Dissident Veteran For Peace

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty—so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator—and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. [Cramer's emphasis omitted].

Source: Clayton E. Cramer, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Greenwood, 1999) pp. 5-6 quoting Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes And Punishments, trans. by Henry Palolucci (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1963), 87-88.

Labels: civil liberties, crime, critical thinking, freedom, guns, quotations

If Black lives really mattered to BLM, the media, and academia then they would tell the truth about the Black homicide rate instead of promoting specious, unfounded narratives about racism and police brutality. I was reminded of this once more while listening to an almost hour-long program on National Prevarication Radio (NPR) yesterday.

The show was Freakonomics Radio and the episode was "What Are the Police for, Anyway?" I actually agree that the US has a murder and incarceration problem. I also support an end to the War on Drugs and evidence-based police reforms that are effective at increasing the safety of both officers and the communities they serve. 

Unfortunately, BLM, most of the media, and most academics don't care about facts. They are driven by false narratives that sow division and enhance their careers and the power of politicians and business elites.

Here's an illustrative excerpt from the radio show transcript:

Black Americans are five times more likely to be arrested than white Americans. On a per-capita basis, Blacks are also much more likely to be fatally shot by the police. There has of course been a racial reckoning around policing lately

    PROTESTORS: Hey, hey! Ho, ho!  These racist cops have got to go!

Highlighted by the police murder [sic] of George Floyd. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 51 percent of U.S. adults have either 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in the police.

Anyone with even a modicum of common sense, let alone statistical education, realizes that on "a per-capita basis" is a wholly inadequate way to analyze police shootings by demographic group.

According to the Washington Post 2015-2021 police shootings database, 95.5% of the people shot and killed by police in the US are males and yet they make up slightly less than half of the US population. Thus, on a per capita basis, men are far more likely to be shot and killed by police but no one screams about systemic police misandry. An honest, sensible person looks at that discrepancy and say, yes, but males commit proportionality far more violent crimes than females.

In fact, year after year, Blacks commit around 50% of the murders in the US and most of their victims are Black. Anyone who thinks this fact bears no relation to outcomes of police encounters with Black people is profoundly stupid, profoundly dishonest, or both. Cops of all colors may not be able to cite the precise statistics but they know by experience that, ceteris paribus, Black people they encounter are far more likely to be a threat to police and others than people of any other race. (That doesn't mean police should not regard everyone as putatively law-abiding individuals, most Black people are not violent criminals and they deserve to be treated respectfully unless objective circumstances dictate otherwise.)

Moreover, FBI data (Zip file) reveals that Black criminals upped their game in 2020.^* In 56.6% of cases where the race of the "murder offender" is known that offender is Black; the comparable figure for Whites is 40.6%.^† Academics have long known that Black Americans have a criminal violence problem that dwarfs that in all other communities but, by and large, they haven't had the courage or integrity to vocalize that and hold the media and activists accountable in discussions of police conduct.

For instance, in 2013, Siegel et al. published an article on the predictors of firearm homicide rates in arguably, the premier US public health journal, but they buried the lede. They claimed "ours is the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the relationship between firearm ownership and gun-related homicide rates among the 50 states."

In their final statistical analysis they found that the strongest predictor of "gun-related homicide" rate was a racial factor. In their tables 2 and 3 they reported: "For each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%" and "For each 1-SD [standard deviation] increase in proportion of black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 82.8". The comparable firearm homicide rate increases associated with an "increase in proportion of household gun ownership" were 0.9% and 12.9%.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the relationship between proportion of Black and firearm homicide rate in the body of their paper, which was titled "The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010". Now, if you really cared about reducing homicides wouldn't you foreground the strongest predictor found in your analysis? Needless to say this finding, as far as I can tell, has never been reported in any mainstream media outlet. In the only coverage I could find of the study anywhere was in Science Daily and they didn't report on any predictor but household gun ownership.

Notes

^* See "Expanded Homicide Data Table 3, Murder Offenders by Age, Sex, Race, and Ethnicity, 2020".

^† 8,142 ÷ (20,982  - 6,592) = 0.5658 = 56.6%; 5,844 ÷ (20,982  - 6,592) = 0.4061 = 40.6%

Labels: Black America, crime, George Floyd, guns, media, National Public Radio, police, race, science

In 1995, the Sackler family started producing and pushing oxycontin, a semi-synthetic opioid, via the Sackler-controlled company Purdue Pharma. Along the way they made billions of dollars in profits.

According to the CDC:

Nearly 500,000 people died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999-2019 ... The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, with overdose deaths involving prescription opioids (natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone) increasing since at least 1999.

Most states of the United States have some form of the "felony murder rule". This means a perpetrator can be held be criminally liable for murder if s/he caused the death of another person in the course of committing a felony. The perpetrator need not have intended the death of the victim and, in some states, need not have been the proximate cause of the death.

For example, if you merely drove the get away car for an armed robbery where one of your accomplices murdered a bank teller then you may held responsible for the murder. (If narrowly written and applied I think the felony murder rule is perfectly fair and just.)

I bring this up to point out that in America if you kill one person—even if you didn't pull the trigger—you can be punished for the murder. On the other hand, if you are a member of the Sackler family who had a key role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans by opioid abuse then (so far) you won't be personally charged with any crime.

