Thursday Tidbits

     I’m not in the right frame of mind for one of my interminable, intolerably sententious essays – yeah, I know, every dark cloud has a silver lining – so have a scattering of interesting bits from elsewhere around the Web.

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1. Say It Loud, Sister!

     Shamelessly stolen from Brock Townsend’s place:

     Indeed. And why not? Maybe if we were to airdrop about ten million rifles – with ample quantities of the ammunition for them, of course – over the worst beleaguered parts of Mexico, we could give these folks the right idea. At least they wouldn’t be able to excuse themselves as “unequipped.” And it would be lots cheaper than the ongoing calamity we call “foreign aid.”

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2. Words And Diction Matter.

     First, have an old favorite quote from Robert A. Heinlein:

     "Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols, and only negligibly to phenomena. As a matter of fact," he continued, removing the cigarette holder from his mouth and settling into his subject, "it can be demonstrated that the human mind can think only in terms of symbols.
     "When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions—rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not sanely.”

     This is a perfect explanation for why “political correctness” must be resisted at all costs and to the limit. PC limitations on what we may say amount to limitations on what we may think. Or, as Syme put it in 1984, the point of PC Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought, by forbidding us the symbols with which we could express forbidden ideas.

     All that having been said, read this sharp and unsparing essay, and reflect on it.

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3. A Disturbing Possibility…

     …that cannot be summarily dismissed:

     As Waco was a test, so CV19 is a Drill, a proof exercise that verified the theorizing and gaming that was done years ago. 'Orden ab Chao' - Order out of Chaos. Create a Panic, bring the solution. Hegel in practice. Kissinger's MO.

     The US is just entering a depression. The economy is failing, and this BS pandemic is the cover for that collapse and creates the aura of a competent authority working in the peoples' interests. Another fraud. And as the US goes, so goes the West.

     Now we are faced with a deliberate food shortage. Intentional. Under the cover of a phony 'pandemic' and unnecessary Lockdown. Food is a weapon - Henry Kissinger. He who controls food, will control the world. Hungry people are very amenable.

     Food isn’t just a weapon; food is the weapon. Were any entity to gain absolute hegemony over the American food supply, we would be reduced to abject surrender to that entity, without recourse. And while it’s likely that no such intention lies behind any of the “lockdown” orders, the consequences of those orders, which will soon be felt through the prices of foodstuffs in our supermarkets, ought to have us thinking about the utilitarian value of freedom: specifically, the freedom to produce, trade, and feed ourselves and one another.

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4. Asymmetries Must Be Respected.

     By way of Firehand comes this report of an atrocious crime:

     NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) -- North Charleston Police have arrested two men in connection to the sexual assault Monday night, May 4, of a 13-year-old girl with "diminished mental capacity."

     The reported assault was live streamed on the internet via Facebook Live, police say.

     Tasheen A. Walker, 20, and Jonah D. Fishburne, 18, both remain in jail at the Charleston County Detention Center following their arrests late Monday night on charges of second degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

     North Charleston Police say they were alerted to the reported sexual assault incident when people began reporting the Facebook Live video to them. An officer viewed the video, and commented asking anyone with information to call 9-1-1.

     Please read the whole story. There are people who are appalled that I favor making rape a death-penalty crime. Frankly, I’m appalled that anyone could view it otherwise. And by the way, have some interesting statistics, taken from The Color of Crime, published by the New Century Foundation:

     The National Crime Victimization Survey can be used to determine how much violent crime blacks commit against whites and vice versa. Unfortunately, although it has clear racial categories for victims, NCVS classifications for perpetrators are vague. Therefore, for the purposes of interracial crime only, we must refer to a “white” (with quotation marks) perpetrator category that includes some but not all Hispanics. Because the victim categories are better defined, we can still refer to white (without quotation marks) victims of interracial crime. Because the “white” perpetrator category for interracial crime includes some Hispanics, the result is an inflated measure of what we will have to call “white”-on-black crime.

     Even so, the differences between black and “white” rates of interracial crime are enormous. As Figure 18 shows, between 2001 and 2003, blacks were 39 times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the reverse, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery. ⁴⁰ There were an average of 15,400 black-on-white rapes every year during this period, 139,000 robberies, 489,000 assaults, and 12,762 sexual assaults. By contrast, there were only 900 “white”-on-black rapes every year, 7,600 robberies, 101,000 assaults, and 3,217 sexual assaults. Of all 768,879 violent interracial crimes involving blacks and whites, blacks committed 85 percent and “whites” 15 percent.

     What about interracial murder? The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) include the race of the victim and offender, and make it possible to calculate rates of interracial murder. In 2002, blacks were 16 times more likely to murder W&H than the reverse. SHR statistics from 1976 to 2002 tell us blacks murdered 26,727 W&H during those 26 years, and W&H murdered 10,207 blacks, making the black-on-W&H murder rate 17 times that of the W&H-on-black murder rate. ⁴¹

     High multiples like these do not necessarily mean blacks are deliberately targeting whites (and Hispanics) for violent crime. One reason multiples for interracial crime are so high is that there are about 5.5 times as many whites as blacks in the United States. This means blacks are 5.5 times more likely to encounter whites than the other way around, so even if blacks choose victims without regard to race, there are many more potential white than black victims. White criminals are also more likely to have white victims for the same reason.

     40: These estimates are based on both single and multiple offender crimes in NCVS. For information on the tabulation of the number of offenders in NCVS, please see the Methodological Notes.
     41: BJS, “Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Trends by Race” (BJS), http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/ovracetab.htm. Accessed July 13, 2005.

     [NCVS is the National Crime Victimization Survey. BJS is the Bureau of Justice Statistics. While the above was taken from a 2005 report, more recent data, available from the sites linked above, are consistent with it in overall pattern. -- FWP]

     Fascinating, eh? Puts me in mind of the incident that triggered this essay. Remember it?

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5. Tyrants Gotta Tyrannize.

     And like his father before him, Andrew Cuomo grasps at every opportunity:

     NEW YORK — Health care workers that came to New York to help fight the coronavirus pandemic at its epicenter will have to pay state taxes, according to the governor.

     He addressed the issues Tuesday at a news conference.

     "We're not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "So there's a lot of good things I'd like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I'm gonna spend more money, when I can't even pay the essential services."

     Even though the state government asked thousands of people to come to New York from out of state to help fight coronavirus, they will have to pay New York state taxes, even on income they might make from their home states that they're paid while in New York.

     SUBSIDIES?! Only a completely soulless monster could make that statement with a straight face. But Cuomo feels he and his myrmidons are owed, by persons who volunteered their time and effort to the relief of suffering New Yorkers.

     Shameful. Yet this horrible ingrate is overwhelmingly likely to win another term as governor of New York. I hope the thousands of charitable souls who came to help us will ignore him – and that their home states will support them in that.

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     That’s it for today, Gentle Readers. I hope you’re all well, happy, and back at work…those of you who still have work, anyway. I’ll be praying for the rest of you. Be well.