Friday, May 09, 2014


Admissions of wrongdoing are very rare from blacks

They mostly maintain their assertions of innocence to the end  -- even in the face of  overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Just one more example below.  In most accounts of black crime on this blog, no admissions were  made



The family of 19-year-old Dante Williams, shot while attempting to rob a Waffle House in South Carolina, say that Williams didn’t have to die and was a “respectable boy.”

The incident, caught on security cameras, shows Williams and Jawan Craig enter the Spartanburg Waffle House, point a gun at the cashier, and demand the cash in the register.

Justin Harrison, a concealed carry permit holder, was sitting at the bar area. “They’re yelling ‘everybody get down, get down’ and I’m not getting on the floor. I am not going to be a victim,” Harrison recalls.

After Harrison refuses to get down, Williams starts to approach him but Harrison stands up and fires multiple shots at Williams. Harrison then turns to Craig who tries to wrestle the gun away but is unable to and ends up fleeing. Police later arrested him and charged him with armed robbery.

“This was the only time. If I am going to fight it was that one time. He was approaching me and I saw that as him engaging me,” Harrison says.

Former Spartanburg deputy David Blanton was Harrison’s concealed weapons permit instructor and says “not only was he defending his own life, which the law says he can do, but there were other people in the restaurant.”

Of course, Williams’ cousin Tamika McSwain disagrees. “I understand he felt threatened by the situation but he said the gun was pointed at him so he fired. In fact, [Williams] was walking out,” says McSwain.

Recalling her time with Williams, she says “he was always sharp, always goofy, loved to dance, he was a respectable boy.”

Regardless of Tamika’s qualms, Harrison’s shooting has been ruled as justified by both the Sheriff’s Office and the Seventh Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

Meanwhile, Craig has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for taking part in the thwarted robbery.

SOURCE






Policing Thought Crime

Jonah Goldberg

In 1920, a bond salesman walked into Joseph Yenowsky's Waterbury, Conn., clothing store. Yenowsky was a tough sell. During their lengthy conversation, Yenowsky told the salesman he thought Vladimir Lenin, the Russian Bolshevik leader, was "the brainiest man" in the world. The bond salesmen turned Yenowsky in to the police for sedition. Yenowsky got six months in jail under a Connecticut statute.

This was hardly an isolated incident during the so-called "Red Scare" of the World War I era. In Syracuse, three activists were arrested for circulating fliers protesting the conditions of America's political prisoners. The subversive flier quoted the First Amendment. They got 18 months in prison. In Washington, D.C., a man refused to stand for the The Star-Spangled Banner. A furious sailor shot the "disloyal" man three times in the back. When the man fell, the Washington Post reported, "the crowd burst into cheering and handclapping." An Indiana jury deliberated for two minutes before it acquitted a man of murdering an immigrant who'd said "To hell with the United States."

A number of conditions were necessary for this totalitarian fever that gripped America. The law -- state, federal and local -- was arrayed against any free speech deemed "un-American." But so were the people. There was a broad consensus that there was a real threat posed to the U.S. from abroad -- and from within -- in the form of Bolsheviks, anarchists and disloyal immigrants or "hyphenated Americans" (e.g. German-Americans or Irish-Americans). Woodrow Wilson's administration fueled this climate. Wilson himself proclaimed that "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

It's valuable to remember all of this for several reasons. First, it's good to know such things can happen here ("even" under the leadership of liberals and progressives). Also, it's good to understand that things have been worse than they are today. There's a tendency to think our government has only become more intrusive and censorial than ever. That's simply untrue. Last, we should be wary of thought-crime panics.

Again, things aren't nearly so bad as when Wilson's Attorney General, Mitchell A. Palmer, set about to eradicate the "disease of evil thinking." That's a pretty low bar for an open and tolerant society. Still, in the last few months, many institutions have been struggling to clear it. Rutgers University invited Condoleezza Rice to be a commencement speaker, but she was bullied out of it. Brandeis University offered Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- a Somali-born women's rights champion and critic of Islamic fundamentalism -- an honorary degree until protests from faculty and students kiboshed that. Azusa Pacific University recently chickened out of a speech invitation to Charles Murray.