The Sackler family members who ran Purdue Pharma belong in prison. However, there are plenty of other culprits not directly connected to the Sacklers or Purdue Pharma who also belong in prison for their part in the opioid crisis and, as far as I know, none of them has been criminally charged, either.

To be clear, while the Sacklers et al. helped create the opioid crisis, the crisis itself is a form of collective suicide founded on America's nihilistic consumerism and culture of death. It's worth noting, too, that the death toll is mainly comprised of White Americans who are supposedly so privileged. This is undoubtedly fueled by unconcealed hostility to White people, generally, and White working-class people, in particular.

If you doubt this then try carrying a sign saying "It's Okay to be White" in public in any town or city in America and see what happens. Also, consider the remarks of Duquesne University Psychology professor Derek Hook who opined that “White people should commit suicide as an ethical act.” Hook says that he was speaking about suicide as the destruction of "Whiteness" but try publicly advocating that for any other racial, ethnic, or religious group.

Labels: crime, culture, government, health, medicine, race, White folks

American society has never upheld or realized truth and justice in a manner fully consistent with American rhetoric. Yet, for most of my life I thought our society was at least headed in the right direction. No more.

In the flurry of non-stop anti-Trump (someone I never supported) lies I finally realized that somewhere, in my lifetime or before, the country took a wrong turn. It's tempting to say it happened in the last ten years but it may be more accurate that it was during the 1991 Rodney King police brutality/racism hoax and subsequent rioting when politicians and the media openly abandoned truth, justice, and integrity. The American public, in general, then showed itself to be too gullible and lazy to know or care that vital principles were being gutted.

Don't get me wrong, politicians and the media were not paragons of virtue before then but it does seem like we as a society turned the corner down into dangerous alley back then and things have gotten steadily worse ever since. Academia and the clergy have followed suit or, perhaps, helped lead the way.

In any case, I followed the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin very closely. Before the verdict I had estimated the outcome in order of probability (most to least) was as follows:

1. Hung jury
2. Full acquittal
3. Partial acquittal
4. Guilty on all charges

It's obvious I couldn't have been more mistaken. My estimation was based on the clearly erroneous assumption that the jury included at least one intelligent, rational, and principled juror. I don't have a lot of hope that Chauvin will get justice in the appellate courts.

I wish I knew what to tell people to do to turn this country away from the abyss but I don't. I can say there's no hope in Biden or Trump or most of the other denizens of the two wings of the political uniparty. What I do know is that defeatism is a faster path to destruction.

Here are a few more perspectives on the Chauvin trial and verdict:

• "It's a lie: 'Systematic police racism' and the Derek Chauvin Trial" on LawOfficer.com
• "The Derek Chauvin Trial: Reasonable doubt exists" on LawOfficer.com
• "Chauvin Guilty Verdict Completes the Total Collapse of Law, Order, and Due Process in Biden’s America" on Revolver.news
• "Candace Owens: 'This was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial.' " on Tucker Carlson Tonight via Twitter
  
• "After the Derek Chauvin Verdict: Initial Thoughts and What Comes Next" on RedState.com
• "The Chauvin verdict" on AmericanThinker.com
• "The American Crisis" by Ben Domenech via Twitter

If there were any Left-wing writers who care about truth and justice in the matter of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin then I would link to them but I am unaware of any.

21 April 2021 Addendum: In "George Floyd's Death: Test Your Knowledge" I mentioned that "the written report of the unofficial autopsy of George Floyd requested by Floyd's family and performed Michael Baden, MD, and Allecia Wilson, MD" had never been publicly released. They and their findings were much in the news last summer but unless I'm mistaken neither of them testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin nor was their report offered in evidence by the prosecution. If true, then this suggests that the "family autopsy" was primarily a media prop to advance the financial interests of George Floyd's family and lawyers in extracting a sweet financial payout.

Labels: Biden, crime, critical thinking, George Floyd, Justice, media, police, politics, race, Trump

On June 11, 2020, Von Kleim wrote a piece titled "Preparing for Hard Conversations" on the Force Policy Institute web site. One of Kleim's claims in his piece was: "Even now, we cannot make sense of what we saw. Experts, who have learned to be circumspect and wait for facts, are struggling to imagine any fact that could adequately explain the treatment of George Floyd."

Less than a week after that piece was published I tried to leave a comment. My comment was never posted although I'm not sure why. In any case, jury selection in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin started last week.

If you, like Von Kleim, cannot imagine such possible explanations then your 'imaginer' is probably broken or you have been bamboozled by media manipulation. I can imagine several possible facts that, singly or in combination, may explain, but do not necessarily excuse, Chauvin's actions, including his failure to stop and place Floyd in the recovery position in the last 3-4 minutes before EMS arrived.

