A very sad morning, and a fond farewell

 

Regular readers will know of Ashbutt, our farm kitten that we adopted back in 2016.

He would have celebrated his tenth birthday in the second half of this year . . . but sadly, that won't happen any more.

We have a couple staying with us, along with their two cats, which we've segregated in a room behind a closed door, because Ashbutt is very territorial and possessive.  Last night, it got much worse than that.  He was trying to open the door to the guest cats' room, yowling loudly, and behaving very aggressively when we tried to stop him.  Finally, when one of our guests came out of the spare bedroom too close to him for his comfort, he must have been startled, because he attacked her, biting and clawing, drawing blood.  When I ran over and tried to shoo him away from her and the closed door, he tried to attack me!  He's never behaved that way to us before, but once was more than enough.  (Last weekend we had a family staying with us, including an eighteen-month-old infant.  We segregated our cats to avoid issues with small children, but even so, what if Ashbutt had got out?  The thought of what a big, aggressive cat could do to a toddler is just too scary for words . . . )

With my wife's help, Ashbutt was shut in the garage for the night.  She and I talked about it, but it was obvious what had to be done.  We simply can't risk the injuries he might inflict on our next guest, or even on us, if this sudden violent, aggressive streak continues.  With great sorrow, I took him to the vet this morning and arranged for euthanasia.  His body will be sent for rabies testing (which is apparently a legal requirement in cases like this), and his ashes will then be returned to us.

I absolutely hated having to say goodbye to Ashbutt.  He's always been a "daddy's boy", as opposed to our older cat, Kili, who's definitely my wife's cat.  He would jump on my lap at every opportunity and snuggle for a while.  That won't happen any more, and I know I'll miss him very much . . . but . . . there's the "but" for you.  When an animal turns aggressive towards you, you absolutely cannot take the risk that he'll do the same towards others.  The injury aspect is only part of the problem:  there are legal exposures involved when it comes to damages, reimbursement, etc.  Tolerating that sort of behavior could cost a whole lot of money down the road.  (Our current guests have been very gracious in assuring us they understand, so that won't be a problem in this case;  but that doesn't prevent possible future recurrences.)

Goodbye, Ashbutt.  We'll miss you very much.

Peter

Rescuing a kidnapped girl from her predator captors

 

The BBC has the fascinating story of how a girl who'd been missing for six years was finally traced and rescued.  It's too long to cite everything here, but this excerpt gives you some idea of the care and attention to detail involved.

Squire and his team could see, from the type of light sockets and electrical outlets visible in the images, that Lucy was in North America. But that was about it.

They contacted Facebook, which at the time dominated the social media landscape, asking for help scouring uploaded family photos - to see if Lucy was in any of them. But Facebook, despite having facial recognition technology, said it "did not have the tools" to help.

So Squire and his colleagues analysed everything they could see in Lucy's room: the bedspread, her outfits, her stuffed toys. Looking for any element which might help.

And then they had a minor breakthrough. The team discovered that a sofa seen in some of the images was only sold regionally, not nationally, and therefore had a more limited customer base.

But that still amounted to about 40,000 people.

"At that point in the investigation, we're [still] looking at 29 states here in the US. I mean, you're talking about tens of thousands of addresses, and that's a very, very daunting task," says Squire.

The team looked for more clues. And that is when they realised something as mundane as the exposed brick wall in Lucy's bedroom could give them a lead.

"So, I started just Googling bricks and it wasn't too many searches [before] I found the Brick Industry Association," says Squire.

"And the woman on the phone was awesome. She was like, 'how can the brick industry help?'"

She offered to share the photo with brick experts all over the country. The response was almost immediate, he says.

One of the people who got in touch was John Harp, who had been working in brick sales since 1981.

"I noticed that the brick was a very pink-cast brick, and it had a little bit of a charcoal overlay on it. It was a modular eight-inch brick and it was square-edged," he says. "When I saw that, I knew exactly what the brick was," he adds.

It was, he told Squire, a "Flaming Alamo".

"[Our company] made that brick from the late 60s through about the middle part of the 80s, and I had sold millions of bricks from that plant."

Initially Squire was ecstatic, expecting they could access a digitised customer list. But Harp broke the news that the sales records were just a "pile of notes" that went back decades.

He did however reveal a key detail about bricks, Squire says.

"He goes: 'Bricks are heavy.' And he said: 'So heavy bricks don't go very far.'"

This changed everything. The team returned to the sofa customer list and narrowed that down to just those clients who lived within a 100-mile radius of Harp's brick factory in the US south-west.

There's much more at the link.  It's well worth reading in full, to give you some idea of the difficulties involved in tracing missing children.

The horrifying part of the story, to me at any rate, is that when police finally raided the house and rescued the girl, they learned she'd been raped by a sexual predator for six years.  Six years - and she was 12 years old when rescued.  That means she'd been missing and abused for half her life.  She was a child, with no resources to call on, no parent to lean on, nobody to help at all.  How she survived such abuse is something I can't comprehend.  Now in her 20's, she has a few things to say in the article about her experiences.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of missing children in our country.  Many of them were sent here by human traffickers, sold on to predators and abusers across the country.  It's heartbreaking to think that Lucy is only one such person.  If only we were all more alert to the warning signs, we might be able to help so many more . . .

Peter

Yet again, indulging transgender madness leads to tragedy

 

Yesterday saw yet another example of a transgender individual going insane and trying to destroy everyone around him - taking them with him, so to speak.

Ten people including the shooter are dead after ⁠an ⁠assailant opened fire at a high school in western ⁠Canada in the town of Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday in one of the country's deadliest mass casualty events in recent history.  Initial reports by local police and the Canadian media described the shooter as female.

However, the authorities reluctance to release the identity of the suspect was an immediate red flag.  Their reports only indicated that the shooter was a female in a dress.  

Independent journalists now say they have the identity of the alleged shooter, corroborated by family members:  Jesse Strang, a 17-year-old biological male who started identifying as a "woman" in 2023, is reportedly the culprit behind the school massacre which left 10 dead and 25 wounded.   

. . .

The tragedy represent yet more evidence that transgenderism is a dangerous mental health crisis.  Multiple mass shootings (including school shootings) have been perpetrated by transgender suspects in recent years, and suspected Charlie Kirk shooter, Tyler Robinson, was living with his transgender boyfriend at the time of the shooting.   

In almost every instance, the transgender status of the shooter has been covered up or dismissed by authorities and the establishment media. 

There's more at the link.

One has to ask whether someone who suffers from gender dysphoria, particularly if they insist on living a transgender lifestyle should not be automatically classified as potentially dangerous.  Not all of them are, of course;  I've known three genuinely transgender individuals, all of whom have undergone permanent sex-change surgery and lived as their chosen gender for decades.  However, they are the exceptions that prove the rule.  I've met dozens, perhaps scores, of "pseudo" transgender people whose behavior, outlook, etc. demonstrate serious mental problems, to the point that some might better be labeled as bat**** crazy.  Where does one draw the line?  Is it possible to draw a line and say that, if someone crosses it in any measurable way, he or she is more or less dangerous to society?

Strang killed nine victims, including his mother and younger brother, and injured 25.  The small, close-knit community where they lived will be haunted by the horror of his crimes for years to come.  May the souls of the victims of yesterday's shooting receive mercy from God, and may those who mourn them receive what comfort they may.  May the injured be blessed with healing, and may their families be given grace to help them recover.  And, please God, may the rest of us learn from this and all too many other tragic examples, and do what we can to protect ourselves and our loved ones from transgender insanity and violence.

