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

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

 

Labels: critical thinking, politics

We can always easily spot the propaganda that we don't agree with. You ask any liberal, what's propaganda? They'll say, "Oh, Fox. Fox News." You ask any conservative what's propaganda? They'll say, "MSNBC." They're both right. Both are propagandistic, but what they can't see is the propaganda that they agree with because they think it's just information. They think it's just the truth.

Source: Mark Crispin Miller, as quoted in the partial transcript of an interview by Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi in "Meet the Censored: Mark Crispin Miller", Jan. 4, 2021.

Labels: critical thinking, media, politics, quotations

I complain about the routine dishonesty of mainstream and Left media outlets because they are my main sources of news and commentary. However, I have zero illusions about the routine accuracy and integrity of Right media outlets.

A case in point is a recent article by Jordan Davidson on the site of The Federalist titled: "Major Study Finds Masks Don't Reduce COVID-19 Infection Rates". In the body of Davidson's article it is claimed: "A high-quality, large-scale Danish study finds no evidence that wearing a face mask significantly minimizes people's risk of contracting COVID-19." 

However, right in the Danish article's abstract the authors, Bundgaard et al., state: "Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection."

Davidson writes: 

After a month, 42 of the mask-wearers in the study (1.8 percent) were infected with the virus while 53 of the non-mask-wearers (2.1. percent) were infected with the virus. Statistically, this is not a significant difference between the two groups, suggesting these infection differences were a product of chance, say the study authors.

Echoing similar misinformation from the New York Times, Davidson again misleads her readers by misrepresenting the meaning and importance of a lack of statistical significance.* In fact, Bundgaard et al. use the word "chance" exactly nowhere in their article. They actually describe their findings as "inconclusive" rather than attributable to mere "chance".

In the "Discussion" section of the Bundgaard et al. article it says:

The findings ... should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection. [emphasis added]

In other words, Davidson did exactly what the authors said she shouldn't do based on their work.

In the "Discussion" the authors again note that one of several limitations of their study was that it made "no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others." In other words, the study offers no evidence about whether masks do or don't prevent COVID-19 infected mask wearers from infecting other people.

Moreover, as Bundgaard et al. indicate in their "Intervention" section, they were testing the effects of "no mask recommendation" versus "a recommendation to wear a mask". They were not testing masks or mask wearing per se. Also, only "46% of participants wore the mask as recommended" but Bundgaard et al. did not exclude from their results people in the mask recommendation group who were "predominantly" but not fully compliant with the mask recommendation. Only the 7% whose compliance was characterized as "not as recommended" were excluded.

In short, the Danish study says what pretty much any sensible person already realized—masks alone are not a silver bullet but there is evidence that they do help reduce the spread of COVID-19 from infected people to non-infected mask wearers.

Liar, manipulators, and incompetents working in the media depend upon the fact that most people will never question their reporting or never question it enough to do their own research. It also bears remembering that reporters and editors are also fallible humans—not every error or falsehood reported is deliberate. In any case, when it comes to important matters never blindly trust a media outlet (or a politician) to be accurate or honest.

###

* A note on "statistical significance": Davidson is not alone in botching the reporting on "statistical significance" the Danish authors do it, too. In 2019's, "Moving to a World Beyond 'p < 0.05' " the editors of the journal of the American Statistical Association write:

... it is time to stop using the term "statistically significant" entirely. Nor should variants such as "significantly different," "p < 0.05," and "nonsignificant" survive, whether expressed in words, by asterisks in a table, or in some other way.

Regardless of whether it was ever useful, a declaration of "statistical significance" has today become meaningless. Made broadly known by Fisher's use of the phrase (1925), Edgeworth's (1885) original intention for statistical significance was simply as a tool to indicate when a result warrants further scrutiny. But that idea has been irretrievably lost. Statistical significance was never meant to imply scientific importance, and the confusion of the two was decried soon after its widespread use (Boring 1919). Yet a full century later the confusion persists.

They also offer this guidance:

• Don't base your conclusions solely on whether an association or effect was found to be "statistically significant" (i.e., the p-value passed some arbitrary threshold such as p < 0.05).
• Don't believe that an association or effect exists just because it was statistically significant.
• Don't believe that an association or effect is absent just because it was not statistically significant.
• Don't believe that your p-value gives the probability that chance alone produced the observed association or effect or the probability that your test hypothesis is true.
• Don't conclude anything about scientific or practical importance based on statistical significance (or lack thereof).

