THECOCONUTWHISPERER.
General News and Conservative Politics. Strictly no Anti-Semitism, Nazism, Communism, Racism, or Conspiracy Theories including Anti-Vax & 911 conspiracies. Email : Admin_News@mail2world.com
Not black enough? British actress Naomi Ackie scores Whitney Houston role, sparking woke American meltdown over her nationality
19 Dec, 2020 07:33
It appears some black Americans are far less enthusiastic about the Ackie landing the role, however, because she’s from ‘across the pond’.
Writer and film producer Brooke Obie fired off a series of impassioned tweets about her disappointment over Ackie’s new acting job.
“I just find it funny how ‘the best person for the role’ of a Black American icon is never a Black American. It’s giving me white supremacist excuses,” she wrote. Obie went on to suggest that not casting a black American for the part of Houston was a betrayal of “interracial solidarity.”
Her sentiments were echoed by other commentators who argued that black Brits are more “privileged” than African Americans.
“Maybe if the various black diaspora groups start acknowledging their privileges we can start to quash diaspora wars,” one upset Twitter user wrote.
There was plenty of pushback against the outrage, though. One observer noted that it’s possible that it’s simply less expensive to hire black British actors, which would actually suggest that black American actors are more ‘privileged’.
“Conversations about Black British actors getting work in Hollywood could be a conversation about cheapness of labour but instead its people highlighting that Black people that exist outside America are not ‘Black enough’ to play AAs,” read one critique of the social media drama.
Others accused black Americans of selectively using the concept of black “solidarity” to further their own, selfish interests.
“I thought we ‘stood in solidarity’? Or does that only work when the attention is on American causes?” asked a British Twitter user. Black Americans aren’t the only black people in the world, she added.
Australia may be the bellwether of China’s foreign relations with Western nations – and their relationship is on the decline.
As reported by the Daily Friend, a senior spokesman in China’s Ministry of foreign affairs, Zhao Lijian, tweeted a doctored picture of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the neck of an Afghan boy. The picture outraged the Australian government, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison criticising it harshly and calling on China to apologise. This is nothing new in the deterioration of relations between the two countries, but Australia’s more hawkish stance on China says a lot about how democratic nations might deal with China in the future.
Australia – a wealthy, developed economy – has seen remarkable economic growth. Despite being a developed country with high GDP per capita, Australia has not had a recession since 1991. While the rest of the world struggled through the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Dot-com bubble and the Great Recession of 2009, Australia’s economy has powered on without ever experiencing more than two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. It took government-mandated lockdowns and a global pandemic to finally knock the Aussie economy into recession (along with the rest of the world).
Australia is the 8th largest country in world, but is home to just 25.7 million people. The vast Australian Outback is sparsely inhabited, but highly rich in natural resources such as oil and industrial metals. Australia is the world’s top producer of iron ore and bauxite, the second largest producer of gold and the third largest producer of uranium and cobalt.
Such vast reserves of natural resources, coupled with its location in the region, mean Australia is in a prime position to sell to rapidly emerging markets in East Asia. Of these, none has been so voracious a consumer as China.
It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the 28 years in which Australia steamed ahead without a recession coincided with China’s most rapid economic growth rates of the 1990s and 2000s. China is by far Australia’s largest trading partner. In fact, China trades more with Australia that Australia trades with its next eight largest trading partners combined. Indeed, the extent to which the Australian economy is invested in China is quite staggering. In 2019, China purchased 32.7% of the value of all Australian exports.
With statistics like these, it’s easy to see how any economic decoupling or trade war between the two would bring great harm to Australia’s economy – which is why the recent decline in diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing is notable.
Trump’s rhetoric and actions
It’s hard to say where it all began with Australia, but no doubt Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions on China have had a large influence. In late 2018, Huawei was banned from Australia’s 5G network. In 2019, the Hong Kong protests erupted, galvanising a great deal of anti-CCP rhetoric from governments around the world, with American lawmakers arguably taking the lead in passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. In November 2020, Australia signed the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Japan which would allow shared military training and operations between the two nations’ armies. Again, this angered China.
