Bayou Renaissance Man

It seems an old sword has vanished.  It's deemed by locals (particularly those in the tourist trade) to be the original, real, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, pinky-swear Durandal belonging to the mythically-enhanced, legendary Roland, one of Charlemagne's military governors during the 8th century AD.  The Telegraph reports:

It is southern France’s answer to Excalibur, the mythical sword that King Arthur legendarily pulled from a rock to obtain the British throne.

However, Rocamadour has no idea who managed to wrench its famed Durandal sword from the stone in which it had been embedded for centuries, particularly because it was 10 metres (32.5 feet) off the ground.

All the town knows is that one of its main tourist attractions has vanished. It is presumed stolen and an investigation has been launched.

Durandal was the sword of Roland, a legendary paladin (knight) and officer of Charlemagne in French epic literature. According to the legend, Durandal was indestructible and the sharpest sword in all existence, capable of cutting through giant boulders with a single strike.

Its magical qualities are recounted in the 11th-century epic poem The Song of Roland, the oldest surviving major work of French literature.

. . .

Medieval “myth” has it that before it was given to Roland, Charlemagne received Durandal from an angel. Before his death at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, Roland is said to have tried in vain to break it on the rocks to prevent his enemies from seizing it. He finally threw it into the air to save it. Miraculously travelling hundreds of kilometres, it is said to have embedded itself in the rock face of Rocamadour.

There's more at the link.

I can't help laughing at the fuss and bother.  It's patently obvious to anybody with two working brain cells to rub together that Rocamadour installed a fake Durandal to attract medieval tourists, who were rather more credulous than their modern equivalents.  It's the same sort of fake as the "pieces cut from the sail of Saint Peter's fishing-boat!" that pedlars sold to pilgrims, or the fabled "Holy House of Loreto", the purported original home of the Virgin Mary.  It supposedly flew (powered by angels) from Nazareth in the Holy Land, via two other locations, until it landed in Loreto, Italy (which proceeded to make a fortune from pilgrims thronging there to see it).

(Perhaps Boeing might like to hire the angels concerned?  They need all the help they can get right now!)

So, a long-standing fake has been stolen.  So what???  Just whip up a convincing copy of it, put it back in place, and Bob's your uncle.  It's not as if the stolen fake has any value, intrinsic or otherwise.  "Flew from Roncevaux to Rocamadour", my fundamental jujube!

(On the other hand, if President Biden turns up wielding the stolen Durandal copy during his next debate with former President Trump, all sorts of things might get more interesting!  It might help his cutting remarks . . . )

Peter

Found on MeWe:

(Presumably referring to this study.)

And all of us who've "been up the sharp end" in our joint and several ways nod our heads in agreement, and say (loudly, with feeling, in well-lubricated chorus):

Of course it is!  You don't think we'd have been there without being demented, do you?

Sheesh!!!

Peter

From Sgt. Mom at Chicago Boyz, writing about "the LGBT-BLT lifestyle":

It used to be said that it was the love that dare not speak its name, now it’s the love that never shuts up.

Word (or words!).

Peter

Watching our country descend into banana republic territory (see the Babylon Bee for more about that), I came across this graphic on MeWe.  I find it eerily disturbing.  Click the image for a larger, readable view.

That may be ten years old, but it also might be a scarily accurate prediction of our present situation . . .

Peter

Stephan Pastis, as usual, says it all.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

Yet again, let me point out that with all the manipulation, lying, cheating and deception going on - from both sides of the political aisle - we should not expect a free, fair election in November.  Shenanigans will be the order of the day.  Do not trust any professional politician (i.e. one who's done nothing else except work in politics since leaving high school or college).  If they've grown up in and through that system, they're as untrustworthy as that system.  By all means pick one's flavor of politician and vote for them, but don't expect that to change or improve our society.  I reckon we could count the moral, ethical, honest, upright politicians in the House or the Senate on the fingers of one hand, two at most.

