HMM: Taiwan asks for Australia’s support in possible war with China. “Over the weekend, I looked at the recent air incursions into Taiwan’s controlled airspace by Chinese warplanes and the chances that this situation could escalate into open warfare. While that still seems unlikely, at least in the short term, it’s clear that Taiwan is taking the matter seriously. They’ve been scrambling their own jets multiple times per day in response, heightening tensions above the Taiwan Strait. Yesterday, the country’s Foreign Minister tossed another log on the diplomatic fire by publicly calling on Australia to deepen its alliance with the island nation, sharing intelligence and other resources in preparation for a possible war. And if China wants a war, Taiwan is promising to give them one.”
Australia would be smart to draw their own defensive line at the Taiwan Strait rather than the Solomon Sea.
I wonder if Attorney General Merrick Garland has just supplied the proverbial straw that will send the camel that is the Biden administration crashing to the ground.
Garland was supposed to be a moderate. The Washington Compostassured its readers that there was a ‘98 percent probability that Merrick Garland is “in between” Ginsburg and Scalia. In other words, that he is comparatively moderate’. One of my friends even wrote that he was a ‘superb’ choice to be attorney general.
I wonder what he thinks now? Garland has been a willing collaborator with all the most egregious actions of the Biden administration. But on Monday October 4, he wrote a memo that will will go down infamy. I think it was Chris Rufo who first reported that Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing (completely unnamed) ‘threats’. The National School Boards Association had complained to the Biden administration, describing the protests as a ‘form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes’. In response, Garland outlined a ‘Partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.’ A ‘partnership among federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement’: think about that.
Again, no specific threats were adduced. What’s really at issue here, as Mary Chastain notes at Legal Insurrection, is criminalizing dissent. ‘Actually,’ she writes, ‘they want to figure out how to deal with parents who have the nerve to be involved in their child’s education.’ Like Biden facing resistance to his vaccine mandate, Garland finds his ‘patience wearing thin’ and orders the coercive apparatus of the state, including the FBI’s Criminal Division and National Security Division, to bear down on parents who have the temerity to question the racist indoctrination of their children.
Let’s go, Brandon! Not surprisingly, the party whose organizing method is “the moral equivalent of war” views American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head. And as the past couple of months have illustrated, they’re far more focused on fighting against American people and industries, rather than Middle Eastern terrorists.
To coin a phrase, would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?
THINK TWICE BEFORE BOLTING TO THE EV FUTURE: Looks like General Motors officials may well be second-guessing their wokey decision to invest billions of dollars in developing Electric Vehicles.
There are more than 143,000 Chevy Bolt EVs on the road, but GM recently put out a bulletin advising owners of certain, uh, precautions they are strongly encouraged to take, according to Ronald Stein, writing for the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):
Not to park your Chevy Bolt within 50 feet of other vehicles in case it catches fire.
Highly recommends that Bolt EV owners not to park within 50 feet of anything you care about.
Recommends parking on the top floor or on an open-air deck and park 50 feet or more away from another vehicle.
Requests Bolt EV owners to not leave their vehicle charging unattended, even if they are using a charging station in a parking deck.
The information Stein provides about the GM warning is his opening illustration of a whole passel of problems EV enthusiasts, global warming alarmists and environmental radicals don’t want people who buy cars and trucks to know about.
The visible impact of all this will be mostly within China, but its macro effects will be global. Such wealth destruction should be intensely deflationary. That may be part of the goal, in fact. Chinese consumers are feeling significant inflation in food, housing, and other living costs. Demographic factors, particularly population aging, will increase this pressure. Decades of the one-child policy reduced working-age labor supply, which raises wages and other prices.
But it won’t stop there. For years, China’s voracious appetite for energy and materials underpinned prices worldwide. At the same time, its low manufacturing prices basically exported deflation. Hence we saw little or no inflation in most finished goods but a lot of inflation in commodity-intensive services like food, energy, and housing.
