Clarity re: LA

"Civil disobedience" has an honorable reputation as the expression of a sincere conscience.

It could describe the action of Rosa Parks, for instance, who defied a particular unjust local law . .  without violating other laws. Unfortunately, the term is often used today to describe a protest against certain laws while using lawless violence and looting. 

That's different. That's not civil disobedience. To violate the law against destroying your neighbor's property is not justified or legitimate. The Los Angeles rioting supposedly to protest immigration law was in no way civil, and in many cases not even the sincere expression of conscience.

Paid protester

In the past, protests in America were mostly people caring passionately about some cause enough to go out on the streets and demonstrate for their opinion. Today many protesters are not moved by conviction but for pay. 

They may carry a sign, shout, obstruct the right of way for their neighbors, destroy public property, destroy private property (photo), attack the police, throw bricks--crimes. 

Here is a young man who was offered $150/day to protest in Los Angeles. He doesn't really care much about the point of it which is to protest ICE officers deporting illegal immigrants, but he needed the money so he took the job.

But he started realizing that he was involved in destroying the community. They told him to go to certain streets where he found pallets of bricks to use (in destroying the community). Later he saw a pallet of molotov cocktails and thought, "Man, should I really be doing this? Like, this is bad news." He didn't care about the city of Los Angeles, but he thought "But I'm American, after all, like, this is not good." This man's conscience kicked in.

"I got to thinking, whoever is funding this must really hate this country." Yup, I believe he's right. 

from X post 

Burn cars≠fun

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you followed a link on yesterday's post, you heard an ABC reporter telling people what he thinks is happening at the riots in Los Angeles: "just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burning".

"Fun"?? This is from a used-to-be-trusted legacy media news outlet. To the degree that anyone agrees with this deluded view of a violent situation, we have a genuine crisis going on in this country.

DOGE backlash 1

Americans were strongly in favor of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year, of course. We don't want to pay for fraud, waste and abuse of this country's financial resources. It's been going on for decades and it's tough to rein in.

Now surveys seem to indicate more people disapprove. What happened? In addition to single "keying" events of random Teslas, there have been fire-bombings and protests (photo) of Tesla facilities. It's a way to sour public opinion and reduce Tesla's value, thereby inflicting pain on Elon Musk.

These events weren't spontaneous outbursts of outraged citizens. A few may have been inspired just by press reports ramping up fear, but there's also sophisticated organization. 

The nationwide protests were all posted and scheduled by Action Network. They originally identified The Disruption Project as the host or co-sponsor, which was founded by an experienced left-wing activist.

from City Journal

Exposed 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Wait, do people really want injustice exposed? For some, that depends on who did it. They'd be okay with injustice if it's done by someone on their own side.

Genuine justice calls for perpetrators to be called out, regardless of which political side they're on. Check out this attack on personal property, part of a wave of vandalism directed at Elon Musk's Tesla car company. The man may think he's justified in this crime because (in his opinion) Elon is bad. 

But that's not justice. And, fortunately, he didn't get away with it.

Stop hiding

A widespread, public discussion about immigration is urgently needed across the United Kingdom and the West. Despite that vote (yesterday's post) against investigation in Parliament, grooming gang crimes should no longer be hidden (photo) in Britain.

Konstantin Kisin names a basic issue that should be talked about openly, civilly, honestly, without censorship and without fear of reprisal:

"Western countries won't stop suffering terrorist attack after terrorist attack until they let go of their most cherished belief: that all people are equal and that all cultures are the same."

A crime is a crime in Britain and everywhere, whether it's committed by natives of your country or by immigrants to your country. 

UK still hides it

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

All the evidence, all the stories, all the first-person testimony "shamed" the United Kingdom Parliament into considering a new, thorough investigation into the ongoing rape gang crimes. 

Are the crimes of these rape gangs being covered up?

So members of Parliament (MP's) voted on whether they should do an investigation of this outrage. They voted about 2 to 1 against it. In other words, the authorities decided not to investigate whether the authorities are covering up the crimes of rape gangs.

UK Prime Minister (photo) was too busy to be present for the vote, but he instructed the MP's of his party to vote against it.

Rape gangs 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post) 

Were the authorities in the dark about the scope of these gangs? No, they knew, and there have been a few prosecutions like the example in yesterday's post which is now 12 years old. Then why has it continued for many years? Because the crimes were ignored, the story buried.

"It's the biggest crime--and cover-up--in British history. . . Thousands of young girls, mostly children, were systematically groomed and raped by immigrant gangs across the UK over a period of decades. Police turned the girls away. Detectives were discouraged from investigating. Politicians and prosecutors did their best to sweep it under the rug. Journalists skipped the biggest story of their lives."

