts referenced in this article).
Or would they prefer to take it up the ass?
We have long followed the Jewish op called “the Alt-Right”, a stewarding of Whites reacting to Political Correctness and its hyperbolic activist groups and coalitions deemed “social justice warriors.” Though these “social justice warriors”, themselves, were an anti White orchestration by Jewish academia, that is a fact glossed-over in this stewarding of Whites by contrast, broadly conducted along the crypo kosher devised platform of paleoconservativsm, but spearheaded pointedly by Paul Gottfried; who saw the need circa 2008, to head off the intersectionality of a necessarily growing consciousness that Jews were not exactly a downtrodden group, but to the contrary, occupying elite niches in society, often unjustly and wielding that power unjustly. Hence the need, from a Jewish perspective, to divert that nascent awareness, the logical counter of White unionization (a leftist thing) and coalition building; and to promote instead a characterology of “The Left” as the enemy, “Social Justice Warriors” its deluded minions. ... we don’t want any of that social justice now that Jews are on top (in more hegemony than ever) ...along with any scummy Whites who are willing to sell out to Jewish interests, now do we?
No, this un-kosher intersectionality could be headed off by moving Whites from false Jewish opposition number one - NeoConservatism - and reviving false Jewish opposition number two - Paleoconserativism - updated 2.0, to appeal to a younger (and naive) audience to include a broader variety of reactionaries, not trying to fit all right wing reactionaries under one tent, but rather create a tentosphere, a loose coalition divide and conquer juggling act that could allow for Christians, Jewish right wingers, neo-Nazis and the scientistic generally, along with nutty conspiracy theorists. Membership seemed to require at least one socially stigmatizing attachment - then you could be a minor e-celebrity, arguing against “the left” and “social justice warriors”, equipped directly by Madison Ave marketing firms with memes and narratives to absolve you (and YKW) from responsibility and accountability, narratives provided for the “Alt-Right”, of pure scientific objectivity, facts of nature as the sole reason that you are on top and the sheer natural injustice of the world, the reason that you are not accountable, “the reason that things are not equal, like THE left character always unnaturally insists upon.”
Richard Spencer is apparently happy to go along with the Jewish misdirection to promote the “SJW’s are the problem” meme ...take the bribe and pay off of this Jewish, Madison Ave marketing campaign, where it originated, focusing on the vastly distorted, hyperbolic anti White “social justice warrior”, really a Jewish academic creation, and talk about it instead, as if it is an organic phenomenon stemming from religious origin, ether, in order to divert Whites from organizing themselves and pursuing their social justice; which would bring into full view Jewish elite niches, their injustice along with right wing/liberal sell outs - seeing them clearly as out-groups:
Is it really necessary, Richard, to go along with memes convenient to (((them))), a meme like this having obviousy been put out by (((their))) Madison Ave. marketing machine? Sure, let’s be against Social Justice now that (((they))) are unjustly on top of everything and right wing sell outs like you, Richard, are perfectly willing to sell out ethnonationalism; contributing to the marketing of this meme, taking (((their))) hyperbolic, anti-White coalitions as being The thing that social justice is about, whereas “reality” and White advocacy can supposedly have no part in social justice. But then, I guess it is convenient to a blue blood like yourself, one with no character. Typical right wing, anti-social bullshit, treacherous, sell out.
And about philosophy student, Joel Davis, with whom you do philosophical hangouts now…
He is the one who necessitated a rebut from me for his conversation with Josh Neal. I believe the discussion between Josh Neal and Joel Davis is off line (I’ll try to find it), but Joel Davis was saying unequivocally that “Israel is our friend.” ...not that it is some kind of supremacist cluster fuck trying to extend its reach over the whole world as “the shining beacon” to the “down trodden masses” - downtrodden because the tribe blends us down and grinds us down.
Joel Davis, who for some interesting reason keeps speaking of Mencius Moldbug (((Curtis Yarvin))) as if he someone authoritative to refer-to, to look up to, when in fact, Yarvin is clearly operating in Jewish interests, misdirecting Whites with his Ops, “Dark Enlightenment” and into “Neo Reaction” etc., ops focusing on co-opting STEM types especially, those who tend to be naive about the machinations as opposed to proper uses of social sciences and the humanities.
