No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems.
The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.
For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths.
Instead, we have two Americas,one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.
The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas?
But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have. So instead those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all. Meanwhile those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of “better stock up before they finally ban it” and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.
Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half. The left are constantly prattling about “assault weapons” which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than “assault rifles”; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target “assault weapons”, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.
The uncomfortable fact is that roughly 80% of the US homicide rate is associated with the drug trade, and the drug trade is violent because the drug war reserves it for violent criminals.
We have a system in place where the government subsidizes poverty in urban areas, imposes economic blight in those same areas through heavy taxes and regulations, renders the residents permanently unemployable via the “criminal justice” (sic) system, and creates a lucrative black market in drugs by restricting supply (not to mention increasing demand as people are desperate to escape their circumstances by getting high), meaning the only game in town is often entering the drug trade. The drug trade is violent because those in it have no access to courts to settle disputes. Powerful industries lobby to keep the drug war going; the top spenders are law enforcement unions, the prison industry, big alcohol, tobacco, and pharma.
Guns are not the proximate cause of gun violence in the US. Childlike magical thinking and simple “fixes” to complex problems will not work. But it is comfortable, and self-righteousness feels so good. So I expect it to continue indefinitely.
Disgraced former Hollywood studio head Harvey Weinstein is hiding out at a $2,000 a night rehab center in Arizona since the New York Times published an expose about the mogul’s history of sexual assault and harassment - a history that has been littered with settlements and NDAs - two weeks ago.
Since then, more than 30 women have come forward to accuse Weinstein of misconduct ranging from harassment to groping to rape, prompting law enforcement agencies on two continents to open sex crime investigations.
And on Thursday, the number of open investigations climbed to four when the Los Angeles Times reported that the LAPD has opened an investigation into Weinstein over an alleged sexual assault that reportedly took place in 2013. The investigation was launched after a two-hour meeting with his accuser earlier Thursday.
An Italian model-actress met with Los Angeles police detectives for more than two hours Thursday morning, providing a detailed account of new allegations that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her at a hotel in 2013.
She is the sixth woman to accuse Weinstein of rape or forcible sex acts. Los Angeles police Capt. Billy Hayes confirmed that the department has launched an investigation into the matter.
It is the first case related to Weinstein to be reported in Southern California. New York police already have two active sex crime probes and London’s Metropolitan Police is investigating allegations made by three women.
The new allegation could be legally troubling for Weinstein because it falls within the 10-year statute of limitations for the crime that existed at the time of the alleged incident, legal experts say.
The woman, who has not been named, provided a detailed account of the incident to the LA Times.
In the latest case, the 38-year-old woman, who has asked not to be named because she is fearful of retaliation and concerned about protecting her children’s privacy, first contacted police on Tuesday, through her attorney, David Ring. Two detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division’s rape special section took her statement on Thursday, describing how Weinstein pushed his way into her hotel room, dragged her into the bathroom and allegedly forcibly raped her.
She told the Los Angeles Times that the incident occurred at Mr. C Beverly Hills hotel after she attended the 8th annual Los Angeles, Italia Film, Fashion and Art Fest in February 2013. She had previously met Weinstein once, briefly, in Rome after being introduced by an acquaintance.
At that time, he invited her up to his hotel room, but she said she declined. She said they spoke briefly at the film festival, but he didn’t appear to recall meeting her.
Later, he showed up “without warning” in the lobby of her hotel. He asked to come up to her room. She said she told him no and offered to meet him downstairs, but soon, he was knocking on her door.
“He ... bullied his way into my hotel room, saying, ‘I’m not going to [have sex with] you, I just want to talk,’” the woman told The Times. “Once inside, he asked me questions about myself, but soon became very aggressive and demanding and kept asking to see me naked. He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do. He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me."
She told her attorney she tried to dissuade Weinstein by showing him pictures of her children.
After about 45 minutes, Weinstein departed.
“When he left, he acted like nothing happened,” the woman said. “I barely knew this man. It was the most demeaning thing ever done to me by far. It sickens me still. … He made me feel like an object, like nothing with all his power."
