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Someone clearly had a word with Apple’s Idiot-in-Chief Apple’s removal of a American Civil War game from its app store due to it showing a Confederate flag (yeah I know 😀 ) prompted such widespread derision across the internet from such a wide range of the political spectrum that lo and behold, the app has been reinstated. One might assume a multi-gazillion dollar company would have sufficient checks and balances to stop Le Grand Fromage from making a complete pilchard of himself and his company in the first place, but at least common sense has eventually prevailed.
And as for a certain flag maker declining to manufacture Confederate flags any more, well one company’s boycott is another company’s business opportunity.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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Not a good week for Apple, says I with obvious relish. A couple of days ago Taylor Swift tore them a new ass-hole when Apple told bands they wouldn’t be paid royalties during their initial free three month roll-out of their music streaming service. Apple gave in.
Didn’t Apple refuse an iOS port of Seaman?
Do we know for a fact that this was a decision by Le Grand Fromage? It seems more redolent of La Grande Fromagette, to me.
Thus Perry:
Oddly enough, I just left a comment in the “Imprecation” discussion pointing out that we here are part of the process by which Apple restores its balance.
Such as it is, of course. :>)
Nevertheless, I’m a MacAddict. Face it, you got to deal with some unsavory folks if you want to Compute. Or else build your own, starting with digging the necessary Rare Earths out of the ground yourself.
I wouldn’t buy an Apple and this is why. Not because of their politics, just because their model allows them to choose what I can put on my device in the first place (I only speak of iOs, I don’t know if this is true of Macs or not).
Well, as a longstanding Mac-addict, I have to confess that, some several years ago when it seemed that PC loons and idol-worshippers were taking over at the helm of the corporation, I wouldn’t have a bar of it and voted with my feet, making a boycott of my own. I sold my stock in it and shunned the products. Sad to relate, but one has to move on.
After all, when religio-political ideology and activism begins to look set to trump fundamental customer-focussed business drivers, there would seem little point in buying stock in or doing business with what seems to have become an over-priced, religio-political and pathologically sick corporation.
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By the way @Perry de Havilland, I couldn’t help observe that you may have inadvertently allowed an accidental typo or malapropism where you write “…low and behold…”.
I just cannot take the left seriously any more. One nutter kills some nice black folk in a church and boom! it’s time for the culture war to continue, this time on the Confederate flag image (as used by Bubba in his election campaign in ’92 for example)
Yet how many rap songs glorify the street thug mythology, and directly(?) contribute to the nigh-on 6000 deaths of young black youth at the hands of other black youth, and the rap shit is called “art” and “free expression”
The moment you think about it, the sheer incoherence and brazen political expediency of it all is ghastly.
The only goal here is to continue with the meme that all the problems in the world are due to white people…
How long before Hillary adopts the hashtag #killallwhitemen?
Questions that can be answered easily number one:
How long before Hillary adopts the hashtag #killallwhitemen?
That depends on how long it is before Bill is caught cheating again…
Re: Watchmen.
As the rumours about Hilary er… wears comfortable shoes, have been around for decades, does she actually give a shit? Or is it just for the image issues it might cause?
Johnnydub wrote,
LOL!!!
Next you’ll be saying that Phil Colin’s In The Air Tonight promotes revenge murder, Stalone movies promote gun violence and the Colombine shootings had something to do with trenchcoats and Marilyn Manson’s music. Granted, rap is insipid and most ‘famous’ rappers today are completely tone-deaf, but it’s bravado dick-waving that’s not even remotely realistic…like Scarface, like Stalone movies. Quite frankly, I DO NOT WANT a Disney-fication sterilization of our western world by dictatorial rule or by mob/concerned society “democratic” fiat. Rap is REALLY REALLY BAD “art”, just like crusifix in a jar of piss, but it’s an artistic expression nontheless and subject to freedom of speech, and the idea that it induces people into becoming murderers, ect is as silly as the idea that pot is a gateway drug toward using “heavy drugs”, or that bicycles are a “gateway vehicle” to becoming drunk drivers. (Just look at how many drunk drivers owned a bike sometime in their lives).
slartybartfarst, it doesn’t surprise me a bit that Apple bends to public political view, when they’ve milked and exploited the irrational hatred of “big business” all along. (They used to present themselves as a david fighting the microsoft corporate “evil big business” giant). For example, Apple choosing to make some of their latest creations “completely in the USA” is completely political. In other words, let’s pretend the Luddite-minded Protectionists are right and conveniently pretend that Comparitive Advantage is still an unknown. Not to mention pretending that workers in asia having “low pay jobs”* is somehow worse than having no job opportunities.
(*In truth, “sweatshop jobs” in Asia routinely pay 2 to 5 times the average national wages in those countries. 7 TIMES in honduras). Christopher Hitchens once said that religion poisons everything. I agree, but I’ll add that gov/politics poisons everything too.
What really cracks me up about all this hoopla are the retards who continue to insist that the “bars and stars” confederate flag ISN’T about racism or slavery, but rather about “the cause” or “the southern cause” or “heritage” or “southern tradition”, etc, blah blah blah. If you’ll notice, those are all vague as hell. The reason it’s vauge as hell is because these are lies. The American branch of the whig party ripped itself apart from internal disagreements, one of which was views on slavery. The former whig party members who were for the abolishment of slavery formed the Republican party. When their first presidential candidate ran for office (can’t remember his name), southerners were warned that if he were elected, it would be the end of slavery in the south. He wasn’t elected, but the next Republican presidential canditate, Lincoln, was elected. And one month before he swore into office, a handful of “slave states” dropped out of the union. Other states followed suit. Most gave slavery as their reason, but others like Texas didn’t say slavery outright, but did say that whites are “superior”, yada-yada. What “southern heritage” are today’s pro-confederate flag wavers wanting to protect, their favorite ice tea and BBQ recipe? These bigots are lying to themselves and others.