Here is Joel Davis in the chat of a Paul Gottfried stream, apparently very interested in getting in with Gottfried:
First, I will give you the excerpts of Joel, followed by the whole chat:
joeldavis
Cotto, where do you think institutional support could possibly come from for a legitimate paradigm shift to occur away from the Neoliberal/Neocon binary?
Right Ruminations
My point is that you can’t understand to how Catholics deal with this history until you understand the particulars of Catholics doctrine. A term applied to Mary may be historical but that “Star of the Sea” is not doctrine.
Ohm 7
Is Christianity invented by Jewish Elites of Old Time or a development of Old European Religion?
orabell
invention of Paul
joeldavis
According to this analysis, wouldn’t that render Protestantism to be a ‘de-paganization’ of Christianity?
Ultra Testosterone
Protestant is closer but it still depends on gospels
orabell
yes.. it moved them farther away from their pre-Abrahamist , pagan, roots..
joeldavis
Cotto, do you believe Christianity will remain culturally dominant for the forseeable or have we passed the point of no return?
joeldavis
The dissident right’s inability to find coherence seems to be a consequence of a lack of religious convergence as much as anything.
joeldavis
Good call Imperius, as long as we remain alienated (post)protestants we lack the ability to build coherent moral language.
Oswald Spengler
@joeldavis hey joel loved your chat with keith woods
Ultra Testosterone
Cotto should do stream labs so he gets more of the money
Oswald Spengler
also john david ebert
joeldavis
@Oswald Spengler thanks man, would love to get on this program or have these guys on my channel sometime as well.
Oswald Spengler
that’d be great
joeldavis I tried emailing Gottfried recently, but no response this far, i’ll keep trying.
Ultra Testosterone
Gottfried is a good guy but he didn’t get some of top tier scholarship jokes
Ultra Testosterone
Cotto is more aware of the jokes
Brando Calrissian
The demographics look pretty good for non-mainline-Protestant churches. Kaufmann’s book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth, and the religious anthropology/population studies work of Ed Dutton
Ultra Testosterone
Different generation
Brando Calrissian
suggest that religions with high TFR and high retention will outbreed moderate religions and nones even in the developed west.
joeldavis i’d love to get their thoughts on building institutional support for the cutting edge ideas spinning out of the dissident right particularly.
Oswald Spengler
@joeldavis you should hook up with justin murphy too
joeldavis
@Oswald Spengler i’ve been on his channel already once before, i’ve been trying to organize an interview with him on my channel recently, hopefully we can organize that soon.
Oswald Spengler
@joeldavis sent you an invite on FB, i’m “joseph ducreux”
Luke Avedon
@Cotto-Gottfried When is @Right Ruminations coming on by the way?
Right Ruminations
@Luke Avedon I am well. A sub of mind just made a new channel - Terminal Philosophy - and had me as his first guest. I think he his channel has promise for the Rumisphere as it were.
Schizo Ric AKA Quantrell Bishop
@joeldavis is the MAN!
Oswald Spengler
@Cotto-Gottfried would it be a good thing for economics as a field to be destroyed by intersectionality?
Schizo Ric AKA Quantrell Bishop
@Cotto-Gottfried get @joeldavis on your channel for an interview
joeldavis
Cheers Schizo, i’d love to.
Curious Cretin
Are Mormons pagan?
Oswald Spengler
lol^
joeldavis
“i’ve never been called a nerd before”
joeldavis
high-T
joeldavis
response
Oswald Spengler
cotto is 6 6
Ultra Testosterone
lol
Ultra Testosterone
Truth
Oswald Spengler
@Cotto-Gottfried thoughts on the now-not-so-new atheists?
Imperius
There’s way more money we can give. I’ve been hard at work setting the infrastructure. Just let me know the channel where you will get more of it, like PayPal.
joeldavis
Cheers Cotto, i’ll try the outlook address.
Luke Avedon
@Cotto-Gottfried Nice! I will check it out.
Ohm 7
Yo I went to take a bath and missed the answer about if Christianity has descended from Jewish Elites of the Hellenic Times or from the Old European Religion?
Imperius
We’re moving into phase two the end of this year, which is why I tried seeking out Gottfried and found that there was even this Cotto guy, lol. Solid guy.
Luke Avedon
@Right Ruminations I like that he has a Blade Runner avatar. My favorite film of all time.