In short, China is losing its role as the world’s lead manufacturing exporter. Government policies aren’t helping, but George Friedman notes this is actually a cyclical process. He wrote a thoughtful piece (which I shared with Over My Shoulder members here) about the apparent 40–50 year pattern in which a nation takes on this role then loses it. The US did so in the 1890s, then it was Japan, and China since the 1980s. . . . The end of this period is traumatic. The US marked it with the Great Depression, and Japan with its 1990s downturn, but both countries adapted and recovered. (You might even say they “muddled through.”) George expects the same for China.
UPDATE (From Ed): This Facebook outage is huge — It’s their worst since 2008, when they only had 80M users! And speaking of getting shut out of Facebook, “Was just on the phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors,” Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times tweeted earlier today.
The National School Boards Association has asked President Biden to look into slapping a “domestic terrorist” label on “angry” parents and community members who speak their minds at board meetings.
“America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat,” the group says in its letter to the president. “[As] acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
This kind of statement is a much worse act of violence than criticism aimed at school boards. One more argument for abolishing public schools.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School boards see protests as ‘domestic terrorism.’ “Angry protesters at school board meetings may be guilty of ‘domestic terrorism’ or ‘hate crimes,’ the National School Board Association (NSBA) believes.”
If you don’t want to be labeled a terrorist, maybe you shouldn’t send your kids to public schools.
Merck & Co’s stock price rose sharply on Friday after the drug company announced positive clinical trial results from its experimental anti-viral Covid-19 pill. Data showed the pill halved the chances of dying or being hospitalized for at-risk populations—a breakthrough advancement in the fight against the global pandemic.
Discussing the development on Fox News Monday morning, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, called it the “most profound scientific achievement since the vaccines.”
* * * * * * * *
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade wondered why, then, Merck isn’t going “to bat for their own drug.”
“Well, they’ve got to be very careful with the FDA,” Makary responded. “If you do something out of line with what they want you could offend them and the FDA is vindictive and they will hold up authorizations and approvals.”
The Fox News host couldn’t believe what he just heard.
“Are you kidding? The FDA is vindictive?” he asked.
“First of all this is the most political FDA in U.S. history,” Makary claimed. “Second of all, the FDA has a long history of pulling products from companies that are unrelated to mistakes in other medication and device applications so companies have to be very careful, and that’s why you generally don’t see pharma complaining about the bureaucracy and red tape at the FDA—”
“They’re afraid,” Kilmeade interjected.
“Yeah, they’re afraid of the backlash,” Makary confirmed.
“Yeah, that’s healthy,” the host responded sarcastically.
The numbers are in, and the debate is over. Our nation is in the midst of one of the worst crime waves in American history.
New nationwide data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveals that last year the number of murders rose by 29 percent, drug overdose deaths increased 30 percent, and the number of gang-related killings skyrocketed more than 55 percent. To put this carnage into context, a 29 percent increase in murder isn’t simply bad, it’s the worst single-year increase in American history. Similarly, the drugs flooding into our communities aren’t only deadly, they are the deadliest drugs ever sold. For the first time ever, over 100,000 Americans lost their lives to drugs and homicide in 2020.
The number of assaults rose by 12 percent last year and criminal assailants committed nearly 75,000 more violent crimes than they committed in 2019. Although the total number of property crimes fell, the total cost of those crimes rose by nearly $2 billion. Recorded cases of arson also rose by nearly 35 percent, a trend that is likely associated with last summer’s BLM riots, which were the most destructive in American history.
In Democrat-dominated cities, violent crime rose far more than the national average. Last year, murder rose 50 percent in Chicago, 44 percent in New York, and 38 percent in Los Angeles. The murder rate in Baltimore was higher than El Salvador’s or Guatemala’s — nations from which citizens can claim asylum purely based on gang violence and murder.
What actions are you recommending for the pro-life movement?’ the New Yorker Radio Hour host asks his guest, a tenured university professor and author of How to Blow Up an Abortion Clinic.
‘Well,’ the guest replies, ‘I am recommending that the movement continue with the March for Life and crisis pregnancy centers but also open up for property destruction. We need to step up because so little has changed and so many babies are still being killed. So, I am in favor of destroying machines and property, not harming people. I think property can be destroyed in all manner of ways. It can be neutralized in a very gentle fashion, or in a more spectacular fashion as in potentially blowing up an abortion clinic.’
