In 1999 Lostprophets were signed to a record label called Visible Noise. Their first album "Thefakesoundofprogress" was released on 27 November 2000. On 2 February 2004 the band's second album "Start Something" was released in the UK and South Korea. Six singles were released from the album. "Burn Burn" reached number seventeen in the UK Singles Chart. The band's third album, "Liberation Transmission", was released in June 2006 and was the band's first album to enter the UK Albums Chart at No.1. The album was also successful in Japan. Kerrang! gave it five out of five stars. In 2009 Lostprophets did a cover of "Boys Don't Cry" on an album of The Cure covers given away free with NME.
"The Betrayed", the band's fourth studio album, was released in the UK on 13 January 2010. It reached number three in the UK Albums Chart. Their last album, "Weapons" was released on 2 April 2012. It reached the number five in the UK Albums Chart. It got mixed reviews.
HMV stopped selling Lostprophets' albums in 2013 after Watkins was convicted of trying to rape a baby. The BBC will not play Lostprophets' music anymore.
In June 2014, the remaining members formed No Devotion with American singer Geoff Rickly as their lead vocalist.
Racism
Racism is the belief in the natural superiority of one race over another. It may mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.
Racism can also be used to describe the social, legal, cultural, economic, and political processes that are a result of those beliefs.
During the Holocaust, Nazis in Germany believed that some races did not even deserve to exist. These beliefs were racist. Because of those beliefs, they killed many people who belonged to those races. Those actions, which resulted from their racist beliefs, were also racist.
Racism has existed throughout human history. It has caused wars, slavery, the creation of nations, and laws. However, racism has never been the "only" cause of wars and slavery. Leaders often used racism to make their actions seem all right. For example, the Nazis used the idea that Slavic peoples were less than human to make it seem all right to take over those people's countries. In the United States, white people used the idea that African Americans were less than them to make it seem all right to treat them as property.
Humans often categorize themselves by race or ethnicity. They do this based on ancestry, as well as visible traits like skin color and facial features. People of the same ethnic group are often connected by ancestry, speaking the same language, having the same culture, and living in the same places.
However, scientists say that humans do not really fit well into these categories, biologically. The DNA of people from different races is very similar. Evidence from genetics and archaeology suggests that all humans came from the same group of early humans in East Africa. This means that different races did not appear at different times. All humans came from the same race, and separated into different races later. Because white people historically had more power, some people call racism against whites "reverse racism".
In the second half of the 19th century, there were different ideas on how species change over time. Charles Dawin made the idea of evolution popular and spoke about natural selection. Herbert Spencer spoke about the survival of the fittest. Social darwinism is the idea that what applies to species also applies to human societies:
Between the 1870s, and the end of the Second World War, these concepts were sometimes used to justify racist ideologies.
In the late 18th century, Europeans began using the term "Aryan" to refer to the original prehistoric Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants up to the present day (i.e., the Indo-European peoples—those Caucasians who speak the Indo-European languages). It was also assumed at the time, that, Aryans were a culturally superior people. By the late 19th century, some Europeans began to use the name "Aryan" for only the Nordic peoples of Europe (one branch of the Indo-European peoples), as a "pure," "noble" and racially "superior" race they claimed were descended from the original Aryan tribes. The theory that the Aryans first came from Europe became especially popular in Germany and to a lesser degree in Austria and Hungary.
There was much prejudice based upon this perception of the world as the Europeans and Orientals both regarded them selves as superior to the other skin colours, which lead to African slavery, Apartheid, the Jim Crow Laws, Nazism and Japanese imperialism.
When Europeans came to America, they killed thousands of Native Americans and when the European settlers got to Australia, they started killing off large numbers of Aborigines.
With the birth of their empires, many other native tribes suffered in Canada, New Zealand, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
Japan also held similar beliefs about Chinese and Koreans in their colonies.
Racism in the U.K., Ireland and France was usually about limiting the rights of Jews, Roma and minorities like the French Basques.
As the colonies became independent after the 1950s, many migrated to the U.K. and France, but were discriminated against. Some British cafes and hotels would not welcome in Caribbean guests and the French made Arabs feel unwelcome in some French towns as well. Since the 1960s, India, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people have moved to the U.K. and been victimised and 'Paki-bashed'. 9/11, 2001, has heightened the French and British fears about Islam and Arabs in general. Polish and Brazilian migrant labours are also discriminated against in some places. Racist parties like the U.K.'s British National Party and National Front trade on these fears to get votes.
Alleged scientific findings of racial differences were used by Nazi Germany to justify the racialist policy with its concept of "Großdeutschland" (Greater Germany) and the Nordic race idea. The Nazis' attitude towards the Jews were anti-Semitic and falsely blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I and the Great Depression. The Nazis and some of their anti-Semitic allies, like Hungary, committed genocide against the Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.
Both the Nazis and Romania's Iron Guard also persecuted the Roma, who were considered part of the allegedly inferior 'Indic' race. During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic attempt at genocide of the Roma, known as the "Porajmos". The Nazis also knowingly killed of thousands of Slavs, lesbians, Communists, liberals and gays.
Fascist Benito Mussolini, in a 1919 speech to denounce Soviet Russia, claimed that Jewish bankers in London and New York City were bound by the chains of race to Moscow, and claimed that 80 percent of the Soviet leaders were Jews.
Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, who they saw as being in competition with Italy, which had laid claim to the Yugoslavia's region of Dalmatia.
Mussolini said Italy would get its own way and was willing to use force to settle arguments. An early example was Italy's bombardment of the Greek island of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and crushed a rebellion in Libya, which had been an Italian colony since 1912.
Italy, like Germany, Austria and Hungary regarded all Slavs and Roma as stupid, racially inferior due to the effects of Social Darwinism and undeserving of their basic rights. Anti-Arab discrimination was also used in parts of Libya.
The Iron Guard was an antisemitic fascist movement and political party in Romania from 1927 to 1941. They despised and denounced both Jews and the Roma.