I visit about a dozen campuses a year, and at nearly every one, it's common to hear tales about how the social or administrative policing of thought crimes is all the rage. The latest buzz phrase is "microaggression." These are allegedly racist, homophobic or sexist statements made by people with no bigoted intent. Essentially, if someone can rationalize a reason to take offense that's all the proof required. Microagressions are the new vectors for the "disease of evil thinking."

Off campus, things haven't been much better. Watch MSNBC for 10 minutes and you will learn that Republicans are simply champions of "white supremacy" deserving no respect or quarter. I have no sympathy for disgraced L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's views about race, but there's something troubling about how so many people are comfortable with vilifying a man for something he said in private, possibly even during couples' counseling. While conservatives and libertarians have lamented various calls to silence dissent, mainstream liberals seem unconcerned by calls to prosecute climate change skeptics.

In Washington, Democrats increasingly resort to charges of racism or sexism whenever they hear ideas they don't like. Democratic House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer have dubbed critics of Obamacare "simply un-American." Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid insists the libertarian Koch brothers are "un-American." President Obama himself has a knack for suggesting that he cares about America while his opponents don't. He also likes to suggest the time for debate is over on the issues where he's made up his mind.

Defenders of the thought-crime crackdown will fairly insist today is different from things in Yenowsky's day. Fighting bigotry is an obvious good, unlike the crackdown on domestic radicals. Yes and no. Sure, fighting bigotry is right and good, but so is defending the United States from those who would do it harm. The test isn't in the motives but in the methods. Today, it is a kind of evil-thinking not to be part of the war on evil thinking. And so the cause of tolerance demands evermore intolerance.

SOURCE






Revulsion over Jeremy Clarkson has become a badge of honour for the left

Even The Guardian thinks political correctness is going too far.  See below

If you wait by the river long enough, they used to say, the body of your enemy will float by. Unfortunately, these days you may be unable to discern it among the teeming flotilla of lesser and distractingly irrelevant corpses, comprising – but certainly not limited to – obscure prospective Ukip councillors, footballers, presenters, and applicants to second-tier reality formats.

Maybe race rows are cheaper by the dozen, in which case the last month has represented incredible value for the great British public. However, if you are one of those oddbods who loathe racism but find yourself increasingly troubled and/or bored by the form such thrice-weekly things take, then these are not the most encouraging of times.

Clearly there are plenty who think that Jeremy Clarkson should have been sacked for the mumbled Top Gear outtake he is documented as having been at pains to rescind – just as I'm sure there were plenty within US law enforcement who were perfectly satisfied with Al Capone's conviction for tax evasion. It's a question of ambition. It's unfashionable to have too much of it, which is why all right-thinking people to the left of Ukip – from Tories to commies – are supposed to regard it as a triumph each time a news outlet's exposé forces Nigel Farage to outlaw some nobody for a vile thing they said on social media three years ago. This, apparently, is a win, even though the evidence suggests it simply calcifies the sense of asymmetric warfare against Ukip out there in the unreachable spaces where all those rising numbers of people who are going to vote for the party are living their unknowable lives.

Admittedly, Clarkson rather complicated matters on Thursday night by releasing a video statement that seemed to begin as a classic non-apology apology, but ended up in a bizarre class of one: perhaps the first recorded instance of the hugely apologetic non-apology. He was "begging your forgiveness" for something he was simultaneously claiming not to have done.

But if we discount that for a moment, it is hard not to be struck by the blunt and useless standard of debate that has characterised this latest flare-up on an issue of monumental sensitivity, just as it has characterised so many before it. Most of the coverage of – and an unscientific half of the reaction to – Clarkson's mumbling of what sounded like the N-word in a Top Gear outtake has appeared to be based on the misapprehension that the only context in which to consider one of Jeremy Clarkson's remarks is a selection of Jeremy Clarkson's other remarks. It's a sweet idea, but it's not going to win any arguments. In fact, as should be obvious by now, it's more likely to lose them.