Australia, however, does not seem to be backing down. In a move that perhaps angered China the most, Australia led a coalition of 62 countries in calling for an independent enquiry into the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Though the statement did not mention China by name, it was received particularly badly in China, where state-run media lashed out at the Morrison government for the move.
A mini-trade war might even seem to be on the horizon following China’s imposing heavy tariffs on Australian agricultural products. Tariffs have since been levied on barley, beef, and, just recently, Australian wine, in this case a massive tariff of up to 212%. Though agricultural products do not account for the bulk of Australia’s exports to China, the tariffs hit home for Morrison, as a lot of his voter base is in rural Australia.
This recent tweet from Zhao Lijian elicited an angry response from the Australian government, with Morrison labelling the image ‘repugnant’ and calling for an apology. Criticism was levelled across the board by the Australian government.
China is not a democracy. It is a run by a one-party authoritarian government, it has a poor record on human rights and its citizens’ civil liberties are curtailed – especially with regard to criticism of the government. This has often earned criticism from liberal democratic governments around the world, but particularly in the West. As China’s economy grows, however, so does its power and influence on the world. Should any country criticise China on political grounds, economic retaliation such as tariffs or other trade restrictions could have a devastating effect on it. One might say that the economic cost of having a bad diplomatic relationship with China increases as China’s economy grows.
Louder political message
Australia is hugely economically invested in China and thus its willingness to risk economic hardship through diplomatic incidents projects a much louder political message.
Though Australia is a Western-style liberal democracy, it has for a long time pursued a more amicable relationship with China. That began to change in the 2010s, but the relationship has taken a massive dive since 2018. Given the great economic costs to Australia if a trade war were to ensue, what should this teach political analysts? The willingness of the Morrison government to contemplate such a risk shows how priorities have shifted of late.
If anything, it shows the extent to which political issues involving China are now becoming so dire as to be worth the risk of economic decoupling. Though the United States, Canada and the EU all trade a great deal with China, none compares to Australia.
An Australian decoupling from China would be momentous – it would signal the point at which political priorities outstrip economic benefit. With diplomatic tensions mounting, Australia has an enormous amount to lose – economically that is. Politically, more conflict with China will simply add Australia to the list of democratic nations already unafraid to criticise China and bear the economic consequences. One should therefore take note of the recent spat between the governments of the two countries, as it shows a significant change in their relationship.
A recent article in China’s state-run newspaper Global Times had the following to say about the relationship’s deterioration:
‘Canberra is treading a hazardous path that has no prospects for a U-turn during the Covid-19 pandemic, and likely for a long time afterward.’
Canberra is in all likelihood fully aware of this. The fact it is pressing on is not a sign that the China-Australia relationship is insignificant, but that the political costs of staying silent on China are becoming too much to bear. If even Australia can no longer keep its mouth shut, what can be expected from other democratic nations?
WASHINGTON – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the Democratic Party needs new leadership during an interview that aired Wednesday.
During a new podcast with The Intercept, Ocasio-Cortez said "I mean, I think so," when asked directly whether it’s time for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to be replaced.
Ocasio-Cortez, who hasn't been shy in criticizing members of her own party, hit the Democratic leadership with one of her most direct criticisms in the interview.
She also said Democrats have failed to create a succession plan for when older leaders like Pelosi and Schumer do step aside.
Schumer, 70, was re-elected as leader of the Democrats in the Senate last month.
Pelosi, 80, recently indicated this upcoming two-year term will be her last as Speaker if she wins the Speaker's gavel on Jan. 3rd. House Democrats have already nominated her to serve as Speaker next year.
Ocasio-Cortez said the party has not "groom[ed] the next generation of leadership."
"A lot of this is not just about these two personalities," she said of Pelosi and Schumer, "but also the structural shifts that these two personalities have led in their time in leadership. The structural shifts of power in the House, both in process and rule, to concentrate power in party leadership of both parties, frankly, but in the Democratic Party leadership to such a degree that an individual member has far less power than they did 30, 40, 50 years ago."