Below is essentially the list I came up with in the middle of last June. Since then more information has rendered some of them implausible and I've struck them out. I don't claim to know which, if any, of the remainders are true but here they are in no particular order:

1. Chauvin is a racist with a disregard for the lives of Black people.
2. He is a misanthrope who dislikes people in general, regardless of race.
3. He had detained others this way before and/or had witnessed it and didn't think any serious harm would be done.
4. He was showing the crowd who was boss.
5. He was showing the rookies how it's done.
6. He was actually putting very little pressure on Floyd's neck (this seems to be consistent with the final report of the Hennepin County M.E.) and thought Floyd would be fine until EMS arrived.
7. He genuinely thought Floyd was just fine but faking.
8. He was having a bad day and/or angry about George Floyd's behavior or something else and expressed his anger recklessly.
9. He was fatigued or stressed and simply made a poor decision(s).
10. He had a personal grudge against Floyd and wanted him to suffer but not die.
11. He had a personal grudge against Floyd and wanted him to suffer and die.

See also: George Floyd's Death: Test Your Knowledge

Labels: crime, critical thinking, George Floyd, media, police, race

Facts don't matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

Source: Heather Mac Donald. "Darkness Falls: The collapse of the rule of law across the country, intensified by Antifa radicals, is terrifying". City Journal. May 31, 2020.

Labels: Black America, crime, politics, quotations, race, White folks

Due to a gruesome video of Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd's neck and the widespread media coverage of it, the death of Floyd quickly became a matter of public outrage and ongoing national interest. Across the United States, Derek Chauvin has been characterized as the murdering poster boy of systemic racist police violence and important public policy decisions are being made in the wake of protests occasioned by Floyd's death.

What follows is a 12-question quiz. The purpose of this quiz is not to amuse, provoke anger, or to make light of George Floyd's death. Rather, the purpose is to give the reader a benchmark to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of information provided by mainstream media coverage of the death of Floyd and subsequent events.

If you do well on this quiz then you may conclude that the media sources you rely upon are providing you with important factual material in context (or it may be that you have also done your own research independently). Otherwise, you may want to consider what your sources of information are and whether they are trustworthy when it comes to controversial and important subjects. The answers to the questions appear at the end of the quiz.

1. According to the statements of probable cause in the criminal complaint and the amended criminal complaint against former officer Chauvin, what was the relationship of Chauvin and George Floyd before May 25, 2020?

a. They had both worked at El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub.
b. They had worked at the nightclub and knew each other.
c. They had worked at the nightclub, knew each other, and had clashed there.
d. The statements of probable cause do not indicate that the two men worked together or knew each other.

2. The conversations in the publicly available bodycam transcripts of former MPD officers Thomas Kiernan Lane and J. Alexander Kueng reveal that Chauvin knew Floyd and/or Floyd knew Chauvin.

a. True
b. False

3. David Pinney, a Black man who told CBS News he worked with Floyd and Chauvin at El Nuevo Rodeo, retracted his claims that Floyd and Chauvin knew each other "pretty well" and "bumped heads" with Pinney later saying he mistook George Floyd for a different Black former co-worker.

a. True.
b. False.

4. According to the Lane and Kueng bodycam transcripts officers expressed concern that Floyd might be at risk of or suffering from which potentially lethal condition:

a. None, they expressed no concerns about Floyd's health and safety.
b. Positional asphyxia.
c. Mechanical asphyxia.
d. Excited delirium.

5. According to a 2009 "White Paper Report on Excited Delirium Syndrome" by a task force of American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), a 2014 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin article, and a 2016 ACEP newsletter article "excited delirium" is likely to be:

a. A myth.
b. Junk science.
c. A racist fiction created to justify police misconduct.
d. A real condition that can lead to death by a sudden cardiopulmonary arrest.

6. On May 25, 2020, MPD's official use of force policy permitted officers to use neck restraint as a "Non-deadly force option" including the "Conscious Neck Restraint" described as "The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure."

a. True.
b. False.

7. According to information in the official autopsy report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner and the amended criminal complaint against former officer Chauvin how long did George Floyd live after Chauvin "removed his knee from Mr. Floyd's neck"?

a. Zero minutes, Floyd was already dead.
b. Seven minutes.
c. Thirty-three minutes.
d. Fifty-eight minutes.

8. According to the official autopsy report, the Medical Examiner identified "no potentially life-threatening injuries" to George Floyd's body and no "evidence of injury" to his neck.

a. True
b. False

9. How many times does the official autopsy report mention "excited delirium", "suffocation", "strangulation", "asphyxia", and "neck compression" in total?

a. Once.
b. Seven times.
c. Thirteen times.
d. Twenty-three times.

10. The case title of the official autopsy report is which of the following:

a. Cardiopulmonary Arrest Complicating Law Enforcement Subdual, Restraint, and Neck Compression.
b. Cardiopulmonary Arrest Caused by Law Enforcement Subdual, Restraint, and Neck Compression.
c. Cardiopulmonary Arrest Due to Fentanyl and Methamphetamine Overdose.
d. Cardiopulmonary Arrest of George Floyd aka Floyd Perry.

11. On May 31, 2020, according to notes of the Managing Assistant Hennepin County Attorney, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner "said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death."

a. True
b. False

12. When was the written report of the unofficial autopsy of George Floyd requested by Floyd's family and performed Michael Baden, MD, and Allecia Wilson, MD, publicly released?

a. On June 1, 2020, the same day as the press conference announcing their findings.
b. On June 3, 2020, the day charges against Chauvin were upgraded to second-degree murder.
c. On July 15, 2020, when the Floyd family filed their lawsuit in federal court.
d. It has never been publicly released.