The unnamed woman"s story echoes accounts given by many other women, including actress Asia Argento, who was shared her own account of being assaulted by Weinstein with the New Yorker.
IN addition to the NYPD, LAPD and Scotland Yard, it has also been reported that the FBI is investigating Weinstein and fears he could pull a “Roman Polanski” by fleeing the country to “seek treatment” in Europe.
The deranged psychopath responsible for the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history was on psychotropic drugs that can lead to violent behavior, according to a report out of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. This information was predictable as most mass shooters are on some type of the same medication.
It was also revealed Tuesday, that Paddock transferred $100,000 to the Philippines before the shooting. This information was given to the Journal by a source within law enforcement who was not authorized to speak publicly about this case.
As the Journal reports:
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Records from the Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program obtained Tuesday show Paddock was prescribed 50 10-milligram diazepam tablets by Henderson physician Dr. Steven Winkler on June 21.
A woman who answered the phone at Winkler’s office would not make him available to answer questions and would neither confirm nor deny that Paddock was ever a patient.
Paddock purchased the drug — its brand name is Valium — without insurance at a Walgreens store in Reno on the same day it was prescribed. He was supposed to take one pill a day.
Valium, although often used as a sedative and calming medication, can have serious side effects of aggression. According to the FDA, diazepam can elicit the following side effects:
confusion, hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior;
unusual risk-taking behavior, decreased inhibitions, no fear of danger;
depressed mood, thoughts of suicide or hurting yourself;
hyperactivity, agitation, aggression, hostility;
“If somebody has an underlying aggression problem and you sedate them with that drug, they can become aggressive,” said Dr. Mel Pohl, chief medical officer of the Las Vegas Recovery Center. “It can disinhibit an underlying emotional state. … It is much like what happens when you give alcohol to some people … they become aggressive instead of going to sleep.”
READ MORE:5 Fast Facts You Need To Know About The Massacre in Las Vegas
As the Journal reports, a 2015 study published in World Psychiatry of 960 Finnish adults and teens convicted of homicide showed that their odds of killing were 45 percent higher during time periods when they were on benzodiazepines.
A year earlier, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry published a study titled, “Benzodiazepine Use and Aggressive Behavior.” The authors wrote: “It appears that benzodiazepine use is moderately associated with subsequent aggressive behavior.”
There are most certainly people of all ages that can benefit from certain prescription medication. However, the most worrisome aspect of Paddock’s ties to this medication is that the majority of mass shooters in recent U.S. history have links to these same meds.
This is not some conspiracy theory either. The side-effects listed by the drug companies themselves include delusional thinking, suicide, and homicidal ideation.
One single psychiatric medication prescribed to help people quit smoking has been tied to an epidemic of aggression and suicide.
In only five years, 544 suicides and 1,869 attempted suicides were reported to the FDA as “adverse events” in connection with the drug Chantix, according to documents obtained by America Tonight under the Freedom of Information Act.
The website SSRIstories.org has also been documenting the link between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and violence. On the site is a collection of over 6,000 stories that have appeared in the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) in which prescription drugs were mentioned and in which the drugs may be linked to a variety of adverse outcomes including violence.
This latest mass shooting in Las Vegas that left more than 50 people dead and more than 500 injured is as obscure as they come: a 64-year-old retiree with no apparent criminal history, no military training, and no obvious axe to grind opens fire on a country music concert crowd from a hotel room 32 floors up using a semi-automatic gun that may have been rigged to fire up to 700 rounds a minute, then kills himself.
We’re left with more questions than answers, none of them a flattering reflection of the nation’s values, political priorities, or the manner in which the military-industrial complex continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.
Is it because the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games) - what professor Roger Stahl refers to as “militainment” - that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire?
Then again, could it be, as some have speculated, that these shootings are all part of an elaborate plan to incite fear and chaos, heighten national tensions and shift us that much closer to a complete lockdown? After all, the military and our militarized police forces have been predicting and preparing for exactly this kind of scenario for years now.