That setup, Ocasio-Cortez continued, drives "really talented members of Congress that do come along" to pursue other opportunities.
The House Democratic Caucus will likely continue to be governed by the same leadership as it has been for more than a decade: Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and House Majority Whip James Clyburn. All are in their eighties.
"The internal dynamics of the House has made it such that there is very little option for succession," Ocasio-Cortez stated.
17 Farm attacks and 8 farm murders in South Africa: 1-15 December 2020
The Rome Research Institute of South Africa
The onslaught against the white minority, especially farmers, continues unabated with no action from government. In the first fifteen days of December 2020 there have been 17 farm attacks and eight farm murders in the country. During November 2020 there were thirty three farm attacks and ten farm murders in South Africa, whilst three farm attacks were successfully averted.
During October 2020 there were 42 farm attacks and 7 farm murders in South Africa, whilst 5 farm attacks were successfully averted.
Farm attacks and farm murders – the year so far:
1-15 December 2020- 17 farm attacks, 8 farm murders. November 2020- 33 farm attacks, 10 farm murders. October 2020- 42 farm attacks, 7 farm murders. September 2020- 48 farm attacks, 5 farm murders. August 2020- 52 farm attacks, 9 farm murders. July 2020- 55 farm attacks, 9 farm murders. June 2020- 56 farm attacks, 7 farm murders. May 2020- 15 farm attacks, 4 farm murders. April 2020- 17 farm attacks, 1 farm murder. March 2020- 35 farm attacks, 6 farm murders. February 2020- 31 farm attacks, 8 farm murders. January 2020- 17 farm attacks.
Information supplied by The Rome Research Institute of South Africa
South Africa: Farm attack, elderly couple injured in violent panga attack, De Wildt
Farm attack, elderly couple injured in violent panga attack, De Wildt
A savage farm attack took place on the night of 16 December 2020, between 23:00 and 24:00, in De Wildt, Vissershoek, in the North West province of South Africa. A gang of attackers armed with pangas attacked an elderly couple in their home and violently assaulted them. The attack was very traumatic for the couple who suffered numerous injuries and cut wounds.
It is unclear how many attackers there were, but it could have been as many as six who were involved. They overpowered the elderly couple, ransacked the home and fled the scene with, amongst other things, a TV, cell phones and a decoder. All roleplayers responded and found the home in disarray with blood smeared throughout the home.
The necessary medical attention for the couple was arranged.
The police are investigating the attack but there have been no arrests. There is no other information available at this stage.
President Donald Trump's spy chief will not meet Friday's deadline to submit a classified report to Congress on foreign efforts to sway the Nov. 3 election, officials said, because of arguments within the intelligence community over whether China should be cited more prominently for its attempts to influence American voters.
A statement from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe's office Wednesday night said the deadline will not be met because career officers in the intelligence community say they have "received relevant reporting since the election and a number of agencies have not finished coordinating on the product."
Ratcliffe was weighing Tuesday refusing to sign off on the report unless it more fully reflected the national security threat posed by China's efforts, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the information.
The report was to go to Capitol Hill as Trump continues to reject the outcome of the presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has claimed wide-scale voter fraud cost him the race, with a number of fellow Republicans still refusing to recognize Biden as president-elect. The intelligence report would not deal with allegations of domestic fraud, such as in ballot-counting.
Ratcliffe and other Trump appointees – including National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr – noted over the summer China posed a bigger election threat than Russia.
In recent months, they have issued a barrage of warnings China is covertly attempting to sway American politics and culture from state legislatures to Hollywood movies and from college campuses to Disney theme parks.
U.S. intelligence agencies cited China and Iran for their attempts at 2020 election interference, with his supporters saying those nations would seek to hurt Trump rather than help him.