Remember the acronym TINVOWOOT - There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This - because you're going to be hearing it a lot between now and then.

Peter

I'm sure many readers have noticed that the campus riots against Israel have many common features.  Many demonstrators all have the same type and color of tents in their "protest camps", often arranged in similar grid patterns.  They have professionally printed protest signs, delivered in their hundreds, rather than spontaneously-drawn hand-made signs.

Does that remind you, perhaps, of those strategically-placed and anonymously-delivered pallets of bricks that accompanied street riots in many American cities during 2020, and the unrest that led up to the Presidential election that year?  It sure does me . . .

There's also the presence of professional agitators and activists to organize the otherwise clueless students.

Mayor Eric Adams warned Wednesday that “outside agitators” had descended on Columbia University’s campus to radicalize students ... Hizzoner blamed the on-campus chaos on insurgents who have a “history of escalating situations and trying to create chaos” instead of protesting peacefully.

“There were individuals on the campus who should not have been there. They were people who are professionals and we saw evidence of training,” Adams said.

“I know that there are those who attempting to say, ‘Well, the majority of people may have been students.’ You don’t have to be the majority to influence and co-op an operation. That is what this about.

. . .

Adams said the NYPD was brought in Tuesday night to quell the unrest at Columbia after the administration acknowledged outside influencers “were on their grounds training and really co-opting this movement.”

There's more at the link.

The U.K. Telegraph provided this pen-portrait of one of the better-known radical organizers in New York City.

When Eric Adams, the New York mayor, issued a warning about “outside agitators” infiltrating the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, his words were accompanied by video of students dutifully obeying orders from a grey-haired woman.

She was identified as Lisa Fithian, a New Yorker living in Texas, yet the 63-year-old would have needed no introduction to law enforcement officers involved with policing protests in the US for more than half a century.

Described by Mother Jones as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant”, Ms Fithian has supported a plethora of movements over the decades including opposing the Iraq war, fighting for Louisiana communities following Hurricane Katrina, Extinction Rebellion and Occupy Wall Street.

She has been arrested between 80 and 100 times yet unions and activist groups hold her rabble-rousing skills in such high regard they have paid her $300 (£240) a day to run demonstrations and teach them tactics for taking over the streets.

Video released by New York police at Mayor Adams’ briefing on Tuesday showed Ms Fithian instructing a mob of pro-Palestinian protesters as they took over an academic building at Columbia University.

. . .

After attending Skidmore college in New York, she cut her teeth as a political activist with the Washington Peace Center campaign group in the 1980s, organising demonstrations locally and nationally with a focus on anti-racism issues.

By the time she took a key role in Occupy, a social justice movement that targeted leading financial institutions, she was a revered figure among fellow campaigners.

As Occupy took over the parks of New York and Los Angeles in 2012, she was reported to have been handing out advice to younger activists on tactics ranging from proper tear gas attire to long-term protest strategies.

“When there is some conflict, or things aren’t going the way that we want them to go, or people don’t have a good long-term plan,” a twenty-something protester told Mother Jones, “I have heard others and myself say, ‘Damn it, where is Lisa Fithian?’”

Max Berger, another Occupy campaigner, said: “Nobody is going to say that what Lisa does is not badass so she is in a very strategically important position of teaching kids who want to be badass to be smart.”

Again, more at the link.  She was far from the only such organizer there.

Also, intriguingly, we find that many of the "migrants" who recently poured across our southern border, with the help of the Biden administration, may be involved in the campus riots.

The modern version of Rent-A-Mob, perhaps?

Perhaps most intriguing from my point of view, the "fact-checking" sources that almost unanimously debunked the placement of bricks during the 2020 riots, denouncing them as mere "construction debris", are also working flat-out to deny that outside agitators are at work in these campus riots.  A simple Internet search reveals the common guidelines they've been given.  They're all marching to the beat of the same drummer, suggesting that their "fact-checking" is itself nothing more than political propaganda.

