Giving, and the mentality of giving

 

A few days ago I asked readers to support two friends, James and Tirzah Burns, as James struggles with very serious illness.  Thank you to all who responded.

One respondent, Boron, said this in a comment.

It tears at my heart not to be able to be as free with my money (provide to those in need) as I had been was while I was workng.

Whatever money I've put away; we need it most now that I'm retired with disabilities.

The pennies that have fallen through the cracks we use to provide the little extras for our children, particularly in these times.

The remainder we're putting aside for our grandchildren's education.

It is all the more painful for me as a Jew aware of my obligations: tzedakah and more particularly, gemilut chasadim.

The more important question of course, invades my conscience: "Do I take the crumbs from my childrens' mouths to feed a stranger?"

I often wonder what will be my answer to Him.

I've had some long discussions with friends and acquaintances about giving to others;  when it is (or perhaps is not) appropriate, how much one can/should give in relation to what one has or earns, deciding who or what causes deserve our contribution and which do not, and all that sort of thing.  It's been interesting to develop a way of looking at giving that isn't bound to any one religious faith or secular philosophy, but rather to the simple fact of living as a human being.  Here's how I look at it.

I begin by acknowledging the many times I've needed help - and not only economically, either:  emotional support, advice, encouragement, all are "help".  From there, it follows logically that if I have needed help, I should be prepared to offer help to those who need it, because they are human beings, too.  The nature, kind and amount of that help are, of course, open to discussion.  For example, I won't help an alcoholic or drug addict buy more of the poisons that feed their addiction, and I won't give them money to buy those things for themselves.  I will, however, buy them food, and help them get to a place where they can get the physical, mental and spiritual help they need to change their lives (e.g. the Salvation Army).

There are those who object that by refusing to help them do what they want to do, I'm in effect judging them, forcing them into moral or ethical compartments with which they might not agree.  I guess that's right - but by not exercising judgment, by helping them continue with their self-destructive behavior, I would be contributing to the inevitable end of such moral laissez-faire:  their demise.  I won't accept such co-responsibility;  I can't, due to my own moral code.  If that doesn't satisfy some critics, well, I'm sorry about that.  They can help in whatever way seems good to them, and I'll do likewise.

What worries me more than such questions is the number of people today who seem to regard it as a weakness to support anyone.  What's theirs is theirs, and they don't see why they should share it, particularly if they might have to delay or postpone something they want in order to spend their money, or time, or talents on someone else's need.  The concept of giving as a duty, as a way of life, seems foreign to them.  That stands in stark contrast to the unknown sage who said:

“I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing that I can do, to any fellow human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it; for I will not pass this way again.”

All those points, of course, can be made irrespective of any religious background.  To a Christian, the Bible is filled with admonitions and encouragements to give what one has to help those who have not, and to support one another in the trials and tribulations of life.  Many regard those obligations as fulfilled by contributing to the collection in church on Sunday.  Fortunately, many more go further than that.

My own personal approach to giving starts by thanking God for the many blessings I've been given, some without requests to others, others as a result of asking for help (the most recent example of which being my bleg for help with medical bills last month).  That leads to a direct corollary:  if I hope and expect to receive help when I need it, I must be ready and willing to offer help when others need it.  It's like two halves of the same coin.  I may not be able to offer as much as another person needs, or the precise form of help they need, but I'll get as close to it as I can.  My wife and I don't "tithe" as such;  we rather say that our money is there to meet our needs and those that the good Lord puts in our path.  Some months we may give very little to others.  Other months we may donate a lot more than a tithe.  It all depends what needs present themselves, whether or not we feel led to respond, and our current ability to do so.  However, it's a fundamental rule for us that we should always be willing to respond as best we can.  If we try to hold on to everything we have, why should we expect others to be any different?

It's also true, of course, that we can't possibly meet most of the needs around us.  We're not rich, and are unlikely ever to be so.  Therefore, we donate according to what is practical and possible for us, and trust the good Lord to make up that which we cannot.

A final thought.  I think we would all do well to develop a "mindset of giving".  This is where we look around us, at people and activities close to us, and ask how we can contribute.  There may be nobody needing help with hospital bills, or trying to rebuild their home after a fire;  but our local small-town library may need funds raised, or our old folks' center wants money to upgrade their facility.  A few dollars from enough people can help them a lot.  If we actively look to pick just one project or need each month, and support it with a few dollars or a couple of hours of work, that's a start.  It puts us in the right mind-set to recognize larger needs when they arrive, and be willing to consider helping to meet them.  We don't just dismiss them out of hand, or casually disregard them.  If we all did that, I think a lot more of us would be willing to help out in all sorts of ways that we currently don't think about.

