Memes that made me laugh 61

 

Harvested over the past seven days from around the Intertubes.  Click any image for a larger view.

More next week.

Peter

Sunday morning music

 

D-Day, the 6th of June 1944, marked the beginning of the end of World War II in the Western European theater.  The Allied armies invaded five beaches in Normandy, and by nightfall had established a foothold on the continent of Europe that would lead to the elimination of Nazi forces in the West within a year.  Germany, tied down by her far larger and bloodier battles with the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, could not muster enough forces to stop the Western invaders.  Her defeat was now inevitable.

Perhaps the best-known music associated with D-Day is the theme to the movie "The Longest Day".

The film was based on Cornelius Ryan's best-selling book about the battle.

Here's the theme music.

However, perhaps the most poignant musical remembrance of the day comes from Jim Radford, who was part of the invasion fleet in 1944.  Many years later, he composed a musical tribute to his comrades in arms.  I'll let him tell you about it.  This is from the BBC's seventieth anniversary commemoration of D-Day in 2014.

Allied, German and civilian casualties on D-Day were over 20,000, with at least a quarter of that number dead, perhaps as many as a third.  More died later of injuries sustained on that day, or were maimed for life.  As we commemorate the 77th anniversary of the invasion, let's think about them, and pray for their eternal rest.

Peter

Saturday Snippet: The Taxman Cometh

 

Taxation has been one of the most unpopular aspects of government since time immemorial.  Whether levied in a civilized fashion, through payroll deductions and at point of sale, or extracted at the point of a spear or sword, governments need taxes to function - but those on whose behalf they're supposed to function resent having to pay taxes, particularly when they think they see others benefiting from them more than they do themselves.

In their new book "Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue:  Tax Follies and Wisdom Through the Ages", Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod look at the history of taxation, examining examples of where it's worked and where it's failed (and, in both cases, why).

It's an informative and sometimes fascinating book, discussing many events of which I hadn't previously been fully informed.  I learned a lot.

Here's an excerpt from the opening chapter, discussing the Boston Tea Party in some detail and throwing light on the tax policies that sparked it.  It goes on to discuss taxation in an African colony that was more easily suppressed, but produced even poorer results.

UNCOVERED BY Napoleon’s soldiers in 1799, the Rosetta Stone famously held the key to deciphering ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphics. The trick, of course, is that it bears the same text in three different scripts: knowing the others, scholars could begin to understand the hieroglyphics. But what could be so important as to be worth carving out in three scripts? The answer, you will have guessed, is taxation. The Rosetta Stone describes a tax break given to the temple priests of ancient Egypt, reinstating tax privileges they had enjoyed in prior times. (So it also teaches us an early lesson: tax exemptions are as old as taxes.) But taxes themselves are far older than the Rosetta Stone. Indeed, early recorded human history is largely the history of tax. Sumerian clay tablets from 2500 BCE include receipts for tax payments.

These relics are visible reminders that powerful rulers have always exercised their powers of compulsion to divert resources to their own preferred use. (A “tax,” to get the definition out of the way, is “a compulsory, unrequited payment to general government.”) Indeed, as Edmund Burke saw, that is largely what defines them as rulers. Conflicts centered around this exercise of their coercive power to tax sometimes blaze across the pages of history, playing a profound role in shaping the institutions that we all live with. More mundanely, but with almost inconceivably deep and direct impact, the exercise of taxing powers has impacted the daily lives and struggles of ordinary people for millennia, whether it is peasants handing over some of their rice crop to the local lord’s retainer in Tokugawa Japan or shopkeepers in Lagos wondering how to complete their value-added tax (VAT) return. For the ordinary masses of humanity, taxation has long been the most direct way in which government impinges on their lives. Rulers, and systems of government, are largely characterized—and their survival and development largely determined—by how they choose to exercise their power to tax. As de Tocqueville wrote, “There is scarcely any public matter that does not arise from a tax or end in one.”

Over the millennia, the fundamental challenges faced by rulers aiming to extract resources to fund the state’s activities, or their own fancies, have remained largely unaltered. What has changed, and is still changing, is how they address them. This book is about those problems of taxation and what past tax episodes—dramatic and humdrum, appalling and amusing, foolish and wise—teach us about how best to shape tax systems so as to avoid calamity and maybe even do some good.

We start with four stories that provide vivid illustrations of some of the key themes of this book. Not the least of these themes (though we suspect this is rarely the purpose policy makers had in mind) is that tales of taxation can actually be entertaining.

Bengal to Boston

Not many incidents in tax history could be called “well known.” The exceptions are a few conflicts in which tax issues were at the heart of wider disputes over sovereignty. These, however, are so well known as to have become close to founding myths. So it is with the barons forcing King John (ruled 1199–1216) to sign Magna Carta, and John Hampden refusing to pay King Charles I’s ship money. But national legends are rarely quite what they are cracked up to be. Sometimes they are misremembered: “Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you?” asked the British comedian Tony Hancock, “Did she die in vain?” And sometimes the legend ignores important parts of the truth.

So it is with our first story, which is that of the American Revolution, ushered in by the Patriots of Liberty dumping tea into Boston Harbor—prompted, we are told, by oppressive British taxation. This is probably history’s best-known tax revolt. But things were not quite how they have often come to be seen, one general lesson from this book being that, when it comes to taxation, myth is often more pervasive than reality. The Boston Tea Party was actually prompted not by some tax increase, but by a tax cut—with the back story being a complex interplay between increasingly desperate policy makers and powerful interest groups, all adept at spinning their own self-interest as something noble. And the most appalling British tax oppression in the story did not occur in the American colonies. It took place in India.

The story begins in 1763, when the British emerged from the Seven Years’ War with both their empire and their debt massively expanded. In America, the colonies had been freed from French pressure on their borders. In India, the privately owned but state-sponsored East India Company had established itself as the preeminent and rising colonial power. But all this, with gains in Canada and the Caribbean as well, had not come cheap. The British had financed the war largely by massive borrowing: The national debt had close to doubled, rising to an alarming 120 percent or so of gross domestic product (GDP), and two-thirds of all government spending was on interest payments. It was time for Britain to set its fiscal house in order—and for the colonies to do their bit.

By 1765, things did not seem to be going too badly for the British. True, the colonists in America had not taken kindly to the sugar duties of 1764, but perhaps stamp duties, levied on legal documents and other printed materials, would work better—after all, they had worked at home for many years with no great difficulty. Prime Minister George Grenville expected them to prove “equal, extensive, not burdensome, likely to yield a considerable revenue, and collected without a great number of officers.” Moreover, the proceeds were earmarked for the defense of the colonies. It was surely only fair that the colonists, who came up with only 6d (six pence, or half a shilling) a year per person in tax, compared to 25 shillings annually for the average Englishman, should chip in more. And the news from India was spectacular. In that year, the Mughal Emperor granted the East India Company the diwani—the right to collect tax revenues in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. This was a truly glittering prize. The Gentleman’s Magazine thought that “the prodigious value of these new acquisitions … may open to this nation such a mine of wealth as … in a few years to … pay off the national debt, to take off the land tax, and ease the poor of the burdensome taxes.” In 1767, it seemed that a start on this had been made when the East India Company agreed to pay the government £400,000 a year for the enjoyment of its possessions in India.