Perhaps there’s no single one factor to blame for this gun violence. However, there is a common denominator, and that is a war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex that has invaded almost every aspect of our lives.
Ask yourself: Who are these shooters modelling themselves after? Where are they finding the inspiration for their weaponry and tactics? Whose stance and techniques are they mirroring?
In almost every instance, you can connect the dots back to the military.
We are a military culture.
We have been a nation at war for most of our existence.
We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.
In order to sustain the nation’s appetite for war over the long haul in spite of the costs of war in lives lost and dollars spent—and little else to show for it—the military has had to work overtime to churn out pro-war, pro-military propaganda. It’s exactly what President Eisenhower warned against (“the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”) in his 1961 farewell address.
We didn’t listen then and we’re still not listening now.
All the while, the government’s war propaganda machine has grown more sophisticated and entrenched in American culture.
All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies such as X-Men and Transformers is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots aimed at indoctrinating the American populace into believing that patriotism means throwing their support behind the military wholeheartedly and unquestioningly.
And then there are the growing number of video games, a number of which are engineered by or created for the military, which have accustomed players to interactive war play through military simulations and first-person shooter scenarios.
This is how you acclimate a population to war.
This is how you cultivate loyalty to a war machine.
Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon turned to sports to further advance its agenda, “tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war.”
Remember, just before this Vegas shooting gave the media, the politicians and the easily distracted public something new to obsess over, the headlines were dominated by President Trump’s feud with the NFL over players kneeling during the national anthem.
When you talk about the Las Vegas mass shooting, you’re not dealing with a single shooter scenario. Rather, you’re dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.
You want to stop the gun violence?
Stop the worship of violence that permeates our culture.
Stop glorifying the military industrial complex with flyovers and salutes during sports spectacles.
Stop acting as if there is anything patriotic about military exercises and occupations that bomb hospitals and schools.
Stop treating guns and war as entertainment fodder in movies, music, video games, toys, amusement parks, reality TV and more.
Stop distributing weapons of war to the local police and turning them into extensions of the military—weapons that have no business being anywhere but on a battlefield.
Eleven years ago, this essay argued against hate-crime laws.
One argument read “People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.”
This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed S. J. Res. 49, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.
The law rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups…” But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas?
No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who’s next?
The resolution is too specific, but it’s also dangerously vague. The term “other hate groups” has no known definition. Suppose that this term is defined by a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC currently names 917 groups as hate groups (see here for a list). Their criteria are not restricted to violent actions. They comprise SPEECH. They say “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” They are very clear about this: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”
This Congressional resolution is a declaration that certain kinds of groups, some named but many, many others open to inclusion, are to be attacked by the U.S. government.
The law urges “the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.” The term “threats” in the first paragraph is vague, dangerously vague. However, the very next paragraph singles outfree speech actions when “hundreds of torch-bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans…” The same sentence joins this with violent actions “…and violently engaged with counter-demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville…”
This law regards free speech as a threat, linking it to violence, painting them with one brush. There can be no justice that can stem from such a completely sloppy and inexcusably amateurish legal treatment. This linkage is made clear in paragraph seven with this language: “…communities everywhere are concerned about the growing and open display of hate and violence being perpetrated by those groups…” There is no distinction made here between the “open display of hate” and “violence being perpetrated”. As I predicted 11 years ago in arguing against hate crime laws, hate speech is being identified with hate crime.
I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of defining and singling out “hate speech” as some sort of new danger or threat or harmful activity or crime, to be dealt with by government or courts of law as I was 11 years ago with the idea of “hate crime”. The standard categories of crime are quite enough without adding to them a government laundry list of prejudices and aversions that everyone is not supposed to express or feel, under penalty of government law.
A shootout erupted around 10:30pm on Sunday night in Avignon, southern France, when two gunmen opened fire on a crowd outside the Arrahma mosque leaving either people injured, La Provence newspaper reports.
