Archive for November, 2023

Yes You can Blame the US and the UK and Australia and Yes Even Israel in a Fram Oil Filter sort of way

Posted: November 7, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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King Richard (Disguised): Oh, now I remember. How does your loyalty to Richard set on a killer of knights, a poacher of the king’s deer and an outlaw?

Robin Hood: Those I’ve killed died from misusing the trust that Richard left them. And the worst rogue of these is the king’s own brother.

King Richard (Disguised): Oh, then you blame Prince John.

King Richard (Disguised): No, I blame Richard. His task was defending his people instead of deserting them to fight in foreign lands.

The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938

Since the beginning of the Israel Hamas War I have seen a concerted effort to blame Israel and the west:

  • For the Hamas Attacks
  • For the Reactions on Western Campus
  • For the Response to Mass Protests
  • For the open antisemitism in the west

Now of course Hamas did the attack and the slaughter than brought this all on but when it comes to blaming the west let’s to the chase. They have a point.

  • I blame the west for ignoring the problem of Radical Islam in General and Hamas in particular.
  • I blame the west for allowing illegal migration bringing supporters of Jew slaughter to their lands
  • I blame the west for not enforcing their own laws against those who came illegally or even legally.
  • I blame the west for punishing those who objected to these double standards.
  • I blame the west for silencing any who warned about what was happening (see Spencer & Geller et/al)
  • I blame the west for attacking their own civilization for trifles (see microaggressions) but ignoring actual crimes of others.
  • I blame the west for letting their educational systems be taken over by those who hate us.
  • I blame the west for letting themselves be paid off
  • I blame the west for playing the “moral equivalence” game
  • I blame the west for funding the Palestinians in general and Gaza in particular without control or audit of the funds or materials.
  • I blame the west for not supporting those opposing the Mullahs in Iran
  • I blame the west for not taking out the Mullahs when they had armies both to the east and the west of them
  • I blame the west in general and the Biden Administration in particular for funding Iran
  • I blame the west for pressuring Israel to stop fighting back for the sake of peace and quiet.

And most important of all

  • I blame the west for doing all these things while there was still a chance of stopping this at a low cost.

And I don’t leave out Israel from the blame game

  • I blame Israel for deluding themselves that you could contain Hamas
  • I blame Israel and Israelis for pretending that the Palestinians want peace
  • I blame Israel for giving back Gaza, legitimately won in war with Egypt, to the Palestinians.

But most of all

  • I blame Israel for not finishing the job nine years ago when Hamas hit them or frankly any of the other dozen times that Hamas attacks and they let it go.

I actually had “giving Egypt back the Sinai” on this list but you can argue that an active peace with Egypt was worth it of course actually given Israel’s nuclear deterrence and active peace with Egypt was going to be the norm anyways, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

So if you want to blame the US or blame the UK or blame Australia or even blame Israel, you do have a point in the sense that all of these that have happened were preventable so you are basically making the Fram oil filter argument from the 1970’s ads.

Israel and the west decided they wanted to pay the price later and are now doing so.

A hero in Hong Kong

Posted: November 7, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

In a world seemingly bereft of heroes, it’s worth remembering that some heroes do exist and need our support.

Lai Chee-ying, better known in the West as Jimmy Lai, is a Hong Kong businessman and politician fighting for democracy for several decades.

Now, he sits in a Chinese prison accused of violating outrageous laws intended solely to suppress the democratic movement and freedom of speech in Hong Kong.

Born in Guangzhou in south China in 1947, Lai escaped at the age of 12 from the mainland to Hong Kong as a stowaway aboard a small ship. There, he spent his early years in a garment factory and rose to the position of factory manager. In 1975, Lai used his year-end bonus on Hong Kong stocks to raise cash and bought a bankrupt garment factory, where he began producing sweaters. He built Giordano into a company with more than 8,000 employees in 2,400 shops in 30 countries. 

After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Lai turned his attention to politics, building a publishing empire to combat and criticize the Communist Party and its rulers. Lai created Next Digital, a Hong Kong media company, and the popular newspaper Apple Daily.

In 2006, Next Magazine ranked second in circulation in Hong Kong’s magazine market. Apple Daily became the No. 2 newspaper in Hong Kong. He expanded to Taiwan, and 

in 2020, Lai launched an English version of Apple Daily. All of the publications were banned in mainland China. 

Lai was arrested in 2020 on charges of violating the territory’s new national security law, an action which prompted widespread criticism. However, no trial has been set for these actions, which could end up in a life sentence. In three separate cases, he was sentenced to more than five years for various political offenses, including participation in political protests. 

Lai is a devout Christian and a British citizen who met with top U.S. officials during the Trump administration. Yet the Vatican and the British and American governments have done little to get Lai out of jail. 

A recent documentary, The Hong Konger, is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRkuv-fOV7k

In an interview, Lai says: “The younger generation and the older generation have never been so united…. If we just surrender, we will lose everything.” The documentary is also critical of the relationship between corporate investment and the lure to Western companies of Chinese markets.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., Lai decries violence and has disavowed some of his followers who engage in attacks on police. 