‘Do you yourself plan to be involved in such actions?’ the host asks, scandalized and titillated like a 16-year-old girl whose prom date just whispered his untoward intentions in her ear.
If I were planning things, I wouldn’t tell you, but I’m prepared to be part of any kind of action of the sort that I advocate in the book.’
God, he’s so cool.
And scene.
Of course, this interview never happened. Not only would the author never have been booked on that particular podcast, he’d have been fired from his university, blacklisted by every major publisher, denounced as a terrorist, stripped of his bank account, and placed under federal surveillance.
But replace ‘pro-life movement’ with ‘climate movement,’ and you’ll find that this interview did happen, less than a week ago, with Andreas Malm, whose very real book is called How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
American rapper Kodak Black spent the Fourth of July holiday at the Golden Acres Housing Project in Pompano Beach, Florida. He purchased 100 air conditioners worth a total of $12,500 and hand-delivered them to residents there.
Kodak shared a video of the event on social media where he said, “We out here passing out AC units, helping install them….We do it for the projects, we do it for the projects. The people relying on just enough cash to survive. We’ll get you all ACs man, we out here.”
The singer went on to note that he grew up poor in a similar area and loves to give back. “It’s hot right now. The heat will bring a little frustration. Sometimes that cause people to act out. I remember when I had to take from people,” the 24-year-old said. “So, now that I’m blessed enough to give back, that’s what I like to do. We out here passing out A/C units, helping install them and all that right now.”
But as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and Kodak’s actions quickly came under fire. The Housing Authority of Pompano Beach sent the performing artist a cease and desist letter claiming his presence in the community caused a “disturbance.” They also claimed he filmed a music video while there, which his lawyer disputed, and took issue with the fact he helped to install some of the units.
According to TMZ, “a representative for the Pompano Beach Housing Authority said that while Kodak’s donation was ‘an extremely generous and admirable gesture,’ there were concerns about AC installations being done properly to meet safety guidelines.”
In their letter the Housing Authority wrote, “Your actions have adversely impacted the Property’s residents’ right to peacefully enjoy the property.”
Black’s lawyer responded with his own letter criticizing the government for its “wish to stop the assistance to the elderly and underprivileged during a heat wave and 2 year pandemic.”
The peoples champ. When I first met @kodakblack the thing that keeps people grounded when a lot of things are going on around them is charity and good deeds. He took that advice and has been running with it ever since. #kodakgivesback Thank you to Francky https://t.co/sWhx5NF5zA
While many Americans might find this story outrageous (as they should), it’s really nothing new. The government frequently blocks charitable donations in a multitude of industries and ways. For example, a large network of regulations often outlaw companies and individuals from donating excess food, offering housing for the homeless, or redistributing unused merchandise.
Why do they do this? That’s the correct question, but there are many problematic answers.
Often these laws are put in place by what the political world calls “NIMBYs,” which stands for “Not In My Backyard.” NIMBYs are people who work both in and outside the government to micromanage their surroundings. They are busybodies with too much time on their hands who wreak havoc on their communities. Even when their preferred policies are put in place with good intentions, they always end up harming people in ways the NIMBYs never seem to predict.
This seems to be that sort of situation. You’ll note that the Housing Authority seems to take the most issue with Kodak’s installation assistance. Likely, that is because most cities and states make residents jump through expensive and time-consuming hoops to perform such services. These regulations require individuals to obtain certain certifications and pay the government for occupational licenses before they can work, all in the name of public health and safety of course.
But is it really about health and safety? Maybe for some NIMBYs. But the regulators and their friends often get a cut of the pie. Oftentimes, the lawmakers sit on the boards of the very schools that offer these mandated certifications. Other times, they extend exclusive contracts to their friends in the industry who would be undercut by someone offering these kinds of services for free.
Either way, the results are the same and these kinds of regulations always end up harming far more people than they “save.”
Despite carrying an incredibly high tax burden, America continues to be one of the most charitable and generous nations in the world. And that’s a good thing because our government largely squanders our money and fails to actually take care of the most vulnerable people in society.