Different levels of fear motivated the silence according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Police feared that they might be called racist. Politicians could lose important votes from immigrant communities. Neighbors and journalists feared violence from Muslim men.

Two other factors are involved: multiculturalism and elite disdain for working class girls.

from The Free Press

To be continued

Rape gangs 1

A journalist spent six months investigating a crime in Britain for NBC : the "organized sexual exploitation of girls as young as 13." He called it a "grueling" experience which gave him nightmares: 

"Graphic accounts of rape and sexual abuse are not easy to put out of mind, especially not when the victims are barely pubescent."

Nine men were convicted of those crimes in 2012. This is old news. But the crimes continued and the number of victims kept multiplying, right up to the present. I've seen estimates that  hundreds of thousands of girls have been assaulted in perhaps fifty cities, some girls murdered.

How is it possible that thousands of these brutal crimes could continue over so many years in so many cities without authorities taking enough action to stop it? That question is suddenly convulsing British politics and capturing worldwide attention.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Nouvel an 2

Car burning, as the protest of angry and violent people, is an awful annual tradition (photo) in France on New Year's Eve. It declined about 10% last year because of the coming Olympics, so only 745 vehicle fires were reported by authorities. Hopefully some restraint will be exercised tomorrow.

I posted about the recurring event in January of 2018:

A French "tradition" of intentional car burning takes place every New Year's Eve. In just the Ile de France region of Paris this year there were 250 cars burned, plus 75 to the east in Strasbourg, and some in other cities.

It's bad, but it's been worse. NYT reported that 1067 cars were torched in France in 2013, and 940 in 2014.

New Year's weekend was also observed by assaults on police and firefighters. First to arrive at an apartment building fire in Saint-Denis, police went inside to rescue screaming children. Exiting the building with kids in their arms, they were stoned by "a bunch of young people."

Criminals here

Venezuela (image) has released convicted criminals to work with intelligence officers to infiltrate the U.S. Their mission is to track down former officials or military from their own country and "neutralize" them. 

 

Why would their government order such a thing? They know that at least some of these individuals may soon come before American border control and could be in a position to reveal secrets. "[T]he Maduro regime may fear some Venezuelans may trade information to avoid removal" from the U.S.

How does Venezuela know this? Because of our election results. Our incoming president taking office in January promises to deport illegal immigrants.

The story is based on a leaked U.S. Customs and Border Control field report. Over half a million Venezuelan immigrants have come across our borders since early 2020.

from Breitbart

Prosecutors 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

About 90% of U.S. criminal cases are handled by elected district attorneys: "Once elected, rogue prosecutors refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes that are on the books in their states, justifying their refusal by claiming prosecutorial discretion.” 

Yes, these D.A.'s use their own preference about which criminal cases to prosecute. 

So if (for example) the legislature makes it a crime to resist the police making an arrest, a rogue prosecutor (D.A.) might decide not to prosecute breaking that law--it's up to him or her. The practical effect of it is, he repeals a law legally created--when it's his responsibility to to enforce it. 

In 2022, Manhattan's newly elected D.A. announced that his office would not prosecute the following: "marijuana misdemeanors; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing . . resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution."

photo

The police are "concerned about the messages these types of policies send to police officers and criminals on the street. . . there are already too many people who believe that they can commit crimes, resist arrest, interfere with police officers, and face zero consequences.”

from CNN

Prosecutors 1

Keeping us safe in America is the job of local law enforcement. A movement was started years ago to upend that security. Two foundational beliefs motivate them: that our criminal justice system is completely racist, and that law-and-order district attorneys have to go because they control what charges will be pressed.

Racial activists with Marxist ties persuaded a billionaire (G. Soros) to donate a million dollars in 2015 to replace D.A.'s in Louisiana and Mississippi. It grew into the "progressive prosecutors" movement, or the "rogue prosecutors" movement in the words of this author.

Cities dominated by leftwing politicians elected these new ones who see defendants as victims. A law professor who supports this rogue movement says its goal is to "reverse-engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure."

 

photo

The one pictured above claims that he is concerned with protecting the "truly vulnerable." But that doesn't turn out to be the result of the progressive (rogue) prosecutors movement: "In the areas where it has prevailed, the most harm has been done to racial minorities whose interests it purports to represent."

from Imprimis

(cont'd tomorrow)

Disparity

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Must all racial disparity (variance or difference) in any context be understood as the result of hostile, hidden racism? It should be easy to see through such an extremely over-simplified generalization. Here's some data from the address. and it may not be comfortable to hear. (The data is not documented. If you question it, do research of your own.)

In 2019, half of all black 12th graders had not mastered basic reading, and two-thirds had not mastered arithmetic and how to read a graph." According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only three percent of black high school seniors were college ready in 2023." These are serious concerns - but they don't mean that college exams are racist.