Soon, however, things were going very badly wrong. In America, fierce opposition to the stamp duty had led quickly to its repeal. The government of Pitt the Elder (doubtless distracted by then being “seriously disabled by mental illness”) responded in 1767 with the Townshend Duties on tea and other products. This was expected to produce only about one-tenth of the revenue of the diwani. But the point was in the preamble, declaring it to be “expedient that a revenue should be raised in Your Majesty’s Dominions in America.” More resistance and boycotts followed, and in 1770 all the taxes other than the 3d per pound tax on tea were removed; that remained because, as the king continued to insist, “[there] must always be one tax to keep up the right [to tax].” The protests and boycotts continued, and in March of 1770, panicked British troops killed seven locals on the streets of Boston.

But things were even worse in India. The diwani was already proving less spectacular than predicted, as famine came to Bengal in 1769. The Company’s revenues there fell from £1.8 million in 1766/1767 to £1.3 million in 1770/1771. This reduction was smaller than might have been expected, given the depth of the famine: 20 percent of the population of Bengal may have died. But what stopped it falling further was the Company’s ruthless collection. “Indians were tortured to disclose their treasure,” reported one official of the old regime, “cities, towns and villages ransacked; jaghires and provinces purloined.” But these extreme measures could not prevent a massive shortfall in revenue, compounding other difficulties facing the East India Company: uncontrolled over-borrowing by its excessively entrepreneurial employees in India, massively increased military spending—and an accumulation of huge stocks of tea that it could not sell, partly because of the boycott in America. The Company’s sales to the colonies fell by nearly 90 percent between 1768 and 1770. By early 1772, the Company was in serious trouble. It held about 18 million pounds of unsold tea in its London warehouses; had effectively defaulted on the custom duties due on importing tea into Britain; and, far from paying a tidy sum to the government, needed to borrow large amounts from it. But, being at the heart of English finances (and the wealth of many of the elite20), the East India Company had become too big to fail. “The monopoly of the most lucrative trades, and the possession of imperial revenues,” Edmund Burke was later to tell Parliament, “had brought you to the verge of beggary and ruin.”

There were, Lord North had declared in 1768, “two great national questions, the state of the East India Company and the affairs of America.” And they became increasingly intertwined, with the solution to each perhaps lying in the solution of the other. To secure the financing of the East India Company, the key was to increase its sales of tea, and the American market was the main hope. The potential for its expansion was clear, but so was the obstacle to realizing it: Something like three-quarters of the tea consumed in the colonies was being smuggled in. To some, these commercial problems could give convenient cover for a politic removal of Townshend’s tax. But, by now prime minister, Lord North insisted that the principle had to be maintained: This was, as Edmund Burke cattily put it, not a real tax but a “preambulary” one.

This was when the hard-pressed bureaucrats and politicians in London came up with a cunning plan. In short, they reduced the price of tea in the colonies by eliminating a tax due on tea in England, while maintaining the preambulary principle by leaving the tax charged in the colonies unchanged. The East India Company, to be more precise, had until now been required to bring tea destined for the colonies into England first, at which point an import tariff of about 24 percent was charged, and to put the tea up for auction. From July 1773, however, this tax was entirely removed for tea exported to America. For the cheapest tea, this would allow the price charged in the colonies to be cut by about 6s per pound. Smugglers would still have the advantage of not paying the Townshend Duty, but with the East India Company also now enabled to sell directly to the colonies, the smugglers were clearly in for some real competition. Surely the Americans would now be unable to resist buying taxed tea in large quantities. And in so doing, they would not only be sending the East India Company, and the powerful interests behind it, on the way to recovery but also implicitly accepting the British government’s right to tax them. Clever.

But this ruse was, it turned out, a bit too clever. The agents chosen by the East India Company to sell in the colonies the now extremely cheap tea were clearly going to be loyalists. And thus the British—having infuriated lawyers, publicans, newspaper publishers, writers, and other smart and influential people by the Stamp Act of 1765—were now directly attacking another powerful interest group: the savvy, powerful and respectably disreputable businessmen who had been making good money from smuggling tea, and who were increasingly aligning themselves with the patriot cause.

Men, that is, like John Hancock, “a respectable large-scale smuggler” who was the richest merchant in Boston and now closely associated with the patriot agitator Sam Adams (as well as subsequently and proverbially supplying the first—and largest and most flamboyant—signature of the Declaration of Independence). Not only could the American merchants no longer hope to sell smuggled tea, they could not even hope to sell the legitimate British tea. The happy thought in London was that these measures would undermine not only the commercial interests but also the influence of these powerful men. But they misjudged. Hancock chaired, and Adams inflamed, the meeting at the Old South Meeting House on December 16, 1773, which ended with the Sons of Liberty throwing 35,000 pounds of cut-price tea into Boston Harbor. Tea shipments were refused in Philadelphia and Charleston, and tea parties erupted again in Boston and New York. From there, under the banner of “no taxation without representation,” riot proceeded to revolution.

There is irony in this. The modern American Tea Party, vociferously opposed to all but minimal taxation, takes its name from what was in effect a violent protest against a tax cut. There are also lessons. It might be too much to conclude that “as it turned out, [the Sons of Liberty] were not just against taxation without representation—they were against taxation, period.” But the Boston Tea Party was evidently about more than just tax rates.

The Boston Tea Party, and the Revolution, were ultimately about sovereignty. The overt exercise of authority for its own sake in the form of the tax on tea simply evoked and crystallized resistance. But these events were also about the power of interest groups, which, like the smugglers in the American colonies, can be ingenious in amassing support even from groups whose own interests—like those of the average Bostonian tea drinker—would seem to point in quite the opposite direction. And, as with other calamitous tax episodes, it was largely about the way in which taxes were implemented. Or, perhaps more to the point in this case, about their being implemented at all. Smuggling was a normal part of life for the colonists (as it was for many of their English brethren), and Britain’s consistent attempts to stifle it were not taken well: When the smuggler-hunting Royal Navy vessel Gaspee ran aground in 1772, the locals simply set it on fire. Discontent is also more likely when there is little support for the way in which tax receipts are spent. So it did not help that the proceeds of the Townshend Duties were earmarked for the extremely unpopular purpose of financing British political appointees in the colonies and establishing commissioners of customs, who acted without juries.

Freed of the British, the new American government, soon faced its own tax revolt. In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton imposed a tax on whiskey (considered a somewhat sinful luxury) after finding that tariffs did not meet the revenue needs of the fledging federation. Not entirely by chance, the tax tended to favor larger distillers, a powerful lobby group. But it enraged another interest: whiskey-distilling farmers in Western Appalachia. These small rural distillers refused to pay the tax; tarred and feathered tax collectors; and, finally, resorted to armed rebellion and bloodshed. The new American government reacted in much the same way as had the British—with force. But with a different outcome. In 1794, troops led by President George Washington easily quelled the rebellion.