Peter

A very sobering statistic

 

This headline caught my eye yesterday:

Day 1,419: The Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Just Surpassed Soviet War With Nazi Germany

This week has marked another grim milestone in the nearly four-year long Russia-Ukraine war. The conflict has just entered its 1,419th day - which means it has officially surpassed the entirety of the historic Soviet campaign against invading Nazi Germany, which lasted 1,418 days from June 1941 to May 1945.

Red Army forces eventually drove Nazi troops back from the Volga River all the way to Berlin, before seizing the German capital. But in today's war, the 1,419th day is just another in a long one in a tragic and grinding war of attrition, where it is believed each side has lost literally hundreds of thousands.

. . .

On both sides, a whole generation of young men is being wiped out.

There's more at the link.

We too often focus on the geopolitical and/or military and/or strategic and/or statistical aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war.  However, that misses the human tragedy that is playing out for both countries.

All nations involved in the two World Wars lost a significant proportion of their brightest and best young men.  After those wars, their absence was noteworthy in that the performance of most of those countries (in any sphere you care to name) was less than expected, and lower than pre-war forecasts would have anticipated.  My father, who fought in World War II, often said that the reason Britain descended into socialist chaos so fast after the war was that too many of the future leaders who could have kept her on track were dead.  Leaders tend to make themselves vulnerable simply by leading, because they're priority targets in war.  An army without effective leaders at all levels - NCO, junior officer, field officer, etc. - is a losing army, and, by extension, so is the nation that uses it.

We don't know what the future holds for either Russia or Ukraine, but we do know for certain that a lot of their young men aren't going to be there to help them.  Both countries will suffer from this loss for decades to come.

May the dead of both sides be forgiven their sins, if that is possible, and may they rest in peace.

Peter

Armistice Day

 

All over the world (except the United States), this date, November 11th, is solemnly commemorated as Armistice Day.  On the eleventh day of November, 1918, at the eleventh hour, the guns fell silent across Europe as World War I, the so-called "War To End All Wars", finally ground to a halt.

Both of my grandparents fought in that war.  My paternal grandfather and his wife came to live with my mother and father in their declining years (as was common in an earlier generation - they weren't dumped into old-age homes).  One of my earliest memories was of my grandfather's constant hacking cough, the result of injuries sustained from a German gas attack on the trenches during that war.  His lungs never fully recovered, and the injury shortened his life appreciably.  Thus, even though the war had finished decades before I was born, it still touched my memory.  He died when I was three or four years old, I don't recall precisely which.  The house was somehow very still without his coughing . . .

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Peter

The tragic poison of extremism

 

I've been worried for years about how the extremes of American politics, both left- and right-wing, have been growing stronger, and eroding the center.  Mutual tolerance, openness to new ideas, and acceptance that others can be right and we can be wrong, have always been the hallmark of civilized discussion.  Trouble is, as our civilization crumbles under so many pressures, so too do those hallmarks.

Rod Dreher, a commenter whose insights I value greatly, has written two columns about anti-Semitism and its disastrous effect on right-wing politics.  They epitomize the dangers I'm seeing in the body politic as a whole right now, because the same comments can be applied to other extreme viewpoints as well.  They're long articles, but worth investing the time to read them in full.

In his first essay, Dreher examines the rise of the "groyper" influence.

Every one of the right-wing Jews to whom I spoke last night believe that Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous man in America to Jews, because in their view, he’s the most important mainstreamer of anti-Semitism on the Right. This was painful for me to hear, because I consider Tucker a friend, and though I have been disturbed by the anti-Jewish turn his rhetoric has taken, I had not been aware of how extensive his anti-Jewish commentary had been (I don’t regularly listen to his podcast), nor the effect his rhetoric has had on the outlook of American Jews.

. . .

As we left the Green Room headed to the stage, we saw on our phones that Tucker had hosted [Nick] Fuentes on his show. For me, this was a bright red line that I was hoping Tucker would not cross. But cross it he did ... Tucker asked nothing about Fuentes’s past statements praising Hitler, or any number of horrific things that have come out of that kid’s mouth, (e.g., “We will make Jews die in the holy war.). And then there’s ... blaming “organized Jewry” for threatening the existence of America, because they allegedly put the tribe over the common good.

. . .

The fact that Tucker Carlson, the most influential right-wing media figure in America, went from dismissing Fuentes early this year as a gay twerp in a Chicago basement, to having him on his show and blessing him with a soft interview, is a sign of the times. And not a good one. It was a two-man Unite The Right rally. Bad times ahead. The time to find your courage, fellow conservatives and Christians, and speak out against this stuff, is NOW.

Fuentes comes off on the Tucker broadcast as reasonable, despite his anti-Semitism, sexism, and deranged bigotries. If you are tempted to think of Fuentes that way, I advise you to look at this long compilation of the sick pedophilic stuff Fuentes and his followers have posted online. (There is no pedophilia imagery, don’t worry; it’s just screengrabs of texts and videos in which they celebrate pederasty and rape.)

. . .

As I’ve long said: Jews are canaries in the civilizational coal mine. As the gatekeepers and authorities are collapsing everywhere, we are going to see horrible things. I am thinking this morning about my warning from twenty years ago to the Left that if they accepted anti-white identity politics, they were going to legitimize pro-white, anti-everybody else identity politics among a younger generation that lacks the taboos. And it has happened. It is a howling absurdity that Fuentes, Candace, et al. claim to be Christians while promoting this stuff, but you should know that outside the US, the connection between Jew-hating and Christianity is historically well-established.

So, by the same logic, if the Right legitimizes Fuentes-style identitarianism, it is going to push normie liberals (what few there are left) further into radicalism. This is the Weimar dynamic: the feeble and discredited center could not hold against the growing strength of left-wing and right-wing radicals.

. . .

Many of us on the Right have wondered for years why decent liberals in authority kept their mouths shut about the left-wing anti-white bigots. And then the crazies took over the party. It’s happening to the Right now. I don’t know where this is going, but it’s nowhere good — and it’s getting there with accelerating speed.

A frightening thought: what if there are no gatekeepers at all anymore? What if anybody can say anything, and do not risk political exile or irrelevance?

There's more at the link.  Disturbing, but highly recommended reading.

In his second essay, Dreher looks at the similarities between the Weimar Republic in post-World-War-I Germany, and current political events in the USA, and puts the "groyper" phenomenon in that perspective.

I was talking today with a Christian I know who is a big player in conservative politics, and who is as appalled by it as I am. He tells me that what normie outsiders like me don’t know is that something like 30 to 40 percent of the Republican staff in Washington under the age of 30 are Groypers — that is, followers of Nick Fuentes.

Let that sink in.

. . .

The essential appeal of Trump, I learned, is not so much from his policy proposals (there weren’t many), but because he was a big fat finger in the face of a corrupt Republican establishment.

I didn’t vote [in 2016], because I couldn’t stomach Trump, I would never have voted for Hillary, and my vote didn’t matter in Louisiana anyway, as it was destined to go to Trump in the electoral college. But watching how the Left went into manic overdrive to destroy him and everything related to him changed me. The Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 broke me. I realized that as bad as Trump was on so much, he was the only thing standing between Us and Them. I voted for him in 2020, and though I wasn’t in the US in 2024, I openly supported him then. The Biden administration showed us what wokeness in power would and could do. I had no qualms at all about supporting Trump 2024, even though his personal character flaws are all too clear, still.

