Month: December 2016

The 2nd Amendment Was Only For Muskets (Puckle Update)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The First “Assault” Weapon – 1718

(Via FIREARM BLOG) The Puckle Gun is one of those firearms of which only a couple of expamples exist in the world, but which is covered in a great deal of introductory firearms books, usually in their section on the history of machine guns. This has led many to assume the Puckle Gun was some kind of proto-machine gun, which isn’t exactly the case, although it is a very important historical step on the road to modern rapid-fire weaponry. Some discussion will follow below, but first, Forgotten Weapons released an installment on the partial original Puckle Gun located at Reed Knight’s Institute of Military Technology…

[ the video below is here in the Firearm Blog post ]

What makes the Puckle significant to the development of rapid fire guns? Its features. It is one of the earliest, if not the earliest breechloading guns to my knowledge that incorporates all of the following features necessary for a modern rapid-fire gun:

  • A method of sealing the chamber to prevent gas escape
  • A quick-changeable feeding device for rapid reloading
  • Pre-set, integrated priming to elminate the priming stage of loading and protect the priming compound from the environment

Previous breechloaders did incorporate one or two of these features, but Puckle’s gun combined all three to produce a true rapid-fire weapon….

InPuckle Gun 1718 the “Puckle gun” [above], the first machine gun, appeared. (One could argue that the so-called “assault rifle pre-dated the Second Amendment.) The Colt revolver followed not long after and in the late 1800s the Gatling gun, which fired 200 rounds per minute, appeared on the market. The evolution of firearms was observable during the time that the Constitution was drafted; to argue that the Founding Fathers were unaware of, or not living through, the ever-evolving capabilities of firearms is blatant ignorance of both common sense and fact. Jefferson himself was a noted collector and in letters explained what technological capabilities he favored in pieces over others in his collection. ~ The Dana Show

A transcript of the above CBS 46 presentation can be found HERE.

RED STATE continues on with this thinking:

…Prior to the Civil War, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that first Congress dropped references to “as allowed by Law” that had been in the English Bill of Rights. The Founders intended that Congress was to make no law curtailing the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.

The 2nd Amendment, contrary to much of today’s conversation, has just as much to do with the people protecting themselves from tyranny as it does burglars. That is why there is so little common ground about assault rifles — even charitably ignoring the fact that there really is no such thing. If the 2nd Amendment is to protect the citizenry from even their own government, then the citizenry should be able to be armed.

There are plenty of arguments and bodies to suggest that we might, as a nation, need to rethink this. The Founders gave us that option. We can amend the Constitution.

In doing so, we should keep in mind that in the past 100 years Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, China, and other governments have turned on their people at various times and, in doing so, restricted freedoms starting often with gun ownership. You may think a 30 round magazine is too big. Under the real purpose of the second amendment, a 30 round magazine might be too small.

Regardless, as the President announces how he will curtail the freedoms of the second amendment, we should remember Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943):

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

And the Examiner notes “Pepperbox” and “Volley Guns”

…Put whoever tries to get away with such an unsupportable wild claim on the spot by asking them to explain pepperbox revolvers, multiple barrel handheld firearms based on a concept introduced in the 15th Century, albeit they were initially fired using a match. At the time the Constitution was adopted, pepperboxes had upgraded their technology to flintlock versions, with up to seven barrels rotated by hand.

Then ask them to explain volley guns, first used in 1339.

The Founders experienced first-hand a major technological innovation that yielded a range and accuracy advantage: long guns with rifled barrels, like Kentucky and Pennsylvania rifles, had it all over British standard-issue Brown Bess smooth bore muskets…

The Wild-Wild West:

…How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let’s say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town’s most violent year ever.

As for the traditional Western gunfight as depicted in movies, the inaccuracy of handguns at the time would have made quick-drawing skill irrelevant: It was simply so unlikely you’d hit a guy on the first, second or third shot that it didn’t really matter which guy got out his gun first. The closest history got to high-noon show downs was dueling, where people just stood across from one another with their guns out, aimed and fired until someone got lucky, and someone else was dead. Forget about “fanning,” rapidly cocking a single-action revolver between rounds like Clint Eastwood does in A Fistful of Dollars. You’d be lucky to hit a henchman if the duel took place in a closet.