The British did learn some lessons from the American Revolution. In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi challenged the legitimacy of British rule in India by scooping a teaspoon of salty mud, boiling it in seawater, and thereby producing illegal untaxed salt. His actions clearly paralleled those of the Sons of Liberty at the Boston Tea Party. This time, however, there was no punishment from the British comparable to the “Intolerable Acts” of 1774 that were leveled at post–Tea Party Boston. Even Gandhi noted that the British showed great restraint. In the next story, however, they showed almost none.

Never Such Disgrace

This is a story of taxation at its most appallingly oppressive: targeted at a vulnerable and oppressed group, offensive not just in its amount but in how it was collected—and also reflecting the use of taxation as a means of social engineering.

In 1896, the British established a protectorate over Sierra Leone, appointing district commissioners to oversee indirect rule by the local chiefs. To pay for this, and for a planned railway, Governor Frederick Cardew announced the introduction, on January 1, 1898, of a tax on all houses—a hut tax. Such taxes were widely used in colonial Africa, part of the motivation being to induce the native population to participate in the cash economy in order to be able to remit the tax: an example, and we will see plenty of others, of a tax deliberately intended not only to raise revenue but also to change behavior. The chiefs, while proclaiming their loyalty to Queen Victoria, politely protested. Cardew responded by reducing the tax and introducing some exemptions (including for Christian missionaries). But then he proceeded with the tax anyway.

Collection soon ran into trouble. Chiefs were imprisoned and put to work breaking stones for refusing their role in collection, to their great humiliation. “Since the time of our ancestors,” said one, “there has never been such disgrace to one of our Chiefs as this prison dress which I wear.” Fighting broke out first in the north, as the British moved to arrest a chief and regional leader, Bai Bureh, who was viewed, perhaps wrongly, as instigating resistance. But he was, in any case, a respected and hardened warrior, who had once fought for the British and knew their ways only too well. (When Cardew offered £100 for Bai Bureh’s head, Bai offered £500 for Cardew’s.) Soon it became a guerilla war, with British columns ambushed on the jungle paths and fighting multiple engagements each day. The British responded with the systematic torching of towns and villages—thereby destroying the tax base itself. Rebellion broke out in the south, too, and there the conflict was even more brutal, marked by the massacres of several hundred Europeans and Africans in European dress.

By November, however, the rebellion was flagging. Bai Bureh was betrayed, captured, and exiled to the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Ninety-six of his comrades were hanged. With that, what was called by the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain (destined to reappear later in this book) “a general rising against white rule,” fizzled out. The suffering had been immense. Even Cardew came to be haunted by “[t]he thought of … the gallant officers and men who have fallen, of the devoted missionaries who have been sacrificed, of the Sierra Leoneans who have been massacred and”—an afterthought perhaps being better than nothing—“of the many natives who have been killed.”

This conflagration came to be known as the Hut Tax War. But there was more to it than the hut tax. Though the resistance did not aspire to remove the British, the fight was nonetheless largely about an affront to local customs and honor. Taxing huts was seen as directly undermining property rights: “Paying for a thing in our country,” one chief explained, “means you had no original right to it.” And it came along with the usurpation by the district commissioners of judicial and other powers that had rested with the chiefs (including, perhaps not incidentally, the revenue they received from exacting fines). “The king of a country however small, if he cannot settle small matters, is no longer king.” Not least, the aggressive implementation of the tax by the Frontier Police—sometimes ex-slaves taking revenge on their former masters—created antagonism. As so often, this conflict, while directly associated with taxation, reflected other, deeper sources of tension. And ham-fisted implementation can be as provocative as the tax itself.

A royal commissioner, sent to find out what had gone wrong, recognized the powerful mix of causes behind the war. Resistance arose, he said, from the “sense of personal wrong and injustice from the illegal and degrading severities made use of in enforcing the Tax,” which was in itself “obnoxious to the customs and feeling of the people.” He recommended that the hut tax be abolished, the police force brought under control, and the authority of the chiefs increased. The hut tax, however, was not removed. It was simply reduced to 3s. Bai Bureh, meanwhile, became an enduring national hero in Sierra Leone: a hospital and football club are named in his honor, and in 2013 he was pictured on the 1,000-leone banknote.

This revolt was far from being the only one prompted by colonial hut taxes. In German East Africa, 2,000 people are said to have been executed for nonpayment. Possibly the most bizarre colonial tax conflict, however, centered around dogs—who will make a surprisingly frequent appearance in our stories of taxation.

This was the armed resistance by the Maori of Hokianga County in New Zealand to a tax on every dog in the district (as well as a “wheel tax” based on a vehicle’s tire width). This tax was also seen as infringing the autonomy of the indigenous people. Troops were mustered. But things ended, happily, without (human) bloodshed. Not, however, before the leader of the resistance, Hone Toia, made one of the more memorable utterances in tax history: “If dogs were to be taxed” he prophesied, “men would be next.”

Another dog-tax episode, however, ended far from peacefully. In 1922, the Bondelswarts, a nomadic group in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia), rose up against an increase in the dog tax that had been imposed in 1917. This tax was no small matter, as dogs were central to their pastoral way of life, used for hunting and protecting their livestock from vermin. The South African government, exercising its postwar mandate in the area, used aircraft to bomb the group into submission—one of the first instances of the deliberate bombing of civilians—and ultimately, more than 100 Bondelswarts were killed. Eyebrows were raised at the League of Nations, but nothing was actually done.

The Hut Tax and Dog Tax Wars of Sierra Leone and New Zealand show how tax revolts, and their lasting consequences, are sometimes as much about the way in which the government treats taxpayers, and the claim to sovereignty underlying their exercise of coercion, as they are about how much the taxes aim to extract. In less bloody times, the concern has often been with mere intrusiveness. This is a recurrent theme in the story of taxation. For instance, later in this chapter we will get a taste of the resentment felt under the later Stuarts of tax officials’ rights to enter people’s homes to count their fireplaces. This is echoed by today’s concerns that, in the digital age, governments may come to know more about us, for tax and other purposes, than we would like.

The book goes into much more detail about other incidents, and is very educational to those who've never thought much about the relationship between revenues and freedom.  Recommended reading.

Peter

It looks like Second City Cop has a new home

 

In January the well-known Second City Cop blog, authored by an anonymous policeman (-men?) in Chicago, went dark, thanks to the threatened public identification of its author(s) (which would have exposed him/them to retaliation).  I wrote about it at the time.  In April, he/they published an update on his/their situation, and on law and order in Chicago, at the Chicago Contrarian blog.  Again, I covered their report.

It now looks as if he's/they've taken up longer-term residence as guest authors at Chicago Contrarian.  So far he/they have published four articles there, including one this week, and I hope to see many more.  His/their acerbic, politically incorrect commentary provided essential insight into the trials and tribulations of living in the Windy City, and I'm very glad to see it'll still be available.