Labels: COVID-19, critical thinking, health, media, science, statistics

The first election I remember with any clarity is the 1976 race between Ford and Carter. Since then I've participated in every presidential election, including two where I served as a precinct officer.

Over and over, every four years, I've heard people say: "This is the most consequential election of our life time" or words to that effect. I was never convinced that was true until this year. The American corporate media have never been known for rigid devotion to the full truth and political neutrality but they seldom engaged in such sustained blatantly and overtly dishonest reporting as followed the 2016 election of Donald Trump. 

The media's usual modus operandi was to manipulate people through omission, de-emphasis, and spin. For example, in 2011, Barack Obama became the first known US president to order the assassination of an American citizen "without due process of law". In actuality, the Obama administration fought successfully in court to ensure there would be no due process for US citizens on its "kill list".

These facts should have been blared relentlessly in headlines along with critical op-eds until Obama was successfully impeached. To be sure, there was media coverage of these outrages but nothing commensurate with the gravity of the offenses or even approaching the outrage ginned up by the media's blatantly false characterization of Trump's 2017 remarks regarding violent protests in Charlottesville. To this day, most Americans I speak with about it have little or no idea about Obama's assassination of American citizens not to mention his unapologetic killings of thousands of non-citizens, including hundreds of children.

However, this year's election was the culmination of four years of an unprecedented, near-complete decoupling from truth except when it supported the narrative. In some ways this started with Black Lives Matter and was fanned by Obama but it increased by orders of magnitude when Trump was elected. Since then we've been subjected to an emotionally and ideologically driven outpouring of hate and, often, blatant lies.

In all my life, I've never seen the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry join in such sustained lockstep to villify and remove an American president and to demonize the people who put him in office. There's no conclusive evidence this will end when Trump is gone.

The naked, unrestrained quest for power and domination by any means of the Democrats and their allies is frightening. Few useful lies are too incredible to report and few inconvenient truths are so important that they can't be denied, misrepresented, or ignored. Unfortunately, many Americans uncritically rely on the mainstream media and are too busy, too lazy, or too indoctrinated to thoughtfully question what they are told, let alone what they are not told or allowed to view, hear, and judge for themselves.

A case in point is today's press conference with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Trump campaign adviser Kayleigh McEnany, and campaign General Counsel Matt Morgan. These three spoke for over 20 minutes on concerns about the election practices in some states and the lawsuits filed to deal with them.

McDaniel said, from Michigan alone, the campaign had 131 affidavits and over 2,800 incident reports concerning election irregularities. McEnany alleged that 682,479 ballots were counted in Allegheny County—where Philadelphia Pittsburgh is located—where no Republican poll watchers were permitted to observe the canvassing.

I'm not going to go through all the claims put forth, you can watch the press conference and make up your own mind. However, McDaniel was correct when she stated: "If the shoe were on the other foot. If it were this close the other way. If president Trump was in the lead in all these states ... the media would be screaming, 'This isn't over, the race isn't over, we need more time to count and make sure it's right.' But because it's Biden and a very slight lead the media demands the race is over and there's nothing to see here."

And, in fact, there has been a virtual corporate media blackout of the press conference today. Fox News started to show it and then quickly decided to censor it. The Washington Post covered the Fox News censorship but not the substance of the press conference. On their flagship afternoon news program National Public Radio has a nearly two-minute long segment the Bidens' dogs' new Twitter account but nothing about the allegations raised in the press conference. In fact, NPR apparently hasn't covered anything White House Press Secretary McEnany has said since Oct. 28.

If you truly care about technically free and fair elections in an admittedly flawed political system the time is now to step up against the Democrats and the media's potential, if unlikely, coup-in-the-making. Do it for your country and yourself, do it out of respect for the ideals of freedom of information and representative democracy. Tell your friends and family what is happening. Tell your political representatives that you want all credible allegations of electoral error and impropriety fully and transparently investigated.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations I
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations III

 

Labels: critical thinking, Democrats, media, National Public Radio, Obama, politics, Trump, voting

Whoopi Goldberg poses with members of the Proud Boys in Florida in 2019.