Why Do We Believe It?

Because famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid wanted you to believe it. If you’ve seen Young Guns on cable, you probably know the guy was gunning somebody down every ten minutes!

Well according to sources who aren’t Billy The Kid, his lifetime kill count was four. Criminals inflated their murder stats for the same reason guys today inflate their sexual experience: It made them look cool. Towns like Deadwood talked up their violent, lawless natures in order to attract adventurous settlers. Books were written about them and movies were made as soon as cameras were invented, and nobody who’d been out west was rushing to correct the misconceptions because, why the hell would they. A century and a half later, we still love that lie…

(6 Ridiculous History Myths ~ You Probably Think Are True)

Miss Malcolm’s Book has some startling examples of a society gone mad!

Malcolm’s book has shown me that I radically underestimated the danger of gun control. Her detailed study of British legislation on the topic shows the real aim of the disarmers. They wish to abolish the right to armed self-defense entirely. The point is not only to block armed resistance to the state, as I had previously thought; in addition, everyone is to be made totally dependent on the state for protection.

Some of Malcolm’s examples are shocking. In England “[m]erely threatening to defend oneself can also prove illegal, as an elderly lady discovered. She succeeded in frightening off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from a toy gun, only to be arrested for the crime of putting someone in fear with an imitation firearm” (p. 184).

Not even if one’s life is in danger can one legally use a weapon. In another case, two men assaulted Eric Butler in a subway, smashing his head and choking him. “In desperation he unsheathed a sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of them. . . . The assailants were charged with unlawful wounding but Butler was also tried, and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon” (p. 185).

You can imagine the legal position if someone goes so far as to use a real gun to defend himself. As British law now stands, you cannot even use a gun in your own home to defend yourself against burglars. In a 1999 incident, Tony Martin surprised a professional burglar and his accomplice while they robbed his home. He fired, killing one of them.

Did the government commend Martin for his bravery in confronting the burglars? Quite the contrary, they tried and convicted him for murder. “Thus an English farmer, living alone, has been sentenced to life in prison for killing one professional burglar and ten years for wounding another when the two broke into his home at night” (p. 216). Fortunately, our story has a “happy” ending: the court of appeals reduced his sentence to five years, on grounds of “diminished capacity.”

[….]

Gun control advocates, faced with these facts, will at once begin to yammer uncontrollably, “a correlation is not a cause.” Indeed it is not; but in this instance, a strong correlation holds in two ways: when guns increase in number, violent crimes decrease, and when guns decrease, violent crimes increase. Further, a plausible causal story explains the correlation: the prospect of armed resistance deters criminals. This is about as good as an inductive argument gets. But I do not anticipate that those who wish to take away the right to self-defense will alter their position. They aim to make everyone totally dependent on the all-powerful state….

(Guns and Violence: The English Experience, Joyce Lee Malcolm)

John & Ken Discuss CalPERS Ponzi Scheme (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

California Boondoggles

The pension crisis in California is the worst in the country, and it will continue to get worse as Jerry Brown and the environmentalists strap this state with regulations that choke businesses to death — see:

✦ California Regression – Eco Craziness
✦ Cow-Farts in London – Jerry Brown

IBD has this article on the issue:

Pensions: California, which is known for its earthquakes, just had a major one. Didn’t feel it? You will. This quake isn’t the earthshaking kind, but rather the state’s decision to recognize reality when it comes to its insolvent public-employee pension fund.

Last week, the 85-year-old California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, slashed its official investment forecast going forward, meaning that state and local governments, police and sheriffs departments, and even school districts will have to spend billions of dollars more to CalPERS to support their future retirees. And, no doubt, it will mean higher taxes for all.