If you formerly followed that blog, you might want to bookmark its current location.  I'm happy to know the author(s) will continue to keep us informed.

Peter

Sometimes the jokes write themselves...

 

I did a double-take when I saw this advertisement.  Click the image for a larger view.

For a start, the caption "Air Force Pride" is, to say the least, problematic.  Remember, back in the day, being gay (i.e. homosexual) was referred to by some as being "light in the loafers".  To actually market loafers under the "Pride" label, with its current connotations (as in "Gay Pride", etc.) appears, in so many words, to be inviting their wearers to self-identify with the latter trend.  That's made worse by the wording of the blurb accompanying the advertisement.

Introducing the Air Force Pride Men's Shoes, a custom-designed fashion exclusive from The Bradford Exchange. Expertly crafted of luxurious faux suede uppers in a rich tan color, these must-have slip-on shoes capture Airman spirit in incredible style! You'll never want to take them off!

Each moccasin is lined with ultra-soft flannel in a camouflage print and features whip stitching around the top panel ... What a wonderful way to put your best foot forward and show your Air Force spirit!

I asked an Air Force friend, a senior NCO, what he thought about the wording of that advertisement.  After a moment's stunned silence, he said firmly (even emphatically), "No.  Just... NO!!!"  He may have emphasized that with a few well(?)-chosen adjectives.

I suspect many of his colleagues will feel the same - particularly when they consider what the other branches of the Armed Forces, particularly the Marines, might have to say about it, using an even more scatological selection of adjectives.

(Interestingly, I notice the vendor offers a similar product for the Army and the Navy, but not for the Marines or Coast Guard.  Discrimination?  Or discretion being the better part of valor?)

Peter

Yale University - an oligarchy exposed

 

If you want to see the operations of an oligarchy exposed - the same sort of oligarchs who appear to have seized control of the USA as a whole - look no further than the governing board of Yale University.

Yale is a nonprofit corporation and a very wealthy one, whose alumni are supposed to elect its governing board. Ordinarily, Yale alumni get a ballot containing two candidates for each open slot on the board. The two candidates are chosen by . . . the board.

You can vote for whichever one you like, but the candidates are forbidden from taking any positions on any issues. The biographical information that comes with the ballots is scanty and, as I can attest, almost entirely useless in deciding whom to vote for.

Until recently, there was a safety valve: A candidate who could gather enough petitions could have his or her name placed before the alumni, too, running against the two candidates the board nominated. The last time that happened successfully was the first time a Jewish candidate, William Horowitz, was elected to Yale’s governing board. That was in 1965.

But this year, a distinguished Yale alumnus, Victor Ashe, a former mayor of Knoxville and ambassador to Poland, ran his own petition campaign. 

Ashe wanted to end the secrecy that defines Yale governance. (How secret? The minutes of board meetings aren’t released until 50 years later.) In particular, Ashe had questions about the operation of Yale’s endowment, which, though huge, hasn’t been managed as well as some other schools’, though one board member’s investment firm has reaped multimillion-dollar management fees, according to Yale’s 2018 tax return.

Ashe, in other words, ran a campaign on openness and reform. And he lost, which was a disappointment, but not a disgrace.

The disgrace was that, even before the election result was announced, the Yale board met in secret and abolished the petition process. Apparently, even the possibility that an outsider might challenge the insiders’ choices was intolerable.

The net effect is that a small group now controls a multibillion-dollar corporation, with no real accountability. As Ashe told me, “They’ve seized control without any outside supervision. . . . It’s a $31 billion corporation. That’s not pocket change.”

There's more at the link.

The arrogance and insularity displayed by the board are absolutely breathtaking in their impudence and insouciance.  Challenged to be more open, honest and accountable, instead they slam the windows shut, preventing even one single breath of fresh air from penetrating the fusty, stale frowsiness of their once-venerable institution.  Allow greater transparency?  Allow alumni a greater say in the running of their alma mater?  Perish the thought!

I don't know whether, or how, it might be possible to challenge and overthrow this unelected, dictatorial board of governors, but if it can be done, it should be done.  They've just demonstrated their complete and utter lack of fitness for their positions - not to mention exhibiting what appears to be at least underhandedness, possibly pandering to self-interest, perhaps even gross dishonesty, in the ethics of their governance.

How can anyone be proud of graduating from a once-great institution such as Yale, a former bastion in the evolution of what was once the greatest democracy in the world, when it's now seemingly governed by undemocratic, arrogant oligarchs who'll blatantly feather their own nests at the expense of their alumni?

Peter

The raffle winner has been drawn, but announcement is pending notification

 

As promised, the winner of our AR-15 pistol raffle was drawn yesterday;  but so far, he hasn't replied to my e-mail or telephone messages, to let me know whether he's willing to have his name and location published on this blog.  I have to wait for him to get back to me about that.  As soon as I know, I'll announce whatever he allows, so keep your eyes peeled for the details.

A couple of late entries arrived this morning.  I'll contact those who sent them, and ask whether they want a refund, or would like to have their entries transferred to the Glock pistol raffle that will kick off next week.  I'll do the same for any more late entries that come in.

Thanks for your patience.

Peter

"A Sinking Ship of State Drowns Everyone"

 

That's the title of a study by the Gatestone Institute, examining President Biden's infrastructure spending proposals.  It provides the following list of key points.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

• To be clear, the spending bill is actually the creation of a national debt so massive that it has the means to destabilize a democracy dependent on a functioning economy.
• For the Chinese Communist Party, seeking to master the 21st Century as the one global superpower, it represents a strategic victory without so much as firing a single bullet. They know that an economically weakened America cannot possibly sustain its military leadership when it is burdened with paying down a massive debt. Our allies and unaligned nations recognize this threat as well, and will reinvent their relationship with China if they believe America's best days are in the past.
• What makes the Administration believe that Corporate America would not respond with massive restructuring to avoid a confiscatory tax bill -- or passing the added cost on to the consumer, or moving the company's headquarters offshore to a country with a lower corporate rate -- to avoid the threat of losing its international competitive edge? Corporations have good accountants, too.
• Few debate the idea that our nation's infrastructure is in need of serious attention but the level of political dishonesty in characterizing the Biden plan as "infrastructure" has even made many in his own party queasy. Significant portions of the bill are earmarked for "environmental" agendas and seeming favors to campaign donors, such as billions in subsidies for electric vehicles. The proposed bill cries out for more sunlight and vast quantities of disinfectant.
• This recipe for an economic apocalypse comes at a time when new job creation has stagnated and the specter of a serious inflation has begun to emerge.... As historians will tell you if we have the wisdom to listen, no one escapes the devastation of a debtor nation. No one.

There's more at the link.

Note the growth in our national debt during the 21st century alone.