In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray focused on Russia in an appearance before a House committee, saying it was seeking to hurt Biden's presidential campaign through social media and influence operations. Although Wray testified China also was trying to interfere, primarily by spreading disinformation, Trump chided Wray in a tweet, saying China "is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Ratcliffe's concerns are fueled by fresh intelligence that provides a fuller picture of what China's leaders either did or planned to do to keep Trump from being reelected, the people said.
That information, some of it in Mandarin and gathered in the weeks before and after the election, is still being assessed, one of the people said. It includes social media campaigns, such as attempts to amplify messages Trump is a white supremacist, the person said.
China has previously rejected the Trump administration claims as false. The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
The dispute over China's role comes even as the U.S. government is trying to assess the damage from a devastating hacking attack on government agencies attributed to Russia.
Some analysts say the new intelligence will show China's effort to influence the U.S. election was far more extensive than previously reported by spy agencies over the last year, the people said.
The report is due in classified form to lawmakers 45 days after the election, with an unclassified version set to be released to the public weeks afterward. It summarizes intelligence gathered by agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Before taking over in May as director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe was a Republican congressman from Texas who emerged as one of Trump's fiercest defenders during the president's impeachment inquiry last year.
A Texas congressman and former federal prosecutor with no previous intelligence agency background, Ratcliffe was originally chosen to replace former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats last year. But he withdrew from consideration following public scrutiny of his qualifications, and his denunciation of former special counsel Robert Mueller at a House hearing.
Tensions over the report due this week reflect the debate that played out before the election over which adversary bore greater responsibility for attempts to tamper with American democratic institutions. In September, O'Brien asserted that China – not Russia – "has the most massive program to influence the United States politically."
Yet a week later, a Homeland Security Department official accused Trump administration appointees, including O'Brien, of attempting to suppress intelligence on Russian election interference while promoting China as the prime threat.
In a whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy, Homeland Security's former intelligence chief, said he was ordered to stop providing intelligence assessments on Russian election meddling and start reporting instead on interference activities by China and Iran.
A ghost ship laden with hundreds of kilos of cocaine has washed up on the remote Marshall Islands, giving the tiny Pacific nation its largest ever drug bust.
The abandoned ship likely spent a couple of years drifting on the high seas before running aground on the atoll. It’s believed the boat drifted thousands of kilometers from Central or South America and mystery surrounds what became of its crew.
The country’s Attorney General Richard Hickson said the 5.5-meter (18-foot) fibreglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 649 kilograms (1,430 pounds) of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck.
Police loading a box filled with one-kilo "bricks" of cocaine into a pickup truck.
The drugs were in one-kilogram packages marked with the letters ‘KW’. Local police say they incinerated the illicit cargo on Tuesday, except for two packages which will be handed over to the US Drug Enforcement Agency for analysis.
Interestingly, it’s far from the first time debris from the Americas has washed up in the Marshall Islands. Drugs have been found along the shoreline of the sprawling islands chain several times in recent decades, but the latest haul was by far the largest.
The leading theories suggest the drugs are jettisoned by smugglers who are in danger of being caught or flotsam from boats that got lost in storms.
It’s not just drugs that wash up in the Marshalls; in 2014 Salvadoran fisherman Jose Alvarenga landed in the atoll more than 13 months after departing Mexico’s west coast with a companion, who died during the voyage.
In the aftermath of that incident, researchers conducted computer simulations of drift patterns from the Mexico coast and discovered that nearly all eventually arrived in the Marshall Islands.
Recommend this post and follow The Coconut Whisperer
Lab-grown meat to make historic debut at Singapore restaurant
AFP
Three cultured chicken dishes will be served, ‘each bite influenced by a top chicken-producing country in the world: China, Brazil and the United States’.
Lab-grown chicken meat will make its debut at a Singapore restaurant in a culinary first this weekend after the company behind the product announced its inaugural sale Wednesday.
US start-up Eat Just said earlier this month that its product had been approved for sale in the city-state as an ingredient in chicken nuggets after Singapore became the first country to allow meat created without slaughtering any animals to be sold.