Hope I didn't bore you with this diversion into the weeds.  I just thought Boron's point, and similar comments made by a couple of other readers, deserved further attention.  I'll be interested to read your own perspective(s) in Comments.

Peter

Is it possible for a politician to be even more cretinous than usual? Oh, yes...

 

The politician in question is Cory Booker.  Basically, if it moves, as far as he's concerned it's Fascist, and must be condemned as such.  It would help - greatly! - if he actually knew the meaning of the word Fascist, as illustrated a couple of days ago, when he appeared on a podcast titled "The Anti-Cult Club".  He came up with this gem of political wisdom:

Yes, indeed.  I've never heard of any "old African saying" that "sticks in a bundle can't be broken" - and I'm a damned sight more African (having been born and raised on that continent) than Senator Booker.  However, I do know the meaning of the Latin word "fasces".  According to Wikipedia:

A fasces is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often, but not always, including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a Roman king's power to punish his subjects, and later, a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.

The image of fasces has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial power, law, and governance. The fasces frequently occurs as a charge in heraldry: it is present on the reverse of the U.S. Mercury dime coin, behind the podium in the United States House of Representatives, and in the Seal of the U.S. Senate; and it was the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party in Italy (from which the term fascism is derived).

So, when Senator Booker uses the image of the fasces to illustrate opposition to fascism, he's heading in precisely the opposite direction to what he means.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  Far too many of our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, behave in precisely the same way.  It's as if election to office knocks several dozen points off some (but fortunately not all) politicians' IQ scores.

Meanwhile, if you're logged into X, go enjoy the whole thread in which Sen. Booker's gaffe is discussed.  It's giggle-worthy.

Peter

Quote of the day

 

From a reader over at Larry Lambert's place:

"I like to think that my Scots-Irish ancestors came to America in the early 1700s because it later gave them one more chance to shoot at the British."

Now why is that so instantly believable?  Could be because I have Scots and Irish ancestors as well . . .

Peter

Yay pemmican!

 

A few years ago I mentioned Steadfast Provisions and their pemmican products.  Earlier this year I boosted their fundraiser, aimed at building a brand-new, much-updated commercial kitchen to produce much larger quantities of pemmican and other products.  I'm very glad to report that the new kitchen is up and running, and their pemmican is better than ever.  If this article sounds like I'm shilling for them, well, I guess I am, because I really like to see small businessmen come up with a good idea and make a living out of it - and I just plain like pemmican anyway!

(In case you didn't know much about pemmican, there's a very informative article about it at their Web site.  Recommended reading.)

The new product is similar to the old, but more finely ground, producing a powdery rather than a granular substance when crushed or folded into other foods.  I find the flavor much improved, too.  Last time I ordered the salted-only pemmican, without seasoning.  It was fine, but very bland, designed more to be added to other foods (e.g. soup or stew), or supplemented with flavorings if eaten alone.  In this way it would taste more like the main dish, but provide added protein.

This time I ordered the seasoned version, and find it's much more palatable to eat on its own, even without adding anything else.  The texture appears much closer to Plains Indian descriptions of it, where it was eaten by the pinch out of a parfleche rawhide bag.  I tried some yesterday flavored as the Indians did, with honey dripped over it - delicious!  One can also add dried or fresh berries for a fruitier, sweeter flavor.

I plan to keep several bricks of this stuff in stock as an emergency supply.  One could exist by eating only pemmican, if one had to, but that would get boring fairly quickly!  I regard it as an excellent "bug-out" food, energy-rich and nutritious, easy to get to while walking or driving.  The new version tastes good enough that I'll probably be eating some as a snack on a regular basis, too.  I don't think one could possibly get foods that are more "keto" than pemmican, so I'll take advantage of that.

I prefer to buy the "brick" package of pemmican, containing 2.2 pounds of concentrated beef.

It may seem expensive, with a price tag of $97 for 2.2 pounds of pemmican, but bear in mind how greatly the "raw" weight of meat has been reduced in the production process.  One of those bricks contains over 10 pounds of raw beef, and given the price of good-quality beef today, that's a bargain in anyone's language.  If you'd like to try something smaller and lower-cost, the company also makes a pemmican bar for $17.  Expect them to be hard to find for a few months as the word spreads about the company's new production and new flavors.

To all my readers who contributed to Steadfast Provisions' fundraiser, thank you very much.  IMHO, it's been worth the wait to get their new premises into production.

