ozza posted:

From the horrid Facebook group "Patriot Ordnance Friday". One of the comments on the image is "An armed society is a polite society. Period". But we're not racist guys honest

tyler is a joke posted:

I know they're making a stupid joke here, but it's funny because in reality hot weather makes crime go up, not cold. Specifically domestic violence and other crimes in which victim and aggressor are familiar. Because it's hot and people are agitated. While Houston is probably hotter on average than Chicago, it's also much more spread out - 627 sq mi vs Chicago's 234 sq miles. So is it more likely that you'll get in an argument with your neighbor after a long day of being out in the heat when you're both in your backyard or when you're both on the front stoop?

Fandyien posted:

Sex Hobbit posted:

The Trib got a real genius letter to the editor today:

TinTower posted:

All cops and private security are bastards, but I can forgive them when they deliver 100,000 volts to a Freeman on the Land:

(Unsure if it's been posted, a quick search indicates it hasn't)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia5pQ5yUS5g

System Metternich posted:

This is the Darien Chest, in which all the documents regarding the Scottish colonisation of the Americas were kept.

You never heard of this (I sure didn't)? At the end of the 17th century, Scotland was in a bad shape, as its economy was small and had no means of protecting itself against English politics. England (which was linked to Scotland via a personal union, i.e. the two nations shared the same monarch) exerted a great deal of economic power over its smaller neighbour, much to the dismay of the traditional Scottish elites. As a series of crop failures added to the crisis, calls for a custom union or even a merging with England were answered by the Scottish governement with a new idea: what if Scotland could gain a colonial foothold in the Americas? Smallish states like Portugal or the Netherlands were gaining vast riches out of their colonies, why not add Scotland to that list? In 1695, the "Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies" was created by an act of parliament with the monopoly on all Scottish tradewith India, Africa and the Americas. The company was plagued by many problems from the very beginning; the English East India Company immediately tried to kill off its competitor by forcing English and Dutch (the Netherlands were linked to England/Scotland by a personal union as well at that time) investors to withdraw. Investors outside of the territories ruled by King William III had to be refunded after the English threatened to sue, as the Company of Scotland hadn't managed to get official royal support for fundraising outside of William's realms. This meant that all of the Company's money had to come from Scotland itself. Finally, the executive board was divided by different business interests, namely whether to invest in the East Indies or the Americas.


Who was behind this enterprise? The main proponent was Sir William Paterson (1658-1719), a Scottish banker who as a young adult had spent some time in the Americas where he first got the idea of a Scottish colony in Central America. After his return to Europe, he became one of the founders of the Bank of England, returned to Scotland in 1695 and managed to convince the Scottish Lord High Commissioner (i.e. the direct representative of the king in the Scottish parliament) to support his ideas in parliament. He dreamed of a Scottish-controlled trade hub in the Guld of Darién, east of the isthmus of Panama and described to his investors in great detail that no, Darién wasn't claimed by the Spanish, the ground was fertile, the climate great and the sea full of edible turtles. Within a short time, the Company managed to gather the sum of 400,000 pounds, all from Scotland. That constituted roughly a fifth of the total wealth of Scotland, so the entire thing was a huge risk by both the Scottish elites and the government.

The entire scheme proved to be a massive failure. In 1698, the first expedition set sail towards the Americas, with about 1,200 people on five ships. The fact that they had to go from the Scottish east coast in Leith and to keep their passengers below deck so as to not draw the attention of English warships (which couldn't be trusted to let the expedition pass, owing to the influence of the English East India Company) should in hindsight have been the first massive warning sign to all participants that the whole thing was doomed to fail. Paterson himself was part of the expedition, alongside with his wife and his infant son. In October the ships arrived in the Caribbean, claiming an uninhabited island between Puerto Rico and St Thomas for the Scottish Crown, only to be told shortly afterwards by an English officer that the island already belonged to Denmark and that they should gently caress off pronto. Under the guidance of a pirate Paterson had known since his days in the Americas, the settlers continued towards Darién.



