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Roma_Victrix - Was Troy in Baltic Sea? (a weird theory)
Post 1
Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
But interestingly, all their paternal lineages were from the Indo-European invaders, which is still the case with Basques for the most part.
Hell hath no scorn like a woman's fury, so I'm sure the mothers of these mixed marriages made sure to instill and impart their non-Indo-European ways onto their children, their pillaging fathers be damned. It is interesting how these non-Indo-European cultures stayed intact, then, especially with the ongoing pressure of neighboring Indo-European groups like the Celtiberians and the people of the Castro culture. However, the native-speaking Iberian groups were clustered largely to the eastern and southern parts of Spain (disregarding the Lusitani to the west reaching into Portugal), while the Celtic peoples dominated the northern and western parts before, during and after the arrival of Phoenician & Carthaginian colonists, Archaic & Classical Greek colonists, and then finally Roman colonists. The Iberian natives were basically entirely Latinized/Romanized by the time the Germanic Visigoths arrived in the peninsula in late antiquity.

Quote Originally Posted by Morticia Iunia Bruti View Post
@sumskilz: I never stated, that the european neolithicum was a era, in which all people were singing kumbaja.

I already noted, it was a violent time, in which raids and massacres occurred with extreme violence, but there is no smoking gun for a intentionally genocide of the neolithic farmers in Europe by Indo-Europeans.

@Oda: It could also have been a neighbour village of the Globular Amphora Culture.

What those neolithic farmers unlike the near eastern cultures never developed was a pharao or a sumerian priestking as strong central authority for claims about fertile land.

So conflicts could escalate quickly.
How do we account for the huge disparity in the overwhelming presence of Indo-European paternal lineages versus the marginal amount of surviving indigenous Neolithic people's paternal lineages, though? It seems odd to say it about pre-modern societies and especially ones belonging to the Bronze Age, but judging by the genomic history alone it appears that the newcomers were almost systematically destructive, at least of the original male populations in various areas of Europe stretching from east to west. It is perhaps evidence of the first known androcide in prehistory. One must wonder how often it happened and seems entirely different even from how the medieval Mongols annihilated other people (usually only to serve as an example to neighboring cities and kingdoms that they should submit or at least pay tribute to the khan or face total destruction). Aside from the first born sons of Egypt thing in the legendary account of Moses in the Hebrew Bible, I can't remember: does the latter mention specific instances of Near Eastern civilizations deliberately and methodically wiping out the male members of enemy kingdoms or tribes? Obviously there is a lot of death and destruction in warfare but usually it did not involve the systematic killing of all male members of enemy peoples due to that being logistically impossible and/or stupid and unfeasible for maintaining the economy of a large settled urban civilization after conquest.


Cope - Smithsonian Group Museum Engages in... White... Supremacy?
Post 2
Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
I still don't see how challenging a dominant culture and putting forward the idea that it may not be a universal truth/optimum, but just one amongst many amounts to a call to reject every aspect of, or even "purge" the dominant culture. Even if you have encountered people who say exactly that, surely that's no excuse to just stop considering whether parts of what they're saying make sense. That whole discussion seems to be continuously derailed by people who seem hell bent on not questioning their own preconceptions. And note that I say 'question' not 'abandon'. I'm not personally convinced the BLM theorists are on the right ideological track, but I'm not so cowardly as to jump on every opportunity to twist and distort their ideas.
You aren't challenging the "dominant culture". You're part of it. There's a reason why BLM's narrative is regurgitated ad nauseam by corporate America, the cosmopolitan press, the entertainment industry and academia. The Washington elite literally kneel for it.

Debating the criminal justice system, police reform or the leading causes of African American mortality was never the objective. The priority for the liberal establishment and their activists has been to launch irrational, hyper-critical attacks against "whiteness" (itself a term typically used as a racial pejorative), American icons and various western institutions. So instead of discussing the substantive issues and consensus building (which might actually threaten the status quo) we've been dragged into another one of the left's poisonous culture wars, complete with riots, looting, vandalism and other forms of violence.


Aexodus - Smithsonian Group Museum Engages in... White... Supremacy?
Post 3
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-...pics/whiteness
Since yesterday, certain content in the “Talking About Race” portal has been the subject of questions that we have taken seriously. We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended.
So even the museum has tacitly admitted that they shouldn’t have said what they did. In my opinion, this is not a change of heart, but a case of the mask slipping to much and hastily trying to re-adjust.

Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.
i refuse to be so naive as to think that these academics don’t believe that whiteness is a bad thing when they connect it to oppression, racism, and ‘microagressions’, and in order to be anti racist we must abolish things like Western science, individualism, and the family institution.

Racism is perpetuated by deeming whiteness as superior and other racial and ethnic groups as inferior.
So racism is perpetuated by deeming science, law and justice, holidays, work ethic, individualism, and functional families as superior. Because apparently, these things are all exclusive to whites.

The feelings associated with white fragility often derail conversations about race and serve to support white supremacy. While these feelings are natural human reactions, staying stuck in any of them hurts the process of creating a more equitable society. The defensiveness, guilt, or denial gets in the way of addressing the racism experienced by people of color.
As far as I can tell, this ideology is about abolishing various Western customs and aspects to ‘create a more equitable society’.

For white people doing anti-racist and social justice work, the first meaningful step should be to recognize their fragility around racial issues and build their emotional stamina. “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo breaks it down(link is external).
Here they plug a crank theorist who authored such works as Beyond the Face of Race: Emo-Cognitive Explorations of White Neurosis and Racial Cray- Cray. She and others like her are getting a lot of requests for anti bias and diversity ‘training’, these are the people we’re letting into our workplaces and schools.

As well as this Vox article about ‘sneaky racist language’ https://www.vox.com/2016/2/1/1088913...age-thug-bossy.

This is all under the same ideological umbrella that whiteness studies is propagated by.


Beorn - Discussion and Debate Community Thread
Post 4
First of all, I want to distance myself from Antonius' hysterics.
Turkey declared that it's going to make oil surveys within Greek EEZ, and anticipating the Greek reaction set out with their fleet towards the area. In response, Pretty much every seaworthy greek navy ship was given orders to sail there too. Neither the Greek Navy nor the Turkish one (I think) have the number of commissioned, sail-worthy vessels claimed above.
The Turkish goal is to force the two sides on the negotiation table through an international incident, in order to reverse some of the treaties of the last century and make some bi-national agreement regarding the EEZ, as the UNCLoS laws are against their claims in the eastern Mediterranean. They did the same in 1987 but were forced to abandon the Thasos area, and according to Bild, the Navtex won't go on after Merkel intervened.

Nebaki's posts contain bollocks propaganda as usual, so let's show the correct maps, for the billionth time:

This is the map with the turkish (illegal) EEZ claims in the area, as highlighted by their recent agreement with Saraj's regime in Libya.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




and this is the EEZ of Greece, according to UNCLoS treaties

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


Turkey has not signed the international UNCLoS treaty, because according to the definitions included in its articles they have to accept their limited EEZ.


Abdülmecid I - Predicting the "inevitable" Chinese collapse: A typical case of terrible methodology?
Post 5
Recently, I have noticed a growing trend of revisionist analyses that challenge the widespread belief that China will overthrow the United States from their place as the global superpower in the foreseeable future. Personally, I agree that the ascension of China is not a foregone conclusion and there's definitely the chance of Beijing failing to achieve its goal and America succeeding in maintaining its hegemony during the current century. However, in my opinion, most of these essays are written in a very childish and partial manner, while they suffer from the most common methodological mistakes.

The majority of them do not even try to keep any pretense of objectivity, but instead shape the conflict in moral terms of black versus white, while openly declaring their estimation (presenting it however as an indisputable fact) that the rise of China will have negative repercussions for humanity (in what concerns personal and state freedom, but not necessarily limited to that). Now, it's not surprising that the "experts" take sides, especially considering the scope of the subject, but that open admission of bias undermines the credibility and utility of their work. Most of the articles give me the impression of aiming to confirm the prejudices of the author, whose intention is not to test the validity of his hypothesis or to study a particular phenomenon, but, on contrary, to prove what he already suspected, no matter towards where the evidence will point.



1. Decline of the rate of China's economic development: In this case, some of the arguments can be convincing, but, from my experience, it usually consists of abusing statistical data. As China's urbanisation, industrialisation and generally gross domestic product is expanding, the growth rate has been gradually decreasing, which is sometimes interpreted as a sign of financial stagnation and upcoming crisis. However, the steady reduction is a perfectly reasonable development, because, thanks to the already accomplished growth, there's less room for expansion, in comparison to an agrarian society, for example, while the initial absolute quantity is so huge that it's practically impossible for China to replicate the old numbers in relative terms (those observed by statistics that measure growth in percentages). The inability (willing or unwilling) to understand statistics is a common misconception, when it comes to China, just like Goldstone predicted their inevitable collapse, because he failed to realise how population and urbanisation work. His mistake reminds me of an old article that predicted that female athletes would eventually surpass their male counterparts, failing to imagine that the amelioration rates of women will slowly decline, as their sport records improve.