If President Biden's proposals are adopted, over and above our now-traditional budget deficit spending, they'll send that chart almost vertically upward.  We'll add at least $10 trillion to the national debt by the end of next year, what with "regular" budgetary expenditure and "infrastructure spending" on top of that.  Almost all those dollars will have to be added artificially, by the Federal Reserve creating them out of thin air.  There'll be no economic activity underlying them to justify their non-existent "value".  It'll be pure inflationary pressure - and we can't sustain that, on top of the existing accretion of unrepayable debt already laid on our backs.

We, as a nation, simply can't afford this.  It'll bankrupt us.  (Of course, that may be the whole point - see the Cloward-Piven strategy.)

Peter

Yet another official hobgoblin to frighten the citizenry

 

Glenn Greenwald (who famously broke the Snowden revelations about state invasion of citizen privacy) alerts us that a new pattern of government warnings to the American people signals a new politically-inspired war on terror.  This time it's directed against conservatives and Trump supporters, who are now officially lumped together and derided as "domestic extremists".  Trouble is, it's just as false and manipulative as such warnings have been in the past.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

. . .

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country.

. . .

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

I saw first-hand how this dynamic functions when doing the Snowden-enabled reporting on mass domestic NSA surveillance under the Obama administration. By the time we broke the stories of mass domestic surveillance on Americans — twelve years after the 9/11 attack — fear levels over Al Qaeda in the U.S. had diminished greatly, especially after the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. As a result, anger over Obama's sprawling domestic surveillance programs was pervasive and bipartisan. A bill jointly sponsored by then-Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) — which would have greatly reined in NSA domestic spying powers — was on its way to easy, bipartisan victory as a result of that anger over NSA spying. But suddenly, the Obama White House convinced Nancy Pelosi to whip enough Democratic votes to ensure its defeat and save NSA domestic spying from reform. But the momentum which that bill had — it would have been the first since 9/11 to rollback rather than expand government powers — along with anti-surveillance-and-pro-privacy polling data, proved how significantly the playing field had shifted as a result of those revelations and, especially, the reduction in fear levels experienced by Americans.

But shortly thereafter, a new group — ISIS — emerged to replace Al Qaeda. It had a two-year stint with middling success in scaring Americans, but it was sufficient to turn back the tide of pro-privacy sentiment (at one point in 2014, the U.S. intelligence community claimed out of nowhere that a Syria-based group that virtually nobody in the U.S. had ever heard of previously or since — "the Khorasan Group" — was “a more direct and imminent threat to the United States,” but that new villain disappeared as quickly as it materialized). After ISIS’s star turn in the role of existential threat, the Democrats, during the 2016 campaign, elevated Russia, Putin and the Kremlin to that role, abandoning without explanation Obama's eight-year argument that Russia was merely a regional power of no threat to the U.S. This revolving carousel of scary villains ensured that the pressure to reduce the powers and secrecy of the U.S. security state eroded in the name of staying safe.

Before Joe Biden was even inaugurated, he and his allies knew they needed a new villain ... While negative views of Russia increased in the U.S. during Russiagate mania, few outside of hard-core Democratic partisans viewed that country as a genuine threat or primary enemy. Few Americans woke up shaking in fear about what the Kremlin might do to them.

The search for a new enemy around which the Biden administration could coalesce and in whose name they could keep fear levels high was quickly settled. Cast in that role would be right-wing domestic extremists.

. . .

Beyond the DHS bulletins, that agency and other intelligence operatives continue to issue reports, for both public and classified consumption, warning that the greatest national security threat the U.S now faces is domestic extremism. As we reported here last month, that "domestic extremist” designation includes not just anti-Biden and anti-government protesters on the right but also leftist groups including animal rights activists — essentially anyone who objects to prevailing ruling class dogma and wants to use their constitutional rights to advance those views. To compile these reports, the CIA appears clearly to be breaking the law in using its vast intelligence weapons for domestic monitoring and control.

Online censorship, of course, is also rapidly increasing in the name of stopping the threat of domestic extremism.

. . .

These are all the same weapons as the ones invoked for the first War on Terror. Yet what is perhaps most notable about comparing this new domestic War on Terror to the first one is not the common weapons invoked to fight it but rather how identical are the rhetorical strategies used to demand submission to it.

No nuance or questioning is permitted when it comes to discussions of how much danger America really faces from domestic extremists. The parallels with the first War on Terror are manifest.

. . .

Opposing this new domestic War on Terror and all those new powers and secrecy authorities that go with it does not require support for or even indifference toward what happened at the Capitol on January 6. It merely requires a basic knowledge of recent U.S. history and how these powers are invariably used by the secretive U.S. security state when government-generated fears lead to their widespread enactment. The dangers of the first War on Terror were grave enough. Transferring it to "the Homeland,” as President Biden calls it, is bound to be far more dangerous still.

There's more at the link.

In case some readers have forgotten, I remind you that Glenn Greenwald is a left-wing journalist, not a right-wing conspiracy theorist.  He just happens to be an honest journalist, and will investigate any story without fear, favor or bias - something sadly lacking in all too many of his contemporaries.  I wish there were more like him.

A century or so ago, H. L. Mencken warned:

Yet again, the Sage of Baltimore's warning proves prescient.

Never forget that the entire Biden administration is illegitimate.  It is beyond statistical doubt that the November 2020 elections were stolen by unprecedented levels of electoral fraud - possibly perpetrated and/or aided and/or abetted in many cases by the same organs and employees of the administrative state that are now trying to frighten us into line, and stop us questioning their authority.  Their reason for trying to frighten us is simple:  to discredit any challenge to the legitimacy of the Biden administration.  Those who've stolen power intend to hold onto it, no matter what.  Furthermore, they know that if they're exposed and lose power, they'll be called to account for their crimes - and they have no intention of allowing that to happen.

These warnings against "domestic extremists" are nothing more or less than an attempt to manufacture an excuse to crack down on opposition to the Biden administration and its policies.  Let's recognize them for what they are, and treat them - and their originators, distributors, cronies and lickspittle lapdogs - with the contempt they deserve.

Peter

Heh

 

Not just one, but two good puns in comic strips yesterday.  Click each image to be taken to a larger version at their Web pages (or, in XKCD's case, to read the mouseover text).

Peter

"Global food inflation has not risen this fast since 2011"

 

That's the opinion of Ole S. Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy at Saxo Bank.  Last month he tweeted:

Click the images (above and below) for a larger view.  Note the steepness of the rise in the graphs he provided.

Keep inflation in the front of your mind.  Mr. Hansen identifies a current year-on-year food inflation rate of 30.7%.  That's frightening - but not unexpected.  It may get much worse.  As I've said here repeatedly, we're in for a severe dose of inflation, possibly even hyperinflation (which may or may not be "transitory", as some observers have hopefully suggested).

Look for evidence like that provided by Mr. Hansen.  The mainstream media may ignore it, but we do so at our peril.  It's easier to prepare for a problem (as best we can, anyway) when we can see it coming, than when it catches us unawares.  I fear most Americans will be caught unawares, because most mainstream media and most politicians are maintaining a deafening silence about what's happening.

Peter

Is there still an America worth dying for?