On November 2nd, the ships reached their destination and made first contact with the resident natives, which were very glad to see Europeans that weren't Spanish agents. The settlers constructed a fort towering over their harbour, christening it "Fort St Andrew". On the other side of the mountain they started "New Edinburgh", the actual settlement. And from then on, absolutely everything went horribly wrong. Paterson secretary succumbed to dysentery on the very day of their arrival, his wife and child following shortly afterwards. Near permanent rain made agriculture next to impossible, the natives showed no interest in the trinkets and goods brought by the settlers (and therefore wouldn't trade food with them outside of a small stream of more or less regular gifts). It turned out that almost no sailors were passing the area, and the few that were didn't purchase anything. Most of the food the settlers had brought with them had rotted due to improper stewing. The following ship that was supposed to deliver additional supplies already sank in Scottish waters.

During the following summer, the mortality rate rose on some days to ten people a day. Most hadn't even enough strength left to go turtle hunting, so booze was pretty much everything that was left and hadn't gotten spoiled yet. The remaining settlers were drunk off their rear end most of the time, as they watched as their numbers dwindled more and more. Meanwhile, King William had issued an edict explicitly forbidding any support of the colony - England was at war with France at the time and didn't want to anger its ally Spain. Still, letters sent home by the setters described New Caledonia as something of a paradise and claimed that everything was going according to plan. They probably knew that the financial security of the entire nation was at stake, or were they simply too proud to concede defeat? I don't know. When a small detachment of Spanish soldiers entered the area and attacked the fort, the remaining settlers finally had enough, though: after eight months of horror, the survivors left the colony hurriedly. Six people who had been too weak to move had to remain in the settlement, slowly starving there. Only one ship arrived back in Glasgow on November 21, 1699. Only 300 people had survived the whole ordeal.


The flag of the Company

The positive letters the first expedition kept sending had a horrible consequence though, as during the autumn of 1699, a second group of about 1000 settlers set sail towards Darién, arriving there on November 30. Amazingly, they managed to find a small number of survivors from the first wave there, including a certain Thomas Drummond, who had accompanied the first expedition as a military advisor and was guilty of participating in the Massacre of Glencoe as well, in which 78 civilians were slaughtered following the Glorious Revolution. Drummond insisted that the fort had to be rebuilt immediately, as the Spanish could return any day now. The second settlers were very annoyed by that, seeing that they hadn't expected to arrive in a fever-ridden hellhole but a thriving little colony. Dummond was finally arrested, with the self-proclaimed leader of the new settlement James Byes becoming highly paranoid, throwing everybody into the surrounding jungles that caught his mistrust. Byres eventually left the settlement in a small boat, and the remaining settlers became apathetic and helpless. A small spark of hope was ignited again, as new faces of the Company arrived, most prominently Alexander Campbell of Fonab. Campbell had the order to organise the settlement's defences and proved to be surprisingly competent. He realised that the only hope of surviving against the Spanish forces was by taking them by surprise, and so he set out to attack the nearby Spanish stockade of Toubacanti in January 1700. The daring operation was successful, and the Spanish fled - Campbell himself was wounded, however, and consequently incapacitated by fever. Without him, all remnants of leadership were pretty much lost, and so it was no surprise when the Spanish managed to return with a larger force soon afterwards, laying siege to the fort for a month. The settlers only surrendered after the Spanish commander threatened to burn down the entire fort and were forced to sail home again. Of a total of maybe 2,500 settlers, only a couple hundred survived.

What were the consequences of this scheme (besides all the deaths)? After the whole thing had come crashing down, Scotland (and most of its elite) was pretty much bankrupt. Especially in the Lowlands, almost every family had lost some money. There was another desperate attempt by the Company to gain a foothold in the overseas trade, and I'll just quote wikipedia here because this is just an amazing last note to the whole disaster:


The political consequences were even more drastic. Yet another attempt of the Company went awry when the Annandale was sent towards the East Indies where it should enter the spice trade. It was seized almost immediately by the English, however, which in turn caused a huge uproar in Scotland with three innocent English sailors being scapegoated and hanged. The Company never managed to gather the funds for another try, though, and many Scottish nobles had to face the dire reality of bankruptcy. The English government agreed to stabilise the Scottish Pound, and hinted at a possible recompensation for the losses as long as Scotland would agree to a political union. They got what they wanted: in 1707, the Act of Union between England and Scotland was signed into law, and the disaster of Scotland's first and only colonial enterprise played no small part in it.

Xandu posted:

This sovereign citizen stuff is a goldmine. This cop's much more patient about it (at least so far, still watching the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3otdTKmew

Gullous posted:

Do we really need to be eating ALL the time? And why is it always poo poo-food? On that note, you can order Bacon-maple syrup-ice cream and Denny's now:

fermun posted:

Sovereign citizens are such an amazing mess of conspiracy laws. They are so much fun to watch, in small doses.