Put all that together, and the "demonstrations" begin to look more and more like the George Floyd protests of 2020:  a technique for political intimidation, rather than a "spontaneous" outburst.  These riots are far too well organized and coordinated across the country for that.

I think I have a solution, though.  Let's gather up every organizer we can find, plus the "student leaders" who are looking to them for guidance, and drop them all into the middle of the biggest concentration of Hamas terrorists we can find in Gaza.  Let them discuss solidarity and fellow-feeling all they like, while the rest of us watch.  It might make for a sell-out pay-per-view experience.

Peter

There's been an enormous, emotional reaction to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's revelation that she shot an errant dog after it had killed a flock of chickens and then appeared to turn on her.  If you've missed the story, you can read about it here.

My first point is, if the incident is as she described it, she did exactly the right thing.  One of her dogs had inflicted death and destruction on another person's animals.  There's no "miracle cure" for that;  once an animal starts down that path, it'll continue unless and until it's stopped the hard way.  I've seen it many times before, and twice have assisted a friend to shoot packs of dogs that had "graduated" to chasing cattle, biting at their legs and throats, trying to bring one down to kill and eat it.

My second point is that far too many people today have lost sight of the basic facts of life.  They're living in a cocoon, an emotional fuzzy ball of fluff that's insulated them from reality.  As "Ragin Dave" put it at Liberty's Torch:

The people freaking out about this are people who have never once been outside of their protective bubble. Sometimes real life demands hard choices. When I read the story, I just shrugged and went “Yeah. So?” I think it would do this country a world a good if many of those pampered bubble dwellers had to actually see where their food comes from, and perhaps harvest that food themselves. The first time I helped harvest and butcher an animal I became much more appreciative of the food on my plate, and the people who work to put it there. I think that lesson needs to be taught to an entire generation these days.

True dat.  Life is full of hard choices.  Killing an errant, dangerous animal is just one of them - and by no means the most difficult.

Choices are often hard in the abstract, but a heck of a lot easier in the concrete.  It's easy to say, "Oh, I could never shoot someone!" when asked what one would do if a criminal attacked one's spouse or child.  When it actually happens - when one's spouse or child is subject to a brutal, relentless attack that can only result in her death or serious injury - it's a whole lot easier to justify shooting, and even killing, the attacker.  That also tends to change one's whole outlook on life.  Shooting an errant, dangerous animal is part and parcel of the same response.

I remember a young lady I knew back in South Africa.  She was one of the anti-violence, peace-and-rainbows-and-unicorn-farts people, nice enough as a person, but without much of a clue about the darker side of the world.  When I invited her to join a class I was presenting on defensive firearm use, she recoiled in horror, as if I were some sort of monster.  (I was more than a little surprised that her husband, a shooter and hunter and outdoor type, had married her;  but he obviously saw beneath the surface to the real person, who hadn't yet revealed herself.)

That changed in the small hours of the morning she found an intruder climbing in through the window of her two-year-old daughter's bedroom.  According to her (somewhat bemused) husband, she stormed into the room (pushing him aside in the process), pepper-sprayed the intruder in the eyes, waited until he'd put his hands up to his face, kicked him hard in the unmentionables, and proceeded to beat him unmercifully about the head with her daughter's favorite wooden stool (so hard that she broke it).  According to him, when the cops arrived, they stood around scratching their heads and saying things like "Ma'am, why did you call us?  You were doing just fine on your own!"  Kipling warned us about the female of the species . . . and I suspect he was right, particularly when the female in question is the mother of a young child.

I heard about the incident at five o'clock that morning, when she called, woke me out of a sound sleep, and demanded to join my next shooting class, at once if not sooner.  She learned well, and persuaded her husband (who, already a shooter, needed little persuasion) to buy her a Colt Commander lightweight .45 pistol, which she proceeded to carry everywhere with almost religious fervor.  She'd learned the hard way that life happens, whether we like it or not - and she was determined to make sure it worked out in her (and her child's) favor next time.  The rest of her (former) circle of friends were horrified at her transformation, needless to say, and promptly turned their backs on her;  but her husband (and yours truly) were all in favor.  It did their marriage no end of good, too.

