The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within 30 seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949.
June 25, 2017
QotD: The Two Minute Hate
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June 24, 2017
How the FBI rolls
Mark Steyn on the fascinating differences between lying to the FBI and having the FBI lie to you:
Recently I had occasion to speak with an FBI agent myself in connection with a matter rather closer to home for me than the Kremlin. After a couple of hours of going over all the details, I leaned back in my chair and said, “What do you think’s really going on here?” And the G-Man, who was actually a G-Woman, replied that, in her experience, you could investigate someone for two or three years and never know the answer to that question. So you nail them on mail fraud. And we all had a good laugh and went on our merry way.
But I confess I feel a little queasy about that. If you investigate someone long enough, you may not get the goods on them, but you’ll certainly get some goods. And so much of American justice seems to involve designating the guy you’re gonna get, and then figuring out afterwards what it is you can get him on – Al Capone for tax evasion being merely the most celebrated example thereof. But there are a zillion lesser examples and Jim Comey has made his own famous contribution to the pantheon: He got Martha Stewart banged up in the Big House for lying to the FBI in a matter for which there was no underlying crime.
Incidentally, why is it a crime for Americans to lie to the FBI but not for the FBI to lie to Americans? As when Comey testified – just a month ago – that Huma Abedin had forwarded hundreds of thousands of emails to the laptop of her sex-fiend husband. Like so much Comey grandstanding, it was a great story – but it wasn’t true:
The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.
If Martha Stewart or Scooter Libby had done that, “what to do about it” would be easy: They’d be headed to the slammer. But, when the FBI Director makes false statements under oath in a matter for which he is giving expert, prepared testimony, he gets to skate.
This “Russia investigation” is now in its Martha Stewart phase: Fifteen lawyers are not going on a two-year fishing expedition in order to hold a press conference and say they came up empty. Somewhere along the way someone will misremember something and the fifteen synchronized fishers will leap in the air and pounce: Ah-ha!
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The Articles of Confederation – Lies – Extra History
Published on Jun 17, 2017
The Articles of Confederation gave the United States their name, but even beyond that, they exposed many of the issues that would underlie this new nation for the rest of its history. James Portnow interviews series writer Soraya Een Hajji about the Articles of Confederation!
The murder of Philando Castile
Thomas Knapp on what he calls “The Castile Doctrine” … the police being held to far lower standards than ordinary citizens:
On June 16, a jury acquitted St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez of all charges in the 2016 killing of motorist Philando Castile. That acquittal was, in a sense, also a death sentence — not for Yanez, but for future motorists unfortunate enough to encounter cops like him.
No, this is not a “bad cop” story. It’s a sad tale and I actually feel sorry for Yanez. But the facts are what they are.
Yanez killed Castile. The killing was caught on video and neither Yanez nor his attorneys denied it.
His defense (that he feared for his life) was based on ridiculous grounds relating to the smell of cannabis and the presence of a child (“I thought, I was gonna die, and I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five year old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing, then what, what care does he give about me?”).
I find his justification to be astonishing … how can a man who thinks like this have ever been trusted with a gun and a badge?
Castile had informed Yanez that he possessed a concealed weapon and a permit for it, and was following Yanez’s orders to produce the permit when Yanez panicked and fired.
Key word: Panicked. His fear wasn’t justified. It wasn’t reasonable. It was unthinking and irrational. That made him culpably negligent in the killing.
[…]
The jury, in relieving him of the consequences of that failure, continued a sad tradition of holding law enforcement officers to a lesser standard of conduct than ordinary Americans. In doing so, they made the world a safer place for cops who shouldn’t be cops — and a more dangerous place for the rest of us.
US law generally holds civilian gun owners to much higher standards in cases like this than they ever seem to expect their own law enforcement officers to meet. A civilian who shot a driver in a similar situation would be lucky to only be facing manslaughter charges, but might well be convicted of first degree murder. A cop? Every extenuating circumstance is given full weight by both judge and jury. A person with no formal training is expected (and required) to be cool, calm, and collected under unexpected extreme stress, while a trained officer is given a pass for “panic” and irresponsible gunplay. Where’s the justice?
Update, 27 June: Even more puzzling is the virtual silence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) over this judicial killing:
These are gruesomely interesting times in the American gun debate. The footage of Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez killing motorist Philando Castile wasn’t enough to convict him in a court of law, but it’s no less damning for that. The more these videos pile up, the harder it gets to rationalize American police forces’ objectively insane collective death count.
The circumstances of Castile’s death are particularly enraging for gun rights activists — or, rather, they ought to be. Castile calmly informed Yanez he was legally armed, just as he should have; Yanez freaked out and, seconds later, pumped seven bullets into the car. By rights, many have observed, the NRA should be leading marches through the Twin Cities. Instead it’s saying and doing bugger all. Not a good look.