Even if they are born from the same small and nasty place – and for me it is an if, though for others it won't be – calling your dog Didier Dogba just isn't of the same magnitude as publicly ridiculing Mexicans as feckless and fat and lazy. The apparently unpalatable truth for many on the left, where it is tempting to wear our reflexive revulsion at this sort of thing as a badge of honour, is that the journey towards a kinder and more civilised society can be hampered as much by the overly pious progressive as it can by the recalcitrant regressive. How can you possibly demand others realise the power of nuance if you shrilly decline to deploy it yourself?

By trotting out a smorgasbord of Clarksonisms, Jeremy's would-be nemeses imagine they are producing an irresistible weight of evidence, when in fact their failure to distinguish between the gravity of dismissing an entire, frequently vilified race, and what someone chooses to name their private pet, implies an equivalence in such a specious manner that it undermines what ought to be a just argument. It should smell wrong to anyone, whether they do it knowingly or out of stupidity. It certainly smells wrong to people who might need persuading that the world should move on, with the result that they switch off entirely at a moment that might in more nuanced hands be regarded as a teachable one.

Still, we've all got to have a view, haven't we, and the apparent popularity of these stagey debates among the vocal might seem to imply that to be tired of race rows is to be tired of life. But are these increasingly, troublingly identikit explosions what the idealists might hope: a sign of hand-over-fist progress, where what once might have been regarded as a minor offence is now come down upon like a ton of bricks by a righteously avenging force that swells in number by the day? Or are they becoming the elevator music of public life, an insidious reinforcement of a polarised status quo, a pseudo event in which the chief bigots are privately more than happy to get caught up because it galvanises their own troops?

To listen to the airwaves or read the internet when these things are running is to watch little more than the rabid restating of previously held views. Behold the endless entrenching of positions, which appears not to result in a single defection from either side to the other – a sort of rolling wasted opportunity, which will be coming around again before the spittle's dry on this round.

SOURCE

    


The War Against The Jews

Nearly seventy years after the end of the Holocaust and its recent commemoration, Jews frequently recite the pledge of "Never Again"; yet, the war against the Jews continues and with the exception of a few lone voices, no one within government, Jewish leadership, the media, or authority is responding.

The war against the Jews did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.  While there may have been a respite for a few decades, it has raised its ugly head once again, and presently threatens European Jewry, Israel, and increasingly North American Jewry.  From Western European capitols to Ukrainian cities in the east, anti-Semitism is on the rise, while we in North America are witnessing an ever increasing climate of anti-Semitic hate on college campuses and the Internet.

The Nazi uniform of yesterday has been replaced by young Muslim men hiding under their keffiyehs (terrorist scarves) chanting "death to the Jews" and "death to Israel".  Under the guise of freedom of speech, they terrorize Jewish youth on the streets of Paris, American campuses or as in NYU, their dormitories.  The Muslim Student Association, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, with over 1000 chapters across our college campuses is permitted to incite and wreck havoc upon young Jews that would never be permitted against Muslims or Blacks.  During Israeli Apartheid Week, young Jews are called Nazis, racists and baby killers.  Where are the cries of the righteous among us? Where are the voices of the Chancellors, the Presidents, Board of Directors, and the faculties in the halls of academia?  Their eerie silence speaks volumes and their tolerance of evil is a moral failure that will haunt their universities for time to come.

Israel, the only Jewish state, with half of the Jewish population has been earmarked for destruction by those who wish for a Judenrein Middle East.  While Muslims have a majority in 49 countries with an Arab land mass of over 5 million square miles, Jews with a sliver of land to call their own are begrudged the right to self-determination, a right allotted to all other nations.  Condemnation for the Jewish ancestral homeland is a favorite pastime at the United Nations, the European Union, and this American administration.  On April 25th of this year, John Kerry, warned Israel at a meeting with world leaders that "Israel will become an apartheid State if it doesn't make peace soon."  Note that this warning was not directed at the "Palestinians" who refuse to even recognize a Jewish state, but at a Jewish democratic ally who has traded land for peace, only to receive acts of terror in return.