So, I fail to see why all the fuss about Governor Noem's actions with respect to her dog.  She did what was necessary, when it was necessary.  I have no idea whether or not she's a good governor, as I live a long way from her state and have never had the need to do any research about her:  but the story makes me more likely than not to consider her favorably, as a politician who's walked the walk as well as talked the talk.  Readers who know more about her can tell the rest of us in Comments if that's a reasonable assessment.

Peter

Remember the sanctions against Russia that were instituted in the wake of that country's invasion of Ukraine?  Looks like those sanctions are (as usual) somewhat less than a stellar success.  Sky News reports:

British carmakers appear to have continued selling hundreds of millions of pounds of luxury vehicles to Russia even after the invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions, exporting the cars indirectly via former Soviet states, Sky News analysis suggests.

While direct British car exports to Russia have fallen to zero following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that collapse has been followed by a corresponding increase in car exports to countries neighbouring Russia, most notably Azerbaijan.

Our analysis, based on official HMRC trade data, finds that the UK exported £273m of vehicles to Azerbaijan last year, a 1,860% increase compared with the five-year period preceding the invasion.

Not only is the increase in exports to Azerbaijan unprecedented, it is of a similar magnitude to the annual car exports to Russia in the two years before the imposition of sanctions, which averaged £330m.

Alongside the UK HMRC statistics, Sky News has analysed UN international trade data which shows that over precisely the same period that Britain recorded an unprecedented increase in car exports to Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan recorded an unprecedented increase in car exports to Russia.

. . .

Sky News has previously shown that many other banned items, including those known to have been repurposed as weapons, have been sent to former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Those states have all recorded sharp increases in their exports to Russia.

There's more at the link.

As usual, sanctions are a feel-good panacea, not an effective means of exerting pressure.  All they do is increase the cost of doing business with the nation targeted by them.

South Africa, my country of origin, is an excellent example.  A mandatory arms embargo was instituted against it in 1977.  It certainly interfered with the importation of naval vessels and other major items of hardware:  but that didn't stop South Africa from building its own and/or upgrading existing assets, including obtaining (legally or illegally) all the technology needed to do so.  In addition, major expansion of its domestic armaments industry produced world-leading advances in artillery, mine-protected vehicles (which were the foundation of almost all MRAP designs in the West a couple of decades later) and other areas, as well as supplying almost all components, spares and tools that had previously been imported.  Being at the time the largest producer of gold in the world, South Africa could pay suppliers in utterly untraceable precious metals or in any currency in the world, obtainable by selling that gold.  (Why do you think the Krugerrand became the world's most widely circulated gold coin during that period?)

Needless to say, there were any number of vendors ready, willing and able to do business on those terms, including major companies in the USA, Britain, Germany, Israel and elsewhere.  Also, non-military products that could be applied to military needs were imported on a massive scale:  I mentioned a couple of examples in a previous blog post.  To cite yet another one, South Africa produced its own clones of the DEC PDP-11 computer in large quantities, and imported Japanese clones of the IBM System/370 mainframe.  Imported computers could not legally be supplied to South Africa's military or armaments industry, in terms of the arms embargo:  but they could be (and were) sold to other government departments and organizations for non-military scientific research and administrative data processing.  If those same computers from time to time ran software for other entities as well, who was to know?

Sanctions benefit two groups of people.  First, they benefit the feel-good, do-good emotional types who can at least say, "Well, we're doing something about the problem!"  The fact that what they're doing isn't very useful or effective is neither here nor there - it's the feelings that count (and the public relations value), not the facts.  Second, they benefit all those who are prepared to take money from anybody for anything.  They can ratchet up their prices according to how difficult the sanctions make it to export to the buyer, and according to how badly the buyer needs what they have to offer.  That latter, by the way, is a two-edged sword.  South Africa often encountered sellers who believed they had a lock on the market, and could force South Africa to pay whatever they demanded for what it needed.  They usually found that they were sent on their way without a penny while another, more reasonable (and more realistic) seller got the business.  (If you're going to play hardball with an expert in hardball, you'd better be sure your ball is harder than his, so to speak.  Some would-be sellers who thought they were hard men tried tactics such as threats of exposure, blackmail, etc., only to find that South African purchasers could be harder than their worst nightmare.  Others watched and learned, making it much simpler to do business with them in future.)