It is both heartening and saddening that people like Jimmy Lai exist. It’s crucial that ordinary people and governments use whatever pressure possible to free him from his Chinese prison. 

I Fully Endorse Shooting Someone Who Pulls a Knife on You

Posted: November 6, 2023 by datechguy in News/opinion
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On my way home from Mass this morning I was listening to lament after another Patriots loss when the sports network switched to a quick news update noting that there was a man who shot someone is an Ocean State Job Lot Department store and was on the lam.

There is however a twist to the story as noted here:

The shooting occurred around noon inside the store, located at 105 Campanelli Industrial Drive (the site of the former Toys R Us), after the victim who was shot allegedly pulled a knife on an employee during an argument, Duarte said.

I object to the use of the word “victim” here as it implies he was some innocent instead of a person who drew a knife on someone.

I think it is very appropriate to shoot someone who pulls a knife on you, Once a person produces a weapon the game changes, it’s no longer an argument it’s life or death and nobody should consent to let themselves be killed or threated with death to appease someone else vision of propriety. Something like this happened to my father in the early 60’s when he and his brother were involved in a fight outnumbered 6-2 with some young punks when one of the six they were routing pulled a knife. Dad warned him to put the knife away promising him that he did he would escape the fight with nothing worse than bruises but if he didn’t it was life and death and he would get badly hurt.

The punk didn’t put away the knife, and while dad didn’t shoot him or use the knife after he disarmed him he did hurt him, badly. There were no legal consequences.

Of course this was the early 60’s when even in Massachusetts a man’s right to self defense was still considered a given. In this case the employee fled the scene perhaps figuring that in 2023 his right to self defense wasn’t a given or given this update.

An employee wanted in connection with a shooting inside an Ocean State Job Lot in Brockton that left a shopper injured over the weekend has surrendered to police, officials announced Monday morning.

The suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, allegedly shot the customer around 12 p.m. Sunday at the store at 105 Campanelli Industrial Drive, according to the Brockton Police Department.

Police said the alleged gunman was taken into custody without incident...

…A Boston 25 source said the employee in question is 18-years-old.

…it’s very possible that being an 18 year old kid he just panicked. Of course it’s also possible that he fled because it might have been an illegal weapon or that he was not legally able to carry a gun. That’s rather likely given his age.

Furthermore as a rule it’s a bad idea to argue with a customer in this way. If a customer becomes belligerent you call for the manager to handle it, that’s what he was there for. You don’t escalate the issue.

But even if he was wrong to argue, and even if the gun was not legal, once the knife came out as far as I’m concerned the 18 year old was quite right to shoot the man. You aren’t obliged to let yourself be killed so that some leftist in Boston can feel better about himself and it’s better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.

Either way I find the best way to avoid being shot in self defense is not to produce a weapon and threaten someone life. I suspect this is a lesson the customer in question has learned very well and I suspect it will be a long time before another angry customer decides to produce a weapon in that store.

Closing thought: I suspect that in many US states this story wouldn’t raise an eyebrow and the idea of fleeing would never have occurred to the employee.

The migrant crime wave is here

Posted: November 5, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, immigration, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“That son of a bitch Castro is sh*ttin’ all over us.” US Immigration officer speaking to Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in the movie Scarface.

And now Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s son of a bitch strongman, is defecating on America.

Where is the mainstream media on this story? 

In the Chicago area, where I live, the MSM is asleep at the wheel. Chicago’s woke daily newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, the latter laughingly calls itself “the hardest-working newspaper in America,” are the worst violators of committing the sin of omission in regard to media bias.

Television and radio websites here are a bit better, but if you want to get the feel of what the Joe Biden’s migrant crisis has done to the Chicago area, there is only one website to visit, CWB Chicago, which works a heck of a lot harder than the leftist Sun-Times.

Here are some headlines from CWB Chicago from just the last six months:

Let’s move on to the suburbs:

As for those links, while the alleged criminals are all referred to as “migrants,” it’s not always stated in these reports where they are from. That being said, in every case where a nationality is named, every time they are listed as Venezuelan.

Before you call me a racist, bigot, hater, or whatever, I want to make a couple of things clear. I believe that most of the people who Joe Biden all-but-invited into our country who have crossed the Rio Grande have come here with good intentions–mainly to make an honest living.

Most, of course, does not mean all. And some migrants have been the victims of crimes committed by other migrants–or by non-migrants. Yes, I am aware that many migrants in Chicago live in wretched conditions, including inside police stations and at O’Hare Airport.

My ethnic background is Irish. If these were migrants from Ireland or my wife’s native Latvia–instead of Venezuela or wherever–I’d still be reporting on the resulting crime wave.

That being said, this migrant crime wave, which of course is not limited to the Chicago area, seems to be driven by recently arrived Venezuelan migrants.

Joe Biden and the Democrats have waved in millions of people into America who we know little about, including many criminals.

The Biden Wave needs to stop.

As for these crooked migrants, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which in Cook County, Illinois, may often be just a slap on the wrist. If found guilty, they should be turned over to ICE officials and put on the fast track for deportation.

These migrants are guests in America.

One more thing: Build the wall.

John Ruberry, whose wife is an immigrant, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.


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