#SafetyPin: The simple way you can show solidarity with the UK's foreign-born population

#SafetyPin: The simple way you can show solidarity with the UK's foreign-born population: Vote Leave's campaign was tainted by accusations of racist dog-whistling: a poster unveiled by Ukip featuring an edited photograph of refugees came under particularly heavy criticism for its likeness to Nazi propaganda.

And sadly, as Tory MP Simon Hoare put it in the Commons yesterday, a "racism genie" appears to have been let out of the bottle as a consequence.

The National Police Chiefs' Council said on Monday there had been a 57 per cent rise in reports to an online hate crime reporting site between Thursday and Sunday compared to a month ago.

Don't blame Brexit on working-class anger - it's more worrying than that

Don't blame Brexit on working-class anger - it's more worrying than that: Brexit was a rejection of British multiculturalism. That is the real take-home message of the Ashcroft polls. Of those who see themselves as "English not British", 80 per cent voted to Leave, irrespective of social class. Those who see themselves as "British not English" voted 60 per cent for Remain.

This is Cyprus...: Cyprus, the EU and Brexit

This is Cyprus...: Cyprus, the EU and Brexit

Mbeki's chilling warning in 2007: A virus is eating up the ANC from the inside | Politics | RDM

Mbeki's chilling warning in 2007: A virus is eating up the ANC from the inside | Politics | RDM: I would like to cite a vitally important observation our Secretary General made in his Organisational Report to our 51st National Conference, five years ago.

He said: "We have also reported to the NGC (held in 2000), on the challenges being in power has on the structures of the movement. We found that the issues dividing the leadership of some of our provinces are not of a political nature, but have mainly revolved around access to resources, positioning themselves or others to access resources, dispensing patronage and in the process using organisational structures to further these goals.

"This often lies at the heart of conflicts between (ANC) constitutional and governance structures, especially at local level and is reflected in contestations around lists, deployment and the internal elections process of the movement. These practices tarnish the image and effectiveness of the movement.

"The limited political consciousness (among some of our members) has impacted negatively on our capacity to root out corrupt and divisive elements among ourselves. For the movement to renew itself as a revolutionary movement, we have to develop specific political, organisational and administrative measures to deal with such destructive elements."

Nelson Mandela also drew our attention to this challenge when he opened our 50th National Conference in 1997. Among other things he said: "One of these negative features is the emergence of careerism within our ranks. Many among our members see their membership of the ANC as a means to advance their personal ambitions to attain positions of power and access to resources for their own individual gratification.

"Accordingly, they work to manipulate the movement to create the conditions for their success.

Profiling house robbers – why a dog beats electric fences – HomeTimes

Profiling house robbers – why a dog beats electric fences – HomeTimes

The Top 100 Books Referenced by Noam Chomsky | ChomskyList.com

The Top 100 Books Referenced by Noam Chomsky | ChomskyList.com: The Top 100 Books Referenced by Noam Chomsky

Google is Recording Everything You Say — Here’s How to Hear It, Delete It, and Stop It | The Daily Liberator

Google is Recording Everything You Say — Here’s How to Hear It, Delete It, and Stop It | The Daily Liberator: Thanks to a function of their search software, Google could have years worth of your conversations recorded, and you can hear it for yourself. Your cringe-worthy history can be heard and viewed along with a list of all your searches, at your personal Google history page.

Notable.ca | Big Surprise: Harvard Study Shows that Sarcasm is Actually Good for You

Notable.ca | Big Surprise: Harvard Study Shows that Sarcasm is Actually Good for You: Data from a recent study entitled, The Highest Form of Intelligence: Sarcasm Increases Creativity for Both Expressers and Recipients, suggests that the delivery and deciphering of sarcasm offers psychological benefits that have been largely underappreciated and long overlooked.

When Being Pro-Life Did Not Mean Being Conservative | Religion & Politics

When Being Pro-Life Did Not Mean Being Conservative | Religion & Politics: Most of the pre-Roe pro-life activists were Catholics with liberal political sympathies shaped by their Church’s social justice teachings and the New Deal. They viewed their campaign to save the lives of the unborn as a human rights cause, which is why much of their rhetoric closely paralleled the language of the civil rights and anti-war movements.

The Heavy Anglo-Orthodox: The war in Iraq was a war on truth

The Heavy Anglo-Orthodox: The war in Iraq was a war on truth: The Iraq War was a hubristic demonstration, a demonstration of the Antichrist, that the truth itself is something that must be subjected to the human will, that it is human will that shapes reality and not the other way around.