Peter

The Ukraine war is increasingly equipping and empowering drug cartels

 

South American drug cartels are deliberately sending some of their best fighting men and women to Ukraine, to learn how to use drones against an enemy, and how to convert ordinary civilian models into killing machines.  Because this is a growing danger within the USA as well, I'll provide an extended quote from the article.

Mexican intelligence officials tipped off their Ukrainian counterparts in July.

They warned Kyiv that cartel members were infiltrating Ukraine’s foreign ­fighter cadres to learn how to fly first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones, which give pilots a bird’s-eye view of the target as they close in with an explosive payload.

Mexico’s warring drug cartels, who are engaged in their own drone arms race, now appear to be adopting the technology.

Last week, footage emerged for the first time of Sinaloa cartel sicarios, or hitmen, brandishing a new “fibre-optic” FPV drone, a model pioneered in Ukraine that is controlled by cable rather than radio signal to evade jamming devices.

“Ukraine has become a platform for the global dissemination of FPV tactics,” a security official in Kyiv told Intelligence Online, a French security website that first broke news of the investigation into Eagle 7.

“Some come to learn how to kill with a $400 drone, then sell that knowledge to whoever pays the highest price.”

Quite how many cartel hitmen have gone to Ukraine for drone “training” ­remains a mystery. The investigation in the summer is understood to have discovered at least three former members of Colombia’s disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla movement, heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.

It would not be hard for a cartel member to blend in these days in Ukraine, as the International Legion is ­increasingly relying on Latin American recruits.

Most are from Colombia, where large numbers of former security personnel have found themselves jobless in the wake of the landmark 2016 peace deal with the Farc.

. . .

It is thought that several thousand have served in the International Legion over the past three years, with up to 300 killed.

Cartel members are understood to be taking advantage of the fact that Kyiv has limited means to vet overseas recruits properly.

“We’re seeing reports in recent months that both Mexican cartels and Colombian criminal groups are trying to infiltrate the Ukrainian military to learn techniques that they can take back to Latin America,” Alexander Marciniak, a Latin American intelligence analyst for Sibylline, a private intelligence firm, told The Telegraph.

“The cartels can use drones for all sorts of purposes, attacks and surveillance on each other and on the security forces, and for smuggling contraband.”

Mexico has seen a huge surge in the use of attack drones in recent years, from just a handful of incidents in 2020 up to more than 40 per month by 2023. It reflects a growing militarisation of the drug gangs, with cartels hiring professional ex-soldiers, many of them from Colombia, to give them an edge.

. . .

As well as getting access to vast ­arrays of weaponry, foreign volunteers can also learn a range of techniques for building home-made attack drones, many of them circulated on DIY-style instruction videos.

Meanwhile, both Colombia and Mexico face growing US pressure to crack down on cartels, following Donald Trump’s announcement that designated Mexican cartels would now be treated as “narco-terrorist” groups rather than street gangs because of their growing firepower.

Four suspected drug boats have been destroyed by US drone strikes in the Caribbean, and Mr Trump has also hinted he could send US troops into Mexico. Colombia is considering a bill to outlaw its soldiers from enlisting as mercenaries.

Critics, however, say that banning them from legitimate work could simply drive more into the ranks of the cartels.

There's more at the link.

This would also help to explain why the USA is ramping up its operations against drug cartels in several South American countries, including (that we know of) Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela.  If US forces and law enforcement agencies can "get ahead" of such technological advances, they can keep the danger at arms' length, so to speak.  However, if cartels are already carrying out tens of operations every month (again, those are just the ones we know about), it may be too late for such delaying tactics to succeed - and drones may make such operations a lot more dangerous for those tasked with them.

This points to a growing internal security problem inside our borders.  What if the current Antifa/BLM/far-left/progressive demonstrations are suddenly augmented by attack drones aimed at law enforcement trying to control the unrest?  Our police aren't equipped or trained to deal with such weapons, and it's hard to see how civilian law enforcement could be so equipped without transgressing a number of constitutional rights and issues.  Nevertheless, I'd say it's increasingly likely that they will face such dangers.  It's in the cartels' best interests to disrupt law enforcement, for different reasons, but towards the same end - making parts of the country ungovernable, so they can take advantage of that for criminal rather than political advantage.

Those of us who regard personal preparedness and willingness to resist crime and violence have some hard thinking to do here.  We don't (generally) have access to such technology;  but without it, we'll be several plays behind the game, and much more vulnerable.  That applies particularly to larger cities within which the users of such drones will find it easier to conceal themselves and operate untraceably.

Matt Bracken has written extensively on the growing danger of drone warfare within the USA.  I highly recommend that you read his article on the subject, complete with many photographs.  I think all of us will do well to consider how this danger may affect us, in our own regions and circumstances, and plan accordingly.

