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→ RFK Jr excluded from presidential debates
Joe Biden and Donald Trump have finally agreed to a debate date on 27 June and, at the President’s insistence, will be bypassing the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has hosted these events since the Eighties.
Biden’s campaign complained of the Commission’s handling of Covid-19 protocol in 2020, but a more likely rationale for the President preferring a news network debate is the opportunity to exclude independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who might gain the requisite 15% of national polling to qualify for the Commission’s debate. The CNN debate will require participants to appear on enough state ballots to reach 270 electoral votes, which in all likelihood would disqualify RFK Jr.
Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want.
They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 15, 2024
“Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy,” Kennedy wrote in response to the news. “If Americans are ever going to escape the hammerlock of the two-party system, now is the time to do it. These are the two most unpopular candidates in living memory.” Maybe next time.
→ National Trust experiments with racial euphemism
The National Trust is embracing a trendy term for discussing non-white people.
The UK heritage organisation has announced plans to help 100 “people from the global majority” become walk leaders, joining a growing effort to help expand outdoorsmanship to a more racially diverse audience. The North Face, for example, offered a 20% discount in March to anyone who took an online course on inclusion which, among other things, taught that racial minorities need “affinity groups” where they can “learn about the outdoors without fear of being judged”.
May is National Walking Month, so we want to share the new Walk Together Pathway which will support 100 people from the global majority to become qualified walk leaders.
We are proud to be working with eight walking groups and seven outdoors organisations to get more people… pic.twitter.com/6tqin2uL7F
— National Trust (@nationaltrust) May 14, 2024
The National Trust was apparently undeterred by the widespread backlash last year to its exclusion of Christmas and Easter from its charity calendar, as well as its more recent incursions into the culture wars.
The phrase “global majority” is meant to “decolonise language” by declining to “situate whiteness as the norm”. Perhaps “the global minority” will enter the lexicon as well…
→ BBC’s Ros Atkins to play Glastonbury
Coldplay. Shania Twain. Add to this year’s Glastonbury line-up that BBC News presenter who always pops up in dark shirts. The Beeb’s Ros Atkins, who has long moonlighted as a drum & bass DJ, announced today that he will be playing a set at the festival in June.
It's frankly incomprehensible that I'm tweeting this – but here's the line-up for Stonebridge at @glastonbury and, to my great excitement and astonishment, I'm on it. What started with a one-off drum and bass set for BBC6Music two years ago has ended up here. Very grateful for… pic.twitter.com/JZWe6DplTm
— Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) May 15, 2024
In a 2022 interview, the BBC’s News and Analysis Editor claimed he’d abandoned the decks but a change of a heart, and a series of sell-out gigs, has resulted in his invitation to play the Somerset festival. Atkins’s BBC colleague and jungle music aficionado Amol Rajan could serve as a warm-up act.
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SubscribeThe global majority is clearly Chinese people, Japanese people, white people , Hispanics and Filipinos.
Finally!! Something Biden and Trump can agree on. RFK would destroy them both in a debate. And I’m not even an RFK supporter.
Why am I not surprised that you think the utterly bonkers RFK is fantastic?!?!?
I literally said I’m not an RFK supporter.
Yeah, but you’re full of it. You say you don’t like Trump but you are here fawning over him even as he gets more and more ludicrous!
Why am I not surprised at your utterly bonkers contribution? Fantastic?!?!?
The National Trust was established to “promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest.” Now it has determined to treat the majority the Nation as unwelcome aliens in their own land, and to malign the reputations of the benefactors who entrusted their inheritances to it.
There is no “global majority”. The Chinese and Indians top out at around 12% of the total each. Though I doubt that’s who the National Trust had in mind.
Identity politics at its most stupid.
As Stephen Walsh astutely notes in his comment, there’s no sign of the National Trust declining funding from the “non global majority” who’ve provided most of its funding (members and smaller donations as well as the legacy estates). Same pattern – of course – with the C of E.
National Embarrassment; now all those frustrated hate preachers who didn’t find an opening in the Green Party at the recent elections can get jobs as walk leaders.
Oh, but they never go for a walk (it’s the systemic racism).
Are NT ‘Walk Leaders’ paid or volunteers ?
If paid, then surely it’s straight up racial discrimination (of a minority (Their words, by implication, not mine)). If volunteers, then it’s, maybe, not so bad, but, even then ! I have no problem with he NT trying to get people, of any hue or underrepresented demographic out and taking physical exercise and enjoying the heritage that Britain has to offer, but I despise the Weasley, insulting, way they go about it.
The UK heritage organisation has announced plans to help 100 “people from the global majority” become walk leaders, joining a growing effort to help expand outdoorsmanship to a more racially diverse audience. The North Face, for example, offered a 20% discount in March to anyone who took an online course on inclusion which, among other things, taught that racial minorities need “affinity groups” where they can “learn about the outdoors without fear of being judged”.
So, as a white person and therefore part of the “global minority”, I assume that I need an “affinity group” where I can learn about the outdoors without fear of being judged, correct? I mean, I’ve seen articles lately that suggest an appreciation of the English countryside is indicative of white supremacy, and quite frankly I’m grateful to the National Trust for taking steps to ensure that I can enjoy the picturesque British landscape without being judged by a bunch of Leftwing jackasses.
Or is this more of a Bolshevik-Menshevik thing, where the “Majoritarians” actually represent a minority, and vice versa for the “Minoritarians”? “Global Bolsheviks” has a certain ring to it.
The term ‘Global majority’ only makes sense: 1… From the perspective of the entire globe, ignoring all local or specific contexts (an abstraction which no other part of the world would entertain) ,
and 2… If you lump all identities outside a putative undifferentiated ‘whiteness’ together into one singular, equally undifferentiated identity.
Utterly moronic, even by the standards of those people.
With reference to the exclusion of RFK Jr from the debate, I wonder if it’s possible for him to take a page from Trump’s book. Trump didn’t participate in the Republican nomination debates; instead he ran his own interview in the same time slot as the debates.
I wonder if RFK could run counter-programming at the same time as the Trump/Biden debate. Maybe RFK could be questioned by a panel of journalists about his beliefs and political agenda? It would be interesting to see how many skipped the Old Codger debate in favor of an RFK interview.
So let me get this straight- the “global minority” …. Stuff it! Some people, need a “help group” to glad hand them and share their “insert fatuous lived experience or similar descriptor here” to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. At the risk of sounding reactionary could they not do what the rest of us do, ergo Google a place and think “that looks nice, let’s go there for a walk” ….. I despair…..