You don't often see this one in original resolution so:

ulvir posted:

I find the American part of the Internet's obsession with everything Bacon quite fascinating. Did stuff like Epic Meal-Time jump on that bandwagon, or help start it off?

ozza posted:

From the horrid Facebook group "Patriot Ordnance Friday". One of the comments on the image is "An armed society is a polite society. Period". But we're not racist guys honest

ughhhh posted:

Well to be honest, neither the WAC nor the WASP were allowed to serve in combat roles and were often treated as glorified secretaries by their male colleagues. On the other hand, during the Spanish Civil war amongst the C.N.T.-F.A.I. women were leaders and active participants shaping the revolution (to the point that the propaganda against the Republicans by the Catholic Church and fascists was that women were too 'free'). In WWII with the Soviet union you have around 500,000 women in combat at any given time, many acting as officers. I understand the importance of the WAC and WASP within the US and UK, but they should not be held in equal terms to what was happening around the world in places like the Spanish Republic and USSR

System Metternich posted:

Darien Scheme

haveblue posted:

If you want to take a more serious try at debating that on Facebook (don't), you could point out that New York City has four times the population of those places, and the highest density in the nation, and incredibly restrictive gun laws, and less than half the murder rate of Houston (3.8 per 100K).

V-Men posted:

God I hope that episode is available somewhere.

Mauser posted:

Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kdF5SAy4CM
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWs-MFOQWQ

I never really liked Wolf Blitzer and I always assumed that he wasn't too sharp. Obviously a trivia contest proves this beyond a reasonable doubt.

System Metternich posted:

This is the Darien Chest, in which all the documents regarding the Scottish colonisation of the Americas were kept.

Moist von Lipwig posted:

Don't forget

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU

ekuNNN posted:

"April 30th, 1975; the Day of Victory of the Vietnamese people against the genocidal war waged relentlessly by the US imperialists! Long Live Socialist Vietnam!"

Gullous posted:

I recently saw a movie at "Cinebarre", which is basically a bar+theater. The menu is mostly fried items, creating an environment I found disgusting due to the odor and sound.

Ogantai posted:

You either posted the wrong image or the wrong translation. The bit at the top (toàn thắng) does mean "victory", but the slogan at the bottom translates roughly as "the two sides united progress towards socialism". There's nothing about the US or genocide.

hairysammoth posted:

Amazing post. I particularly enjoyed it as I'm related to those feckless Drummond arseholes. Can I ask where you got all this stuff? My Mum would be fascinated.

The Rev Mr Francis Borland posted:

Upon our arrival in this new world, we met with a sorrowful and crushing-like dispensation, for expecting here to meet with our friends and countrymen, we found nothing but a waste, howling wilderness; the colony deserted and gone, their Huts all burned, their Fort most part ruined, the ground which they had cleared adjoining to the Fort all overgrown with shrubs and weeds. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health and comfort, but behold trouble.

System Metternich posted:

Pascal Barillon, juror and 2011 winner of the Grand Prix de la Baguette de la Ville de Paris, testing the olfactory component of the participating baguettes.

El Anansi posted:

From here

April 25, 2013. Two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.


(no_such_thing_as_systemic_capitalist_violence.jpg)

Fluoride Jones posted:

Ah, no, but you see they didn't die at the hands of some dictator, it was just an accident, so therefore capitalism is blameless!


Unrelated photo of Belgian King Leopold II

System Metternich posted:

Thanks! I mostly got it out of a cross-reading of several Wiki articles (the German article on Paterson is surprisingly detailed). Currently I'm also reading this account of a survivor of the second wave. It's very fascinating, I wasn't aware of the full extent of the internal strife between the colonists, for example. The account is basically a constant repeat of "gently caress this place!", over and over again and sometimes reads like the script for a horror movie:



Pascal Barillon, juror and 2011 winner of the Grand Prix de la Baguette de la Ville de Paris, testing the olfactory component of the participating baguettes.

Squalid posted:

This is actually pretty similar to the experience of English colonists at Jamestown, the main difference seems to be that the English kept dumping unlucky souls there to replace the dead.



Recent excavations have now uncovered evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown. This skull of a 14 year old girl was found in a rubbish heap with bones of butchered dogs and horses, and has cut marks indicating removal of the tongue, cheek flesh and extraction of the brain.