Sadly, this move won’t be enough. For years, the state has projected steady investment returns of 7.5% for CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the nation. But returns have been below that. So now CalPERS is trimming its return to 7% per year. But, given the pension fund’s mismanagement and poor performance, even that may be too high. Today the fund is a little over 60% fully funded, meaning it will have to raise billions of dollars more to be solvent. That means higher contributions for government workers, and higher taxes for average citizens.

It’s no accident. “CalPERS has … steered billions of dollars into politically connected firms,” wrote Steve Malanga in City Journal, back in 2013. “And it has ventured into ‘socially responsible’ investment strategies, making bad bets that have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Such dubious practices have piled up a crushing amount of pension debt, which California residents — and their children — will somehow have to repay.”

That’s happening now. California’s famous Highway Patrol, for instance, has grossly underfunded its pensions. So it got the state to agree to a $10 hike in car registration fees to help make up the shortfall. No doubt, it will be asking for more soon.

It’s not just California. Across the country, pension funds have been underfunded, mismanaged and in some cases looted by managers. Today, according to the Fed, pension funds across the country are $2 trillion in the red — after being overfunded as recently as the year 2000. That means tax hikes are coming, like it or not…..

Professor Wants “White Genocide” For Christmas (UPDATE by SARGON)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Remember, Sargon is an atheist (just a memo):

The bottom line seems to be that white-people are not welcomed at Drexel University — OR — not have white alumni donate money:

THE DAILY CALLER discusses the above Tweet by George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia,

Drexel University associate professor of political science George Ciccariello-Maher has a long history of espousing racist views towards white people on Twitter and has at times supported genocide.

Cicariello-Maher, a white man who specializes in race and racism among other topics, has been the subject of criticism from media outlets and social media users after he tweeted on Saturday, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He subsequently deleted the tweet and brushed it off as a joke, saying that “White isn’t a race.” (RELATED: University Professor: I Want ‘White Genocide’ For Christmas)

However, Cicariello-Maher’s view that “white isn’t a race” doesn’t match up with his past tweets. On Sunday, Ciccariello-Maher said that the massacre of whites during the Haitian Revolution was a “good thing.” During the Haitian massacre in 1804 as many as 4,000 whites were killed.

Ciccariello-Maher’s anti-white tweets, however, did not start this weekend. On Feb 3, 2013, the Drexel professor said that “Yacub made a lot of white folks.” According to Nation of Islam theology, Yacub is a black scientist who created the white race to be a “race of devils.”

Then on June 8, 2015, Ciccariello-Maher said, “Abolish the White Race.” A little over a week later, the Drexel professor said that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof “simply put into practice what many white Americans already think.”

Ciccariello-Maher also tweeted in Sept. 2016 a purported exchange between him and his son: “Son: If I was a slave, I’d bake a cake & put a potion in it & the white people would steal it Me: What would the potion do? Him: Kill them,” the Drexel University professor wrote.

Just this past week, in response to a viral video claiming to show two men kicked off a plane for speaking Arabic, Ciccariello-Maher wrote, “#Gulag these Racist Crackers.”

Ciccariello-Maher, who describes himself as a communist, joined Drexel University in 2010. Drexel University said in a statement Sunday afternoon: “While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, Professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University.”….

Speaking of “Class Warfare,” e.g., cultural Marxism…

“One Of The Worst Foreign-Policy Presidents Ever” ~ Dershowitz

Published by Papa Giorgio

 

HOTAIR h-t

DERSHOWITZ: What he did was so nasty, he pulled a bait and switch. He told the American public this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank. And yet, he allowed he representative to the U.N. to abstain –which is really a vote for– a resolution that says the Jews can’t pray at the Western Wall, Jews can’t live in the Jewish Quarter [of Jerusalem] where they have lived for thousands of years. And he’s going to say, ‘Whoops! I didn’t mean that!’ Well read the resolution! You’re a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law School.

It’s nothing more than a petulant swipe at Benjamin Netanyahu, and as Dershowitz explains, it’s going to backfire — badly:

DERSHOWITZ: This will make peace much more difficult to achieve because the Palestinians will now say ‘we can get a state through the UN, we can get a state through the BDS movement,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We can get a state through the International Criminal Court,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We don’t have to negotiate, we don’t have to make painful compromises.’ He will go down in history, President Obama, as one of the worst foreign-policy presidents ever.