 

Max Morton asked that question on Memorial Day.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

America today is run by someone, we’re not really sure who, and every part of its culture and history is being deconstructed.

The Constitution is not even a speed bump to a new class of oligarchs and tyrants who are in the process of “reimagining” America as a giant Eveready battery to power their globalist business interests. Clearly half the country no longer believes in ideals like individual liberty, freedom, free speech, live-and-let-live, the Golden Rule, or tolerance.

What happened? If I could go back in time and talk to my dead friends and comrades who fell in service to America, what would they say? Would they still have volunteered? Would they still have put their lives on the line for this? Because this is pretty much nothing like the way of life I know they signed up to defend. This is an abomination. This is something I expect they would fight against.

Zombie America

To paraphrase my colleague Angelo Codevilla, what’s happening now in America is not a perversion or aberration, it’s an assertion of power. What we are seeing is the transformation of America from a free and sovereign nation accountable to the citizens, to a vassal state coalition of oligarchs and rogue national security bureaucrats sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, China’s global hegemony. Who is really on top in this relationship has yet to be determined. Is it the bureaucrats in service to the oligarchs, or is it the oligarchs backing a rogue bureaucracy? Either way, in the words of the late, great George Carlin, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”

. . .

This is truly frightening and raises the question of who is staffing and running our national security apparatus? In fact, who is running our country? Has America become a zombie nation? One without principles, morals, a guiding philosophy, or cultural identity? Present-day America seems to be mindlessly destroying everything in its path, whether through horrid foreign policy decisions, antagonistic and divisive domestic policies, or tyrannical governance. Like a Hollywood movie zombie, it is rapidly becoming unrecognizable from its former living self.

Clear and Present Danger

The current regime likes to talk about the domestic extremist danger to “our democracy.” What they really mean is that traditional Americans are a threat to their transformation of America away from a sovereign nation-state to some form of authoritarian oligarchy.

Too many Americans fail to understand the very real threat to their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness posed by a regime that holds this belief. Unfortunately, Americans seem to be waiting for a white knight or some divine miracle to roll back the regime’s ongoing transformation of America. The truth is, that old America, the one you grew up in, the one you think of as normal, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone, and it isn’t coming back.

Whether the current regime is backed by an oligarchy-supported deep state bureaucracy, or a deep state bureaucracy supported by China-sympathetic oligarchs, the clear and present danger to every traditional American is centered in Washington, D.C.

We cannot be free if our elected leaders are under the influence of China. And we cannot be free if we must live by the leave of a rogue national security establishment. If Americans want their liberty, they will have to rid themselves of the ruling elite’s swamp—as Donald Trump sadly discovered too late, there is no coexisting with it.

There is still a large part of America that wants to live in a republic and that wants the return of their natural God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution. But there is also a large part of America that no longer believes in the ideals of the republic and are intolerant of anyone who thinks differently.

One faction must bend the other to their will by force, or separate and each go their own way. We are at the point in this great experiment of liberty and self-governance that was America where we must begin the separation between those two factions. They cannot coexist in peace and it is folly to think one side will be able to impose its will on the other.

On this Memorial Day, I will be thinking of my friends and comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice, and I’m not afraid to say that some of those memories will be difficult. But I know that their beliefs and the way of life that motivated them to serve as warriors still exists. It exists in every defiant American who refuses to bend the knee to the tyrant. It exists in every American who still believes in liberty, freedom, and equal justice under law. It exists in those who yearn for the self-determination of a republic. I think that’s worth fighting for, and I think there are others out there across America who believe the same.

It is time to stop trying to debate our country back into unity. Instead, it’s time to look forward, to make a place where we can again live free, speak freely, worship freely, and live out our lives in the manner we choose. It is time to acknowledge the truth and learn to live with it, as difficult as that may be, and to move on. It is time to understand, and say out loud, the republic is dead; Long live the republic!

There's more at the link.

My perspective is a little different, and perhaps a little clearer, than most Americans'.  You see, I came here in the mid-1990's, and my first contact with America was at that stage of its development.  After 9/11, I saw the wholesale destruction of civil liberties as the "security state" took over many aspects of government, and I was deeply troubled by it.  I was "fresh enough" to constitutional rights and civil liberties that I was very aware of how quickly and easily they were overruled.  Since President Obama's administration, I've watched unelected bureaucrats and political cronies systematically dismantle many of the things I found most attractive and valuable in America, replacing them with partisan political structures that George Washington and the Founding Fathers would probably have gone to war all over again to prevent.

I therefore agree with Mr. Morton that the American Republic I knew in the mid-90's is effectively dead.  Those who've been here much longer than I may not have been fully aware of its dying.  The "boiling frog" syndrome has doubtless had its effect.

I hope and pray that our constitutional republic can be saved . . . but I have to admit, I doubt it.  The divisions between Left and Right have become so strong, so overwhelming, that there's virtually no possibility of compromise any longer.  Also, it's ridiculous to talk about fighting to resolve the issue.  With tens of millions on each side, we can't kill or threaten our way out of this.  I pointed that out in connection with the Paris terror attacks of 2015, and the argument is equally valid here.  I said then, and I still say now, "We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails."

Perhaps the only way forward is to divide our present nation into two (or even more) parts.  That may be the only way to avoid another bloody civil war.  Unfortunately, that won't be acceptable to the oligarchy currently running things in Washington, because it would dilute and diminish their power.  Therefore, I expect bloodshed, no matter what happens.

Peter

"How the World Ran Out of Everything": Lessons we all need to learn

 

The New York Times points out that so-called "Just In Time" manufacturing practices were caught short by the COVID-19 pandemic and its widespread after-effects.

In the story of how the modern world was constructed, Toyota stands out as the mastermind of a monumental advance in industrial efficiency. The Japanese automaker pioneered so-called Just In Time manufacturing, in which parts are delivered to factories right as they are required, minimizing the need to stockpile them.

Over the last half-century, this approach has captivated global business in industries far beyond autos. From fashion to food processing to pharmaceuticals, companies have embraced Just In Time to stay nimble, allowing them to adapt to changing market demands, while cutting costs.

But the tumultuous events of the past year have challenged the merits of paring inventories, while reinvigorating concerns that some industries have gone too far, leaving them vulnerable to disruption. As the pandemic has hampered factory operations and sown chaos in global shipping, many economies around the world have been bedeviled by shortages of a vast range of goods — from electronics to lumber to clothing.

In a time of extraordinary upheaval in the global economy, Just In Time is running late.

There's more at the link.

The article is pretty accurate, IMHO.  Factories had grown used to running on a minimal stockpile of essential production supplies, relying on regular, reliable deliveries to bring them what they needed when they needed it.  Unfortunately, when those deliveries were interrupted due to any one of a number of factors aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the factories could not continue normal production.  They had insufficient reserve supplies on which to fall back.

I think all of us can draw an important lesson from this.  How would - how will - our own emergency plans survive a sudden, unforeseen interruption in supplies?  Many so-called "preppers" speak glibly of having so many months' or years' food supplies put away, just in case;  but how many of them have checked their stockpiles against reality?  They might have mountains of rice and beans, but be short on essential medical supplies (painkillers, laxatives, diarrhea medication and so on).