Imagine what we could accomplish if the government simply got out of the way and let us use our money to take care of people of our own free will.
It boggles the mind that there would be any question as to the unconstitutionality of sexually assaulting people pulled over at a traffic stop or interacting in any other manner with a police officer.
Lynette Christmas still has nightmares about the day that forever changed her life. It was Valentine’s Day of 2016. Christmas was pulled over in Harris County, Georgia for a routine traffic violation. The officer, Deputy Thomas Pierson, gave her a warning and sent her on her way. But minutes later, he pulled her over for a second time.
This time, he sexually assaulted her.
“I can feel the day and what the air was like. The smell of the air. When he was dragging me up by the car,” Christmas told local station WSBTV. “And as he was leaving, he told me he was going to kill me.”
Pierson is now serving an 8-year prison sentence. To some, this might sound like justice. Rape cases have a notoriously low clearance rate in the country, and police officers are rarely sent to prison for their crimes.
But Christmas would not call this justice.
According to Christmas, Pierson was accused by many other women of inappropriate conduct during traffic stops. Those women filed reports long before Christmas was assaulted, but nothing was done about them. Pierson was also involved in the death of a teen during a traffic stop. Clearly, there were many indicators that Pierson posed a threat to the general public for some time, yet his superiors, the police department, and the county did absolutely nothing to intervene.
In Christmas’ eyes, the failure of Pierson’s superiors to hold him accountable in the line of duty makes them culpable for the crimes against his victims as well. So, she sued the county, the Sheriff, and Pierson himself.
But in March, a judge ruled that the lawsuit could not move forward, because the defendants all enjoyed “qualified immunity.”
What is Qualified Immunity?
For those unfamiliar, qualified immunity is a court doctrine that the US Supreme Court essentially pulled out of thin air in the 1960s—in a move many would call judicial activism. It is not grounded in the Constitution and has no legal foundation. Yet it has been the law of the land for nearly 60 years.
Because of qualified immunity, Americans are unable to sue government actors—all government actors, not just police officers—and hold them accountable for their actions unless a court has previously ruled their specific act was unconstitutional in another case.
Christmas wants her day in court. Not just against Pierson, who is now jobless and financially unable to pay restitution, but against the department and the county who enabled his actions. But none of them can be held civilly liable thanks to qualified immunity.
“The sheriff is covered, and the county is covered under qualified immunity,” says Christmas. “I shouldn’t be responsible for the medical bills and the damage that was done to me,” she said.
One might assume that a court would have found cops sexually assaulting women during traffic stops to be unconstitutional at a prior point in history, but that assumption would be wrong. Qualified immunity creates a perpetual Catch-22 where no case can proceed because no prior case has proceeded.
As a federal judge quoted by the Equal Justice Initiative explained, “Plaintiffs must produce precedent even as fewer courts are producing precedent. Important constitutional questions go unanswered because no one has answered them before. Courts then rely on that judicial silence to conclude there’s no equivalent case on the books. No precedent = no clearly established law = no liability.”
That is why a judge ruled against Christmas’ lawsuit.
Restitution vs. Retribution
The fact that qualified immunity protects government agents from civil liability (as opposed to criminal prosecution) is what makes qualified immunity an especially unjust doctrine. Justice should primarily be about making victims whole, not merely incarcerating perpetrators. And qualified immunity prevents victims from that very thing, permanently blocking them from the restitution owed them when their government violates their rights.
In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard wrote, “The idea of primacy for restitution to the victim has great precedent in law; indeed, it is an ancient principle of law which has been allowed to wither away as the State has aggrandized and monopolized the institutions of justice.”
As our carceral state has grown, and government coffers and authority grow right along with it, many have come to see justice as retribution. Not only has this compounded the trauma that often leads to violence and criminal activity amongst offenders, it has also left victims and their families with false promises of closure and a lack of the actual services they may need to heal.
In Christmas’ case, she needs money to cover her medical bills. But because the Supreme Court and Congress continue to shield government actors from accountability to the people they are paid to serve, she is unlikely to see a dime.