After the sh*tshow that was last night's presidential "debate" the mainstream media's major talking point is the allegation that Trump refused to "condemn white supremacists". Never mind that, beginning no later than August 2017, Trump has repeatedly "condemned white supremacists". Never mind, too, that White supremacism is virtually a non-issue in modern America.

In any case, the media frenetically seized on Trump's failure to condemn a group fingered by Biden—the Proud Boys. Earlier today, I ran a search on "proud boys" + "hate group". Every news hit on the first page of results claimed, assumed, or implied that the Proud Boys is a violent "hate", "white nationalist", and/or "white supremacist" group, mostly on the strength of allegations by the disreputable ADL or SPLC. In typical fashion, spineless Republicans and Fox News piled on.

Here's the strange thing, as even some of its detractors acknowledge, the Proud Boys is a multi-racial group. Here's what one critic wrote earlier today:

Indeed the group has a membership that includes those of Black, Hispanic, and Asian backgrounds. This fact would be the core argument against the Proud Boys being termed a "white nationalist" group, which goes along with its also-problematic rebranding to center on the coded language of "Western values."

"Proud Boys is a multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for McInnis asserted in 2018. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."

So, how is a Progressive goodthinker supposed to reconcile the Proud Boys' racial/ethnic diversity (good) with White people/hate (bad)? Injunction 1: Who said you were allowed to think? Your betters have told you what to believe, just accept that the Proud Boys are a hate group and leave it at that. Injunction 2: If you disobey Injunction 1, realize that their refusal to accept (White) racial guilt proves their crime. It goes like this:

However, the group's [i.e. the Proud Boys'] website includes a list of core values [see also here] as tenets: "Minimal Government, Maximum Freedom, Anti Political Correctness, Anti-Drug War, Closed Borders, Anti-Racial Guilt, Anti-Racism, Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment), Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment), Glorifying the Entrepreneur, Venerating the Housewife, Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism."

The impossible notion of couching "anti-racism" together with "anti-racial guilt" is informative, in the implicit suggestion that Proud Boys do not hate non-whites as long as they (whites) aren't guilted into taking ownership of their privilege or past sins of racialized violence. In other words, per their ideology, "others" can join as long as they fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority.

In fact, all ethical and thinking people reject both racism and racial guilt. Moreover, the Proud Boys nowhere, that I have seen, claim or imply that non-White members are "others" who must "fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority."

In one of the rare, more balanced accounts USA Today reported:

Current Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is Afro-Cuban, says the group has "longstanding regulations prohibiting racist, white supremacist or violent activity," Ronald D. Coleman wrote in an email to USA TODAY. Coleman said he is a spokesman for the Proud Boys.

"We do not care what color you are or what your background is ... if you love America ... we consider you a brother," Tarrio said in a written statement provided by Coleman. The group condemns racism, fascism, communism and socialism, the statement says.

As for the allegations of violence. I have little doubt that some of the Proud Boys and/or its associates have instigated violence and they should be arrested and tried for it. However, I have watched a lot of video of the violent encounters and they, overwhelmingly, seem to be defensive on the part of the Proud Boys.

One recent example occurred this summer in Kalamazoo. The USA Today report quoted above said simply: "When the Proud Boys met with counterprotesters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in August, the tensions boiled over into fights requiring law enforcement to step in." The reporter did not see fit to tell his readers that Kalamazoo police determined, and provided video showing, that "counterprotesters" initiated the violence (see also here).

In a largely ignored statement issued before Kalamazoo police had their press conference the Michigan chapter of the Proud Boys said, in part:

For those in Kalamazoo city government who claim to reject our values of hate – we merely ask who do we hate? African American Proud Boys, Asian Proud Boys, Jewish Proud Boys, Arab Proud Boys, Hispanic Proud Boys were all represented as photo and video documentation of our protest prove. We hate no one, but we do pity those that must resort to violence when confronted ... by those who vote for a different political party than they do, and support the current President of the United States.

All this is not to say the Proud Boys are angelic beings who can think or do no wrong but all the evidence of which I am aware indicates that the mainstream media has generally shamefully misrepresented them for transparently political purposes.