Politicians (like our current president) may say that being a black person is much more dangerous than being white. Actually, that's true. "Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined . . "

But it's because of black-on-black crime, not the implied reason that white people (especially police) are always on the attack. 

There's a skills gap between races and a behavior gap. The solution is to deal with and to close those gaps, not to vilify the whole white race.

from Hillsdale

Merit 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some medical schools have stopped using the Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) as a requirement for new students. The National Institutes of Health has broadened their criteria for doctors getting neurology grants to include things like whether they received childhood welfare.

California's state bar association lowered the pass score on its bar exam for attorneys because only 5% of black law school graduates passed the exam the first time, compared to 42% of the Asian law school grads and 52% of white law school grads.

In the area of law enforcement, police officers don't always arrest shoplifters and sometimes district attorneys don't prosecute shoplifting and certain other crimes anymore. Why? 

"Macy’s flagship store in New York City was sued several years ago because most of the people its employees stopped for shoplifting were black. The only allowable explanation for that fact was that Macy’s was racist. It was not permissible to argue that Macy’s arrests mirrored the shoplifting population."

from Hillsdale

(cont'd tomorrow)

Stealing IP #3

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

While testing some turbines in China, American Super Conductor found that they were running on new code which AMSC had not released yet. They investigated Dejan because he was one of the few who had confidential access, and then found the emails which told the whole story.

image

Sinovel, their biggest client, cancelled all its millions of dollars' worth of orders (of course it did). Dejan confessed and spent a year in Austrian prison. AMSC suffered market value loss of over a billion dollars and had to let 600 employees go out of their previous total of 900. It was devastating.

Afterward, cyber attacks kept coming. AMSC hired a computer security firm, which discovered that the attacks were now coming from a Chinese military unit tasked with spying on North American companies. Thousands of American companies have lost "engineering documents, manufacturing processes, chip designs, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, you name it it's been stolen."

from The Great Brain Robbery

Stealing IP #2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Imagine this scenario. You have some ideas for a great tech product. You start your company and hire some engineers to develop those ideas. You find clients who really want your product and are happy to purchase it from you. You keep figuring out more ways to help your clients and take care of your employees.

After decades of research and experiment at your company, someone takes your valuable results and gives them away. That's stealing intellectual property. 

That's pretty much how it was for American Super Conductor. They spent years and millions of dollars developing advanced software for the operation of wind turbines. After China in 2005 passed a law calling for wind farms, AMSC contracted with the Chinese company Sinovel to provide the required gadgetry and computer code to them while they would do the physical building of the wind turbines.

An AMSC employee (Dejan) working in their Austria office was seduced by the Chinese. An email showed his demands: "All girls need money. I need girls. Sinovel needs me." Sinovel executives were glad to comply.

from The Great Brain Robbery

(cont'd tomorrow)

Stealing IP

A grand jury just indicted a former Google engineer for stealing intellectual property. Over 500 confidential files of Google's ideas (mind work) were stolen for Chinese companies. 

image

He was arrested last week in California for stealing trade secrets relating to AI technology and could receive up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250k for each of the four counts of theft.

Hired in 2019, with access to confidential information, he started uploading hundreds of files into his personal account in 2022. He was soon offered the position of chief technology officer in a new Chinese startup dealing with artificial intelligence. He founded another Chinese startup to train "large AI models powered by supercomputing chips." 

Surveillance camera footage showed somebody else faking his identity at Google's entrance while he was in China. He resigned last December.

from Ars Technica

San Fran Targets

Follow-up to this post

"We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all."

photo

Target, Inc. recently issued this statement, which must be self-evident to every one of us. If it's not safe to work/shop in a store, the store can't stay open. So three Targets are closing in San Francisco, California.

Retail stores come and go in different localities, so that's not unusual. But this is different because the reason being given is a lack of safety and security.

Sound familiar? "Security" is why Whole Foods left. Seven Starbucks are going to close in San Francisco this month.

Note to readers in other countries: rampant, business-destroying crime is new and  alarming here. The state of California seems uninterested in prosecuting it.

from MPR News

"Petty" crime 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some might say "why not?" to shoplifting, if they think only super rich companies own businesses. But local business owners aren't rich, and it hurts them. They bought the goods, bought the store, and employ their neighbors - and it's not fair to steal from them.

A shoe shop opened in a Minnesota suburb in 2021, but the owner gave up in 2022.

Here's the sad story: 

"In just six months, five robberies alone have cost me $30,000 worth of merchandise and caused me to close my store. Repeatedly, burglars smashed the glass doors of my storefront and ripped sneakers right off my shelves. Not only did the last incident cost my store $13,000 in stolen goods, but I am now left with devastating costs to fix all the damage to my store."

He and his family are now awash in debt. 

from Startribune