Gunmen open fire on crowd outside mosque in France leaving eight injured - Mirror Online https://t.co/dLQ6GMVRpA
— Tommy Robinson ???????? (@TRobinsonNewEra) July 2, 2017
According to initial reports, two hooded men were seen arriving aboard a Renault Clio. One was armed with a handgun, the second a rifle. As a crowd oe people were leaving the mosque, one of the armed men, who had got out of his vehicle, opened fire.
La Provence adds that at least four people were injured at the time, while subseqeuent reports said the number is at least eight. About fifty meters away, a family of four who was in her apartment on the second floor of a building also received shrapnel. A 7-year-old girl was slightly injured.
Police in Avignon are now searching for the suspects who fled the scene.
The police have said they do not suspect terrorism is a motive behind the attack. The permanent magistrate at the Avignon parquet, Laure Chabaud, said the working hypothesis is a settling of accounts or a quarrel between young people.
1984 is seemingly already in full-effect in the EU.
An anti-racism demonstration in London, 2016.
After countlessterrorattacks in the name of Islam on European soil, it seems authorities in the EU are more angry over citizen’s freedom of speech and expression…
On Tuesday, Sussex police arrested 50 year-old Nigel Pelham; charged with eight counts of “publishing… written material intending to sir up religious hatred against Muslims”, it’s laughable to consider what he’s being punished for – it’s surreal! The “offensive” posts spanned between February 24 and November 16, 2015.
On that same day, German police raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media. Yes, the biggest problem facing the EU is hate but not the kind they’re punishing. Thus, Mr. Pelham and the 36 who had their homes raided had their fundamental human rights violated…
At least, in the U.S. they did…
Thank God for our forefathers. Thank God for their foresight to decree and memorialize our fundamental rights in the Constitution. I fear of the repercussions and injustices that would be perpetrated by our already corrupt and power-hungry government if we didn’t have the Constitution and its protections.
Interestingly, the two things protecting us from Islam is also protected under our Constitution:
The Freedom of Speech and Press
The Right To Bear Arms
Therefore, without the Constitution – we would probably already be sliding down the slippery slope of hate crimes and thought police a la in Europe. Reaction to terrorist attacks from European leaders writes off the threat. Dying in a suicide bomb is just “part and parcel to living in a big city”, according to London mayor, Sadiq Khan. The Independent instructed citizens of Britain there was only one way to respond to attacks like Manchester; that saw scores of children killed at an Ariana Grande concert. Their advice? To carry on exactly as before.
Then, a week and a half later, another attack in the name of Islam was perpetrated on London bridge that saw three attackers mowing down pedestrians in a van and launching a knife attack on a market. Therefore, it’s a bit hard to “carry on exactly as before” when it keeps happening.
Europe holds no future if they begin to prosecute the only ones standing up against the invasion of a conquesting horde.
Hot on the heels of the WSJ report that Trump"s former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, has offered to testify in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Flynn"s lawyer, Robert Kelner of the law firm Covington, issued the following statement, in which judging by Kelner"s language, Flynn"s offer is not so much to "turn" on Trump, as to set the record straight, while putting an end to the ongoing "media witch hunt", to wit:
the media are awash with unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason, and vicious innuendo directed against him. He is now the target of unsubstantiated public demands by Members of Congress and other political critics that he be criminally investigated. No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.
The full statement by Robert Kelner is below
Counsel to Lt. General Mike Flynn (Retired)
General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.
Out of respect for the Committees, we will not comment right now on the details of discussions between counsel for General Flynn and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, other than to confirm that those discussions have taken place. But it is important to acknowledge the circumstances in which those discussions are occurring.
General Flynn is a highly decorated 33-year veteran of the U.S. Army. He devoted most of his life to serving his country, spending many years away from his family fighting this nation"s battles around the world. He was awarded four Bronze Stars for actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terror. He received the Legion of Merit twice, and the Defense Superior Service Medal four times. He is a recipient of the Defense Department"s Distinguished Service Award and the Intelligence Community Gold Seal Medallion for Distinguished Service, as well as numerous other decorations.
Notwithstanding his life of national service, the media are awash with unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason, and vicious innuendo directed against him. He is now the target of unsubstantiated public demands by Members of Congress and other political critics that he be criminally investigated. No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.