Labels: Biden, critical thinking, media, politics, race, Trump, Tucker Carlson, video, 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

Labels: critical thinking, politics, quotations, race

ALL MODELS ARE WRONG BUT SOME ARE USEFUL

     Now it would be very remarkable if any system existing in the real world could be exactly represented by any simple model. However, cunningly chosen parsimonious models often do provide remarkably useful approximations. For example, the law PV = RT relating pressure P, volume V, and temperature T of an "ideal" gas via a constant R is not exactly true for any real gas, but it frequently provides a useful approximation and furthermore its structure is informative since it springs from a physical view of the behavior of gas molecules. For such a model there is no need to ask the question "Is the model true?". If "truth" is to be the "whole truth" the answer must be "No". The only question of interest is "Is the model illuminating and useful?"

Source: G. E. P. Box., "Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building" in Robert L. Launer; Graham N. Wilkinson, Robustness in Statistics, Academic Press (New York, 1979), pp. 202–203.

Labels: critical thinking, quotations, science, statistics

See also: Popper & Tolerance

Labels: critical thinking, humor, philosophy

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

The diagram below was created circa 2002 and is the product of someone decrying the alleged efforts of "Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" to silence 9/11 conspiracy theorists/analysts.


I have looked at the evidence put forth to support the claim that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition. My conclusion is that this theory is unsupported by the evidence. That is, I think the evidence supports the claim that the Twin Towers (and WTC 7) collapsed as a result of the fires caused by airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers.  Frankly, I often wonder if the controlled demolition claims weren't concocted as a form of, what was later termed by Cass Sunstein, "cognitive infiltration" to discredit more reasonable scrutiny of the official 9/11 conspiracy narrative.

There is much in the story of 9/11 that has been hidden or distorted. At the most basic level, Americans have been fed a misleading narrative that the 9/11 perpetrators were driven by a blind Islamic-inspired hatred of America and its freedoms. In my view, it is more accurate to see the perpetrators' particularized interpretation of Islam, Salafi jihadism, as an organizing ideology used to help mobilize people to fight in response to grievances over US wars and other actions in support of the repressive Jewish state and repressive Arab regimes. Moreover, I find it interesting that, apparently, no US official was ever held accountable for the glaring intelligence and defense failures leading up to and on 9/11.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the "Gatekeepers" diagram but I can vouch for the curious, overzealous "conspiracy theory" bashing that prevails in certain Left circles. Noam Chomsky would be a good example of this. It is, for instance, accurately asserted that he "uses an institutional analysis as opposed to conspiracy theory to reach his conclusions."

Arguably, "institutional analysis" and "conspiracy analysis" are far from mutually exclusive and the existence of proven conspiracies concocted by high US government officials, e.g. Watergate, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, etc., is well-established. Readers interested in this subject are advised to read Lance deHaven-Smith's Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013).

Another thing I can vouch for is the linkage in the diagram between uber-activist and self-described "socialist" Leslie Cagan and the CIA. The CIA was/is closely tied to the Ford Foundation (FF) and has long maintained a coterie of well-connected elite movers and shakers in its leadership. For example, its current president, Darren Walker, among other things, "was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation" and "had a decade-long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS" and "is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations."

The Rockefeller Foundation and the CFR are both enmeshed in the Deep State (see also here). Walker's old law firm had its own ties to the intelligence community with one of its attorneys serving as General Counsel for the Security Affairs Support Association. The firm was disciplined in 2007 for misconduct in a major Congolese corruption case. UBS is a notorious Swiss bank and these institutions have long had a reputation for serving "as sanctuaries for the wealth of dictators and despots, mobsters and arms dealers, corrupt officials and tax cheats of all kinds".

The FF was a major donor to Astraea during the period when Cagan claimed to be on the Astraea board of directors (I have not been able to verify her Astraea board service). For example, Astraea's 2007 annual report touts a $3.5 million grant "over 3 years from the Ford Foundation". Leslie Cagan did serve on the board of Pacifica, which received its "first major foundation grant" in 1951 from the Ford Foundation. In sum, there is enough evidence in support of the relationships alleged in the diagram to give it careful consideration.

As an aside, in a 2003 fluff piece on Cagan in the NY Times Chris Hedges wrote:

LESLIE CAGAN is willing to count many things. She will count the billions the United States will spend if it goes to war in Iraq. She will count the dead. She will count the oil companies that line up for the spoils. She will count the nations that turn their backs on this country in anger. And she will, on Feb. 15, count the demonstrators who are to gather in Manhattan and three dozen cities around the globe to rally to stop the war. She will count all this. She is counting now.