Declaring War on Judeo-Christian Civilization

Published by Papa Giorgio

See other Prager University insights:

The officials said that business with the embassies of those countries — Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal and New Zealand — will be suspended… (CNN)

Here is an excellent article by GATESTONE on the issue of the United Nations trying to undermine the Judeo-Christian West:

✦ How is it that Western jurisprudence, created after the Second World War to prevent more crimes against humanity, is now being used to perpetuate more crimes and against democracies?

✦ It is a dreadful manipulation to try erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. That is what a jihad looks like. It is not just orange jumpsuits, beheadings and slavery. If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future.

✦ If Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault, argued UN expert Dubravka Simonovic with a straight face.

✦ Last month, the President of the UN General Assembly sported the famous keffiyah scarf, a symbol of the “Palestinian resistance” (read terrorism). This is simply the continuation of the cultural obliteration of Israel, which is supposed to justify next its physical obliteration.

✦ The UN’s war on the Israel’s Jews is, at heart, a war against the West. The UN and its backers are briskly paving the way for the European Caliphate.

2016 has been a sumptuous year for the anti-Semites at the United Nations. The UN Security Council just targeted the only democracy in the Middle East: the State of Israel. The outgoing Obama Administration reportedly orchestrated what even Haaretz called a “hit and run” campaign in UN to denigrate the Jewish State and leave it to a fate where only conflict and hate loom. This is a cultural genocide that is no less dangerous than terror attacks. It is based on anti-Semitic lies and creates the atmosphere not for achieving “peace”, as disingenuously claimed, but for perpetuating war.

UNSC Resolution 2334 is the culmination of a dizzyingly fruitful year for anti-Semites. Last November, committees of the UN General Assembly in a single day adopted 10 resolutions against Israel, the only open society in the Middle East. How many resolutions have been approved against Syria? One. How many against the rogue state of North Korea? One. How many against Russia when it annexed Crimea? One.

Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, observed:

“Even as Syrian president Bashar Assad is preparing for the final massacre of his own people in Aleppo, the U.N. adopted a resolution — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — which falsely condemns Israel for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens on the Golan Heights. It’s obscene.”

Not a single resolution was approved for those states which really abuse human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China or Cuba, not to mention many virtual tyrannies throughout Africa. Only one resolution was approved for the “Palestinian refugee properties”, but not even a single mention for the property of the Iraqi Christians in Mosul.

Another resolution in this racist banquet of the United Nations concerned the “application of the Geneva Convention in the occupied territories”. There are hundreds of territorial disputes in the world, from Tibet to Cyprus, but only Israel deserves to be called out?

According to the liars at the United Nations, the most evil country in the world is Israel. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad, and Jordan’s Prince Zeid al Hussein are sponsoring even now a “blacklist” of international companies that have ties with Israeli companies in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to facilitate boycotting Israel in the evident hope of economically exterminating the only democracy and pluralistic nation in the region: the Jewish State.

The UN Envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui of Algeria, suggested also including the Israeli army in the blacklist of countries and groups that regularly cause harm to children, along with Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and countries such as the Congo and the Central African Republic, infamous for their child-soldiers — but of course not the Palestinians, who continue to promote using children as combatants and children as “martyrs“. How is it that Western jurisprudence, created after the Second World War to prevent more crimes against humanity, is now being used to perpetuate more crimes and against democracies?

The UN women’s rights commission condemned Israel as the world’s only violator of women’s rights. Not Syria, where Assad’s forces use rape as a tactic of war, or the Islamic State, which enslaves women from religious minorities. Not Saudi Arabia, where women are punished if they do not wear the Islamic full-covering clothing in scorching temperatures, or drive a car or even leave the house. Not Iran, where “adultery” (which can include being raped) is punishable by being stoned to death. And if Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault, argued UN expert Dubravka Simonovic with a straight face.