Over the years I have heard the word “tribalism” used consistently as a way to deride and attack conservative groups with political stances outside the boundaries of globalization. Many readers have been exposed to this propaganda recently as “tribalism” becomes the go-to denouncement of the Trump Administration. From The Atlantic to CNBC to The Washington Post and beyond, tribalism is used almost as often as the fascist label, and there are very specific reasons for this.
Tribalism (like nationalism and populism) has slowly but surely been falsely associated with totalitarianism, as if the two are synonymous. The use of “tribalism” as a dismissal of sovereignty concepts is a distinctly globalist and leftist habit; clearly, they hate the very notion of it, so much so that they have sought to turn it into a four letter word. But why?
The fact of the matter is, tribalism revolves around sets of principles; meaning, some people hold principles that are completely incompatible with other people"s principles. Some principles simply cannot be reconciled with other principles, and they cannot coexist. Groups tend to form around principles, and thus, certain groups cannot live in close proximity with other groups. When they do live in close proximity, one will invariably absorb the other or destroy the other.
This is more likely to occur when two groups have diametrically opposing views rather than minor deviations and disagreements.
For example, the mass injection of millions of Muslim immigrants into European nations has in a very short period of time resulted in the steady decline of Western ideals and even the decline of legal frameworks in the areas where the immigrants concentrate. Sharia law is a direct antithesis to traditional Western values such as religious freedom, free speech, freedom of association, individual rights, economic independence, free markets, etc. (It is interesting to note that western socialists and communist ideals run parallel to Muslim culture when it comes to the desire to dismantle sovereignty.) The effects of this clash of principles are quite obvious at this point.
Sharia-based groups have been transplanted into the Western sphere in what I consider a deliberate Cloward-Piven strategy of cultural destabilization of Europe.
These groups do not assimilate, they devour the surrounding culture and turn it into something that sublimates in accordance with their principles. This is why the leftist and globalist call for “multiculturalism” is nonsensical. You cannot have two or more diametrically opposed cultures within the same society — one of them has to take precedence over all the others. Globalists in particular KNOW this is the reality, and they use multiculturalism as a means to undermine nations specifically built upon traditional sovereign values.
Leftists are in most cases merely useful idiots that promote multiculturalism as a means of “penance.” That is to say, they believe that traditional western culture should be punished for past transgressions and in due course, phased out completely in exchange for a new utopian system.
Both leftists and globalists will often try to argue that if tribalism was not prevalent there would be no ill will between Muslims and Westerners or any other groups for that matter. But, as stated earlier, what they are glossing over is the inevitability of groups separating based on principals. The only way for all groups to coexist in close proximity in the multicultural paradise we are being sold is for ALL value systems to be eliminated except for one. And perhaps that is the point.
Globalists prefer an outcome in which traditional values are erased and replaced with a “new world order” mindset; a system that is rooted in collectivist suppression of individual liberty, where freedom is exchanged for “harmony;” one global tribe worshiping one global god — the state.
The existence of tribalism might lead to conflicts if opposing cultures are deliberately mashed together, but it also makes the formation of a single overarching tyranny very difficult. Globalists seek to irritate existing divisions and trigger chaos between groups because ultimately, they want to demonize the very concept of tribalism and make way for a one world ideal that fits THEIR agenda.
Leftists are decidedly less self aware on why they fight so hard against tribalism. They see cultural division of any kind on the part of the west as inherently evil. Ironically, when it comes to so called “victim groups” like Muslims, social-justice warriors will argue that their aggressively divisive behavior is off limits to criticism because you have to be “from that culture to understand it”. So, tribalism on the part of designated victim groups is beyond reproach, and tribalism on the part of westerners is a cancer that must be eradicated.
To reiterate, leftists love tribalism initiated by those they consider victim groups. They only hate tribalism when it is initiated by conservatives and the traditional western middle class. The double standard is evident.
Exactly what is happening here? Well, we are being given a false choice. We are offered tribalism at the cost of endless social crisis (which is being deliberately instigated), or, the erasure of tribalism and traditional principles for the sake of “peace.” No other solutions are being presented.