On the other side of the great divide, the gun control movement is almost in hibernation — and understandably so. Theirs is a tough climb at the best of times; with a Republican House and Senate it’s a sheer cliff.
How To Insult Like the British – Anglophenia Ep 12
Published on 8 Sep 2014
If you ever get into an argument with a British person, you’ll wish you’d have watched this video. Siobhan Thompson gives you the tools to sling insults like a Brit.
Here are a few other insults via the Anglophenia blog: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2012/08/the-brit-list-10-stinging-british-insults/
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June 23, 2017
The Disillusionment of Lawrence of Arabia I THE GREAT WAR Week 152
Published on 22 Jun 2017
Almost a year after the secret signing of the Sykes-Picot-Agreement, British intelligence officer and guerrilla fighter T.E. Lawrence learns about the deal. He learns how the French, British and Russians are carving up the Middle East while officially supporting the Arab Revolt. Lawrence is increasingly frustrated with this double crossing behaviour and warns his superiors about the consequences.
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Patrick MacNee of The Avengers on alcoholism and his life
Published on Apr 30, 2017
Patrick talks about his mother began to identify as a lesbian. His father moved to India, and his mother began to live with her wealthy partner, Evelyn Spottswood, whose money came from the Dewar’s whisky business. He called her Uncle Evelyn and he despised her.
He talks about his battle with Alcohol, being a Grandfather, working with Diana Rigg and his book Blind In One Ear. He has a delicious sense of humor and such a fun interview.
He was best known for his role as the secret agent John Steed in the British television series The Avengers. Patrick died in June of 2015 at age 93.
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British and Irish Iron Age hill forts and settlements mapped in new online atlas
In the Guardian, Steven Morris talks about a new online resource for archaeological information on over 4,000 Iron Age sites:
Maiden Castle in Dorset. View of the west gate and ramparts (English Heritage)
Some soar out of the landscape and have impressed tourists and inspired historians and artists for centuries, while others are tiny gems, tucked away on mountain or moor and are rarely visited.
For the first time, a detailed online atlas has drawn together the locations and particulars of the UK and Ireland’s hill forts and come to the conclusion that there are more than 4,000 of them, mostly dating from the iron age.
The project has been long and not without challenges. Scores of researchers – experts and volunteer hill fort hunters – have spent five years pinpointing the sites and collating information on them.
[…]
Sites such as Maiden Castle, which stretches for 900 metres along a saddle-backed hilltop in Dorset, are obvious. But some that have made the cut are little more than a couple of roundhouses with a ditch and bank. Certain hill forts in Northumbria are tiny and probably would not have got into the atlas if they were in Wessex, where the sites tend to be grander.
Many hill forts will be familiar, such as the one on Little Solsbury Hill, which overlooks Bath. But there are others, such as a chain of forts in the Clwydian Range in north-east Wales, that are not so well known. Many are in lovely, remote locations but there are also urban ones surrounded by roads and housing.
The online atlas and database will be accessible on smartphones and tablets and can be used while visiting a hill fort.
H/T to Jessica Brisbane for the link.
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Kate Bush – Hounds of Love – Official Music Video
Uploaded on 1 Mar 2011
Official music video for the single “Hounds of Love” — which is the title track of the Hounds of Love album by Kate Bush. It was also the third of the album’s four singles. The single was released on 24 February 1986, and reached number 18 in the UK Singles Chart.
The music video was directed by Kate Bush herself.
The versions worldwide differ slightly: the US single mix included an additional chorus just after the second chorus.
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QotD: Philosophy
I believe the most important moment in the foreseeable future of philosophy will come when we realize that mad old Nazi bastard Heidegger had it right when he said that we are thrown into the world and must cope, and that theory-building consists of rearranging our toolkit for coping. I believe the biggest blind spot in analytical philosophy is its refusal to grapple with Heidegger’s one big insight, but that evolutionary biology coupled with Peirce offers us a way to stop being blind. I believe that when the insights of what is now called “evolutionary psychology” are truly absorbed by philosophers, many of the supposedly intractable problems of philosophy will vanish.
Eric S. Raymond, “What Do You Believe That You Cannot Prove?”, Armed and Dangerous, 2005-01-06.
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June 22, 2017
Words & Numbers: The Population Boom Could Save the World
Published on 21 Jun 2017
In 1798, 95 percent of the world lived in poverty. Today, less than 10 percent do, in spite of the world’s population growing by 700 percent in that same time.
The common thought among young people is that this 700 percent population growth is going to overpopulate the earth. But given the number of people in poverty, it looks like population growth is actually good for poverty – more people means more brains, which means more ideas, inventions, and innovations.