Now it seems that Fuentes is having the same kind of appeal to Zoomers as Trump did for Boomers and others a decade ago. Compared to Fuentes, though, Trump comes off as Marcus Aurelius. The Fuentes you see on the Tucker interview is not at all the Fuentes of his livestreams.

I simply cannot understand the logic behind treating Fuentes as a normal political actor — even if he has a relatively big following. He is a deeply bad man, with no redeeming qualities. If his mode of discourse, and beliefs, become part of the mainstream of conservatism, we’re done, and we will deserve it. To normalize Fuentes is to move the Overton Window where it must not go. It’s like saying, “Well, I personally disapprove of sniffing glue, and I think it’s bad for us, but if we are going to stop people from glue-sniffing, we need to listen to them to see why they take pleasure in sniffing glue.”

Look at what happened to the Left once they started giving respect and attention to the radical Left. We got the Great Awokening, in which it was considered perfectly legitimate to attack white people as evil because of the color of their skin, and to cancel people for simply dissenting from whatever new radical thing they demanded we all accept as truth. Now they’re about to elect an actual old-Zoomer Islamic race communist as mayor of the most important city in America. Zohran Mamdani is a million times more charismatic than Nick Fuentes, but I see them as part of the same trajectory of American politics.

. . .

I’ve used the term “Weimar America” from time to time, but now, it be gettin’ real.

What we mean when we talk about “Weimar Germany” is that time in Germany between the end of the First World War and Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, when Germany’s democracy wobbled under the pressure of economic collapse, and the falling-apart of all institutions, including parties of the center. Moral norms evaporated, especially around sexuality. Real power in the streets shifted to extremes of Left and Right.

. . .

This past spring, at a screening of the LNBL documentary in Nashville, a woman in the audience asked if I thought the danger of “soft totalitarianism” had passed because Trump was in office again, and the woke were on the defense.

No, I said, because all the conditions that [Hannah] Arendt identified as present in a society ready for totalitarianism are still with us. I don’t want to live in a right-wing society like that any more than I want to live in a left-wing one.

. . .

I have zero sympathy for people on the Left in all this. They chose not only to platform, but to bring into policymaking people every bit as radical as Nick Fuentes, only more educated, and better able to negotiate institutional culture. For at least twenty years, I have been publicly saying to liberals that if you embrace and advocate for identity politics of the Left, you are going to call up the very same thing from the Right one of these days.

. . .

Let me say to you, whether you are on the Left or the Right (and I do have some left-wing readers): if you don’t have a Bright Red Line for the kind of radicalism you are willing to tolerate in public, you had better lay one down, because you are going to be tested.

. . .

Weimar America. If, God forbid, there is a high-profile political assassination, or a severe economic downturn, we are going to be in very, very bad trouble. You all know I’m a blackpill kind of guy, but it seems that reality is catching up to my doomerism.

Again, more at the link.

I can't argue with Mr. Dreher's opinion of Mr. Fuentes.  If you're in any doubt about that, go read the thread that outlines Mr. Fuentes' personal morality (linked above).  If that doesn't persuade you, you may be beyond help.

I've been more and more worried by the number of bloggers and "opinionators" (for want of a better word) who are growing more and more anti-Semitic in their diatribes.  To blame any one group for the troubles of our society, of our body politic, is ludicrous.  After all, if any one group was so consistently focused on achieving world domination, surely it would have succeeded long ago?  I reject any attempt to assign responsibility and/or blame to a group.  It's always the individual who's at fault.  Sure, a group of equally guilty individuals may gather together to achieve their joint aims, but inevitably, the group falls apart sooner or later.  (Read any reputable history book for evidence of that.)

Applying that to our country today, I don't blame Democrats, or Republicans, or liberals, or conservatives, or Jews, or snake-handling Bible-belt evangelicals, for the state we're in.  Those groups are part of the problem, but they're made up of individuals who've been more or less persuaded that their particular group has the answers, and everybody else is part of the problem.  I've been personally on the scene of at least a dozen civil wars and inter-tribal conflicts, and in every case the individuals involved were not the problem.  The problem was always charismatic leaders who used emotion, religion (or tribal superstition) and outright violence to achieve their ends.  When the dying was over, it was never a question of "He did it!" or "She did it!" - it was always "They did it!", with "They" being whichever group could be most conveniently blamed.  That simply meant that another generation would be raised to hate that group or groups, and the conflict would start all over again in future.

Right now, we have groups who are more than willing to kill Leftists, and others who are more than willing to kill Rightists.  They don't care whether the people they kill are good or bad - simply by attaching a label to them, they are defined as "on our side" or "enemies".  With such attitudes becoming more and more prevalent, these United States cannot stand united for much longer.  To put it in a Biblical perspective, "a house divided against itself cannot stand".  We've already seen far too many examples of that in this country:  try "Bleeding Kansas" for a start.  There are many others.

Please, friends, stop and think about this.  It's all around us - and it may yet destroy us.

Peter

The murder of Charlie Kirk and the World Trade Center attack

 

The founder of Turning Point USA and key supporter of President Trump, Charlie Kirk, was shot dead yesterday while speaking at Utah Valley University in that state.

There's already been an immense amount of verbiage spouted by all the usual suspects on both the left and the right of US politics.  I'd just like to point out that Mr. Kirk's murder is merely the latest act in the growing intolerance, sectarianism and naked violence that's become a feature of our political debate since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

So much changed in America on that day, and in the months and years that followed.  Life became more precarious, less insulated from the violence of the modern world.  We went to war, and spent thousands of lives (and tens of thousands more wounded and maimed servicemen) in an ultimately failed effort to combat terrorism and reimpose what our politicians saw as US dominance.  The scars of that conflict are visible all over the world to this day, in countries that have become unstable, violent and brutal - including our own.

Inevitably, that failure has had its impact on our internal politics.  Far too many of us are all too ready to lash out, less willing to talk, not amenable to compromise.  It's "our way or the highway", and we're ready to consign to the highway anyone with whom we disagree.  That's what somebody did to Charlie Kirk yesterday.  His very existence, and the message he proclaimed, threatened their own views of and desires for this country, so they killed him.

I knew almost nothing about Mr. Kirk before yesterday.  I've never followed Turning Point USA, and didn't pay much attention to his electioneering.  Nevertheless, his murder is a body blow to political discourse and sanity in America, because right now there are undoubtedly many on the conservative side of our political divide who are more than willing to see murder committed against a Kirk equivalent on the liberal/progressive side.  Any prospect for tolerance and discussion is, for the time being, almost certainly dead in the water.

That means, whether or not we agreed with Mr. Kirk or President Trump, we're all damaged by this murder.  What will its wider, long-term impact be?  Nobody can say . . . but I suggest we'd better be thinking and praying very hard about it.

Rod Dreher has some very faith-filled and insightful commentary on this tragedy.

Charlie Kirk was no friend of the extreme right. But I fear that the gruesome slaying of Iryna Zarutska by a deranged black man, and now the assassination of Kirk — interesting that both bled out from a wound to the same place on their necks — will be a signal to militant far-right groups to go active. I hope I’m wrong. The urge to do something is powerful. I feel it too. But do what? White people and conservatives don’t burn down cities. Yet the capacity to absorb leftist violence is not infinite.

. . .

