Pro-Forma Policing

Posted: August 13, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Sir Robert Peel’s (the founder of Modern Police) Policing principles #7

Yesterday I alluded to the police not going hard on those who use force, even lethal force defending themselves in places like Seattle where they have been forced to retreat. Let me give you an example of how I think this will work from something that happened in my own life.

About 15 years ago or so my youngest was briefly in the same school where my wife was school nurse, One day I got a call from the VP at the school. He was called into the office one day because he had hit another kid. It turned out the kid had said something about his mother (my wife) and he slugged him.

I went in to see the vice principal and when he objected to my sons actions I bluntly told him what the rules I laid down for my sons years ago concerning fighting at school:

  1. If the other guy is armed don’t fight under any circumstances.
  2. If the other guy throws the 1st punch: fight.
  3. You are not allowed to throw the 1st punch UNLESS the other guy insults your Mother or Grandmother. In that case you are not only authorized to throw the 1st punch your are expected to.
  4. You are not allowed to hit a girl even IF she throws the 1st punch or insults your mother or grandmother.

I told the VP that while I understand he has to enforce the rules and will not complain if he does but as far as I was concerned at home he would not be punished for his actions he would be commended for them.

I further informed the VP that if faced with the same circumstances at school again he is under my orders to do the exact same thing.

Needless to say the VP was rather surprised at my take and said that while he would have to punish my son he would take steps to make sure the provocation was not repeated. As I was leaving he walked to the door with me and in a low voice told me he hoped his sons would stand up for their mother like mine did.

In the end my son got a light pro-forma punishment, neither the kid he slugged nor any other said another word about his mother and the next year I had him in a Catholic School.

That’s how I think such things will work when people decide to reclaim their duty as citizens and when people loudly complain, and they will, the police will note said complaint, and ignore it because this is the society they have voted for.

I Think that Jazz Shaw’s Has Nailed it on Seattle

Posted: August 12, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

In the final paragraph of this piece:

I’d wish the residents of Seattle good luck with this mess, but I’m fresh out of sympathy. They keep electing the same people to the City Council so they’re getting precisely what they asked for. You made your bed. Now you can sleep in it, assuming someone doesn’t set it on fire in the middle of the night.

Eventually I suppose the people of Seattle will get sick of being oppressed or terrorized, when they do the end result isn’t going to be pretty. In the words of Glenn Reynolds:

Is this a boon to the criminal class? Only in the short term.

The thing to remember is, ultimately, police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, but to protect criminals from the public. Before the invention of modern police by Robert Peel in London in the early 19th Century, the public dealt with criminals mostly on its own, and usually harshly. Arrest by the police and trial before a court was a big improvement over mob justice.

And here is a question for our friends on the left, how anxious do you think the police that remain are going to be to arrest a citizen who blows one or more of these criminals away while protecting himself or his family?

I suspect not very.

Hope or Hezbollah?

Posted: August 11, 2020 by chrisharper in war
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

For nearly a decade, I lived and traveled into Beirut—a time that molded me into a journalist.

In Beirut, you worked hard and played hard. Almost every day, journalists went into a dangerous city, where many thousands of people died, and almost every night, they retired to the bar at the Commodore Hotel.

My wife Elizabeth and I arrived in Beirut in 1979, where we lived for two years. After that, we spent many days back in Lebanon during a variety of news stories, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. We returned in 2011 during the Arab uprising to see Beirut had risen from the ashes, with restaurants and businesses booming from an economic resurgence.

Although we both loved the city and made friends with whom we remained close for many years, recent events did not surprise us.

Lebanon has existed for decades without a government. When it had a good leader like Rafic Harari, a businessman and prime minister, he ended up dead in 2005 as the victim of assassination. Ironically, last week’s explosion occurred just as a United Nations tribunal was set to determine the guilt or innocence of those suspected of killing Harari. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-tribunal-hariri-idUSKCN2512IC

For the past year, Lebanese have been protesting the current government for its corruption and inability to deal with day-to-day issues, such as garbage collection. As an example, my former colleague can only received $500 a month from his ABC News and government pensions because the government has placed severe restrictions on the country’s banking system.