It may be objected that to focus too closely on the facts surrounding the death of George Floyd or any other police-involved death is to miss the forest of systemic racist police violence for the trees. However, if you were in what you were told was an oak forest and found that most of the trees were actually cedars then you might begin to question the competency or motives of those who had misinformed you.

For example, the high-profile police killing of Michael Brown in 2014 helped propel Black Lives Matter onto the national stage. That case has been independently investigated three times in the last six years. Two of the three prosecutorial inquiries were under the supervision of Black officials—there was the federal inquiry under the Obama administration's Attorney General Eric Holder and then, this year, a five months long investigation by St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell. Each time a grand jury or prosecutors found there was insufficient evidence that a crime had been committed against Brown. Yet, Brown's death is still unqualifiedly characterized by BLM as a "murder". Why is that?

Answers:

1) d. The statements of probable cause do not indicate that the two men worked together or knew each other (see the criminal complaint and the amended criminal complaint).
2) b. False (see the bodycam transcripts of former MPD officers Lane (p. 16) and Kueng (p. 33)).
3) a. True (see "Man who claimed George Floyd and Derek Chauvin 'bumped heads' changes story").
4) d. Excited delirium.
5) d. A real condition that can lead to death by a sudden cardiopulmonary arrest (see ACEP "White Paper", FBI Bulletin, & ACEP article).
6) a. True (see the MPD Policy & Procedure Manual use of force section 5-311).
7) Either c. Thirty-three minutes or d. Fifty-eight minutes may be considered correct. According to the amended criminal complaint Chauvin "removed his knee from Mr. Floyd's neck" at 8:27 PM (see p. 4). The official autopsy report says that an "antemortem blood draw" ("antemortem" means preceding or before death) was performed on Floyd at the hospital at 9:00 PM (see p. 2) and that Floyd was not pronounced dead until 9:25 PM (see p. 1).
8) a. True.
9) a. Once. The report uses the term "neck compression" only once, in the title, and never uses the other words.
10) a. Cardiopulmonary Arrest Complicating Law Enforcement Subdual, Restraint, and Neck Compression.
11) a. True (see "Notes from conversation with Dr. Andrew Baker, Hennepin County Medical Examiner").
12) d. Never. As of September 14, 2020, the report has not been made public.

See also: "What was Derek Chauvin Thinking?"

Labels: crime, critical thinking, George Floyd, media, police, race

An automated release of documents this week by the FBI has stirred up a minor Twitter storm. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports the release announcement "spark[ed] anger and confusion".

According to an FBI apology posted on August 19, 2020:

Earlier today FOIA materials were posted to the FBI's Vault and FOIA Twitter account via an automated process without further outlining the context of the documents. We regret that this release may have inadvertently caused distress among the communities we serve.

The apology doesn't say what the "materials" in question were nor does it mention that the offending tweet was deleted. As it turns out the FBI released its file on the "Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion", which you can, for now, still access in the FBI's "Vault". The deleted tweet can be viewed here.

It appears someone decided to try to put a lid on the whole matter because people were starting to pay attention and it wasn't all in support of the 'angry and confused' folks. Thus, three of the four non-FBI tweets quoted in the JTA article have now disappeared too.

They probably needn't have worried as—except for high-profile stories that simply cannot be ignored such as Jonathan Pollard, Jack Abramoff, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein—the mainstream media seldom reports on matters that may offend Jews or cast them in a negative light. Examples of buried stories that warrant greater coverage are the ongoing nefarious activities of Chabad, including the $40 million in federal funds allegedly defrauded by the Michigan Jewish Institute. The Trump DoJ put an end to this particular inquiry early this year.

In any case, one of the more pointed replies to the FBI's now deleted tweet quoted from a 2015 article by Yossi Sarid in Haaretz on Republican Jewish operatives waging a "campaign of intimidation ... to stop Democratic lawmakers from skipping Netanyahu's upcoming Congress speech". Here's the excerpt:

In these very moments, the protocols are being rewritten. Rich Jews are writing them in their own handwriting. They, in their wealth, are confirming with their own signatures what anti-Semites used to slander them with in days gone by: We, the elders of Zion, pull the strings of Congress, and the congressmen are nothing but marionettes who do our will. If they don’t understand our words, they’ll understand our threats. And if in the past, we ran the show from behind the scenes, now we’re doing it openly, from center stage. And if you forget our donations, the wellspring will run dry.

Labels: Chabad, conspiracy, crime, fraud, government, Israel, Jews, media, quotations, Rothschild, Trump, Zionism

Almost thirteen years ago, I wrote a post, citing Chris Hedges, that mentioned Karl Popper and his contrived "paradox of tolerance". I also invoked Popper again last year in a post quoting George Orwell.