I suspect that today and in the days to come, there will be some people online cheering on the prospect of civil war, of violence to settle scores ... the fractures are so deep in America today. True, we are nowhere remotely close to the political violence that savaged the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s; reading Days Of Rage is a necessary corrective to fevered speculation about today’s climate. Nevertheless, there was at that time deep tissue connecting Americans, and that gave the country resilience. I fear that has gone now ... something wicked this way comes. We all know this. Prepare.

There's more at the link.  It's worth reading in full.

May Mr. Kirk rest in peace, and may his family receive what comfort they may;  and may his murderer(s?) be swiftly brought to justice.

Peter

The Minneapolis shooter's insane "mandate"

 

Fellow blogger Big Country Expat has taken the time and trouble to photograph every page of the Minneapolis church shooter's ramblings (I refuse to use his name - let him be forgotten!), and has published them on his blog, along with a translation of the weird mixture of English and pseudo-Russian, Latin and Cyrillic script in which they're written.  Click here to go to his place and take a look.

I think he's done us a public service by putting this stuff out there.  I suggest each of us bookmark his post, and if possible save a copy to our own computers, because sure as hell the progressive left is going to try to deep-six the "manifesto" in order to "protect" the trans community.  We need to remember, and be aware every day, that the proportion of mass shootings and other such crimes committed by trans people is out of all proportion to their actual numbers.  It's getting to the point where I think we might start classifying all trans people as at least potential criminals of this sort, purely to protect ourselves against the larger-than-usual proportion of mass murderers coming out of their number.

Also, it's long gone time to improve our school security.  I suggest training and arming teachers, since they're the people on the spot if trouble starts.  I know this latest shooting occurred at a school church service - but that can be catered for, too.  I knew more than a few priests in Africa who routinely carried a gun beneath their vestments as they celebrated Mass, and for good reason.  They lived in parts of the continent where inter-religious violence was the rule rather than the exception, and they saw it as part of their duty to protect "the flock of God which is their charge".  I'm sure their successors are continuing the same policy today.  More power to them!

Peter

A "long drop" indeed!

 

In Africa, when one digs a latrine for use in the bush, there are different ways of going about it.  A "scrape" is literally that - scrape away the surface dirt, do your business, and cover it with the dirt you'd previously removed.  If you're planning a longer stay (e.g. overnight), or if multiple people want to use the same facilities, a "short drop" is called for - digging a hole a foot or two deep, using it (with each successive user scooping a little dirt over his or her "deposit" to control odors), and then filling it in before departure next day.  A "long drop" is for longer-term use, several days or weeks in the same camp.  A hole is dug at least four or five feet deep, sometimes more, depending on whether the soil is firm enough not to collapse into the cavity.  It's often surrounded by a thatch shield, so that ladies can use it in greater privacy.

(I could tell a rather embarrassing story against myself involving a long drop, a snake, and a double-barreled 12ga. shotgun . . . but I shall refrain.  Ahem.)

At any rate, it seems an unfortunate resident of Mumbai in India inadvertently discovered another meaning to a "long drop".  In fact, it's probably the longest drop of all . . .

A 52-year-old man with an upset stomach died after falling from the 18th floor of a building in Mumbai on Sunday while defecating from the edge of a shaft, an official said.

The incident occurred at the 18-storey Matoshree Sadan building, Wadala, in central Mumbai, said the official from RAK Marg police station.

The man, a resident of the high-rise, had been suffering from dysentery for the past few days.

"The victim, who was jobless, lived with his sister on the 18th floor. Someone was using the toilet in their house when he lost control of his bowels and rushed outside," an official said.

He sat to defecate on the edge of a shaft near a lift but lost his balance and plunged into a pit on the ground floor, the official said.

There's more at the link.

A tragic situation, and I'm sure his family is devastated . . . but I can already hear the jokes around campfires the length and breadth of Africa!  Unfortunately, Indians are not popular in Africa because they run many of the local stores that are regarded as interlopers and profiteers, so the jokes will be rather barbed.

Peter

A tragedy leads to a safety recommendation

 

I heard some terrible news yesterday.  A friend and his wife had a daughter in her late teens or early 20's, I don't recall exactly which.  She was severely asthmatic, and had been so from an early age.  They were driving through Arizona and New Mexico, heading for Texas, when they encountered a very heavy dust storm, which reduced visibility so much that they had to stop on the roadside.  Unfortunately there was also a brush fire in the area, driven by the fierce winds of the dust storm.  To make matters worse, their vehicle's ventilation system malfunctioned, letting in the smoke and dust.  The combination caused their daughter to suffer an asthma attack.  They tried to call for help, but the poor visibility and road conditions prevented any from reaching them before their daughter went into cardiac arrest.

My friend is understandably distraught after that experience, as is his wife.  However, he's trying to make it count for something positive by passing the word to everyone he knows that such conditions - or combinations of conditions - can be extremely dangerous to an asthmatic, or indeed anyone with any sort of breathing difficulties such as COPD, etc.  Since both my wife and I have breathing-related issues, he made sure to call me and tell me the sad news.

No sooner had I ended the call than I drove to the nearest Harbor Freight branch and bought four of these Gerson P95 disposable respirators, two in Medium size (to fit my wife) and two Large (to fit me).

One of each size will go into our vehicle emergency kits, to travel with us wherever we go.  They're disposable, so they're not very high-tech, but they'll do for the sort of incident my friend and his family encountered;  and they're low-cost enough that we can afford to replace them every year, to make sure they're still functional.

There are other respirators out there, some a lot more capable - and more expensive - but they're probably overkill for use as emergency travel aids.  Shop around.  However, I don't think the simple paper or cloth masks we used during the COVID imbroglio, or even the stiffer painting-style masks, will be as effective as this design, with its close-fitting face mask and external filters.  I'd rather spend a bit extra for better protection.

In the hope that my friend's tragic loss may help others besides his friends and acquaintances, I share the news with you, and the solution I've adopted.  If any of you suffer from, or have family and/or friends who suffer from, breathing-related issues, I strongly recommend that you do something similar to make your travels a little safer.

Peter

Who will guard the guardians???

 

In ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal asked "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" ("Who will watch the watchmen?" or "Who will guard the guards themselves?").  Basically, it refers to the impossibility of imposing ethical or moral behavior when those responsible for enforcing it are themselves unethical or immoral.

We see this time and again when people in positions of trust betray that trust by preying on the very people they're supposed to help.  Priests sexually abusing altar boys is a very well-known recent example (although it's not nearly as widespread as the mass media would like to pretend).  Counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists and others are just as guilty.  A recent case drives home the point.

A Canadian “kink-allied” psychologist who worked with vulnerable youth in Calgary is facing child pornography charges following his arrest on January 30 by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams’ (ALERT) internet child exploitation unit. Dustin Hrycun, 45, worked to treat both adults and troubled youth at Rising Sun Psychological Services.

Hrycun has been charged with possessing and disseminating child pornography through the online social media application Kik. Kik is a freeware messaging platform notorious for its use in facilitating in child sexual abuse.

. . .

Despite the ongoing investigation, Hrycun was released from custody into the community and is scheduled to appear in court February 25.

A now-deleted online profile posted to Psychology Today listed Hrycun as a “sex-positive,” “kink allied,” “queer allied,” “transgender allied,” and “non-monogamy” expert offering counseling services for teens and adults.