To take just one example in detail:  if I have allergies, do I have a stockpile of anti-allergy medication, OTC and/or prescription, sufficient to tide me over if there's suddenly no more available in the shops?  That's actually a critical item, and should be very high on everyone's emergency supply list.  If we aren't used to living outdoors, where exposure to allergens is much higher, and we suddenly have no air-conditioning (because the power's out), and are forced to open windows to ventilate our homes, all those allergens will come flooding in.  If we have to "bug out" to another part of the country, with local allergens to which we haven't built up any tolerance, it's going to be even worse.  We should have at least several weeks' worth of such medications in stock, if not several months' worth - enough for every member of the family, including low-dose versions for children if necessary.

How many of our normal, day-to-day needs might be seriously affected if routine supplies are interrupted?  I'm not just talking about food, but many other things.  For example:

• Routine maintenance of our motor vehicles.  Do we have enough oil, filters, small consumable parts, and tools to service our vehicles ourselves if necessary, or have a more mechanically minded neighbor or friend service them?  Do we have the necessary instructions or maintenance manuals?  Do we have even a small emergency reserve of fuel, so that if supplies to our local gas stations are interrupted, we have a tankful or two to tide us over, or get to a safer part of the country if necessary?
• Light bulbs, and alternate sources of lighting.  If we can't buy them, we're stuck with what we've got.  I try to keep at least one spare bulb in reserve for every 3-4 in the house, plus emergency lighting that I can bring into play during prolonged power outages.
• Prescription medication.  I have a minimum of 90 days' reserve supply of every single prescription medication my wife and I take, and I'm working towards getting that up to 180 days across the board.  For a couple of critical items (i.e. without them, I'm going to die!), I have a year's supply in reserve.  I also have a small reserve of potentially critical antibiotics, in case of a real emergency.
• Ammunition.  I'm not expecting to fight World War 3, but if society is severely disrupted by a crisis, who knows what looting and/or anarchy might break out?  I have enough ammunition in storage to see my wife and myself through any likely need, and to keep in practice during times like the present, when regular supplies aren't available and/or affordable.

Those are just a few areas of concern.  I'm sure you can supply your own list.

Because they didn't foresee, expect or prepare for disruptions in supply or their labor force, many factories - in some areas, all of them - had to close their doors during the COVID-19 crisis.  Let's take a lesson from that, and make sure we're not making the same mistake.

One more thing.  During a crisis, you'll hear many accusations of hoarding directed against those who are prepared to look after their own needs.  This is a lie, but it's a very common and very persuasive lie.  You should expect the authorities to try to confiscate any "excess" or "hoarded" stocks they can find, in order to satisfy the needs of the mob and provide public relations pictures of how they're "doing something".  They may even mount door-to-door searches for such stocks, in defiance of constitutional and legal norms, justifying them in terms of the current emergency.  (This has been a common element in several emergencies to which I was exposed.)  If you try to resist, you'll probably be arrested.

That's why it's important to keep your reserves as unobtrusive as possible, in plain containers that won't attract envy or suspicion.  If possible, store some in a secondary location, so that if one is found and "looted" (officially or otherwise), you still have the other on which to fall back.  Also, don't talk about your reserves to other people you don't know well, or aren't sure you can trust.  If you do, word about them is sure to get out during an emergency.  People will come knocking on your door, demanding that you share with them.  If you don't (and you shouldn't, except for those who have a legitimate claim on you for support), you're going to attract anger, resentment, and possibly violent attempts to take what you have.  That's not a good place to be.

Peter

Remember my warning about cops being targeted?

 

I wrote recently about how police were targeted in Africa if they failed to enforce the law impartially and in a non-partisan way.  Now comes news that in Mexico, police are being targeted for daring to enforce the law at all.

Mexican drug cartel members have recently taken to targeting police officers in their homes — then torturing and killing them, according to a disturbing new report.

The Jalisco cartel has vowed to wipe out members of an elite law enforcement force known as the Tactical Group in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

The cartel even had a banner printed up and hung from a building in Guanajuato city that declared: “If you want war, you’ll get a war. We have already shown that we know where you are. We are coming for all of you.”

“For each member of our firm (CJNG) that you arrest, we are going to kill two of your Tacticals, wherever they are, at their homes, in their patrol vehicles,” the message continued, referring to the cartel by its Spanish initials.

The cartel started kidnapping members of the Tactical Group and torturing them into giving up the names and addresses of their fellow officers, according to the AP.

There's more at the link.

Read that report in the light of President Biden's proposed budget, which defunds almost all security measures and immigration enforcement along our border with Mexico.  Among those taking advantage of the Democratic Party's destructive intent to supplant indigenous American voters with illegal aliens, whom they assume will vote for the party that lets them in, we can confidently expect to find large numbers of cartel members and drug smugglers.  How long will it be before they begin targeting American law enforcement agencies and officers in the same blatant, in-your-face way as the Jalisco cartel in Mexico?

The common Mexican cartel challenge of plata o plomo - "silver or lead" - is already prevalent in some areas of America.  Several law enforcement agencies along and near the Mexican border have seen the arrest of some officers for taking bribes to allow cartel members and their drugs into this country.  Examples include (but are far from limited to):

• Customs officer charged with bribery and drug conspiracy
• Corruption crosses the border with agent bribes
• Former Nogales customs officer sentenced to prison for taking bribe
• Exclusive: FBI Says Corrupt Border Officials Accepting Bribes Expose U.S. to Terrorist Risk
• 127 Border Patrol and Customs Workers Arrested for Corruption

I daresay we'll see a lot more of that, if the alternative is the deliberate targeting of officers and their families at their homes.

Don't just read news reports like that - think of what they might mean to your safety and security in your own areas, particularly if they're over and above the possible politicized corruption of local, regional and national law enforcement and prosecutorial functions.  Take steps accordingly.

Peter

Don't mess with a Cape buffalo!

 

There are those who think that American bison - wrongly called "buffalo" by many - are tough, pugnacious critters.  Allow me to assure you, they have nothing on real buffalo, particularly the Cape buffalo of Africa.  The latter have killed an awful lot of hunters, and left many more wishing they were dead - not to mention demonstrating forcibly to many other denizens of the animal kingdom that it's unwise to tangle with them.

I was reminded of them - and highly amused - by this photograph sent to me by Lawdog, who's an old African hand like myself.  He and I have both encountered vocal disbelief - from those who don't know any better, or are used to Disney cartoon portrayals of wildlife - that mere "wild cows" can be so dangerous.  (See his Africa stories to be disabused of that notion.)

I'll let the picture speak for itself.  It's clearly a photoshopped version from a video clip (which I'll include below), replacing another animal with a crocodile, but it's still amusing.  Click it for a larger view.

I bet, if that crocodile could talk in between screams of terror, it wouldn't be arguing about who's top dog in that river!