In note 4 to chapter 7 of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) Popper writes:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Here is a graphic representation of Popper's ideas:


Someone on the Right has reworked this graphic, substituting ISIS (or, perhaps, Muslims more generally) for Nazism:


If you doubt whether Popper's "paradox of tolerance" enjoys any currency on the Left then please consider that a slightly longer version of the text quoted above appears as the epigraph to the first chapter, "Faith", of Chris Hedges' 2006 book American Fascists. Consider, too, that billionaire George Soros considers himself a protégé of Karl Popper and derived the name of his Open Society Foundations from Popper's book title. Then please have a look at these articles in The Washington Post, Patheos, Quartz, Kottke.org, Big Think, The New York Times, Salon, Open Culture, and Hornet, for example.

The problem with Popper's supposed paradox should be obvious but it, apparently, is not. To illustrate, here is what Popper should have said:

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force if they or their followers advance their ideas by the use of their fists, pistols, or other means of actual criminal violence. But even then we must be clear that is not their ideas we suppress but their violence in furtherance of those ideas, which would be criminal even if stripped of any ideology whatsoever.

In other words, the problem is not with "intolerant" ideas (Who gets to decide that?) but with violent, coercive actions that are used to promote those or any other ideas. I don't mean to say that society has to wait until the "intolerant" carry out actual violence but, at a minimum, there should be solid evidence of an actual, imminent attack. Thus, there is no paradox of tolerance.

What cannot be tolerated is not intolerance but criminal activity in support of "tolerance", "intolerance", or no ideology whatsoever. Ironically, as has been made abundantly clear in the last two weeks of  looting, arson, shootings, assaults, theft, and vandalism in the George Floyd riots, many on the Left have a high tolerance for criminality in advance of a favored ideology. In this case the favored ideology is "anti-racism" i.e. the intolerance of alleged "racism".

Popper is not the only figure associated with the Left who advocated a constrained view of "tolerance". As cited in Sculos and Walsh, Herbert Marcuse wrote in a 1965 essay titled "Repressive Tolerance" (later published in A Critique of Pure Tolerance) that "a liberating tolerance:"

[W]ould include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior—thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives. And to the degree to which freedom of thought involves the struggle against inhumanity, restoration of such freedom would also imply intolerance toward scientific research in the interest of deadly “deterrents,” of abnormal human endurance under inhuman conditions, etc.

It may be that Marcuse is more influential these days than Popper but they are two birds of a feather in the procrustean arguments they use to constrict and distort the idea of tolerance. My primary objections to Popper's and Marcuse's ideas are to their distortion of the idea of tolerance and their advocacy for the use of state power to enforce orthodoxy. On the latter point, if a church, company, political party, club, etc. wants to expel someone because they do or do not support same-sex marriage, for example, then that is nothing to be celebrated. However, it is a qualitatively far different thing than the governmental coercion Popper, Marcuse, and their acolytes advocate.

Here are a couple of other thoughtful critiques of the "paradox of tolerance":

• Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance
• Rebutting the Fallacious "Paradox of Tolerance"

See also: "The Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis: Intolerance Among Both Liberals and Conservatives" (2014) by Brandt et al. in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Labels: censorship, Chris Hedges, crime, critical thinking, Karl Popper, Orwell, philosophy, politics, race, thoughtcrime, violence

Arson in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020

In the wake of the George Floyd protests and riots a particular quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been repeatedly trotted out (see e.g. here and here and here). As Time noted after the Freddie Gray riots: "One quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., has become a touchstone for those who seek to understand [sic] why those individuals have taken to the streets: 'A riot,' King said, 'is the language of the unheard.' " (On the origins of this quote see the 2013 CBS News piece "MLK: A riot is the language of the unheard".)

It is doubtful that there has been any time in American history when more Black people occupied positions of prominence in the media and power in politics. Even Demon Trump has the same percentage of Black cabinet members as Obama did in his first term.

In Minneapolis, the police chief and the state attorney general are both Black men. The city's representative in Congress is a Somali-American woman. There are apparently four Black members on the city council, one of whom is the son of the state attorney general.

So, how is it that the Minneapolis rioters are supposedly "unheard"? What are they saying and who isn't listening? More importantly, why is it that when pundits, politicians, and other propagandists quote King about the "language of the unheard" they seldom quote the text below from his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech?

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

In 1968, shortly before his death, King reiterated his position on the "language of the unheard" while "condemn[ing] riots", saying: "... I am still committed to  militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the [race] problem from a direct action point of view ... And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method  that  brings about tangible results."

Labels: Black America, Christianity, crime, critical thinking, Ilhan Omar, Martin Luther King, nonviolence, Obama, police, quotations, race, Trump, violence

In the last couple of weeks I've discussed the death of Ahmaud Arbery with two people. Both of them had some familiarity with the matter and had seen William Bryan's video of the last few seconds of Arbery's life.

What was initially stunning to me is that their recall of the video was that the McMichaels were in motion in their vehicle and simply gunned Arbery down. I asked them if they had noticed that, in reality, the video clearly shows that at the time of the shooting the McMichaels were stopped with no one in the driver's seat. And that Arbery had run/jogged toward them and then alongside the passenger side of the McMichaels' truck before suddenly veering in front of it to attack Travis McMichaels, who was on the other side. They both denied noticing or recalling any of this.

The second person, I'll call her P., lives far south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a state where slavery was legal until 1865. P. is, arguably, herself of "redneck" stock. Nevertheless she reflexively denounced the McMichaels as vicious "rednecks". In all the years I've known she has never used that word, as she later acknowledged to me.