The UN’s World Health Organization also singled out Israel as the only violator in the world of “mental, physical and environmental health”, despite Israel being the only state in the world actually to give medical care to its enemies (ask Hamas leaders’ children).

Canadian law professor Michael Lynk was then appointed as the UN’s “impartial” investigator of alleged Israeli human rights violations despite his long record of anti-Israel lobbying, including his board membership on many pro-Palestinian organizations, including Friends of Sabeel and the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.

Last October, the UN cultural agency, UNESCO — by magically declaring ancient Biblical Jewish sites “Islamic”, even though Islam did not historically exist until the seventh century, hundreds of years later — pretended, with the villainous complicity of the West, to erase the Jewish-Christian roots of Jerusalem.

It is a dreadful manipulation to try erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. It is a jihad. That is what a jihad looks like. It is not just orange jumpsuits, beheadings and slavery. If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future. If you do not know where you are coming from, what values will you defend or fight for?….

(read it all)

94% Of New Jobs Created During Obama’s Era Were Temporary Positions

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes from YOUNG CONSERVATIVES:

From Investing:

A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.

The study shows that the jobs were temporary, contract positions, or part-time “gig” jobs in a variety of fields.

Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.

The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%.

Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was surprised by the finding.

Some NBC/SPLC Trump Hate Hoaxes

Published by Papa Giorgio

There are a few issues involved in this video via NBC and the victim mentality of the left, but first the video:

(Jump To: Hijab Arsonists | Online Survey | More)

Firstly, many supposed “Trump” related “hate-crimes” have been shown to be false. We see headlines and stories like the following (published immediately by the Southern Poverty Law Center):

  • A female Muslim student at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette claimed she was minding her own business when two white men, one wearing a “Trump” hat, tore off her hijab, assaulted her and took her wallet.
  • Police announced on Thursday that a Muslim woman, 18-year-old Yasmin Seweid, lied when she claimed three white men assaulted her on a New York City subway while yelling Trump’s name because she was wearing a traditional Islamic head scarf.
  • An unidentified 20-year-old man filed a criminal complaint in November claiming that he was confronted and accosted by at least two white men when he exited an MBTA bus in Malden, MA.
  • In November, a Bowling Green University student claimed she was “walking down the street” when a group of white men wearing Trump shirts started shouting profanities and throwing rocks at her for no reason.
  • Earlier in December, someone went on a “racist,” pro-Trump graffiti spree. Some of the messages scrawled around Philadelphia were “Trump rules” and “Black B***h.”
  • A woman’s mailbox was marked with “KKK” and “Trump,” a brick was thrown through her car window, the back seat of the car was soaked in gasoline and set on fire.
  • a black female student claimed that she was knocked down by a group of white men screaming “Trump.”
  • An openly bisexual senior at North Park University claimed she was the recipient of a homophobic note and hateful emails following Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election.
  • In a widely-shared Facebook post, an Asian student at the University of Minnesota claimed she was harassed by a white male as she was walking across a bridge in Minneapolis. The man told her to “go back to Asia,” Kathy Mirah Tu said in the post. She ignored him and kept walking across the bridge, but says he followed her and added: “Don’t you know it’s disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are talking to you?” He then allegedly grabbed her wrist, and she responded by punching him in the throat.
  • In another viral Facebook post, a black woman claims she was harassed by a group of white male Trump supporters at a gas station in Rehoboth Beach, Del. “Just experienced one of the WORST THINGS in my entire life,” Ashley Boyer wrote in the post, saying four white men pulled up beside her while she was pumping gas and jumped out of the car. The white men “proceeded to talk about the election and how they’re glad they won’t have to deal with n—–s much longer,” she wrote, adding that one approached her and said: “How scared are u, u black bitch??? I should kill you right now. You’re a waste of air.” Another pulled out a weapon and said: “You’re lucky there’s witnesses or else I’d shoot you right here.”
  • Chris Ball, a gay Canadian filmmaker alleged he was assaulted by Trump supporters on election night in Santa Monica, Calif. The Trump supporters hurled gay slurs at him while he was watching the results come in at a bar, he claims, then followed him out of the bar at the end of the night and assaulted him in an alleyway. Ball posted a photo of himself covered in blood in an Emergency Room as evidence, saying the attackers smashed a beer bottle on his head. “We got a new president you fucking faggots,” they told him, according to Ball.