Johnnydub, if anything, Hillary’s resemblance to a bull-dyke can only help her politically. After all, neither the Clinton Administration nor Obama’s administration every did a goddamned thing for the LGBT community. And the only thing Bill ever did for women was grop them.
Johnnydub,
I have to say I’ve never heard the Hilary rumours, and to be honest I’m not sure I care much. Hilary needs Bill because Bill is still popular (because he has the sense not to be just a liberal ideal, but a real person who would probably be fun to have a drink with) whereas Hilary lacks that sort of touch… Whether Hilary needs Bill for sexual pleasure or not is kind of irrelevant (although it did make for a slightly better bad joke).
I always love the idea that rap songs promote violence, whereas anyone who actually listens to rap realises that generally after two successful albums any mentions of violence become stylised and distanced or over-dramatised and hyped. This to me tends to reflect the fact that the violence in many rap songs reflects what the rappers know when they wrote, and as they become rich and successful they drift away from this (a lot of more self-aware rappers even reference this about themselves). Rap is probably the most auto-biographical form of art out there (although there is no reason you could not rap about other things, no-one ever seems to do a rap fantasy epic or reflection on the works of Tolstoy – the second of which might be the best way of upsetting everyone on the planet really), and it therefore is a window into people’s lives and perceptions rather than a manifesto (for anyone other than the odd middle-class kid who wants to be something else). And, as Thailover says, it is art, even if it is not some people’s taste.
That said, I would love to see the campaign for Apple to ban gangsta rap as a source of violence though… If they hadn’t pulled the flag ban, they presumably would have logically had to consider this. But that may just be my desire for self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ to have their heads explode at trying to deal with the fact that Apple was banning ‘black’ music (stupid tag – white people rap as well, as do Sri Lankans (just looking at my music collection)).
Perhaps they had a look at Brazil…
Thailover,
The flag of the state of Georgia had 2/3 of it’s space occupied by the confederate battle flag well into the ’90s. It flew from the state capitol, just next to the Martin Luther King Jr Freeway and within sight of Ebenezer Baptist Church where he preached.
Now for the kicker. But that is like heritage isn’t it. It was adopted in 1956 (nigh on a hundred years after Atlanta burned) to kick the red soil of Georgia into the faces of black folk. If the Confederat battle flag signifies anything it is the KKK, lynching and burning crosses and burning churches. It might mean other things to other people but it is a brand tarnished.
Now, Daisy in cut-off jeans is OK by me.
Watchman: regarding your hypothetical Tolstoy rap, I suggest you investigate the “Thug Notes” video series.
Fixed it for you:
If the Confederate battle flag signifies anything, it is the Democratic Party.
kerching! MrEd you got it spot on. I have been contradicted by many folk who believed Abe Lincoln (not that I am a huge fan) just had to not be a Republican because they are the “nasty” party. Fortunately the age of the smartphone enables me to prove them wrong which results in palpable cognitive dissonance. Having said that the pignorance of the average Brit as to US history is shocking. What is more shocking is the extent to which, despite, their ignorance they still just know.
Good news Perry, good news.
Meanwhile Apple continues to have its products manufactured in China by slaves. But it’s insanely cool because they’re yellow.
Checks and balances to keep from making himself a sardine?
For all your Confederate needs:
http://www.ultimateflags.com/Rebel-flag-for-sale-Confederate-Battle-flag-for-sale.html
Having said that the pignorance of the average
BritAmerican as to US history is shocking. What is more shocking is the extent to which, despite, their ignorance they still just know.NickM, FTFY
I’m so proud of my 15-year-old son. As soon as the Confederate flag brouhaha began, he went right onto the web and bought one. Not that he has any particular love of the Confederacy, but this was plainly a matter in which one haws to defend the rights of the individual.
That or he’s a big “Dukes of Hazzard” fan.
And who isn’t?
@Mr Ed
> If the Confederate battle flag signifies anything, it is the Democratic Party.
I don’t think so. It might have done at one time, but today the people who are fans of that flag are generally Republicans, and for a rather different reason. The real problem here is that that flag signifies different things to different people and one group, a group who claim the high ground of “most offended” want to impose their view of the flag on everyone else, namely that it is a symbol of a time when people were property.
And really it is part of a bigger difference of opinion — namely what the civil war was about. Was it about slavery or states rights? It was about both. One horrible cause and one laudable cause all mixed together in one thing and one symbol. And in a sense it is much like Lincoln himself. Was he a hero or a villian? Again, both. For sure he has a very large personal responsibility for freeing the slaves, but he is also responsible for starting us down the road to transforming the federation of independent states into a central government with power delegated to local governments as it largely is today.
The flag is a complicated thing and to say it is one thing or another isn’t much different than saying “it is a symbol of slavery.” And the same can be said for the Civil War and Lincoln. But I guess that doesn’t fit on a placard to wave outside the state house.
It is even more complicated than that, Fraser, as this particular flag was not even used during the Civil War, and so one may argue that what it signifies is the pre-Civil-Rights segregation in the South, Jim Crow, etc. I do agree with the gist of your comment though, although my take on Lincoln tends to be less charitable than that.
What with all these divisive flag issues, one advantage of being Swiss and neutral is that their flag is a big plus.