Although the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, is a Christian—as delineated in the country’s constitution–he is beholden to Hezbollah, the Shia militia, for his power. He remains in power despite the resignation of the prime minister and the cabinet.

Hezbollah has links to Iran and Hamas and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Hezbollah was behind the 1983 attack against the U.S. Marines that left more than 200 dead and the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985 that left a U.S. sailor dead. The group has a vast militia, which rivals the country’s army, and has engaged in a variety of battles with Israel.

More important for Lebanon, Hezbollah helped create a corrupt and negligent political system that created the lack of enforcement at the port and allowed the storage of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate.

Moreover, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies asserts that Hezbollah siphons off billions of dollars from around the world. Money is laundered through Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to function as a kind of parallel state, one with its financial and social services. See https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/08/04/crisis-in-lebanon/

When my wife and I lived in Lebanon, the country embraced the song “I’ll Will Survive” as it national anthem. The resignation of the government may be a step toward survival, but Hezbollah still has a choke hold on the country. No survival will occur until the organization no longer holds significant power in Lebanon.

Alison Young Has 50K followers on Youtube, Music Industry’s Harvey Weinsteins Hardest Hit

Posted: August 11, 2020 by datechguy in American Success Stories, culture, entertainment

Last week Stacy McCain noted a young lady named Alison Young doing a Buddy Holly Song on youtube and marveled how the technology allows her follow her dream (and build a large following of 50k youtube followers (aprox 49.3 k more than mine without the following hassle and expense:

Back in 1957, Buddy Holly had to travel to Clovis, New Mexico, to record in Norman Petty‘s studio, where “Everyday” was recorded as the B-side of “Peggy Sue.” You couldn’t just program a synthesizer (or use an Omnichord) for your backup track, either. You had to have an actual band to accompany you, or else pay studio musicians at union scale. Because the equipment needed for recording — what Marx would call “the means of production” — was so expensive, getting access to studio time usually required the support of a manager or a record company. Young musicians would generally spend years playing bar gigs and such before they could hope to get a shot at a recording contract. By the time the Beatles signed with EMI in 1962, they had been together five years, played every dance hall in northern England and done four stints as a house band in bars in Hamburg, Germany.

What the advent of cheap high-quality recording technology has done is to topple the barriers between musical talent and the audience. You don’t need a manager or an agent, you don’t need a record company, a studio, a producer, a contract — no lawyers, no paperwork, nothing — to be able to record a song, produce a video and upload it to YouTube where, potentially, you could become an instant superstar.

This is cause for celebration as it allows the audience access to potential articles that they might never hear. There is however one other aspect of this technological revolution that Stacy is missing and it’s a significant one. This young lady has gained a modicum of fame (and hopefully a small living) without having to subject herself to what would have been called in Hollywood the “casting couch”

Imagine if Miss Young was coming up in the 50-90’s. Imagine the groups of executives, agents, studio folks who were all empowered by their ability to give access , equipment or introductions necessary to give you a shot at the audience she now commands. How many might have demanded a less than honorable price for said access?

Think of how many names, big names, paid Harvey Weinstein’s price, or Bill Cosby’s price or Matt Lauer’s price or the prices of the hundreds if not thousands of other Weinstein, Cosby or Lauer wannabees of a lower level that if they couldn’t get you to the top of the ladder demanded their fee to get to the next rung?

Because of this technology Alison and many like her is able to bypass everyone one of those Weinstein wannabees and just make her music. In fact if she proves popular enough they might have to come to HER rather than vice versa.

This is an actual victory for the right of a woman to make the most of her life based on her talents outside of the bed and the real joy of it is thanks to the ability to produce this on her own she will not only avoid being their prey but might be able to happily produce her music without every knowing such people even exist.

What a blessing.

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