Ultra Testosterone
Trump 2020
Imperius
So many factions aren’t talking to each other as much as they should. It’s left to younger guys to have less hesitation.
Ohm 7
Cotto, I’d highly recommend having Keith Woods on, he’s one of the most interesting Leftists on the internet right now I think, he’s an Irish Nationalist
Imperius
Keith Woods isn’t a leftist.
Imperius
He’s a folk nativist. Most of intellectual history, leftism has been anti-nativist.
Imperius
Yeah, there’s cross-over, but don’t simply call him a leftist.
Right Ruminations
@Luke Avedon I like that he had set a specific atmosphere from the outset. I am afraid that the atmosphere of my channel had been too haphazard.
Finally, Joel Davis shows how he wants to co-opt the ultimate move of left nationalism, which by his idea would include Jews:
joeldavis
Misconceiving a Nationalist as a Leftist is a symptom of the post-Cold War propaganda hangover. The Right should be unapologetic about subordinating Capital to the National interest.
However, Gottfried man Right Ruminations pushes back, not wanting to share the wealth, of course ..
Right Ruminations
@joeldavis The neoliberals support both globalism and heavy intervention in the market. I don’t agree with the implication that nationalism and economic individualism are mutually exclusive
Priti Patel today signalled a fresh crackdown on illegal migrants crossing the English Channel as she also vowed to tackle ‘vexatious’ asylum claims.
The Home Secretary conceded that there are currently higher numbers of people trying to cross the stretch of water.
But she said she is working to agree a scheme with Paris which would allow Britain to return illegal migrants to France after they have come ashore in the UK or if they are picked up while at sea.
She also vowed to focus Home Office efforts on combatting ‘vexatious methods’ and ‘vexatious claims’ around illegal immigration and asylum.
Well, good luck with that. Patel, like every other politician is ignoring the elephant in the room - the UN Refugee Convention 1951 and the 1967 Protocol, to which both Britain and France are signatories. The Convention states…
The principle of non-refoulement [pushbacks] is so fundamental that no reservations or derogations may be made to it. It provides that no one shall expel or return a refugee against his or her will in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom
But France is a safe country so they are not genuine refugees ?
A refugee does not cease to be a refugee simply because they leave one host country to travel to another. A person is a refugee because of the lack of protection by their country of origin.
The Convention also states the basic rights of refugees as going well beyond ‘physical safety’ and include freedom of movement within the state, rights to work, access to housing, education, travel documents and more. The absence of ‘means of subsistence’ is justification for moving on and seeking a ‘decent human life’.
Illegal ?
The Convention further stipulates that, subject to specific exceptions, refugees should not be penalised for their illegal entry or stay. This recognises that the seeking of asylum can require refugees to breach immigration rules.
When it comes to refugee status feelings matter. Does the individual feel safe ? This isn’t lost on the likes of Amnesty International and other NGO’s known to tutor would be refugees on the right things to say and how to behave during assessments. Amnesty recorded the words of Josue, a 53 year old from Honduras, on the Mexico - Us border..
I don’t feel safe here. Anything can happen, because I’m Honduran. The police here are very corrupt and they steal the money of lots of people.
The 1951 Convention gives human rights lawyers the upper hand in any court case concerning asylum and refugee status, as in April of last year, when a US federal court issued a preliminary injunction banning the further implementation of Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ aka the ‘Migrant Protection Protocol’.
It’s hard to accept any politician or political party as being serious about ending the ‘refugee’ problem unless they first announce that they are withdrawing the country from the 1951 Convention. The current system only really benefits organized crime - people smugglers and lawyers - and is unfit for purpose. Free of the Convention, countries can decide for themselves whether or not to accept refugees and if they believe an individual or group of people are worthy of refugee status and are willing to provide sanctuary, they can cut out the middle men and go collect; which is something Britain did for the Ugandan Asians and Hong Kong Chinese.
Except for the bit about Europe this is a good article. Federation would not destroy our sovereignty it would guarantee it, just as the rights of California or New York are protected by the federal constitution of the USA. - Bill Baillie
What is Real Nationalism? - James Caterill
From the BNP Website - https://bnp.org.uk/
The word ‘nation’ derives from the Latin for ‘to be born’, by which the Romans meant having roots in a common bloodline, rather than merely being born in the same place. The members of a nation invariably also share the same language, history, values and culture - including traditions and popular entertainment. Often they have the same religion or attitude to religion. These shared ancestral roots, experiences (good and bad) and aspirations combine to make the broad mass of people identify with the nation and with fellow members of it.