For a system to truly uphold rights, we must have a court system that is capable of securing restitution for victims when those rights are violated—especially when they are violated by the very people we have paid to protect us.
Qualified immunity is an affront to our Constitution, to justice, and to our fundamental rights. It must be done away with, and fast.
EQUALITY IS THE NEW RACISM: Professor who criticized extra pay for black faculty labeled example of racism at Princeton. “Princeton University freshmen have been taught that a professor at the institution is an example of racism because he criticized a now-defunct black student group’s aggressive tactics and he opposes giving professors of color a variety of perks, such as additional pay. Joshua Katz, a highly decorated Princeton classics professor of nearly 25 years, is featured in a ‘virtual gallery’ detailing various forms of racism at the Ivy League university. The gallery was part of a mandatory freshman orientation video.”
Freshman orientation in 2021: “Welcome to our racist school. Here are some examples of our racism.”
A PLACE FOR US … ÀPRES LE DÉLUGE: For years, I’ve been teasing my conservative and libertarian friends that we should colonize Baffin Island before things get worse here in the USA. They point out that Baffin Island is cold and that it’s already inhabited by fierce Canadians who might take a dim view of our invasion. And polar bears … we mustn’t forget the polar bears.
I’ve therefore been scouting out—via the miracle of the internet—uninhabited islands with better weather (and smaller predators).
Scratch Clipperton Island off the list.
Named for an 18th century English pirate, Clipperton Island is about 700 miles southwest of Mexico. The two square-mile atoll is not close to anything but the Pacific Ocean. With the exception of a few coconut palms and some grasses, it is pretty barren. Technically its lagoon is full of “fresh” (i.e. non-saline) water, but it’s filthy, very acidic, and undrinkable except on those occasions when your next-best option is death from dehydration. Oh … and the island is home to lots of nasty little land crabs.
None of that’s a deal killer for me. I’m that desperate. Alas, the island’s history gives me the creeps, so I’m reluctantly going to have to give Clipperton a pass.
Here’s the story as I understand it: In 1906 a British company in cooperation with the Mexican government started a settlement on the island to mine guano. Guano mining had been a huge industry worldwide in the 19th century—often involving slave labor. The guano (yes, I’m talking about bird poop) was used for fertilizer before the rise of more modern agricultural methods.
The Clipperton mine came well after the industry’s heyday and was not particularly lucrative. The British soon lost interest. Mexico chose to keep the operation and stationed a number of military men there with their families. By 1914, there were about 100 men, women, and children on the island, all or almost all of them Mexican nationals. Every two months a ship would arrive from Acapulco with provisions—food, water, medicine, and whatever else was needed.
Then things went to hell. As the Mexican Revolution raged, the supply ship stopped coming. There was no food. The 100 inhabitants were faced with the possibility of starvation. One by one, they began to die from scurvy. The military leader of the settlement, Ramón Arnaud, and three soldiers attempted to get help by pursuing a passing ship in a canoe. The canoe sank, drowning all four of them.
By 1917, all the men had died.
Except one—the lighthouse keeper. His name was Victoriano Álvarez and previously he’d been a bit of a recluse. He could have been the hero of the story. Instead he chose to be the villain. He confiscated the women’s guns and declared himself “king” of the island.
By that time there were only 15 women and children left. The self-anointed “king” raped and murdered a mother and daughter when they refused to cooperate with him. He brutally beat and raped most of the others.
If there is a hero to the story, it was 20-year-old Tirza Randon, one of his favorite victims. She bashed his royal head in with a hammer. Sic semper tyrannis.
Very shortly thereafter, the USS Yorktown came by looking for German U-boats. Eleven half-starved women and children (the youngest one suffering severely from rickets) were rescued and returned to Mexico.
This latest set of indictments appear to show that Durham has more people in his sights. Indeed, as you can see for yourself, there appear to be many, many targets out there.
Half the country believes there’s no such thing as equal justice under the law anymore. It would be nice to see these high-level conspiracists finally get what they deserve. After all, this all set the table not only for the 2016 election, but for Trump’s impeachments and dirtying him up for the 2020 election.