“I specialize in depression, anxiety, trauma, couples work, life transition, belief system struggles, religious trauma, existential and self discovery, and sexuality and gender issues. In being a survivor of conversion therapy I have a passion for helping people move through and past anything holding them back from living life unhindered,” reads Hrycun’s profile.

There's more at the link.

One of the things I hated most about the priest sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is that it led to at least suspicions in the eyes of most Catholics about most of their priests.  One could be the purest, holiest, most upright and moral priest out there, but one still suffered from "guilt by association" that was very hard to shake.  To call it demoralizing is the understatement of the century!  It wasn't helped by bishops who uttered pious platitudes to their clergy about "this is part of sharing the suffering of Christ, who was also falsely accused".  Those bishops were responsible for admitting the wrong people into candidacy for the priesthood, and educating them in some seminaries that became a hotbed (you should pardon the expression) for immorality and sin.  See "Goodbye, Good Men" for a painfully accurate description of what many had to endure.

Tragically, the same infiltration of liberalism and secular humanism happened to the "caring professions" like sociology, anthropology, psychiatry and psychology.  People were admitted to professional status, offering "support" to those in need of professional help, who should never have been allowed to practice.  Because of that neglect, they ran rampant through the professions and hurt a great many people, some so severely that they may live the rest of their lives mentally and emotionally scarred beyond repair.  Examples are legion:  see, for one particularly evil case, pediatrician Earl Bradley.)

What this means is, if you're a parent or caregiver, you need to be hyper-sensitive to the potential dangers of taking a child to a particular practitioner or specialist for assistance.  Most of them will be fine . . . but some of them will not.  How to tell the difference is beyond my expertise, but I'd certainly do as much of a background check as I could.  Have any complaints been made against them to their official licensing body?  If so, what sort of complaints?  How many?  Were any sustained?  Does the provider's premises, or his/her staff, or his/her customers, give off any "vibes" (for want of a better word) that make you feel uneasy?  Do you talk with your child(ren) after taking them to such a professional, trying to get a feel for their reactions?  Are they nervous or scared to talk about it?

It's a sick, sad, sorry world when we have to advise something like that.  Sadly, it's the world we've got, and we ignore such precautions at our peril.  Also, for the love of all that's holy, do not - I say again, DO NOT!!! - take your child to any specialist who advertises himself in the way that the suspect did in this most recent case.  Just reading his profile, and how he describes himself, should make any sound, rational person steer their children as far away from him as possible!

Peter

Unspeakable tragedy - but it's not the first time

 

News of a police shooting in Missouri has shocked many readers.

Chilling body camera footage captures a Missouri mom holding her baby as she lunges with a huge kitchen knife at cops who then shoot them both dead.

The newly released footage shows officers — called to a reported family assault — initially talking calmly to mom Maria Pike, 34, as she holds her 2-month-old daughter Destinii Hope while standing inside a closet at her home in Independence.

Eleven minutes into the footage, Pike can be seen suddenly grabbing a large knife from a bedside table and lunging toward an officer.

There's more at the link, including video footage.

I'm sure the police officers are just as traumatized by what happened as the deceased lady's husband.  Sadly, they had no time to think, no time to plan - particularly for a situation like that.  They could only react, and defend their own lives.

It's not the first time I've come across something like that.  I've mentioned before on this blog an incident in South Africa, one where I was an eye-witness.

I was present when a vehicle-mounted patrol was passing through a very volatile area.  A woman rushed out from behind a hut, with a baby strapped to her chest in the typical African manner.  She charged the lead vehicle, holding a Molotov cocktail in either hand, their fuses lit.  The soldiers on the vehicle had a very simple binary choice.  Shoot her - which meant snap-shooting, probably through the baby on her chest, because there was no time to take careful aim and avoid it - or be immolated when the gasoline bombs exploded inside the load bed of the patrol vehicle.  You can imagine their feelings . . . but they were left with no other options.  She, and her baby, died.  Whose fault was that baby's death?  Not the soldiers', I would argue.

Again, more at the link.

What causes a mother to "snap" like that?  How can she even think of endangering her own child in order to attack others?  I don't know . . . for that matter, I don't suppose anyone knows.  For the deceased mother's sake, I can only hope that there was some sort of mental illness or aberration involved - because I can't imagine any mother making a sane, rational choice to act like that.  It's beyond comprehension.

Say a prayer, if you'll be so kind, for the souls of that mother and her child - and for the sanity of her husband, who had to watch that happen.  I don't know if he'll ever be the same man again.  Also, of course, pray for the officers involved, who have to be carrying all sorts of emotional guilt, even though they must know intellectually that she left them with no choice.  Believe me when I say that, even if one hasn't pulled a trigger, the emotional guilt of such an experience takes decades to subside, and is never completely forgotten.

Peter

Detailed after-action report from North Carolina

 

Regular readers will have seen mention of Killer Bees Honey in these pages on several occasions.  They produce what I believe may be the finest honey in North America.  The "beekeeper", Sean, is an online friend of many years' standing.

The apiary is in the the Pisgah National Forest area of North Carolina, and took a pounding from Hurricane Helene last week.  Here's Sean's after action report to his friends, shared on this blog with his permission.

Things are slowly returning to normal here. Food is coming back onto the grocery store shelves, but it’s still cash only for some. Banks are still limiting withdrawals of $1k.

As I wrote the below, I continually thought about your dealings with Katrina.

Sean

******************************************************************

Like all good horror stories involving a demonic woman, it began in the darkness of night. I awoke Friday at 0230 and watched as the metal patio furniture, sans cushions traveled S/B past the bedroom windows. My drowsy WTF reaction was mirrored by the cats WTF stare. The whole house generator had already kicked on. Ten minutes later and with a head lamp piercing the driving rain, I was in the lower bee yard placing heavier rocks on the hives. When I was done, Helene’s 55 knot gusts were pushing the hives off their foundation. Luckily, each hive had around 65 pounds of stored winter honey. I’m sure that’s what kept them from being blown over. I could not say the same for me as I had to get on my hands and knees with each blast of wind. Retreating back to the safety of the house, I could hear trees falling, some snapping in half deep in the forest around me. No bueno. All I could now do is start the coffee maker and wait for dawn. First light came with continued howling winds and rain. A sourwood tree narrowly missed the house and was laying across the pad in front of the kitchen window. Its leaf laden boughs frantically waving to me in distress with each shock of wind.Too dangerous to step outside, I went downstairs to the mechanical room to begin the quick process of charging up the battery bank.

Since then it’s been a total shit show in WNC. I celebrated my 69th birthday chainsawing my way down our mile long driveway. Two days, several naps and six bar chains later, the driveway was passable. This can’t be said for adjacent mountain roads. The 26” of rain washed out or made local roads and bridges impassable. I jumped into the Polaris Ranger once I cleared the driveway and drove the four miles to the main road. What I saw can only be described as post apocalyptic. Neighbors working chainsaws clearing roads and driveways. Head on collisions of trees into houses. Many homes were uninhabitable. Peaceful creeks and flowing water rock falls turned into churning rivers and torrential waterfalls. Bridges and damns were breached. Duke power was releasing water from lakes causing more destruction, but they had no choice; a damn failure would have been more disastrous. 

The ham radio community immediately initiated an emergency net. Numerous surrounding repeaters were connected and a call went out for volunteers, SAR and swift water rescue crews. This was the only way to communicate for four days. People from all over the world were using their HF stations to contact net control for welfare checks on loved ones or family members. Net control then used UHF and VHF frequencies to contact local ham operators. They in turn left the safety of their homes to brave dangerous conditions. Some had to abandon their cars and hike into hazardous conditions. It was heartbreaking to hear one station report back on a welfare check of an isolated elderly couple's home located deep in a holler. He radioed that all he found was a driveway at the end of which was a raging river.