Two things Cagan (and Hedges) apparently weren't counting were the number of highly placed Zionist neo-conservatives pushing for the war and the number of Zionist shills (such as Cagan) in the peace movement pushing the bogus "war for oil" narrative and ensuring little attention was drawn to the primary driver—support for Israel.

Labels: 9/11, Cagan, Chris Hedges, conspiracy, critical thinking, Ford Foundation, Iraq, Islam, Israel, media, Neoconservatives, Zionism

... the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI [ministry of information—VFPD] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

... The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness ...

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own ... [An American parallel would be the circumscribed nature of criticism of Israel in the US media—VFPD]

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so ... Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing [sic] press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases ...

What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal [sic — and throughout as typescript] writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realised, for ten years earlier than that ... The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.

But now to come back to this book [i.e. Animal Farm] of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: 'It oughtn't to have been published.' Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book 'ought not to have been published' merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say 'Yes'. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, 'How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?', and the answer more often than not will be 'No', In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses ... It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that 'bourgeois liberty' is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. [This calls to mind Karl Popper, the "totalitarian liberal"—VFPD] If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who 'objectively' endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought ...

These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

Source: Orwell's Proposed Preface to Animal Farm. Animal Farm was first published in in England in 1945.

Labels: censorship, conspiracy, critical thinking, freedom, Karl Popper, media, Orwell, politics, quotations

Labels: critical thinking, identity, race, White folks

So, the Mueller report is finished and the findings are starting to be released. Given their track record in covering the Mueller investigation it is likely that mainstream media outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times will be unable to adhere to the truth when discussing the report.

By this, I mean that, initially, they are likely to get the bare bones of the report correct then they will devolve into spins, distortions, and fabrications. I am not suggesting that the people who write, edit, and report the news will deliberately be dishonest—although there will likely be some of that—but rather that they will be overcome by their own bias.

Just about two weeks ago there was a striking example of this cognitive impairment in action. The Daily is a program produced by the New York Times that airs on National Public Radio stations. On March 11, The Daily aired "Part 2: What to Expect When You’re Expecting (the Mueller Report)". Host Michael Barbaro spoke with "Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the special counsel investigation for The New York Times."

Here's an excerpt from the transcript of the program (the highlights in bold below are mine):

Michael Schmidt: ... So if Mueller says, there's nothing here to be seen, then the Republicans — we know where they're going to be. They're going to be standing next to the president.

Michael Barbaro: So in that case, do you expect the Democrats would proceed with these [Congressional] investigations, but they would kind of limp along and there wouldn't be a ton of political support for anything approaching impeachment, no matter what is found? Or is it possible these investigations would literally just start to shut down?

Michael Schmidt: I don't think they shut down. I think that they limp along, because the Democrats will still have a base that thinks that Trump has done a lot of things that are terrible. And there will be pressure on them to continue to press. Democrats will say, Mueller may not have enough evidence to show the president broke the law, but we know that he has abused his power and done X and Y and Z. And they'll go on and on and on, and they'll say we can not ignore this.

In the next segment Barbaro raises the possibility that Mueller's findings will do something other than fully exculpate or fully inculpate Trump.

Michael Barbaro: So Mike, what could possibly be the third option? Because in our legal system, when it comes to the special counsel, there only seems to be two options — charge the president with a crime or not charge the president.

Michael Schmidt: For lack of a better term or to make up a term, I would call it the Comey hybrid.

Michael Barbaro: What is — (CHUCKLES) what is the Comey hybrid?

At this point Barbaro and Schmidt discuss former FBI Director Comey's July 2016 press conference. Their conversation is interspersed with recordings of Comey from the press conference. I'm going to skip most of that and get to my point.

Archived Recording of James Comey: There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position, or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

Michael Schmidt: But that at the end of the day —

Archived Recording of James Comey: Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

Michael Schmidt: It didn't meet the high bar of indicting her.

Archived Recording of James Comey: We cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.

Michael Barbaro: So a Comey hybrid is to come out and say no charges are going to be filed against the subject of an investigation, but here are all the things we found. Here are all the implications — essentially not prosecution, but a kind of scolding.