Peter

President Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize

 

I've been getting awfully fed up with the brouhaha over whether President Trump should/should have/ever will win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the first place, previous winners of the Prize have comprehensively dishonored and discredited it merely due to their inclusion on the winners' roster.  Lawdog puts this nicely in perspective, so I won't repeat the details here.

My main objection is simply that the Nobel committee has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they're merely a collection of politically correct idiots.  I remember how disgusted I was when former President Obama received the award.  He had done (and has never done) anything even remotely justifying his receiving it.  He was (and remains) a political hack, a tool in the hands of those manipulating him, and they never allowed him to achieve anything positive.  It was a cretinous move to award him the Peace Prize, because anyone with a couple of working brain cells to rub together could figure that out for themselves;  and if he had any personal integrity at all, he should have refused the Prize, to demonstrate that he wasn't completely a puppet of outside forces.

Since his acceptance of the Peace Prize, it's been irredeemably dishonored in my eyes, and in the eyes of many around the world.  I don't want President Trump to be awarded the Peace Prize, and if he is, I want him to refuse to accept it.  Why would anyone with any self-respect want to be numbered among a bunch of losers like that?

Peter

A school massacre narrowly averted

 

Full marks to two Florida teens who came across a TikTok video last month, and in the process averted a tragedy.

The video included a five-second clip of the interior plans of an unidentified building, along with disturbing elements suggesting violence.  After talking with a friend, the teens contacted the authorities in Florida and told them about the video clip.  The authorities had nothing to go on except the clip, but from the video the FBI were able to identify the building as a school in Kennewick, Washington.

The federal authorities immediately contacted law enforcement, and a combined team tried to narrow down the identity and location of whoever had posted the video clip.  The story of how they did so is interesting detective work in itself.  Through hard work and some lucky breaks, they were able to identify and arrest the fourteen-year-old would-be perpetrator, Mason Bently-Ray Ashby, before his planned attack.

A screenshot that was deleted about 7 p.m. Sept 20, about 45 minutes before the search warrant of Ashby's home was executed, had the beginning of a manifesto, according to court documents.

"Hey, you found my manifesto I am sure you will all be laughing at me by the time you figure out who I am and why I did what I did ...," it said. "I'm sure my Discord and other social media will be released nearly instantly after the massacre."

The manifesto said he had sent photos to friends and, "Hell, maybe, I'll even record the attack and send it to a select few."

There's more at the link.

If convicted of the offense, Ashby can only be incarcerated until the age of 21, because he's still too young to be charged as an adult.  That's a whole new set of problems for the justice system to deal with as the case progresses.  There's also the issue of why parents weren't given more warning, and more information, as soon as the danger was known.  Some of them are asking very pointed questions about that, pointing out that it left their children in danger.  I find it hard to disagree with them.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, I hope somebody acknowledges and rewards the initiative shown by those two Florida teens.  I think it's beyond reasonable doubt that they prevented a school massacre.

Peter

Antifa: smoke and mirrors, gaslighting and astroturfing

 

All the attention being paid to Antifa and its minions and associated organizations is clearly making the organization very uncomfortable indeed.  One of its leading lights (such as it is), Prof. Mark Bray, has fled to Europe to avoid what he will doubtless categorize as "persecution", and other leaders are either "taking the gap" with him or trying to avoid public identification in the USA.

Another tactic is to issue "talking points" to left-wing commentators to deny that Antifa even exists.  It's so blatant it would be funny, if it weren't so dishonest.  See for yourself in this montage of TV commenters all agreeing with each other.  It's a tactic we've seen many times before - gaslight the opposition, pretend something isn't so when it very clearly is, and try to obfuscate the issue at every turn.  (A helpful question to deniers:  if it doesn't exist, why is Prof. Bray's book about the organization still a best-seller?)

As a general rule of thumb, I think the safest approach is to assume that any far-left-wing progressive source, or claim, or allegation is a lie from start to finish.  They can't be trusted, because they can't be truthful.  It's like some pathological obsession with them.  When presented with conclusive video evidence and eye-witness confirmation, they simply reject it as false rather than engage with it.  They're what Robert Heinlein would have referred to as "yammerheads", trying to talk over and drown out the opposition and defy reality.

The lies and confrontations are only going to get worse from now on.  We have a very difficult period ahead of us as the present Administration tries very hard to remove the excrescences that have defiled the US body politic, and return us to the rule of law.  Let's not allow excrescences like Antifa to disrupt public understanding of what's really happening out there.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 281

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.