I was on generator and battery b/u power for nearly five days. There was no damage to the hives and out buildings. AVL was closed to all traffic for four days. Denise was in Chicago, but I was able to pick her up when HWY 64 and the airport reopened. My immediate neighbors, a young family of five had no power. I gave them a five gallon water bladder, a daily thermos of coffee, venison and a Honda 2200 generator along with a jerry can of gas to keep the fridge and essentials powered. They came up to the house to eat and shower, but left last Wednesday to be with relatives in Raleigh. 

We now have grid power and cellular. WISP (internet) is spotty.

Intial Impact

Massive flooding and wind destruction. Total devastation. No power. No cellular. No internet. No water. Land lines were down. Everything was closed. Many towns and communities were literally swept away. Chimney Rock, Swannanoa no longer exist. Boone and half of Asheville were inundated with water. Interstates 40, 26 and HWY 64 were impassable. The geography was literally changed by the flood. I don’t know how some roads, businesses and homes can be rebuilt. Many deaths; a community near the French Broad river in Hendersonville was told to evacuate at the beginning of the storm. Some stayed. Two days later, several bodies were found hanging out of windows and trees. Five were found in a debris field a mile away. Around 250 water plants were destroyed or inundated with muddy water and won’t be operational for weeks if not months. Within 24 hours 37 private helicopters were air dropping food and water to isolated communities. FEMA was non existent.It was private citizens and small businesses helping each other. 

Presently

230 deaths and rising. Nearly 1000 still missing. I was talking to a local Sheriff’s Lt who said they’ll be pulling bodies out of debris fields through the holidays. 50% of homes in the county are still without power.  Most roads leading into town are clear. Interstate 40 at the TN border will remain closed for approximately a year during repair. 26 now has passable lanes, but will need repair. Hwy 9 leading into Chimney Rock is non existent. Hwy 19 leading into Asheville is severely damaged and unusable. All national and state parks are closed due to immense tree falls and trail damage. The Blue Ridge Parkway and all buildings along the Pkw are closed. The nearest town to us is Brevard which now has power. Prior to that, the local grocery stores were open for two days after the event, but it was cash only. I understand they closed soon thereafter because they were cleaned out. Propane is still in short supply. Gas stations which have power have no 93% and are limiting gas to ten gallons per vehicle. There isn’t any non ethanol gas. Lines for gas go for 100’s of yards. Portable generators along with chainsaws and 2 stroke fuel are sold out. Nightly looting around Asheville. The Ingles (grocery) warehouse and Walmart were looted within 24 hours of the storm. Cash only stores and gas stations are causing a run on the banks. As a result, customers are only aloud $1K cash withdrawals. Essentials such as food, water, diapers and baby formula are currently being distributed at churches and community centers by local citizens. What people need isn’t FEMA’s $750. They need food and water. It’s been eight days and some isolated communities are literally going hungry. Good Samaritans, some from out of state trying to reach those in need are being held up at gun point for supplies. There is fear among health professionals of dysentery caused by lack of clean water and unsanitary conditions. 

I read there is a loss of some 60,000 bee hives in the Southeast. There may be greater losses if beekeepers can’t get to the remaining hives and feed them sugar water. My bees are good; they keep their first 65 pounds of spring wildflower honey for the winter.

There were multiple episodes of civil unrest and violence. A dude in Brevard shot out the tires of someone else cutting into a gas line. A fist fight broke out near the local credit union. My bee out yard is near a sketchy neighborhood. Apparently, some local meth heads broke into a home thinking the owners had split. Nope. The husband comes out of the bedroom busting caps from a 357 revolver… we’re old school up here. Said meth heads retreated to their vehicle and returned fire. Husbands wife opens the bedroom window and throws down with a full mag from an AR-10. The next morning nothing was found other than broken glass and some blood. The sheriff’s dept. never responded because no one called (no phones) Like I said, old school.

For further information, I urge you to read the below link regarding Helene’s impact written by an eloquent local writer for USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/10/03/helene-asheville-north-carolina-flooding-climate-change/75490093007/

Opinion: Helene devastated my NC community. What I saw next helped me survive.

My Preps

My wife and I live in the Lake Toxaway zip code area, but not in the HOA. We have 75 acres on the apex of Walnut Cove Mountain. Our driveway is exactly one mile long. We are surrounded by 512,000 acres of the Pisgah National Forest and game lands which is adjacent to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and Nantahala Wilderness. We are very isolated from the rest of the world which is fine by me. Most of my prep education came from being a LEO out of Southern California. I was an active participant in earthquakes, wildfires and riots. Until recently, I was a certified AEMT and SAR member. Presently, I am a beekeeper, a full time house bitch and part time sex slave. Titles I proudly embrace. I hunt deer, wild turkey and bear off my property. My wife, Denise is a retired CFO of a company in NYC. She is an anti gun liberal who happens to know the benefits of capitalism. Go figure.

All our preps worked out amazingly well and without issues. From the initial storm to grid up, all I missed were fresh bananas. First world problem.

Power: We are grid tied with 21 roof mounted solar panels producing 7kW midday. Energy we don’t use from the PV system is stored in a Sonnen Battery 18kW system. During grid down situations, which happens a lot up here, A 30kW, water cooled, Generac powers the entire house. Combined with a buried 1000 gallon propane tank, I can live off grid indefinitely. The Generac was utilized just three hours a day to charge the batteries until I had full sun. Afterwards, everything was powered by stored solar energy. 

Water: We are on a well and septic system. The well is powered by both the grid or generator and PV array/Sonnen system.

Food: I have three freezers filled with wild game. Most I give away to my sister’s in law who are also anti gun liberals, but will take wild meat killed with my guns. Again, go figure. Besides the wild game, we have two walk in pantries filled with supplies for immediate use. I have other food supplies for the real ZA. Bags and cans of food for the Children of Satan (cats).

Cooking: Propane stove top. Electric range. Outside propane grill with multiple tanks. 

Fuel: I have several caddies filled with 93 [octane] non ethanol gas treated with Startron. We have several vehicles including a UTV and ATV. Both with winches and other accessories to make them more functional for our mountainous property. We have not been to a gas station since Sept 26.

Security. Multiple overlapping surveillance systems one on a local server (not dependent on WiFi or cellular)

I have preps specific for such events and had the chainsaws gassed and ready. All vehicles were gassed up and garaged. Speaking of preps, it’s a bit ironic that Sept was “preparedness month” and the national prepper conference in nearby Sylva was washed away. Both emails I received two Thursdays ago saying it was definitely on was not only irresponsible, but dangerous. Stupid decisions lead to stupid results.

Fall back: A separate fully functional building with a Jotul wood stove, running water and stored cots with sleeping bags. 

Fall back #2: A sprinter 170 chassis van converted by Outside Vans in OR. It has 45 gallons of diesel fuel, 20 gallons of fresh water and 630 amp hours of lithium ion batteries with solar. The van has a Guzzle H20 which can purify more water (we have 3500 linear feet of spring fed streams on the property).

Hope everyone is well. 