Michael Schmidt: It's not even about scolding. It's — we're not going to charge, but I'm going to give you a rare look underneath the hood.

Archived Recording of James Comey: Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system in violation of a federal statute that makes it a felony to mishandle classified information, either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.

I have omitted about two minutes of the program here. The next part is the really striking bit.

Michael Barbaro: So the conclusion was that it [i.e. Comey's press conference] was an unnecessary, kind of gratuitous sullying of Hillary Clinton, even though there was no evidence she had committed a crime.

Michael Schmidt: Correct. They're saying if the F.B.I. investigated the average American and found that that person had not committed a crime, we don't then stand up and say, hey, look at all the unsavory things they did — which we didn't think rose to something they should be charged with.

In case you missed it, just moments earlier Barbaro and Schmidt had listened to a recording of Comey saying: "there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information". Comey also makes a case of sorts that Clinton was grossly negligent in her handling of classified material which he later points out is a violation of the federal statute.

In other words, Comey clearly indicated there is evidence of a criminal violation. Yet less than three minutes later Barbaro is on to "there was no evidence she [Clinton] had committed a crime" and Schmidt is agreeing with him.

In coming days, we can expect the mainstream media and Democrats to do a sort of inversion of this. It will probably go kind of like this: 'Well, yes, Mueller found no evidence of collusion but he clearly failed to exonerate the President on obstruction of justice.' They will focus on the possible obstruction of the investigation of the non-existent crime of collusion. Then, in short order, they will omit or undermine the finding that Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign.

As somewhat of an aside, Dana Milbank, writing in The Washington Post last Monday, has given us more evidence of the extremes to which Trump Derangement Syndrome has driven liberals, Democrats, etc.

In "Trump is right. This is a witch hunt!" Milbank actually takes up the defense of witch hunts (Milbank is not alone). He asserts: "The treatment of Trump by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and other investigators does have characteristics of a witch hunt. This is because Trump has characteristics of a witch."

He continues, quoting a community college history professor: "if what is happening to Trump is a witch hunt, 'it is only in a good sense, that is, this is society policing the boundaries that they believe to be ethically and morally right.' " You see, "witch hunts weren't all bad, and their targets weren't always innocent."

See also:

• "Critical Analysis On Russiagate"
• "Cohen's Testimony Against Trump"
• "Video: Clinton vs. Comey"
• "The Shoddy Legal Reasoning Used to Clear Clinton" on fee.org

Labels: Clintons, critical thinking, media, National Public Radio, politics, Robert S. Mueller, Russia, Trump

In "Cohen's Testimony Against Trump" I mentioned that Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald have done some good reporting on the dubious Trump-Russia collusion story (see quote below). There are a few more people doing good work on this subject.

Gareth Porter, Ray McGovern, and others at Consortium News have written several pieces on the subject. Caitlin Johnstone has done extensive reporting and analysis at CN, Medium, and elsewhere that is worth consideration.

I recently learned about "Russiagate In Flames: No Evidence Of Collusion, New Findings Challenge DNC Hack Narrative" by Elizabeth Vos at Disobedient Media. There is also "Mueller's Investigation is Missing One Thing: A Crime" by Peter Van Buren at The American Conservative.

In addition to Maté's work, The Nation has also published "Russiagate or Intelgate?" and other on-point articles by Stephen F. Cohen and "Amid ‘Russiagate’ Hysteria, What Are the Facts?" by Jack F. Matlock Jr.

If you know of any critical reporting on the subject that I should read then feel free to leave a comment.

Now, I want to bring this back to the alleged Russian collusion and simply say that most while most of the reporting on the matter has been driven by Trump Derangement Syndrome there has been a tiny bit of worthy reporting on it from the Left. Most notably it has come from Aaron Maté, writing for the The Nation and The Intercept.* Maté has written: "Trump didn't get to the White House via Russia, but by falsely portraying himself as a populist champion. The only con he will be undone by is his own." ...

* Glenn Greenwald has also had a couple of decent pieces in The Intercept ("The FBI’s Investigation of Trump as a 'National Security Threat' is Itself a Serious Danger. But J. Edgar Hoover Pioneered the Tactic" and "Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story")

Labels: critical thinking, media, politics, Robert S. Mueller, Russia, Trump