She also got angry that I characterized Arbery's final actions as "attacking a man armed with a shotgun". She objected to the word "attacking" even though, as I pointed out, that the word is neutral and if Arbery was engaged in actual self-defense, as she contended, he would have every legal right to attack the McMichaels.

Above I indicated I was initially stunned by the perspective of my friends. However, given the mainstream media's aggressively dishonest agenda-pushing it would be surprising if most people didn't accept the dominant narrative of the shooting. To be clear, my point is not that the McMichaels (and William Bryan) are innocent of any crime—although that seems to be the case based upon the evidence I've seen so far—but rather that the actual facts and the video alone paint a more complex picture of events than the simplistic characterizations of most mainstream and fringe Left/Right media outlets.

The McMichaels have both been arrested for aggravated assault and felony murder. The key charge the prosecution must prove is aggravated assault. If they are found guilty of that then perforce—because Ahmaud Arbery is dead—they must be guilty of felony murder (O.C.G.A. § 16-5-1). I was surprised that they were charged with aggravated assault (O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21) because, in my reading of the Georgia statute, I think the prosecution will have a more difficult time convincing a jury of that than of the charge of criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment (O.C.G.A. § 16-5-41), which is one of the charges against Bryan.

Going out on a limb here, I predict that, before they go to trial (assuming, as I do, that there will be a trial), the prosecutors will charge the McMichaels with criminal attempt to commit unlawful imprisonment in place of or in addition to aggravated assault. If they don't do that then I think the McMichaels will almost certainly be acquitted.

In any event, everyone interested in this case should critically scrutinize media and activist motives and narratives, consider the available evidence, and make up their own minds. Also ask yourself why some killings become national new stories with frequent updates and others get mostly ignored, nationally (see also here and here). Below is the best video (although the accuracy of the narration is spotty) of which I am aware of the events leading up to the shooting and some links to additional key case documents or sources.

• Glynn County Police Report of the Shooting
• Autopsy Report of Ahmaud Arbery
• DA George Barnhill's letter to Glynn County Police Department
• Ahmaud Arbery Murder Investigation | Georgia Bureau of Investigation

Labels: crime, critical thinking, guns, Justice, law, media, politics, race

Yesterday, the AP and NPR both reported that the US Justice Department "is dropping the criminal case" against Michael T. Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. This is not quite correct.

The criminal case against Flynn was made when he pled guilty three times to the charge of lying to FBI agents although, more than two years later, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. What actually happened yesterday was that the DOJ filed a motion in United States v. Flynn asking the trial judge "to dismiss the criminal information" against Flynn.

So, the ball is in the judge's court, not the DOJ's as has been implied in media coverage. And I wouldn't be completely surprised if Judge Emmet Sullivan declines to grant the DOJ's motion. In any case, the gist of the DOJ's motion is not so much that Flynn didn't lie to the FBI agents, though they do cast doubt upon that, but that Flynn never should have been questioned by the FBI in the first place.

As a long time Russiagate skeptic, I am sympathetic to this argument and I can see a case to be made in Flynn's favor on the grounds of procedural, but not substantive, justice. And make no mistake procedural justice is important.

However, there are a lot of aspects to this case that, barring additional evidence, temper any sympathy I have for Flynn or make me skeptical that dropping the case is really warranted in the name of procedural, let alone substantive, justice.

It's worth pointing out that Flynn wasn't some naive apprentice carpenter from Kalamazoo who fell in with the wrong crowd. Flynn was a long-time, loyal servant of the Empire operating at the highest levels of a corrupt system, including a stint under Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Here's my list of, for lack of a better term, aggravating circumstances:

1. No one held a gun to Flynn's head to force him to: a) meet with FBI agents in his White House office, b) without his attorney present, and c) without recording the interview.

2. Flynn pled guilty, in open court, on two separate occasions to the charge of "making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and also signed a written plea agreement to that effect, not to mention his public mea culpa. Here it's worth considering key portions of the transcript of Flynn's abortive sentencing hearing (click on images to enlarge them):


Many of the claims that Flynn and the DOJ are now making in favor of letting Flynn off the hook were already addressed by Flynn himself at his sentencing hearing.

3. Flynn reportedly cooperated fully with the Mueller investigation when he thought it served his interests to advance the Russiagate farce. It's worth pointing out that the Mueller investigation began during the Trump administration and was opened by none other than Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.

4. The Trump administration possesses but refuses to release the actual recordings or transcript of recordings, in redacted form or otherwise, of Flynn's conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak. These recordings were reportedly made during the Obama administration under a FISA warrant. This is particularly irksome because of all the well-founded complaints about the Obama administration's abuses of power.

5. William Barr took over as Attorney General on February 14, 2019. The investigative phase of the Mueller probe ended on March 22, 2019, and the office was completely shut down on May 29, 2019. Yet, the Trump-Barr DOJ steadfastly prosecuted Flynn until yesterday and, although Mueller recommended no prison time for him, the Trump-Barr team reversed course and called for him to be locked up just last January.