Consumption of animals is an environmental threat as cattle produce potent greenhouse gas methane, while logging to create pastures destroys natural barriers against climate change.
On Wednesday, the company said it had made its first commercial sale of the product to 1880, a restaurant in Robertson Quay, a posh riverside entertainment centre.
Eat Just chief executive Josh Tetrick said the news “moves us closer to a world where the majority of meat we eat will not require tearing down a single forest, displacing a single animal’s habitat or using a single drop of antibiotics”.
The restaurant will start serving it from Saturday, the company said.
Three cultured chicken dishes will be served, “each bite influenced by a top chicken-producing country in the world: China, Brazil and the United States”, the statement added.
“This is a very exciting collaboration for me,” said Colin Buchan, the restaurant’s executive chef who used to cook for footballer David Beckham.
“I think people are going to love it.”
Demand for sustainable meat alternatives is rising due to growing pressure from consumers about the environment and animal welfare, but other products in the market are plant-based.
Meat consumption is projected to increase more than 70 percent by 2050, and lab-grown alternatives have a role to play in ensuring a secure food supply, the company said.
There were concerns that lab-grown varieties would be too expensive, but a spokesman for Eat Just said the company had made “considerable progress” in lowering the cost.
Singapore, the high-tech city-state, has become a hub for the development of sustainable foods, with start-ups producing goods ranging from lab-grown “seafood” to dumplings made with tropical fruit instead of pork.
South Africa: Farm murder: Poenkie Bisset (63) found stabbed to death outside farmhouse, Smithfield
Farm murder: Poenkie Bisset (63) found stabbed to death outside farmhouse, Smithfield
#BlackWar continues. Another farm murder. Another woman murdered. Another ex farm worker involved. We are seeing another brutal attack on an elderly white person by “our people” in South Africa almost daily now, many of these attacks ending up in murder. Please inform elderly people of the extreme danger they are in.
Poenkie Bisset (63), the wife of farmer Arthur Bisset, was murdered on Monday morning 14 December 2020, outside their farmhouse on the farm Korhaanfontein near Smithfield, Free State.
She was found next to her car and it seems that she was attacked as she was on the way to town. A Police spokesperson told the media that Arthur discovered his wife murdered when he returned home from normal duties on the farm at around 11:30. Poenkie was stabbed 2-3 times in her neck and was found lying on her stomach.
The police spokesperson said Poenkie still had her car and house keys in her hand. The house was found locked. According to someone who was on the scene there were no signs of a struggle. It appears as if she knew the person who attacked her and talked with him and did not expect that she would be attacked.
Police has arrested 2 suspects, one an ex worker of Arthur. Only a small amount of money that Poenkie had with her is missing. Poenkie leaves her husband and 2 daughters, Charlene and Lieschen, behind
South Africa: Triple farm murder: Grisly scene of hacked parents and grandfather, Bishopstowe
Oorgrens veiligheid
Triple farm murder: Grisly scene of hacked parents and grandfather, Bishopstowe
A triple farm murder took place on 14 December 2020, between 18:00 and 19:00, at the Hoegelee Farm in Bishopstowe, near Pietermaritzburg in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. There was a report of a fire on the farm and the son of the murdered parents, Mark, had gone to the farm after his father was not answering his phone. It was then that he made the gruesome discovery.
On his arrival at the main house he discovered the bodies of his mother, Glynis De Bruin (60) and his grandfather, Colin De Bruin (84). They were both chopped with an unknown instrument. He shouted for his father but there was no response. He went to the workshop and found his father, Daniel De Bruin laying in pool of blood. He was also chopped with an unknown instrument.
A multidisciplinary team consisting of CI, K9, Station members and Provincial Organised Crime Investigation members was put in place to work throughout the night processing the crime scene, obtaining witnesses statements and tracing the suspects.
In early hours of 15 December 2020, at about 02:00 two suspects, Thembelani and Lezo, were arrested at Swapo informal settlement. The two are reported to have worked on the farm as cane cutters. There is no other information available at this stage.