Sounds like Sean and his wife had quite a time of it.  Good to know you're both safe, buddy, along with your bees!  Thanks for the great after-action report and feedback.  We'll all learn from it.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:  Take note of the "cash only" nature of business after the storm.  This happens very often when power and/or communications are knocked out.  If you haven't got an emergency cash reserve at home, this can leave you stranded, particularly if banks aren't open for any reason.

Killer Bees Honey is currently donating all profits from honey and merchandise sales to local hurricane recovery efforts.  If you'd like to support them, please do - and enjoy the honey!  They haven't yet updated their Web site to reflect that, because Web access is extremely difficult for them right now;  but that'll happen soon, I'm sure.

Peter

Remembering October 7, 2023

 

It's become a cliché to speak of 10/7/2023 as "Israel's 9/11", but it remains true.  I don't think Israel, and Jews worldwide, will ever forget that day.  They should not - and we should remember and mourn with them.

Do not forget those who died.  Their memory should inspire us to ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain.

Terrorism remains one of the greatest evils in the world.  We won't succeed in eradicating it as long as there are those whose hatred for others exceeds their love for their own people and themselves.  Words will not eliminate the threat.  Only when we all remember - and apply - the Golden Rule will that be achieved.

"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."

Hamas did precisely that.  So did Hezbollah.  So have Iranian proxies like the Houthi and others.

Israel has not forgotten, and will not forget.  We do not forget.

Peter

Another good one

 

Following on our previous post, here's a meme from Matt Bracken.

True dat . . . and all of them are letting - actively aiding and abetting - the so-called "refugees" and "migrants" to invade and take over our country.

Peter

We remember

 

May the souls of all who were murdered on September 11, 2001, rest in peace, and may their sins be forgiven them . . . and may the rest of us never forget them.

Peter

Yet more child abuse...

 

I should be inured to this by now, but the parade of atrocities just goes on and on and on.

‘Ferocious violence’ accompanied ‘shocking’ levels of abuse at Ireland’s religious-run schools, report finds

Nearly 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse across hundreds of Ireland’s religious-run schools have been documented in a new report, marking the latest grim revelations to emerge from the country’s historic Church-State entanglement.

The report, released Tuesday, documented 2,395 allegations of historical child sexual abuse, involving 884 alleged abusers in 308 schools across the country.

Most of the allegations were reported from the records of 42 religious orders that currently run or previously ran schools in Ireland. The scope of the allegations ranges from 1927-2013. More than half the men accused – which include teachers and priests – have died, it said.

Ireland’s Minister for Education Norma Foley said Tuesday that the level of abuse detailed in the report was “truly shocking – and so is the number of alleged abusers.”

She called the report a “harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse.”

There's more at the link.

Needless to say, the usual suspects are making grave noises about how sorry they are that this happened, and that the Catholic Church will do everything it can to ensure it never happens again . . . but they won't do the one thing absolutely necessary to prevent that - namely, change the way the Church is governed.  As long as what amounts to absolute power is in the hands of a very few "organization men" (and women, when it comes to female religious orders), and delegated to parish priests and other subordinate managers, for just so long this atrocity will continue, because there are few if any practical checks and balances on those in the system.

I should know.  I was a part of that system until the child sex abuse scandal forced me to confront reality, and led me to leave my priesthood and the Church.  That decision has caused me more pain and angst than any other I've ever taken . . . but I felt then, and still do, that I had no moral alternative.  I formally complained to my Bishop that every measure the Church was instituting to fix the problem was no more than pious window-dressing, and would do nothing to resolve the problem.  I was told to shut up and obey orders (in rather stronger language than that).  I was ordered to tell my congregation that they could trust the Bishops to do the right thing, and lead the Church out of this mess, and all would be well in future.  Since I could see with my own eyes that that was a lie from start to finish, it left me with a stark choice;  obey the powers that be, or obey my conscience.  I was not alone in making that decision.

Today, almost a generation after the scandal broke, the situation has not improved to any great measure.  Prelates and priests are still being exposed as pedophiles, some of them of the grossest kind, active in their sin for decades.  They were not exposed until one or more of their crimes broke through the veil of silence and became public knowledge, and even then, many of them have remained relatively unpunished - even defiant, as if their activities were not wrong or evil in any way.  I have no idea how they can square that with the Gospel warning.  I daresay they'll find out one day whether they were right.

I said, when this all blew up, that we'd see Church officials suggesting that most of the problem was in the past, and no longer relevant to today's Church.  Sure enough, a generation later, I'm seeing precisely that defense made.  It's already being raised about the Irish report - "Yes, but most of those cases are decades old, and the perpetrators are dead!"  Doesn't mean that the damage they did has not continued, and permeated into Irish society to a horrifying extent.  How many of those abused kids went on to become abusers themselves, or emotionally so shut-in that they made their spouses' and childrens' lives a misery?  Far too many, I'd think . . . those are known consequences of such abuse.  What's more, there are enough current cases of abuse to give the lie to the claim that "It's all historical!".

I can only suggest to Catholic parents, in the strongest possible terms, that they should be very cautious indeed about entrusting their kids to the "care" of the Church, particularly without constant supervision they can trust.  They certainly can't put their faith in the Church's definition of "trustworthy supervision"!

I did not sleep well last night, after reading that report.  I don't see how any believer can, particularly Catholic clergy - unless they write it off as yet more anti-Catholic spite and propaganda, that can be ignored.

Peter

AI and information overload

 

It looks as if Israel's pioneering use of artificial intelligence (AI) to process, sort and apply intelligence gathered from multiple sources to produce a recommendation for action, is hitting a snag.  Strategy Page reports:

Now the IDF finds that it has often collected too much data on potential targets. This makes it difficult to find the current targets it needs to hit. Efforts to use AI to find the right targets in time to attack them have stumbled over the inability to sort out the available target data to find current targets that need to be hit. Another problem is that using AI to analyze the data and find the right targets concentrates on speed rather than accuracy. As a result the IDF is often hitting the wrong targets and doing so faster than before. Before AI, human analysts were used. This process was slower and often missed targets buried in a massive amount of target data. With human analysts you had better accuracy but the process was often so slow that the target had moved out of view by the time IDF air, artillery or ground attacks were launched.

Current criticisms of inaccurate targeting and civilian casualties are the result of Israeli target planners choosing speed over accuracy. Greater civilian casualties are also caused by the frequent use of the wrong weapon. Often a half-ton aerial bomb is used when a ground based anti-tank missile would have done the job. Another problem was that Israeli target planners had stopped keeping track of how many civilians were killed during attacks. When recent data on the actual number of civilians killed in recent Gaza attacks became known, it was an embarrassment for Israeli target planners and a tragedy for the victims.

There's more at the link.

It's the military intelligence version of the old builder's conundrum:  Fast, cheap, high quality.  Pick any two.  You can't have three.  If it's to be a fast, cheap job, it won't be high quality.  If it's to be fast and high quality, it won't be cheap.  If it's to be cheap and high quality, it can't be fast.  The same applies to actionable military intelligence (i.e. intelligence that leads to action at once or very soon, rather than being filed for future reference).  If you want a fast intelligence analysis and recommendation, it won't be as high-quality as one where you take more time to make up your mind.  If it's high-quality, it'll be slower - and your target may no longer be there when you arrive at a decision.  Effectively, Israel has been trying to use AI to speed up the process;  but AI is being overloaded with too much information, and is therefore making the same mistakes as we might expect from human analysts in that situation.  Unfortunately, it's making those mistakes faster - and people are dying faster as a result.