While the members of a nation often live under one government, the nation and the state are not the same thing. Nations can be subjected to foreign rule for centuries but still retain their identity and thirst for their freedom. The nation is what really matters, a living thing whose present owes both a debt to its past heroes and sacred duties to its as yet unborn future generations. The state is merely the form of government which the nation chooses, for the time being, as for it and for its future survival. In a healthy society without problems of external domination or an out-of-control elite, the form of government will reflect the traditions and the innate character of the people making the nation. The state and its personnel should serve the nation , not the other way round.
Shared culture is one of the most important building blocks of a strong nation, but it is not the only one. Modern scientific research is now identifying the specific genes for certain kinds of behaviour - conformism and individuality, for example. It shows that the proportion of such genes vary among different human populations. This doesn’t mean that any one group is ‘better’ than another, it does mean that human populations are different. The rebuttal of old Marxist egalitarianism proves that culture springs from the inborn nature of the people. Put simply, when large numbers of Brits went to India, they didn’t become Indian, either in terms of ethnic identity or culture. And if large numbers of Africans come to Britain, breathing English air or even being born in England can never make them or their descendants English.
Even if a nation is composed of the descendants of immigrants (the USA, for example), why should that mean that it should accept further mass immigration on a scale that brings poverty and social collapse to many of its communities? In any case, it is not true in Britain. Again, the latest DNA science has buried the old liberal lies for good. We know that the vast majority of indigenous Brits can trace their ancestry directly back to the first post-Ice Age hunter gatherer settlers of our lands - 17,000 years ago. Further waves of genetically and culturally closely related tribes arrived in Neolithic times as farmers, and these were ‘topped up’ by further migration from mainland Europe, the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings for example. Tests on 9,000-year-old remains of Cheddar Man found that the local village school-teacher was his direct descendant. By comparison, the Maoris only reached New Zealand 700 years ago, yet no liberal would dare to sneer that they are “mere immigrants”.
Nationalists reject these double standards and insist that the British people are the indigenous, ‘first people’ of our islands and are entitled to recognition and respect as such.
The liberal-left talk a lot about diversity, but the mass immigration policies and One World ‘ideas’ they promote are in fact destroying human diversity. At present there are around 5,000 different national/linguistic/tribal groups in the world. This wonderful diversity is being wiped out so fast that scientists estimate that by the end of this century only 800 will survive. This catastrophic wipe-out of human bio-diversity can only be stopped if the free peoples of the world reject the Marxist propaganda and capitalist greed that together both favour mass migration and the destruction of separate nations through integration. All peoples have the right to control their geographical and cultural borders so as to preserve their identity. And the individuals and regimes running their states must either help this process or lose all legitimacy.
A nation can assimilate a limited number of immigrants. The more different they are and the larger their numbers, the harder this becomes. At a certain point - which can only be recognised if the host population are free to express their concerns openly - immigration stops being about the rights of immigrants and becomes about the colonisation and dispossession of the indigenous community. Even if integration is possible, it is only acceptable if the original inhabitants welcome it without brainwashing or coercion, and it should never be on such a scale as to fundamentally change the identity and core characteristics of the nation in question. Genocide - the destruction of a people - does not have to involve mass murder. Its evil can also be accomplished through propaganda and social conditioning to encourage different populations to mix. Tyrannical regimes have done this for centuries, knowing that rootless and divided populations are easier to control and exploit than proud and homogenous nations.
What’s so special about Britain and the British? First, we have the same rights to our land, and to self-government within it, as every other indigenous people on Earth. Second, the genius of the closely related British family of nations who are indigenous to our islands has made an absolutely unique contribution to the development of human freedom, happiness and material comfort of the whole world. The rule of law, free speech and parliamentary democracy, the Industrial revolution, the computer age, some of the world’s finest literature, so many great sports - these and many other things are our special gift to Mankind. Why should a people who have achieved so much, and who still have so much to achieve, meekly accept their dispossession and destruction by an elite that has no democratic mandate for such drastic change? The free peoples of Britain have never consented either to mass immigration or to the snuffing out of our right to self-determination in a federal Europe. That is why resistance to those evils is not only a matter of right, but of duty to our nation. Our duty - and your duty - not only on behalf of those alive today, but for the British heroes of the past and for those yet to be born.