This week on Words and Numbers, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan talk about how and why the world is improving despite widespread negativity towards the idea of a growing world population, and why that negativity persists regardless of the prosperity we see every day.
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The Netflix tax is dead (again) – “This thing was a turkey, and Trudeau was right to wring its neck.”
Chris Selley rejoices in the demise of the so-called “Netflix tax” proposal, but also pours scorn on yet another proposal to prop up Canadian print media organizations:
Justin Trudeau wasted little time last week rubbishing the Heritage Committee’s so-called “Netflix tax,” and no wonder. If you’re determined to raid people’s wallets to fund journalism they’d rather not pay for and Can-con programming they’d rather not watch, you’re far better off doing it shadily than with a shiny new tax on something people love. The sound bytes winging around in the idea’s favour were, in a word, pathetic: “it’s not a new tax, but an expanded levy!”; “we already tax cable, why not Internet?”; “we already subsidize magazines, why not newspapers?”
Good God, why any of it? This thing was a turkey, and Trudeau was right to wring its neck.
Newspaper publishers and union bosses remain undaunted in pursuit of unearned public funds, however. “Canada’s newspaper industry unites to advocate for Canadian Journalism Fund,” proclaimed a headline at News Media Canada, the publishers’ lobby group. They’re savvy enough to propose tying subsidies to employed journalists’ salaries — 35 per cent to a maximum of $30,000 per head — rather than just cutting cheques. That might fend off Executive Bonus Rage, but it won’t fend off sticker shock: the suggested eventual cost is a whopping $350 million a year.
As a taxpayer I would much rather subsidize Canada’s journalists than Canada’s legacy media companies — but I would sure as hell rather subsidize neither. The more beholden to government a country’s journalists, the less free its press. Magazine writers in this country know their publications get a top-up from Ottawa in the form of the Canadian Periodical Fund. That’s not ideal. But under News Media Canada’s proposal, we would know our jobs literally depended on government largesse. I’ll take a hard pass on that.
Publishers’ and union bosses’ claims of unanimous support notwithstanding, many unionized journalists, and many of your non-unionized friends here at the National Post, hate the idea. It risks narrowing Canada’s already remarkably narrow spectrum of acceptable ideas and arguments. It risks — no, guarantees — alienating the very consumers we need to attract. In the case of some legacy media outlets it would simply extend the runway for business models that everyone knows will never fly again. In any event, the sums being bandied about wouldn’t solve the crisis as a whole unless the solution was permanent and ever-greater government dependency. I’m amazed to see how many journalists, including some very nearly pensionable ones, support the idea.
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Hunting the Bismarck – II: The Mighty HMS Hood – Extra History
Published on May 18, 2017
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The Bismarck had been sighted, and the British fleet raced to intercept it with their own flagship: the mighty HMS Hood. As Hood and her escort caught up, a harrowing battle between four giant ships ensued.
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The EU regulators want to get rid of a Belgian food tradition
Carol Off reports for CBC Radio’s As It Happens:
Belgian Fries, traditionally served with mayonnaise
(photo by vokimberly at Flickr)
Belgium’s government says a new proposal by the European Union could spell disaster for the country’s world-famous fries.
“We adore our fries the way we make them, so just let us do so for the next 100 years, because the last hundred years it wasn’t a problem, so why should it be a problem now?” Flemish Tourism Minister Ben Weyts told Carol Off, host of CBC Radio’s As It Happens.
Traditionally, Belgian fries, are twice fried in fat. First, they go in raw to generate a soft, fluffy interior. Then they are refried at a higher temperature to create a crispy, golden exterior.
This process sets Belgian fries apart from soft and chunky British chips, or the sleek and thin fries preferred by the French.
But the European Commission is proposing that all potatoes be blanched — briefly cooked in boiling water — before they hit the fat.
It’s part of an EU effort to curb exposure to acrylamide, a chemical that can form in foods cooked at high temperatures, and has been linked to cancer in animal tests.
[…]
On the heels of the Belgian backlash, the European Commission has insisted the proposal is a suggestion, not a ban.
“The commission has no intention whatsoever to ban Belgian frites — or any other frites, for that matter,” spokesperson Margaritis Schinas said on Tuesday.
“Instead, the commission is preparing a new regulatory measure to oblige food business operators to apply a code of practice to reduce acrylamide in food, as it is carcinogenic.
“We are all very attached to the rich culinary heritage we find in our member states.”
For more information on Belgian Fries, see The One and Only Original Belgian Fries Website (which hadn’t been updated with this latest existential threat when I checked it).
H/T to Chris Myrick for the link.
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