How Charles Williams combined the occult with Christian faith | The Christian Century

How Charles Williams combined the occult with Christian faith | The Christian Century: Shadows of a saint

Charles Williams’s magical Christianity
May 12, 2016 by Philip Jenkins

In 1963, W. H. Auden reported his weary experiences on a lucrative U.S. lecture tour in the wry poem “On the Circuit.” It was grim maintaining a smiling face while meeting so many gushing strangers, but occasionally there was “a blessed encounter, full of joy . . . With, here, an addict of Tolkien / There, a Charles Williams fan.” The number of devotees of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis proliferated enormously over the following decades, and that boundless enthusiasm spilled over to any and all of their associates, including Williams. A rising tide lifted all Inklings

Louis van Gaal says 'it's over' with Jose Mourinho tipped to take over at Manchester United | Football News | Sky Sports

Louis van Gaal says 'it's over' with Jose Mourinho tipped to take over at Manchester United | Football News | Sky Sports: United have no plans for a victory parade in Manchester, and the club are believed to be angry that news of Mourinho's potential appointment has overshadowed the club's first FA Cup win since 2004 and first piece of silverware since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson.

Community stands against farm attacks | Vryheid Herald

Community stands against farm attacks | Vryheid Herald: FOLLOWING the brutal murder of Billy Van Rooyen and his father in law Ronnie Lombard, the community members of Zwathi took to the streets saying ‘enough is enough’.

These members of the ward 4 community headed down to the Gluckstadt Police Station to hand over a memorandum regarding their concerns over the rise in crime in their area.

The main issue raised in the memorandum was that of the killing of farmers, which in turn has a negative influence on the community’s infrastructure as many of those working on the farms lose their jobs.

He Carefully Places Sponges Inside His Fridge… The Reason? This Is Pure GENIUS!

He Carefully Places Sponges Inside His Fridge… The Reason? This Is Pure GENIUS!:

• How to quickly and easily peel a lot of garlic cloves by shaking them in a container
• Keep your vegetables fresh by keeping sponges in your refrigerator vegetable drawer
• Cleaning your shoes with toothpaste
• Disinfect your cutting board while eliminating odor with a vinegar solution
• Speed up the drying of your laundry by adding tennis balls to your load

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian: So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Distributism from the East

Distributism from the East: Distributism premises its economic principle of subsidiarity with the ethical principle of solidarity; as such an exploration of what economic justice is to the Orthodox is needed in order to see if it aligns with Distributism’s views. Saint Basil the Great has much to say on the topic of economic justice. For instance, he says in his homily “I Will Tear Down my Barns” that the rich “have been made minister[s] of God’s goodness, a steward of your fellow servants”2 and as such should not hoard what they have but use the money to help others. He further ties justice and economic activity together in his homily “To the Rich” when he says that wherever the rich man turns he will “behold the apparitions of [his] evil acts … the tears of the orphan, there the groaning of widow….”3 driving home that one’s economic actions have both real victims and spiritual consequences. The fact that St. Basil humanizes the poor and gives them identities (orphans and widows) is remarkable for a time period where the poor where generally viewed as a faceless mass for the rich to dump their excess wealth on if they decided to practice charity. In modern Capitalist countries the economic realities often make it easier to see the poor in the later manner, but in a Distributist society with its focus on subsidiarity and solidarity, we would be better able to see them in the former light.

Five Things You Need Know About the Attacks From a Peace Activist in Brussels

Five Things You Need Know About the Attacks From a Peace Activist in Brussels: “We are going to go after them,” Obama said a couple of hours after the terrorist attacks. Really? When?

We know, for example, that the real people fighting ISIS at the moment are the Kurds in Kobane and other cities. We know that helping and supporting them, while cutting the route of ISIS’s oil to Turkey, would deal a huge blow to the so-called Islamic State. Are we doing it? Not at all.

Supporting Turkey, a crucial actor in this whole story with Machiavellian policies on the ground, is a major factor in the ongoing violence.

Theology and Racial Justice with J. Kameron Carter

Theology and Racial Justice with J. Kameron Carter: Get a deeper understanding of racial justice by examining its theological roots. In this course, theologian and author J. Kameron Carter reveals and explains many of the theological underpinnings of racial injustice.

The journey toward racial justice in North America cannot be fully undertaken without a grasp of the theological implications underlying both its origins and development.

South Africa's rising tide of racial profiling | Politics | RDM

South Africa's rising tide of racial profiling | Politics | RDM: Black thinkers need to prick the bubble of black triumphalism if South Africa wants to progress. Afrikaners should prick their hedonism bubble and confront their history of violent submission of black people and land grabs, and English speakers need to understand that their jingoist monolingualism, which is as exclusionary as the worst Afrikaner racism, will only deepen the inequality already bedevilling our common future.

The Geography of Trumpism - NYTimes.com

The Geography of Trumpism - NYTimes.com: When the Census Bureau asks Americans about their ancestors, some respondents don’t give a standard answer like “English” or “German.” Instead, they simply answer “American.”

The places with high concentrations of these self-described Americans turn out to be the places Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has performed the strongest.