To go back to the report above, the British manufacturers involved have clean hands according to the sanctions regulations.  They're not making money out of Russia, but from Azerbaijan.  The fact that anyone with two working brain cells can figure out that Azerbaijani money is, in fact, very thinly disguised Russian money is conveniently swept under the carpet.  After all, one can't expect politicians to do without the bribes payoffs contributions they receive from commerce and industry;  and the thought of causing greater unemployment by asking awkward questions is just too ghastly for them to contemplate.  After all, that might cost them votes!

So much for morality in politics and in business . . .

Peter

Please take three minutes of your time to listen to this lady describe the impact of pro-migrant policies on the city of Denver, Colorado, and on her life.  It's mind-boggling.  Then realize that precisely the same impact is being and will be experienced in every single left-wing-controlled city in this country, unless and until the voters lose patience and put a stop to it.

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1764076610636894524

This is happening TODAY.  What will it be like tomorrow?

As I've said so often before, along with many others who have eyes to see and ears to hear:  GET OUT OF BIG BLUE CITIES.  NOW.

Robert Heinlein's "Crazy Years" are already here, with just a few details differing from his vision.

Peter

I had to laugh at this report.

Poisoned AI went rogue during training and couldn't be taught to behave again in 'legitimately scary' study

AI researchers found that widely used safety training techniques failed to remove malicious behavior from large language models — and one technique even backfired, teaching the AI to recognize its triggers and better hide its bad behavior from the researchers.

The details are at the link.

Had those researchers never heard the term, "Like father, like son"?  Had they never considered that any artificial intelligence that human intelligence can create or develop is likely to resemble, and emulate, the intelligence that inspired it?

Human beings are flawed creatures - each and every one of us.  We have good points, bad points, indifferent points.  Criminals, psychopaths and their ilk are as human as the rest of us, and in some cases good folks exhibit many of the traits of bad folks.  (Consider leadership.  It's amazing how many leaders, in business, politics or anywhere else, exhibit many of the traits of a psychopath.  It's almost like it goes with the territory.)

Any artificial intelligence designed to work with, and sometimes take the place of, human intelligence is going to have to be the same way.  If it isn't, it won't play well with others, because it won't understand - instinctively, empathically or intellectually - how their minds work, and won't know how to interact with them.  I'm sure the developers of artificial intelligence aren't explicitly trying to make their products psychopathic, or as weird as humans can be;  but those traits are part of human intelligence.  I'll be very surprised if any artificial intelligence designed to mimic and/or duplicate the latter doesn't turn out the same way.  I don't see how it can be otherwise.

Peter

From Larry Lambert:

25% of women in America are being treated for some form of mental illness. That means that 75% of them are running around untreated.

No comment!

Peter

It seems that "16 vessels of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, including an IRGC spy ship aiding Houthi operations, sustained significant damage after reported explosions".  No word on exactly where it happened, except that the report came from Iran.  From the smoke and flames, I suspect they won't be going anywhere soon.

Funny how little oopsies like that happen . . .

Peter

Last week, writing about the findings of an in-depth audit of Disney's tame "government" of its land in central Florida, I observed:

The more I read about this mess, the more it appears - assuming the audit is correct in its findings - that Disney has been engaged in criminal activity (i.e. in clear violation of black-letter state and Federal law) for literally decades, and expected to continue to do so.

I now think that was an understatement, to put it mildly.  The more we learn about the situation, the worse things look for Disney.