2. Deterministically declaring that autocracies are doomed to disintegrate: That's an unashamedly ideological perspective, according to which, totalitarian regimes cannot resist the challenges of a modern economy and a prosperous society, an incapacity which inevitably leads to their inevitable self-destruction. That's a purely circular fallacy, which can be basically summarised into China will fall, because it's an illiberal state and illiberal states fail, because China is doomed. The other historical examples (Third Reich, Soviet Union) these commentators use imply their tendency to examine China through anachronistic lens, while also don't verify their arguments. The inconvenient truth is that neither the USSR nor Nazi Germany failed because of their authoritarianism. After all, even if the party dictatorship of China is condemned, there's no reason to arbitrarily assume that the subsequent political change will provoke prolonged chaos, economic and military disintegration and etc. Moreover, China's aggressive policy in Hong Kong and the South China Sea or against the Uyghurs and Taiwan is also brought up, but that also looks like a non-sequitur. Common sense dictates that a more ambitious foreign policy indicates the ability of the state actor to promote and protect its interests in a wider sphere, thanks to its increased power and prosperity, not its desperation. The employed analogies usually concern the Third Reich (and, conveniently enough, not Britain or the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries), but even this case is the result of Germany recovering some of its former power, in comparison to the militarily crippled and bankrupted Weimar Republic of the '20s.



In my opinion, the reason for these obvious methodological errors is the need to satisfy the confirmation bias of the author, the editor and the readership. Optimistic scenarios in geopolitics are always more welcome than more sober and pessimistic expectations, as the Millennium 2002 debacle demonstrated. It would be described as wishful thinking, where the suspicions of the "researcher" are verified and his audience is relieved that the existing system guarantees the maintenance of the advantageous status-quo. To clarify, I don't believe that China's future path is decorated with rose petals or that there are still no obstacles to evade, like the notorious and slightly exaggerated ''middle income trap'', but the dark and bleak picture several pundits paint seems to be based on biased interpretations and abusive usage of data, whose goal is not to objectively investigate the issue, but to protect the confirmation biases of a certain group, which may feel threatened by the prospect of a Chinese hegemony.


PointOfViewGun - The latest complain about Turkey thread (get your daily Turkish delight of bad publicity here)!
Post 6
Quote Originally Posted by ioannis76 View Post
In the areas where there are turkish coasts opposite the Greek coasts, there are no such claims, and the median line is the border. Again, the Law of the Sea dictates that the islands do generate an EEZ. No equity is violated, as Turkey receives its own EEZ, in areas where we have no islands. And Turkey knows full well that EEZ does not mean territorial water, it merely means the right to exploit fisheries as well as mining in said area. The eastern med does not become "a Greek lake".
Your post doesn't seem to exhibit much knowledge on the issue despite being involved in this conversation so many times. Median line is claimed as the EEZ border as it constitutes the meeting points of continental shelves of Turkey and Greece. Equity is violated as a number of small Greek islands cut off access of millions of Turks living on the Aegean coast to the sea. This idea have been recognized by the international community in various examples that we have discussed before. If it was brought to court I'm 100% sure neither side would get 100% of what they want. In the case of France and Canada, the side with small islands end up getting less than 20% of the EEZ it was claiming. If we apply Greek viewpoint Aegean sea definitely becomes a Greek sea economically.


Muizer - Smithsonian Group Museum Engages in... White... Supremacy?
Post 7
Quote Originally Posted by Legio_Italica View Post
In todays episode of things that are too bizarre for parody, the Smithsonian has apparently decided to be so “woke” they are now attributing being a successful human being to being white, with a handy brochure that may as well have been published by the KKK. Tl;dr things like science and rational, objective thought are “White culture.” You’re welcome I guess? Bad news is “Whiteness,” which is apparently all these things according to the scholars at the Smithsonian, is slated for cancelation. Thank you to all the fans who’ve followed the show for 20,000 years. You’re the best.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Label it whatever you want. The Marxist cultural revolutionaries now writing national policy and speaking with institutional authority have made it clear: this is what they openly strive to eradicate from the world. Whoever you are, wherever you are, ask yourself: is that what you want?
The figure seems to have been removed and perhaps some accompanying text. However, I can't find anything that says this needs to be erased/eradicated or whatever.