Liberty proponents like myself would point out that there is an underlying principle within natural law that could solve many of the problems that arise between groups with differing world views without sacrificing everything to join a one-world collectivist hive mind. That rule would be the “Non-Aggression Principle.” To summarize, the non-aggression principle holds that no person or group has the right to impose their beliefs or will on another person or group. The only time force of action is warranted is in self defense and the defense of innocents.
If a society was to operate by the rule of non-aggression, and people were to abide by that rule, then most groups and cultures could live peacefully. For the people who do not abide, removal from that society or nation would be necessary. This is the intrinsic advantage of tribalism in its purest form; tribalism allows us to discriminate against groups with destructive principles and behaviors, or against those that have different objectives. Some divisions are useful divisions. This allows for a group with shared goals to accomplish those goals without constant internal obstruction or sabotage. As long as the non-aggression principle is adhered to, tribalism is the ideal system.
Of course, there are certain groups that are incapable of accepting this dynamic.
Leftist ideology depends upon thought control and manipulation in order to remain relevant. Because their values are not based in logic or self examination, they don’t have the ability to win people over through compelling arguments; all they have are lies and force. When in power, they use the force of government. When out of power, they use the threat of the mob. If tribalism and the non-aggression principle were to thrive, the leftists in their current form would represent a failed group, and they would fade away.
Globalists see themselves as social architects, and an architect cannot function if his building materials will not cooperate. Globalism is impotent without the ability to impose will and the ability to undermine practical divisions between ideological opposites. Tribalism in the name of sovereignty and free society is an impassable wall to globalization. Their only option is to utilize and exploit groups that are anti-liberty as a weapon against existing societies that still have some basis in sovereignty. This is much easier to do when anti-liberty groups are organized within those free systems, or, when they are imported into them. A strong, free people cannot be destroyed from without, they can only be destroyed from within.
Social divisions are absolutely rational and healthy, and there is nothing “evil” or totalitarian about organizing only with people that share your values. The real evil comes from those that would suppress our values in the name of “harmonization” — there is no such thing. Globalists and leftists argue for the adoption and toleration of all ideologies and principles as a means to peace, but what they really want in the end is the erasure of all the ideologies and principles they see as disagreeable in order to make way for their own.
The United States military is without a doubt the most technologically advanced force on the planet, and has been since at least World War II. Most Western nations are likewise, heavily dependent on advanced technology. When the West wins wars, it’s not because of moxy or numbers or cunning. It’s because we can detonate our enemies from miles away on a whim.
In response, our rivals have spent decades trying to compensate with those aforementioned traits. They’re the ones who rely on fighting spirit, cannon fodder, and clever underhanded tactics. They, which includes Russia, China, and lord knows how many insurgents and terrorists, have mastered the domain of unconventional warfare. And they’ve done so by necessity. We’re a wealthy nation with an unbelievably massive military budget. They could never conduct enough scientific research or build enough advanced war machines to compete with us in a conventional war.
Or could they?
It appears that China might be able to. Or at least that’s what the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) thinks. They’re a British think tank that’s been around since 1958, and they have countless members who formerly worked for the British and American governments. The IISS specializes in researching geopolitical issues, and every year they publish the Military Balance report, which examines the military capabilities of the world’s nations. Their latest issue should give the American defense establishment pause.
“Western military technological superiority, once taken for granted, is increasingly challenged,” Dr. John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive of IISS, said in a statement.
“We now judge that in some capability areas, particularly in the air domain, China appears to be reaching near-parity with the West.”
Instead of its usual practice of working on systems that imitate Soviet and Russian technology, China has shifted its efforts (and budget) to domestic research and development. Its Navy is currently working on three new advanced cruisers, 13 destroyers, and outfitting other ships with better radar.
Most shocking were the claims that China is making fast gains in the air war domain. This is an arena that Western nations have dominated since World War II. It could be argued that the United States hasn’t won any war since the 1940’s without that advantage. Now they’re catching up, partly with their own domestic military research, and partly with research that they’ve stolen from us.
