“I’m baffled by the present obsession with transgender issues. I appreciate that everyone’s different and am happy for individuals to arrange their physiology, desire and role in whatever permutation they fancy”.

But why should society be required to reform its language, its census forms and its lavatories around an “ever-growing taxonomy of genders” – “bi-gender”, “inter-gender” and so on? We’re told that the term “non-binary” describes any gender that transcends the “accepted system” of male and female, but feminism has already dismantled the rigid social stereotypes that reigned until the 1960s.

So what is any of this supposed to achieve? Just because someone feels strongly about something, it doesn’t follow that their beliefs have an automatic right to social recognition and endorsement. The arcane debate about transgender identities seems a ridiculous indulgence. There are many more issues in this country – not least the question of how best to help the millions of older people who live alone – that are far more deserving of our attention. (Nigel Biggar,The Times).

My comment: Especially for young people in college this issue must be fraught with difficulty, consuming a lot of time and liable to get you into a heap of trouble if you get preferred genders wrong. These young people are supposed to be learning important subjects at college, preparing them for careers and a lifetime of, yes,learning. Seems to me that everyone should be able to adopt whatever gender description they want, but, judging from comments I have heard, the preoccupation with transgender identity is immoderate. And Epicurus advocated moderation. Let’s use some common sense and judgment … and a sense of humour, too.

Robots are the great bogeymen of the 21st century. With their superhuman strength and non-stop work ethic, many feel they are gunning for our jobs. But these fears may be overblown. The first comprehensive look at automation on the German economy suggests that robots created more jobs than they destroyed.

People’s fears have been stoked by headlines warning of the robot takeover. A 2013 study by the University of Oxford, for example, suggested robots are set to replace as much as 47 per cent of the US workforce and 35 per cent of the UK’s.

But far from this apocalyptic scenario, automation resulted in an overall increase in jobs of between 1.5 and 1.8 per cent in Germany between 2011 and 2016. While robots claimed 5 per cent of jobs, more new ones were created. What’s more, most of these tended to pay better than those that had gone before.

An industrial robot may replace 100 workers, but there are knock-on effects that can add jobs elsewhere. “Now the company can produce the same goods,  but more cheaply. Demand goes up and they need to hire more people to fill the new demand,” says Melanie Arntz at the Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany. The same effect should be seen in other countries, including the UK and US, she says.

Previous studies also overestimated the rqelationship between jobs that can be automated and those that will, says Arntz. To come to this conclusion, Arntz and her colleagues surveyed 2000 senior managers at companies representing a broad swathe of the German economy. The researchers asked the managers to rate the level of automation at their companies in each year between 2011 and 2016. They then used data from the German Federal Employment Agency on around 300,000 workers to get the overall picture.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Robots aren’t coming for your job after all”.  (Sally Adee, New Scientist 14 April 2018)

An hours-long standoff between a group of heavily armed individuals and Massachusetts State Police on an interstate ended with 11 taken into custody.
The situation was resolved “through negotiation and tactical maneuvers,” Massachusetts State Police Colonel Christopher Mason told reporters.  The standoff began nine hours prior when police said the group claimed to “not recognize our laws.”
Video shot along the interstate shows men in military-style gear holding the Moroccan flag. Police communicated with the group through a hostage negotiation team. A Massachusetts State Police trooper was traveling northbound on Interstate 95 in Wakefield when he came upon two vehicles stopped in the breakdown lane around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday.   The men were attempting to refuel their vehicles.

The occupants of the vehicle were dressed in military-style tactical gear. Some had long rifles, some pistols and “some had a combination of both,” Massachusetts State Police Colonel Christopher Mason told reporters.

The trooper asked members of the group to produce licenses for the firearms and members of the group indicated they weren’t licensed or didn’t have copies of licenses on them. “You can imagine 11 armed individuals standing with long guns slung on an interstate highway at two in the morning certainly raises concerns and is not consistent with the firearms laws we have in Massachusetts,” Mason said.

A man who identified himself to police as the leader of the group said on a video recorded after the encounter that he “instructed my men to get out peacefully. I greeted your man with a handshake,” he said, of speaking with the trooper. He claims in a series of videos the group was following federal law and should be allowed to travel across state lines with their weapons.The trooper requested backup and additional state police as well as local police responded.  The head of state police applauded the actions of the responding trooper who he said was “very patient, very understanding with them,” which kept the situation from escalating.

Hostage negotiators were brought in to speak with the men and at about 10:15 a.m., police announced 11 individuals were taken into custody. A pair of individuals were arrested earlier in the day and nine more were arrested late morning.

The individuals are members of Rise of the Moors, a group who identify as Moorish Americans. “The Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments,” the Southern Poverty Law Center says of the movement. “Moorish sovereigns espouse an interpretation of sovereign doctrine that African Americans constitute an elite class within American society with special rights and privileges that convey on them a sovereign immunity placing them beyond federal and state authority.

Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey is identified as the Moorish American Consular Post Head for the so-called Rise of the Moors. His biography on the group’s website lists him as having served in the United States Marine Corps previously.

In a statement on the Rise of the Moors website, he wrote of his military service. “I truly believe that most of the skills that have been instilled in me through military training can be used to uplift our nation and all Moorish Americans. Honor, Courage and Commitment are the Marine Corp Values. Those same values that every Marine is held to, fit perfectly with the High Principles of Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom and Justice that our Prophet, El Hajj Sheriff Abdul Ali instructed us to live by.

“I joined the military thinking I would be helping our people, who at that time I was trained to think we were ‘Black’. I now know of the ‘King Alfred Plan’ and its objective to use our men as the tip of the spear for European World Domination and Imperialism. I will continue as the Prophet did, to work day by day, in public and in private to continue his great Missionary work to uplift fallen humanity and reinforce the foundation of the Moorish Movement – The minds of the People.”

“Wakefield Police Department said the men claim “to be from a group that does not recognize our laws.”. The department added, in a statement. “No threats were made, but these men should be considered armed and dangerous. We are asking residents in these areas to lock their doors and remain inside their homes. A heavy police presence will be in this area as well.

The group disputed that they are “anti-government” both in recorded statements and conversations with police. “We’re not anti-government, we’re not anti-police, we’re not sovereign citizens, we’re not Black-identity extremists,” Bey said during a livestreamed video posted to YouTube Saturday morning. He believes the group is traveling legally by abiding by federal laws, though not acknowledging Massachusetts laws, which he does not believe apply to the group as they did not intend to stop in Massachusetts.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says Moorish Sovereign Citizens have come into conflict with federal and state authorities over their refusal to obey laws and government regulations. “Recently, Moorish sovereign citizens have engaged in violent confrontations with law enforcement. They have also been known to retaliate against government authorities through financial means — a process called ‘paper terrorism.’”The Rise of the Moors filed multiple lawsuits against Providence Police in 2019 claiming their right to bear arms and right to assemble were violated. They accused police of interrupting a lecture the organization was hosting, which was being livestreamed. According to the lawsuit, Bay was teaching the class while armed with a Glock 22 and a semi-automatic weapon, the Providence Journal reported in 2019.   During the recorded lecture, he read from the Koran and spoke of the group’s right to bear arms. “We’re teaching our people not to be criminals,” Bey said.
( Michelle Williams,  Mass Live.com)

– Nuclear weapons

– Corporations as persons. (ridiculous)

– Online financial transactions in general. Unsafe?

– Plastic bags and bottles

– Cellphones (anti-social time gobblers)

– The technology that allows social media, e.g Facebook and most other “social media” offerings, to flourish.

– Availability of mind altering drugs and the violence that accompanies them.

– The constant pestering of (US) voters for money by aspiring politicians.

– Artificial intelligence and people tracking in aid of undemocratic control. (Hoo Flung Dung made disparaging comment about Chairman Xi. 6 years re- education)

Discuss and draw a map.

England’s young lions won praise across Europe after making it to the final of a major international tournament for the first time in 55 years. What didn’t go down so well was the behaviour of some of their fans – or of the British government.

The drunken louts, the booing of opponents’ anthems, the racist abuse of the three players who missed penalties, prompted plenty of continental reflection on a perennial English problem – and on and whether politicians were making it worse.

“Brexit has opened the floodgates, reinforced the feeling – overlaid by a rhetoric of English superiority – that it’s OK to be racist,” wrote Libération. “Of course, if England had won, Boris Johnson would surely have found a way to associate it with victory.”

La Repubblica described Sunday night as “the darkest in English football”. Blick said England “waved goodbye to a lot of respect from the rest of Europe”. For Germany’s Die Zeit, England’s chauvinism was “more visible than its progressive side”.

El País said Sunday’s events and the political posturing that preceded it revealed deeper truths about England, as both a team and a country. “What happens with England when it comes to football happens with other things, too,” it said.

“England is a powerful, advanced and often generous nation, a pioneer in disciplines from science to art and thought. But it is also a petulant country, incapable of accepting its own limitations.”

Is English petulance, meanwhile, to blame for the fact that while many EU countries are already recognising UK vaccination certificates for quarantine-free travel, Britain is still only accepting vaccines administered in the UK, by the NHS?

Whatever, a summer holiday in Britain looks unlikely for EU residents – including British citizens, many of whom have not seen their families for more than a year.

The EU27’s vaccine certificate is now up and running for travel inside the bloc, albeit with a few hiccups. Britain’s government, once more, seems determined to mark its post-Brexit difference. (Jon Henley, Europe correspondent, The Guardian 15 July 2021)

My comment: I couldn’t believe the boo-ing of the Italian national anthem
and the repeated booing of the young black players. But it was always thus – bad upbringing and education from generation to generation. If my sons had been party to this behaviour I would have disciplined them. That’s what father are partly for. But then the fathers probably behaved similarly. Plus ca change…..