6. Finally, like Trump and nearly all DC politicians, Flynn is a partisan and/or tool of the Israel Lobby. Flynn's first substantive post-election conversation with Kislyak was doing the bidding of Israel in trying to get a UN Security Council vote against Israel's illegal settlements blocked (see here and here). This aspect of the case was detailed in two pages (pp. 167-168) of the first volume of the Mueller Report, buried among the hundreds of other pages of text, and has been largely ignored in the mainstream US media (but not as much in the mainstream Israeli media).

Furthermore, it has even been covered up in some legal pleadings filed against Flynn. The criminal information that the DOJ now seeks to have dismissed says that: "the defendant falsely stated and represented to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in Washington, D.C., that ... On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution ..." No mention whatsoever is made in the information of which country was the subject of that resolution or why Flynn would reach out to the Russian ambassador to discuss it.

Similarly, most Americans have no idea that Israel was the country funneling arms to Iran as part of the illegal Iran-Contra affair. Likewise, the name of the country whose forces killed them fails to appear in the posthumous Navy Cross citations of Philip McCutcheon Armstrong and Francis Brown. Nor does it appear in the Medal of Honor citation of William Loren McGonagle. The marker for the five sailors and one Marine killed in the attack on the USS Liberty and buried in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery also gives no indication of who killed these men or the other 28 buried elsewhere who died with them on June 8, 1967.

In sum, I am by no means convinced that ending the case against Flynn satisfies any norms of procedural justice and the attempt seems to me to be primarily a political act of one group of crooks looking out for one of their own. Flynn appears to be clearly guilty of the substantive matter for which he was charged and repeatedly pled guilty.

On the other hand, I would definitely support investigating and prosecuting, as warranted, the allegations of FBI and prosecutorial misconduct in Russiagate (FWIW, I think the creation and release of the whole second volume of the Mueller Report was an abuse of power). Congressional action against law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse, not to mention mass surveillance, is long overdue. How about repealing the Logan Act and the Espionage Act, too? I won't hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.

Last revised: 13 May 2020

Labels: crime, Empire, Israel, Israel Lobby, Michael T. Flynn, Obama, Robert S. Mueller, Russia, Trump

Freddie Glusman, owner of Piero's: Want me to tell you a story?

Eugene Jarecki, director-writer of The King: Please.

FG: Casino. They filmed it here [in Piero's]. True Story. I know where the bodies are buried, some of them anyway.

EJ: How come?

FG: Because I'm Jewish. I move in the right circles. I kiss the right ass.

Source: At about 1:29:50 in The King, Jarecki's documentary/op-ed on Elvis Presley and America.

Labels: crime, film & television, Jews

Labels: children, civil liberties, crime, Democrats, guns, politics

In the United States you have no legal right to expect that the police will protect you from criminal acts or arrest the perpetrators after the fact. There's actually a lot of case law on this subject but I'll stick to just two cases.

In 1975, Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were victimized, at knife point, by Marvin Kent and James Morse in a rooming house in Washington, DC. The police were called numerous times but they dropped the ball with the result that "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse." The victims later "sued the District of Columbia and individual members of the Metropolitan Police Department for negligent failure to provide adequate police services" in federal court. In affirming the dismissal of their lawsuit the en banc District of Columbia Court of Appeals adopted the reasoning of a lower court (citations omitted):

The Court, however, does not agree that defendants owed a specific legal duty to plaintiffs with respect to the allegations made in the amended complaint for the reason that the District of Columbia appears to follow the well-established rule that official police personnel and the government employing them are not generally liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection ... This uniformly accepted rule rests upon the fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen ...

A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order ... Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community. [Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (1981)]

In 1999, Jessica Gonzales' estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, abducted their three daughters in violation of a restraining order against him. She made repeated attempts to get police to enforce the restraining order and return her children to her. They did essentially nothing. Her husband murdered the girls and then committed suicide-by-cop.

She filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that "the town of Castle Rock, Colorado, violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when its police officers, acting pursuant to official policy or custom, failed to respond properly to her repeated reports that her estranged husband was violating the terms of a restraining order." The US Supreme Court reinstated the District Court's order dismissing the lawsuit. They concluded that Jessica Gonzales "did not, for purposes of the Due Process Clause, have a property interest in police enforcement of the restraining order against her husband" (Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005)).

Labels: crime, law, police, United States

Used to losing battles over gun control, gun controllers latch onto any proposal popular enough to make it through the legislature—usually right after some school shooting or other tragedy. Whether or not a proposed law will actually curb gun deaths is irrelevant; gun control extremists will stand behind it. —Adam Winkler in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (Norton, 2011).

Labels: civil liberties, crime, guns, video

The Obama administration Justice Department has investigated three senior officials for mishandling classified information over the past two years but only one faces a felony conviction, possible jail time and a humiliation that will ruin his career: former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman General James E. Cartwright. The FBI's handling of the case stands in stark contrast to its treatment of Hillary Clinton and retired General David Petraeus — and it reeks of political considerations.

Source:  Josh Rogin. "General Cartwright is paying the price for Hillary Clinton's sins." Washington Post. Oct. 18, 2016.