So the question is, what happens if a nation that has already mastered unconventional warfare also reaches parity with the United States when it comes to conventional warfare? Let’s just say that the results won’t be pretty for us should we come to blows with China. Perhaps the Trump and his administration should tread lightly in East Asia, if they want to avoid a rather embarrassing conflict in that region.
Our deranged world is a product of deranged minds.
Philosophy begins with invariably difficult questions. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is there a god or gods? What is right and what is wrong? How should groups of people be organized and function together? Ironically, when such questions are infrequently asked, when philosophy is generally ignored or disparaged, as it is now, is when it’s needed the most.
Political philosophy is the branch that addresses the question of how coercive power is to be distributed in a society. It’s a knotty issue, but one question provides clarification, enabling further analysis and leading to useful conclusions. Who owns a political unit’s resources? This question differentiates between governments that protect individual rights and property and those that don’t. It also highlights a key problem: on planet earth, every government falls into the latter category.
The United States’ founding documents pay tribute to individual rights and private properly. Some of the founders may have thought they were establishing a government subordinated to protection of individual rights, which would have been an historical first. However, none thought such a government would be easy to maintain, and their fears were borne out. The US government places prominently on the inglorious list of governments claiming ownership over everything within their dominion, defined as any place where they can exercise their coercive power.
To those who say the institution of inviolate private property still exists in the US, what asset can the US government not seize? The income tax gives it first claim on income. No real estate is exempt from eminent domain. Intellectual property claims are at the sufferance of the patent, trademark, and copyright authorities. Financial assets held within the banking system can be “bailed in,” and plans are afoot to ban cash. The already extensive range of assets subjected to civil asset forfeiture continues to expand. More ominously, assets can be seized from parties never adjudicated guilty. Conscription grants to the government the lives of the conscripted. The US government is no exception to the general rule, nothing is inviolate expect perhaps a person’s thoughts, and undoubtedly it’s working on that.
Individuals who assert the right to initiate aggression against whomever they choose are philosophically unhinged, candidates for an asylum or a penitentiary. Rejecting the first principle that must guide human interaction—that no one may rightfully initiate force against another person—such individuals have no rational foundation for their thoughts or actions. The “garbage in” of their philosophical premises produces “garbage out” emotional states, mental processes, and ultimately, lives. Having abandoned reason for coercion and violence, reality becomes a chaotic, incomprehensible void.
Governments’ coercive power allow them to take: might makes right. A philosophy that recognized a right of some individuals to steal from others fails on first principles; there is no logical distinction possible between the privileged and the subjugated. Does the aggregation of individuals into a unit which calling itself a government give them a right which none of them have individually? One could say that the aggregate was for the protection of its constituents’ persons, property, and rights, but a government so limited is acting as their constituents’ subordinate agent, exercising and enhancing their right of self-defense. Efforts have been made, notably the American experiment, but no government has ever been restricted in this manner.
No matter its guiding “ism,” every government has granted itself the power to initiate violence against its citizens. Just because the ruling agglomerate asserts this privilege doesn’t render it philosophically valid. What it does is legitimate the initiation of violence for any and all causes—domestic and foreign—the government deems proper.
Having violated the first principle of nonaggression, nothing can stop that philosophical default from trickling down to the subject population. The ragged thief who holds up a liquor store lacks the polish and articulation of the politician who asserts the government’s first claim on a nation’s production, the central banker who depreciates its currency, or the general bent on global dominance who wages offensive wars, but philosophically they’re soul mates. In fact, the thief has a moral one up on the others: he doesn’t claim to be protecting the values he destroys.
Millions have decried the violence that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, just as millions on the other side decried mostly illusory violence among Trump supporters during the campaign. However, not one in a thousand of those denouncing the violence as violations of fundamental civil liberties denounce the daily violations of fundamental liberties visited upon them by their own government. America’s corruption is so complete that those who insist that they are not fodder for the government, that their lives are their own, and that the only proper government is one subordinated to the protection of their individual rights—and maintain positions consistent with those principles—could hold a convention and not fill a high-school gym.