ANTI-SEMITISM

In a recent study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, results from the 2013 survey show that anti-Semitic attacks are growing in their intensity and cruelty. The number and type of violent attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions is worsening.
There were 554 registered violent anti-Semitic acts, perpetrated with weapons or without, by arson, vandalism and direct threats, against persons, synagogues, community centers and schools, cemeteries, monuments and private property in 2013.

The highest number of recorded incidents comes from France: 116, a rise in violent cases has also been noted in the UK, with 95 cases compared to 84 in 2012, and in Canada, 83 compared to 74; in Germany: 36 compared to 23; 23 in the Ukraine, compared to 15; 15 cases in Russia (11 in 2012), and 14 in Hungary (12 in 2012).  (IsraelNationalNews.com, 4/27; "Europe:  Jewish Life "Unsustainable" Due to Rising Anti-Semitism")

In Canada, B'nai B'rith Director, Frank Diamant recently stated "The current level of anti-Semitism in Canada as compared with data from a decade ago shows a leap of 49%,".  "Jews of all ages are subjected to hate acts at work, in school and even in the playgrounds," he added. Despite Canada's efforts - both domestically and internationally - to deal with anti-Semitism, the prejudices still exist in the country."

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, AND SANCTIONS

Taking a page from Nazi Germany during the 1930's when many Jewish intellectuals were ostracized and Jewish businesses were boycotted, today's Muslims are hoping to achieve what they could not achieve on the battlefield, the delegitimization and isolation of Israel.  What started out as a "Palestinian" movement across college campuses in an effort to dismantle the Jewish state, has now blossomed into a world wide movement to strip a Jewish country of international recognition and its very livelihood.  While Israel has a healthy vibrant economy, the BDS movement with its vicious deceitful propaganda has made inroads among today's youth, the media, universities, and businesses throughout the globe.  And once again reminiscent of the 1930's, Jewish professors are barred from symposiums in Europe and Israeli scientists are not welcome at various European universities.

IRAN

While individual Jews are feeling the sting of anti-Semitism world wide, it is Israel, the collective Jewish home that is existentially threatened for eradication.  The Mullah's in Iran have been quite clear about their intentions; yet, the United States, formerly the leader of the free world, is permitting Iran to move full steam ahead.  Under a charade of a coalition of nations, we have decreased economic sanctions for a short term freeze of portions of Iran's nuclear program; yet, there is no indication that Iran has given up their mission to wipe Israel off the map.  On the contrary, the vitriol continues.  The Ayatollah Khomeini called Israel a "fake" regime that will be "eliminated" and during Al Quads (Jerusalem) Day thousands chant "Death to Israel" at mass rallies.  Iran's calls for genocide is a violation against the 1948 Convention Against Genocide to which it is a signatory and calls for the destruction of a U.N. member state is a violation of the U.N. charter, but the world body remains silent.  What other country, but a Jewish one, is continuously threatened with genocide or has to justify its existence?

Prior to the establishment of Israel, Jews were at the mercy of others, and too often found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.  Out of the ashes of the Holocaust sprung forth a rebirth of a Jewish nation with the promise that Jews will never have to fear their persecutors again.  This time, they too will be armed and ready should the need arise.  Well the need has arisen.  There is a war against the Jews....on college campuses, in the biased media, within governments, and the United Nations.  Islam and its practitioners seek to finish the job begun by the Nazis.  History appears to be repeating itself; the world once again has turned a blind eye, as have many Jews.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised that there will be no second Holocaust.  We should hold him to that promise.  Unlike the 1930's, I urge you to rise up.  Stand up and be not afraid.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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