Elsewhere in the opinion piece quoted above, Rogin asserts: "Cartwright's greatest mistake was not talking to reporters or lying about it; he failed to play the Washington game skillfully enough to avoid becoming a scapegoat for a system in which senior officials skirt the rules and then fall back on their political power to save them." Perhaps, but it may also be the more compelling case that Cartwright was hammered because his "leak" about the source of Stuxnet virus was perceived as harmful to Israel. Rogin makes no mention of this.

It is also perhaps telling that Cartwright is out of step with the avaricious DC scumbags—I'd call them "hawks" but hawks are graceful creatures who kill only to stay alive—backing Obama's trillion dollar nuclear weapons expansion plans. Contra the Nobel Peace Prize laureate-in-chief, Cartwright has publicly called for major cuts in nuclear weapons and a path to their elimination.

Labels: Clintons, crime, Israel, military, nuclear weapons, Obama, politics, voting

Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics by Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters has an important and, I submit, true premise. Namely that, on a host of issues, Americans and US politicians face manipulation by orchestrated, well-funded campaigns of deliberate misinformation. No surprise there, right?

However, readers should be aware that Rabin-Havt and Media Matters are themselves part of the propaganda machine they call Lies, Inc. I'll give just one glaring example.

In the epigraph to the book a "lie" is defined, in part, as "to create a false or misleading impression". This is exactly what the authors do in their hit on firearms researcher John Lott.

On page 116, they write: "When a group of researchers convened by the National Academy of Sciences examined Lott's thesis that the liberalization of concealed-carry laws leads to a decrease in violent crime, fifteen of the sixteen panel members found 'no credible evidence' to support this theory" (emphasis added) In support of their claim, the authors cite a 2015 article in Mother Jones magazine by Julia Lurie.

Here's the problem: Lurie is clearly engaged in an attempt "to create a false or misleading impression". In short, she's a liar. Given that the authors of Lies, Incorporated are aware of the methods of deceptive propagandists and yet take no care to correct Lurie's false narrative and tell the truth, I conclude they, too, are liars, especially since they took the liberty of slanting Lurie's statement even more strongly against Lott's position.

Here's Lurie's version: "The National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, assembled a panel to look into the impact of concealed-carry laws; 15 of 16 panel members concluded that the existing research, including Lott's, provided 'no credible evidence' that right-to-carry laws had any effect on violent crime" (emphasis added).

I claim Lurie, Rabon-Havt, and Media Matters are liars because, years ago, I read much of the NRC report in question—Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review—and it was a real eye opener. Here is the full sentence from which Lurie (and Rabon-Havt and Media Matters) lifted the "no credible evidence" phrase: "For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on children’s behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms."

The sentence in question is from page 2 of the report, in the Executive Summary (Lott's name appears nowhere in the Executive Summary). Here is one glaring and misleading omission by Lurie et al.: "the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws ... increases violent crime". Lurie et al. do not include this information or draw it to the attention of their readers because it does not serve their gun control agenda.

They also fail to note that the NRC panel takes a decidedly more judicious—though hardly uncritical—approach to Lott and his work. Readers interested in forming their own opinions on the matter are advised to read Chapter 6 and Appendices A  and B of the report along with the links below. My point here is not to defend Lott and his work—I leave that to others—but to highlight the hypocrisy of Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters.

See also:

• "A response to Mother Jones’ mistake filled article on John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center" on the CPRC web site, Aug. 1, 2015
• "Is it a 'Lie' That More People Carrying Guns Can Lead to Less Crime?" on the Reason.com web site, Apr. 26, 2016. This is a response an article by Rabin-Havt in the Nation.

Labels: crime, critical thinking, guns, truth

Labels: Clintons, crime, politics, United States, video

Some acts, most people would agree, are intrinsically wrong and evil. Murder is one such case. Therefore, it makes a certain amount of sense for the government to have laws against murder. It makes sense not because anyone thinks making murder a crime will stop all murders but because it probably has some ex ante preventive effect and, more importantly, a law expedites punishment and that usually has an, albeit limited, ex post preventive effect.

Fewer people would agree that gun ownership is intrinsically wrong and evil and I am not one of them. In fact, I am hard-pressed to think of any gun law that makes much sense. The folly of gun control was highlighted once again in Munich, Germany where Ali Sonboly killed nine people with a gun recently. Although as the Telegraph (UK) notes, "Germany has relatively tough gun laws and there is no way the teen could legally have obtained the gun in his own country" the government there is calling for "EU-wide gun controls".

Here's the real kicker from the Telegraph:

A 2014 police inquiry found there are 5.6 [million] legally owned weapons in Germany — including shotguns and hunting rifles — but estimated there are four times as many illegal weapons in the country. Just five per cent of guns recovered from crime scenes were legally held with a license.

In other words, 95% of guns used by criminals in Germany were illegal. So, just who are the German authorities most likely to disarm? Hint: It's not the criminals. Sure, some criminals might be momentarily inconvenienced but at what expense to otherwise law-abiding Germans? You can be sure, too, the black market will expand to fill any void created by the new gun laws.

Perhaps, the German government should just make the country a gun-free zone. Have a look at the photo below to see how well that worked out last year in Chattanooga, TN.


See also: "Will Obama call for truck control after Nice attack"

Labels: civil liberties, crime, critical thinking, guns