Smalls was having trouble following social distancing requirements. The powers that be want to promote blacks as the left unionizing heroes. But it’s not ok for you to unionize in your interests, Whitey. In fact, they are watching for where there is too large a majority of Whites, and thus susceptibility of your unionization, collective bargaining power.
Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, tracking “lack of diversity” to head-off susceptibility to unionization
The heat map apparently uses more than two dozen different metrics to track which Whole Foods stores may unionize. The heat map focuses on monitoring three main areas: “external risks,” “store risks,” and “team member sentiment,” Business Insider.
Here are some examples of “external risks,” reports Business Insider:
Some of the factors that contribute to external risk scores include local union membership size; distance in miles between the store and the closest union; number of charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board alleging labor-law violations; and a “labor incident tracker,” which logs incidents related to organizing and union activity.
Other external factors include the percentage of families within the store’s zip code that fall below the poverty line and the local unemployment rate.
Here are some examples of “store risks”:
Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total store sales, and a “diversity index” that represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity and lower employee compensation, as well as higher total store sales and higher rates of workers’ compensation claims, according to the documents.
And here are some examples of how “team member sentiment” is tracked:
Amazon has resisted Whole Foods unionization efforts before — in 2018, the company sent a 45-minute anti-union training video to Whole Foods team leaders that was obtained by Gizmodo. “Throughout, the video claims Amazon prefers a ‘direct management’ structure where employees can bring grievances to their bosses individually, rather than union representation,” according to Gizmodo.
Whole Foods used similar language about direct management in a statement to Business Insider, which it also shared with The Verge. “Whole Foods Market recognizes the rights of our Team Members to decide whether union representation is right for them,” Whole Foods said in the statement. “We agree with the overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct relationship with Whole Foods Market and its leadership, where Team Members have open lines of communication and every individual is empowered to share feedback directly with their team leaders, is best.”
Amazon has not replied to a request for comment from The Verge.
Amazon has a history of aggressively combating unionization efforts, and its anti-labor stance has also come to light due to recent organizing efforts by warehouse employees to protest Amazon’s handling of worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. In late March, Amazon fired a warehouse worker named Chris Smalls who organized a walkout in New York City, claiming he violated COVID-19 safety instructions after coming into contact with a co-worker who tested positive for the virus.
However, Amazon executives later attacked Smalls on Twitter after Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) criticized the company. Shortly after, notes from an Amazon executive meeting obtained by Vice News revealed a plan to publicly smear the worker in an effort to discredit broader labor movements within Amazon.
Update April 20th, 6:31PM ET: Whole Foods provided the same statement to The Verge that it provided to Business Insider.
It should be noted that left-leaning organizations have made use of the same technology in their organizing efforts, although some predictably differentiate their use of heat maps from what Bezos and Amazon are doing by calling the latter, “surveillance.”
The Black Socialists in America (BSA), for example, have created a “Dual Power Map”, a digital tool originally created to help organisers find and connect with other groups or initiatives building alternative, democratic and anti-capitalist structures or institutions.
Now, at the request of organisers throughout the US, BSA is also using the map to plot where strikes and Covid-related mutual aid efforts have happened, so that people can tap into a wider network of support and coordinate further actions together.
As a small organisation with limited resources and capacity, BSA has been using open, publicly available data collected and aggregated by a range of journalists and grassroots groups to feed into the backend of the Dual Power Map.
“In this particular situation, you’re talking about one thing that’s designed by Leftists for public use and covering efforts that are already out in the open, led by poor and working-class people who want their efforts signal boosted and supported, and another thing that was a secret, private surveillance tool designed by members of the ruling class to stop working-class efforts before they can even begin,” said Z, one of the founders of BSA and its current national coordinator, who has adopted the name to protect their identity.
In the age of COVID-19, where discussion about drone use and public cameras employed to help identify outbreaks has revolved around making sure civil liberties are also being protected, Bezos’ heat map strategy to prevent unionization at Whole Foods could come under scrutiny.
Of course, Smalls being a Negro and his wanting to unionize, either for Negroes or being encouraged to do so in order to have a more diversified working class, now that’s ok and newsworthy. Unionizing for your interests, Whitey, that’s not ok, that’s “racist.”