In case you think that's unusual, it's not uncommon to see that sort of thing in Africa.  Consider this lion who, along with a buddy, didn't make sure that their intended prey - who looks to have been either young, or sick and unable to defend itself properly - was alone.

Bad idea.  Bad, bad idea.

"They're just wild cows!"  Yeah.  Right.  Depending on the extent of his injuries, that lion might not have survived that encounter for long.  (Also, note the background to that video clip:  it's clearly the source for the photoshopped photograph above.)

The late Peter Hathaway Capstick, whom I had the privilege of knowing when he lived in Cape Town, wrote many books about Africa.  His first, which cemented his reputation as a world-class raconteur, was "Death in the Long Grass".

In that book, he had this to say.

The African Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer (not "water buffalo", NBC), has enjoyed a Jack the Ripper reputation since the first European thwacked one with a muzzle loader more than 300 years ago.  He has always been considered a top contender as the Dangerous Continent's most dangerous animal, and there is no question that the sheer physical characteristics of Mbogo, Njati, Inyati, or Narri, depending upon what dialect you hunt him in, give him a very unique package of aggregate attributes that in their total are unequalled by any other member of the "Big Five":  lion, leopard, elephant, or rhino.

The most impressive fact about the buffalo is that he has virtually no weak points.  Jumbo and rhino are myopic in the extreme, but a bull buffalo could read the want ads in dim light across Times Square.  The talent of his big, scruffy, thorn-torn ears is incredible, fully the equal of both lion and leopard, either of which he outweighs many times at no apparent cost in blinding speed and maneuverability.  His sense of smell is practically supernatural when he sticks that big, black nose like a #10 jam tin into the wind - as good as elephant or rhino and much better in ambient air than any of the cats.  He is a living arsenal of weaponry for use against jerkwater hunters or preoccupied Africans, offering a Chinese menu choice on your shortcut to Glory of horns that can disembowel a locomotive, hooves like split mattock-heads, and up to a ton of bulk that can roll you into a fair resemblance of shaggy tollhouse cookie mix.  What's more, if you cross him and get caught, he will display a singular lack of reluctance, regardless of race, color or creed, to give you a nice, home demonstration of his talents.  If you are planning on hunting the mighty buff, you had best give some thought to putting your affairs in order.  In the thick stuff, where he loves to loaf away the fly-filled, hot afternoons, he has the edge, not you.

. . .

The "Run, Bambi, it's Man" and "Don't Shoot Him Mister He's a Sheepdog" mentalities rarely waste their time in the thick bush of a hunting concession when they can sit in a zebra-striped minibus at a game preserve and photograph buff that are used to people.  They will tell you that they've photographed thousands of buffalo without any incident whatever, and I'm sure they have.  What they don't realize is that park buffalo behave entirely differently than "wild" ones, acting more like dairy cattle than anything else, drinking and grazing in daylight, while normal buff hide up in heavy cover during daylight and only come to water at night.  When I say heavy cover, I refer to thorn and scrub thatched with grass until the end result is thicker than boiler plate, and about as translucent.  To spend a few days tiptoeing around this vegetable morass looking for a good bull at tag-you're-it distance is possibly the most tense, nerve-wracking hunting in the world.  The first thing you will notice in this pastime is the absence of lady photographers in fake leopard hatbands.

. . .

Although it's true that adrenaline and other high-performance additives are a factor with any large animal when wounded or excited, the Cape buffalo is clearly the champ in the overdrive department.  If you don't drop him stone dead or mortally wounded with the first shot, he will completely lose his sense of humor and may get the idea he's invulnerable to bullets, a point he may prove to you over the next few minutes ... You can shoot him practically to pieces, if he gives you the chance, but he'll keep coming despite wounds that would disable a tyrannosaurus.  Blow his heart into tatters, literally, and he'll have enough oxygen stored in his brain to go a hundred yards and still have the moxie to take you apart with his tent-peg horns and mix you up with enough topsoil to start a modest tomato farm.

A buffalo whose attention you have gotten with a badly placed shot is really something to behold.  For sheer, unnerving ferocity, he will make a range bull look like Ferdinand.  When he has you nicely in range and comes galumphing over to chastise you, he keeps his head very high until a few inches before contact - probably so he can watch your expression - making it about as easy to slip a bullet through the armor of his horns into the brain as to complete a triple carom shot on a warped pool table after seven martinis.  Either you stick a big slug up his nose and hopefully catch his brain or upper vertebrae, or remember the words to the "Hail Mary" in a hurry.

Capstick wasn't exaggerating.  I've shot three Cape buffalo, all of them older specimens taken for meat, not as trophies;  and I made good and sure to shoot them from at least a hundred yards away, downwind of them, where they wouldn't scent my approach.  If I couldn't get a good, solid killing shot at a buff, clearly and without obstructions, I didn't shoot at all.  I had - and have - no desire whatsoever to have a wounded buff take out his frustrations on me.  There are more than enough graves in Africa with suitable epitaphs to teach us that far too often, under such circumstances, they win.

Peter

Sending your child to some public schools is equivalent to child abuse

 

We've spoken about how public school systems in the USA are increasingly being taken over by political correctness and extremism, to the point where so-called critical race theory is becoming dominant in many of them.  What's more, many school systems are openly hostile to those who disagree with this, to the point of deliberately excluding them from proceedings, mocking them, and discriminating against their children because of their parents' opinions.  For the most recent horror story of that sort, from Washington state, see here.  If it doesn't make your blood boil, there may be something wrong with you.

I came across the following post on Gab recently.  I can't link to the post directly, because the account is private and doesn't allow that, but I think the general thrust of the argument is unarguable.  Click the screenshot for a larger view.

Based on my knowledge of many faith-based schools, and information coming from many educators, and news reports like the one linked above, I think the kids' nightmare outlined in that post is an accurate description of what's going on in all too many public school systems today.

The question thus arises:  why would any normal parent put their kids through that nightmare?  Would you willingly send your child into a brainwashing program guaranteed to warp, twist, fold, spindle and mutilate their innocent minds into a ghastly caricature of a normal human being?  If not, how can you in good conscience send them to public schools riddled with critical race theory and political correctness?

It's time for parents to take over their school systems, throw out the nonsense that's infesting them, and get back to the "three R's" of education as a foundation for everything else.  Also, let's include such foundational elements as civics (in the classical sense), logic and literature.  They used to be universal in the American education system;  now, they're largely conspicuous by their absence.  Fortunately, there are signs that parents in at least some areas have had enough of the nonsense, and are mobilizing to do precisely that.  See, for example, Vail, Arizona last month.

If parents are in a situation where there's no hope of doing that, I submit that it becomes a moral and ethical choice to remove their children from that sick, twisted environment, and educate them at home and/or with the kids of like-minded parents who also recognize what's happening, so that their offspring have at least a chance at a normal life.

I think it's become an either-or situation:  either parents take back control of their community's schools, and fix them, or they withdraw their children from them.  There can't be a "middle of the road" approach to such evil incarnate.

Peter