Disney wasn’t just greedy, it was stupid greedy. Mickey the Great and Terrible didn’t just have his hand in the cookie jar, he’d crawled inside and ate everything in it to include the bottom of the jar itself.  

Here’s a fun example, Reedy Creek owns some power plants, and these are taxpayer-supported. Although, they are primarily to be used as emergency backups. Please excuse this next bit because I’m going to have to say allegedly a LOT. Allegedly, it would take years to bring one of them online. The other has allegedly been turned into an air conditioning plant, but they both allegedly still collect subsidies. I mean why pay for something out of your pocket when you can get Uncle Sucker to buy it for you? 

The auditors weren’t permitted entry into these plants because the employees that run these Reedy Creek government facilities DON’T WORK FOR REEDY CREEK ... They are Disney employees.

. . .

The chief auditor stated that Reedy Creek produces no electricity at all. This startled the hell out of a lot of us because Disney World has huge banks of solar panels. In fact, they’ve committed quite a bit of ecological damage to the local wildlife trails to build them. To say nothing of how badly those filthy things will poison the land when the inevitable hurricane blasts through and wrecks them.  

Disney nonetheless ignored real-world environmental terrorism to pat itself on the back over a being phantom friend of the Earth. Disney World loudly and proudly proclaimed that these panels provide 40% of WDW’s power, cleanly!  

Allegedly, all of the electricity provided by those solar panels is sold to a third-party utility. Disney World allegedly buys 100% of its power from Duke Energy and only 10% of that is allegedly provided by anything approaching “clean energy.” 

. . .

The alleged activities have been going on so long it would meet the legal definition of a “criminal enterprise” if these allegations are proven in a court of law ... And no, the IRS can’t ignore this. If they do, every business in the country will start doing it.

There's more at the link.

How on earth did Disney think it could get away with such shenanigans forever?  One is irresistibly reminded of the ancient Greek connection between Hubris and Nemesis.  To put it another way:  "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."  It begins to sound very much as if that fate has been visited upon successive generations of Disney board members, directors and top management.

One might almost feel sorry for the Disney Corporation, if it hadn't systematically and with malice aforethought trashed the legacy of its founder and led untold millions of children around the world astray with its deliberate denigration of "traditional" values and morals.  I'm afraid that if Nemesis is to be visited upon anybody, the Disney Corporation is more deserving of that fate than most.

Pass the popcorn . . .

Peter

Shamelessly stolen from Kim du Toit, because it made me laugh out loud:

When a fly falls into a cup of coffee:

• Italian – throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage.
• German – tosses out the coffee, carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee.
• Frenchman – takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.
• Chinese – eats the fly and throws away the coffee.
• Russian – drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge.
• Israeli – sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
• Hamas Terrorist – blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinians so there will be peace.

Peter

Sadly, a very plausible cartoon for this Halloween season.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the 'Pearls Before Swine' Web page.

As he so often does, Stephan Pastis nails the current zeitgeist with uncanny accuracy.

Peter

The late Johnny Nash was a well-known singer-songwriter.  One of his hits was "There Are More Questions Than Answers", which included the famous line "The more I find out, the less I know".  From that perspective, I think he'd have approved of this cartoon from Stephan Pastis.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

I suspect most of those on both sides of the political aisle in Washington D.C. (and all 50 state capitols) would fit Wise Ass's categorization!

Peter

A report from Sweden suggests that some people are no longer waiting for the authorities to act against serious crime.  It's been auto-translated into English.

A 26-year-old taxi driver from the Middle East was reported for rape against a 14-year-old girl – and then found hanged in a nature reserve. Now the girl, her boyfriend and three of his brothers are suspected of the very troublesome murder, which according to the prosecutor had the character of "an execution".

The events began in February this year when the then 15-year-old girl reported that the taxi driver had raped her when she was 14.

On March 26, a taxi was found abandoned, overflowing and with the taximeter in progress on a parking at Hjälstaviken nature reserve in Enköping municipality north of Stockholm.