Up front, you do not need to agree with their point of view, but it's kind of disingenuous to misrepresent it.

As far as I can tell, people who adhere to the ideas espoused on this page are of the opinion that part of the problem of racism is white people take it for granted that their identity/culture is the norm, to the point they don't think of themselves as having an identity. That is something only other ethnicities have. They also espouse the view that in order for white people to empathize with the view of people of colour they must first become aware of their own identity. In that context, the graphic you posted seems to make sense: it is an attempt to sketch what white people consider 'normal', yet is part of a white identity and as such shouldn't be assumed to be universal. You may not agree with that, but none of this necessarily applies white identity/culture must die/scrapped/cancelled. I'm no cultural relativist myself. I think quite a few things metioned in the graph for which I don't see viable alternatives. But that doesn't necessarily apply to everything here. Not everything in this graph is self evidently the best and only way to live.


Pacifism- USA Elections 2020
Post 8
Sure. Trump courted quite a few high profile Evangelicals (and prosperity theology figures) during the last election and especially early on in his presidency. But voting for someone because you agree with them on the issues is a far cry from religiously (heh) defending whatever he does. That was my main complaint: why is so much more than voting and stances now?

Quote Originally Posted by Pontifex Maximus View Post
so who do you plan to vote for in 2020?
Right now, probably Biden. Definitely not Trump. What about you?

Quote Originally Posted by Prodromos
I believe Black Protestants vote Democrat in spite of their religion, not because of it. They're hardly pleased about, e.g., the growing calls within the Democratic Party to strip religious organizations of their tax status, which would wipe out the Black Church in America. And in recent years young, church-going black voters have been drifting toward the GOP; evidently for these young voters, who are less institutionally attached to the Democratic Party than older black voters, the Democrats have become so hostile to their beliefs and way of life that the racial divisiveness and identity politics don't make up for it anymore. Could Republicans do more to attract black voters? Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the Democratic Party is hostile to conservative Christians, including black conservative Christians.
Perhaps, I can't say that for certain. But most Blacks are still fairly moderate on everything except racial issues, which is not good for our current president. And yet despite all of the talk about identity politics, I think there is a trend away from it among younger people compared to their own grandparents. Young Cuban-Americans don't vote Republican as much, younger blacks are starting to diverge a bit towards "I'm super liberal on all the issues" and "maybe I actually will vote Republican this time".

I can only hope that if people stop basing their vote on their identity, that they won't base their identity on their vote either.

But I will say that I have my reservations about what I'm told about Democrats being hostile to conservative Christianity. I guess it's only natural: if someone mixes their religious identity with their political one, a political attack will also feel like a religious one as well. I think the woke progressive probably feels like the American government has spent most of its life being dominated by conservative white Christians, and its time to break up that hegemony a little. To me, that's an understandable political stance because American culture pretends to be more religious and more Christian than it really is. Maybe it's foolish of me to think that it's only a political attack on conservative Christianity. I think that my own political journey is rooted in a disgust for politics and disillusionment with the direction the GOP headed in 2016, and I decided I didn't have to play along with the uglier elements of it.

I agree with the rest of your post, by the way.


sumskilz - The Potential Lab Origin of COVID-19
Post 9
They estimated the date of divergence between RaTG13 and a hypothesized precursor of SARS-CoV-2 as it hypothetically existed before it acquired RNA from other coronaviruses. Setting aside the fact that no one outside of the Wuhan Institute of Virology has ever examined RaTG13, because they lost it or something, this doesn't address how the RNA of the other viruses got into this hypothesized precursor, nor does it take into account that evolution can be sped up in a lab, nor does it explain how a virus could have appeared suddenly in Wuhan far away from any natural hosts and pre-adapted to humans without anyone having noticed. But if they are correct, the way to prove it is very simple, find the precursor. If this hypothesized precursor is really out there in nature, for reasons of public safety, it is absolutely imperative that it be found.

Peter Dazsak claimed that RaTG13 was never really studied before because it wasn't of interest, which is an odd thing to say since it was found in 2013 during an investigation of a mine-shaft where six miners contracted SARS-like pneumonia that killed three of them. Dazsak was lying of course, it just wasn't obvious at first because Zheng-li Shi had renamed it before she published its genome January 23rd, 2020 as if it was a new discovery. Here is a rather extensive and well-referenced article on the topic: A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Recently, the lab origin hypothesis was deemed worthy of investigation in a New York Times article, which you can also read here if it's behind a paywall. I guess that means it's not a conspiracy theory anymore. They're the ones who get to decide, right?