This is, of course, a tragedy for those civilians caught in the crossfire.  They're "collateral damage", if one uses the official (?) military term.  Trouble is, that term hides the reality of burned, maimed, wounded and killed men, women and children who were doing nothing wrong.  There have been thousands of them in Gaza already, and more will come.

There's no easy answer to this.  I can feel immense sympathy for the innocent on both sides . . . but as long as terrorists are prepared to slaughter innocent people in Israel, they are effectively bringing this down on their own innocent people's heads in Gaza, because Israel cannot - dare not - not respond to terrorism.

Peter

A self-inflicted tragedy in Gaza

 

A report on Thursday claimed that children were being deliberately targeted - executed, in so many words - by Israeli snipers in Gaza.

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an American surgeon with heavy catastrophe-zone experience, is among those stunned by the civilian devastation they've recently witnessed in Gaza, and especially by a high volume of what appear to be precision rifle-fire wounds on children -- including toddlers.

"All of the disasters I've seen, combined – 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined – doesn't equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza," Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, told CBS's Sunday Morning.

. . .

Perlmutter, a Jew who grew up in New Jersey and who now lives in North Carolina, was also disturbed what what he attributed to precise rifle fire directed at children, some of whom were "shot twice." 

"I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn't put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world's best sniper.' And they're dead-center shots."

His description of the phenomenon was confirmed to CBS News by more than 20 other doctors who'd recently visited Gaza. An American doctor had such a problem grasping what he was seeing that he double-checked using CT scans, saying he "didn't believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head."

There's more at the link.

It should be noted that the gist of that article has been repeated in sources such as Common Dreams (an explicitly progressive-left outlet), Politico and Democracy Now!  I have no idea of the political views of Dr. Perlmutter, but I suspect the views of such outlets are clues.  I note, too, that neither he nor any of the others involved have spoken about Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023, or at other times.  It seems a rather one-sided perspective.  That does not, of course, affect the very real disaster that has befallen the people, particularly the children, of Gaza, but it does - must - condition one's perspective on it.

It's tragic to read about that disaster, and even more tragic to see it in real life.  I speak from all too bitter personal experience, because in the terrorist wars in southern Africa during the 1970's and 1980's, children were cold-bloodedly and brutally used as couriers, cover, even as armed combatants, by the terrorist movements.  The kids were given no choice in the matter, and their parents had no option but to let them do so - or be killed themselves as "counter-revolutionary sell-outs".  In rural areas of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), and to a certain extent in the Ovambo regions of South West Africa (today Namibia), it became common for terrorist gangs to kidnap whole schools full of kids and send them across the border to be trained as guerrillas/terrorists in their turn.  The security forces attempted to rescue them before they could be taken out of the country, but seldom succeeded - and when they did, many of the kids died or were wounded in the crossfire.

There were many incidents where security forces were deliberately placed in a no-win situation by terrorists using kids as cover, or to take military equipment to fighters by concealing it in their schoolbags (for example, magazines of ammunition, hand grenades, or even a land-mine or two).  Some children were even used as soldiers, not in uniform, but carrying grenades or other lethal devices and throwing them at a patrol while walking with a group of their fellow kids.  When fire was returned, it wasn't just the guilty ones who died.

I described some years ago how a baby was used to camouflage a land-mine, positioned to catch a patrol.

I remember Gavin, who was a member of a patrol that found a baby, too young to walk, sitting in the middle of a dirt road in a township, crying. As the point man and a couple of others walked up to see why the baby was just sitting there, the terrorists waiting in ambush blew up the landmine they'd buried beneath her, killing the point man and savagely mutilating the other two soldiers. Bits of flesh and blood from the soldiers, and the baby, splattered all over Gavin . . . across his face . . . in his eyes, nose and mouth.

For years, Gavin would start awake in the small hours at night, a scream of horror on his lips. "They blew up a baby! A baby!" Gavin's wife eventually left him, because she couldn't handle the strain of living with his nightmares. Psychiatric treatment couldn't break the cycle; nor could alcohol, or drugs (legal and illegal). Gavin took his own life at last, too tormented by what he'd seen to endure any longer, in the small hours every night, the parade of images across his closed eyelids. He was a hero in my book . . . and I'll always remember him as such.

There was another case where a dead baby was literally hollowed out, presumably by its mother.  Its body cavity was filled with explosives, and then carried through a military checkpoint to conceal the ordnance.  It worked the first time . . . and the second . . . but by the third time, decomposition had set in, and a whiff of it came to the nostrils of one of the soldiers at the checkpoint.  He investigated, and uncovered the scheme.  (The mother claimed - possibly truthfully - that she'd been forced to cooperate with the terrorists;  therefore, no action was taken against her.  I had my doubts.)

I was present when a vehicle-mounted patrol was passing through a very volatile area.  A woman rushed out from behind a hut, with a baby strapped to her chest in the typical African manner.  She charged the lead vehicle, holding a Molotov cocktail in either hand, their fuses lit.  The soldiers on the vehicle had a very simple binary choice.  Shoot her - which meant snap-shooting, probably through the baby on her chest, because there was no time to take careful aim and avoid it - or be immolated when the gasoline bombs exploded inside the load bed of the patrol vehicle.  You can imagine their feelings . . . but they were left with no other options.  She, and her baby, died.  Whose fault was that baby's death?  Not the soldiers', I would argue.

Older kids, as noted earlier, were used as couriers, pack mules, and resupply trains, particularly where the presence of international journalists might be presumed to inhibit troops - who knew exactly what they were doing - from shooting at them.  It seldom worked.

US forces encountered precisely the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It's happening in Gaza, too.  We've all seen videos on YouTube and elsewhere of how Gaza kids are brainwashed and indoctrinated to seek martyrdom, to hate Jews, and to lash out at them whenever and wherever they can.  If you or I were an Israeli sniper or designated marksman in Gaza right now, and saw a baby being used as "live cover" by its mother in a critical situation, or an older kid making a run towards our troops or carrying supplies towards a known enemy strongpoint . . . I daresay we'd take the shot in a heartbeat, because if we didn't, our own troops would suffer the consequences.  That's the cold, hard, brutal reality of a terrorist war.  There are no morals.  There are no rules - except, "Survive!"  Allow me to assure you:  if you hesitate, you won't.

When you're dealing with a ruthless, homicidal movement like Hamas, which has openly stated that civilian casualties serve its purpose as propaganda, it's even worse.  I wish we could know precisely what side shot each of those children.  The answer might be very revealing.  We do know that for years, Hamas has routinely trained children at summer camps to be terrorists.  It has sent children to confront Israeli soldiers on patrol, throwing stones at them, in the hope that the soldiers will shoot back, thereby creating more propaganda about "Israeli atrocities" for dissemination.  Hamas wants child casualties.  It glories in them.

Yes, Israeli forces almost certainly are targeting kids who show themselves in suspicious circumstances.  I'm more saddened by that tragedy than words can say, but I'm not surprised by it.  I'm more surprised at how few kids in Gaza have been shot like that.  As a proportion of the population, I daresay it's minuscule.  I submit that speaks to the discipline and training of the Israeli troops involved (see, for example, the videos linked in the previous paragraph).  There may be a few renegade souls in Israeli uniform who are actively seeking to murder innocent kids in Gaza, but I think it's very unlikely.  I hope and pray I'm not wrong.

May God receive the souls of the children who die like that;  and may He visit condign punishment on those who force them into situations where that can happen to them.

*Sigh*

Peter