ON-and-ON… (IJR – DAILY CALLER [2015] – DAILY CALLER – DAILY CALLER – DAILY CALLER – REASON – CBS – RPT – RPT…)

I tend to agree with a comment posted at the PHILLY VOICE, 

  • How come every bit of hate, post-election, is coming from the tolerant, open-minded left? And how come, more often than not, these accounts end up being either hoaxes or flat-out lies? Progressivism is a mental illness, nothing more.

HIJAB ARSONISTS

But in that NBC video I want to deal with two topics. One being the case of a female Muslim (Muslima) student at the University of Michigan. She claimed last month that a man had threatened to set her on fire unless she removed her hijab.

Horrible! . . . if it were true.

HOTAIR notes that “naturally, the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] connected the alleged incident to President-elect Trump.” Continuing with a quote from [the terror supporting Islamic organization] CAIR…

  • “’Our nation’s leaders, and particularly President-elect Donald Trump, need to speak out forcefully against the wave of anti-Muslim incidents sweeping the country after Tuesday’s election,’ CAIR Michigan’s executive director Dawud Walid said at the time.”

About the video above HOTAIR also relates that “A few weeks ago NBC News put together this report featuring a Muslim woman on the University of Michigan campus talking about her response to the election of Donald Trump. The video highlights the claim (now shown to be a hoax) about a woman on campus being threatened for wearing a hijab.” CREEPING SHARIA asks:

  • Why isn’t her name and photograph being released? Why isn’t she being charged with a hate crime against white men? Her attention to detail suggests it was premeditated, as HotAir notes in Another hijab hoax.

ONLINE SURVEY

ANOTHER issue with the NBC FAKE NEWS video is when they reference the 10,000 teacher survey:

The SPLC withheld some vital information in order to make the “narrative” fit better for the uninitiated public. The NEW YORK POST expands on this:

…The takeaway was that Trump-supporting white kids have been harassing minorities at the nation’s schools. And SPLC’s schools report, along with a broader report on alleged Trump-inspired hate crimes — “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election” — sparked breathless coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major media.

The reports also triggered a statement Friday from the US Commission on Civil Rights, which expressed “deep concern” that “prejudice has reared its ugly head in public elementary and secondary schools.” The panel called for more federal funding to prosecute “hate crimes.”

But the SPLC didn’t present the whole story. The Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit self-censored results from a key question it asked educators — whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”

Asked last week to provide the data, SPLC initially said it was having a hard time getting the information “from the researchers.” Pressed, SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp finally revealed that “about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question.”

Bokenkamp did not provide an explanation for the absence of such a substantial metric — at least 2,000 bias-related incidents against white students — from the report, which focuses instead on “anti-immigrant sentiment,” “anti-Muslim sentiment” and “slurs about students of color” related to the election.

“They left that result out because it would not fit their ideological narrative,” former Education Department civil rights attorney Hans Bader said. “It was deemed an inconvenient truth.”…

The CANADIAN FREE PRESS goes on to state that this “New Hate Category” is very lucrative:

At least some manufacturing industries haven’t moved offshore.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and “other civil rights groups” have scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning (Nov. 29) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The troublemaking leftists plan to call on President-elect Donald Trump “to immediately and forcefully publicly denounce racism and bigotry and to call on Americans to stop all acts of hate.”

At the press conference “the SPLC will release . . . [r]esults of a new survey, answered by more than 10,000 teachers across the country detailing the negative effect the election has had on school climates” dubbed “The Trump Effect”

[….]