On April 1, the taxi driver – was found hung in a tree 500 meters from the car.

The police quickly turned their attention to the now accused youth. All young people refuse crime except the girl who admits that she attracted the man to the place – but only because he was beaten.

. . .

All the defendants deny crimes, but the evidence includes mast connections from mobile phones and DNA traces.

On a jacket, DNA was found from both the taxi driver and one of the brothers.

There's more at the link.

That's what happens when the authorities can't or won't act against criminals, particularly unwanted alien intruders (of which Sweden has an outsize proportion among its population).  It's not limited to Sweden by any means.  Friends, acquaintances and contacts of mine in law enforcement around these parts, ranging from Oklahoma City to Dallas/Fort Worth and from Amarillo to Texarkana, have all reported "unintended consequences" of crimes, sometimes fatal for the criminals, other times just very, very painful and/or impoverishing.  I'd say I've heard of at least a couple of dozen occurrences over the past year or two, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

When police will no longer respond to a crime because it's too "minor" for them to bother about, or because they're too busy elsewhere, or because it's politically incorrect to make a fuss about certain crimes and/or perpetrators . . . people will take it upon themselves to act.  The authorities don't like that, and will doubtless threaten dire consequences, but it's already happening and it's going to go on happening.  After all, if those same authorities ignore the rule of law and the provisions of our constitution by encouraging (and even paying for) massive alien invasion, they shouldn't be surprised when the crimes committed by those aliens (an increasing proportion of them, I'm told) attract consequences that also ignore the law and the constitution.  One good (?) turn deserves another, and all that sort of thing.

Of course, I don't approve of such doings and I don't recommend that readers of this blog should act that way.  Nevertheless, it's still going to happen.  For the authorities to think they can stop it by issuing severe warnings and passing yet more laws and regulations against it is utter folly.  People will do whatever they need to do to ensure their security.  It's been that way for generations, and it's not about to change.

It's very telling that many governments and their agencies are coming down more and more in favor of evil, and against good, in defiance of their citizens.  It's not just about crime - it's about every aspect of our lives.  Neil Oliver asks:  "Who are we and what is it we truly care about?"

Those are very good questions.  Highly recommended viewing.

Peter

From Stephan Pastis yesterday.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

I don't know about the same life over and over . . . thinking back on all I've been through, only an idiot would want to go through it all over again!  As for a different life, as I suppose is anticipated by those who believe in reincarnation:  the ways of human suffering are almost infinite.  Why would I want to experience them?  And why is it that most of those who claim to believe in reincarnation always assert that in a past life or lives, they were royalty or holy or rich or something eminently desirable?  Why were so few of them peasants who got eaten by a passing crocodile or lion?

I recall a lady who claimed to me that in a previous life, she'd been an Egyptian high priestess of Isis.  I assured her that yes, she had been, just as I'd been an Egyptian high priest of Ra.  In fact, I recalled lending her several hundred gold staters way back then, that she'd never repaid.  That meant, at compound interest over the past two and a half millennia, she now owed me rather more than the national debt of the USA.  She accused me of not taking her seriously.  Me?  As if I'd do a thing like that!

Peter

Posted by Francis Turner on MeWe (clickit to biggit):

Coincidental.  All together, now:  "Yeah, riiiiiiiiight!!!"

You don't have to be a Trump supporter to realize that the Democratic Party's fixation over Donald Trump marches in lockstep with its equal fixation on deflecting any and all criticism of President Biden, his family, and their joint and several corruption.  It's so obvious, you could see it from outside the solar system!

Peter

As forecast by many observers in recent years, the pedophile brigade is trying to piggyback on the LGBTQ community to become more widely accepted as "normal" in society.  Among other things, they're trying to classify themselves as neutral-sounding "M.A.P." (Minor Attracted Persons) instead of pedophiles.

I think Rolf Nelson's reclassification of that acronym makes it much more suitable, don't you?

Works for me!  I wonder where I can sponsor a few millstones for deserving pedophiles?

Peter