This small group is the victim of a terrifying pincer movement from above and below. When a society abandons itself to violence, “legal” and otherwise, it abandons itself to mindless irrationality driven by hate and antipathy towards every positive value. Violence is not a means to any end other than destruction and death; violence itself is the end. Humanity has been fed the same tripe for centuries: noble ends justify evil means. Violation of the first principle—the stricture against initiated aggression—bars consideration of the purported ends. A “discussion” with a gun is no discussion. Violence exercised in self-defense protects positive values, but when violence is initiated, destruction, death, and the depraved pleasure of loathsome minds are its only ends.
An individual who claims by word or deed the right to initiate violence - and the consequent rights to subjugate, injure, and kill - is a rabid, deranged, and dangerous animal. A government that asserts that right is a pack. In self-defense, the virtuous, if they are to protect their liberty, rights, and lives, must quarantine or kill the rabid. A necessary corollary of the stricture against initiated aggression is that we have the right to use all means necessary to defend ourselves from it—with pity, perhaps, but no remorse.
The chaos, the terror, of our deteriorating world is a true and faithful reflection of souls abandoned to hate. The free mind and its methods—intrepid curiosity, truth, and logic—stand as their ultimate enemy. If those who would oppose this destruction and death abandon their souls, they become the mindless evil they opposed. Those who defend their rights, values, and lives without surrendering their morality will rebuild from the rubble the kind of world in which they deserve to live. They will do so unobstructed—hate inevitably leads to its own destruction.
A day after cameras were barred from the courtroom, Chicago judge Peggy Chiampas prohibited sketch artists from drawing the faces of the four adultdefendants in the live-streamed kidnapping, torture, and mutilation of an 18 year old mentally handicapped classmate.
The attackers were charged with a hate crime after police witnessed the shocking footage of the victim bound and gagged, beaten, and made to drink toilet water while his assailants shouted "F*ck Donald Trump and f*ck white people!" Jordan Hill, 18, of Carpentersville; Tesfaye Cooper, 18, of Chicago; and Brittany Herring Covington, 19, and her sister Tanishia, 24, were each charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Public defenders Amy Campanelli and Neil Toppel successfully convinced Judge Chiampas that online death threats and "sensationalized" media coverage justify shielding the four from public scrutiny, citing a tumblr post calling for the "public execution" of the defendants. Moreover, Campanelli argues they should not be held in jail pending trial for kidnapping, torturing, and mutilating a guy while shouting racist anti-Trump epithets:
"Sensationalized, pervasive media coverage threatens to poison the jury pool for my clients," Campanelli said, though trials in high-profile cases at the Leighton Criminal Court Building can take years to take place. "They have already been denounced in the media before anything has been proven."
"Worse, these are young people who should not be held in jail but are being held without bond because they have been prejudged," she said. "We will be seeking their release from jail."
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
#1 - We all saw that video of the nearly two day long kidnapping and torture of the mentally disabled man.
#2 - The victim only escaped because a neighbor called 911 due to the noise coming out of the apartment where the torture was taking place. What would have happened if he hadn"t escaped? The assailants were heard saying:
"There"s gonna be a murder. Pop pop pop"
#3 - The woman who streamed the kidnapping, Brittany Herring Covington, showed zero remorse - even while posting to Facebook FROM JAIL:
#4 - Public defender logic; my clients are receiving death threats - the only reasonable action is to release them from jail.
Apparently these four, charged with a hate crime, deserve to be hidden from public. As their attorney Amy Campanelli said outside the courtroom:
"It is sad and unfortunate" that the case has provoked widespread comment from people who didn"t know "all the facts."
I think we"d all love to know what facts she"s referring to. CNN"s Don Lemon thinks this is just a case poor parenting, after all.
A day after cameras were barred from the courtroom, Chicago judge Peggy Chiampas prohibited sketch artists from drawing the faces of the four adult defendants in the live-streamed kidnapping, torture, and mutilation of an 18 year old mentally handicapped classmate.