Like every other activity the SPLC engages in, the point isn’t to actually disavow prejudice but to monetize it, and monetizing hate in the Trump Age requires Trump-style branding.  It’s media gold whenever Trump reiterates for the umpteenth time his “forceful disavowal” of racism.  Outlets from MSNBC to NPR then take to the airwaves to disavow Trump’s disavowal, and another entire news cycle becomes about ‘speaking truth to power’ regarding Trump’s supposedly persistent racism problem.

Thus: the Trump Effect.  The SPLC claims to have stumbled upon the Trump Effect phenomenon after innocently polling 2,000 of the nation’s schoolteachers who spend their spare time trolling the SPLC website searching for confirmation that they’re living in Rachel Maddow’s Nightmare on Trump Street.

Unsurprisingly, after taking SPLC’s online poll, these 2,000 schoolteachers simultaneously arrived at the alarming conclusion that Trump has singlehandedly affected their school’s “climate,” and not for the better like global warming, which keeps the sidewalks free from snow.

In case anyone misses the point that Trump (and not teachers who rant about Trump to their second graders) is a social problem akin to the Black Plague, the Trump Effect report is decorated with a grainy close-up photo of Trump’s open mouth….

Greg Gutfeld agrees (12-2013):

MORE

A recent purported “hate crime” was a burning of a black church with “vote Trump” spray painted on the side. Here is how SNOPES ended their post on the matter:

Greenville is a predominantly African-American community where the mayor described race relations as “fairly good.” However, attacks on churches is not a new development: it was used as a tactic of intimidation by white supremacists during the Civil Rights era. As noted by the fire marshal, a motive has yet to be determined. The fire broke out one week before the 8 November 2016 presidential election.

And the Mayor of Greenville called the burning of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville a “hateful and cowardly act,” Mayor Errick Simmons said this was “an attack on the black community.” “It appears to be a race crime,” Simmons said. “It happened in the ’50s. It happened in the ’60s. It shouldn’t happen in 2016.”

But as with most of these incidents in the past decade… they are hoaxes.

A black man has been arrested and charged with burning an African-American church in Greenville, Miss. last month and defacing its outer walls with “Vote Trump” graffiti.

The Mississippi state police arrested Andrew McClinton, 45, on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree arson of a place of worship, Warren Strain, a spokesman with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety told The Daily Caller.

McClinton allegedly set first to Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, where he is a member, on Nov. 1, a week before the election. The fire destroyed 80 percent of the church. A GoFundMe account raised more than $240,000 to repair the facility….

(From DAILY CALLER; see also BREITBART)

While in the past these churches have been burned by members of racist organization, nowadays it is a fostering of a grievance demographic via awards of victim-hood that has caused a significant increase in the hate-hoaxes. Magically however, this crime went from a hate-crime to just a regular crime — with the snap of a finger.

Two more VERY recent HATE-HOAXES

The first one Delta Airlines confirmed it kicked off the passenger for being rude and disruptinve, NOT for speaking Arabic….

In 2014, Adam Saleh published a video showing an NYPD officer profiling and harassing Muslims. It was sensational, it was shocking, it was clear evidence of NYPD “Islamophobia.” It went viral and made international news. There was just one catch: it was a hoax. Saleh had staged the whole thing. The incident was so embarrassing that even Ibrahim Hooper of Hamas-linked CAIR, a veteran purveyor of fake hate crimes against Muslims, demanded that Saleh apologize.

Now, coincidence of coincidences, Saleh claims that he was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight for speaking Arabic. Even aside from Saleh’s history as a hate crime hoaxer, his story just doesn’t ring true.

(JIHAD WATCH – DAILY WIRE)

MOONBATTERY reports that “it looks like the worst is over for the victims of a phony hate incident at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts:”

  • Babson College has cleared two students of any disciplinary violations stemming from their controversial drive through Wellesley College to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory the day after the presidential election, their lawyers said Monday.

It turned out to be fabricated… but not before being…

…put through hell for a while and were kicked out of their fraternity, but despite doing nothing wrong they pleaded for forgiveness on Fakebook, so the college apparently figured they had been punished enough for indulging in thought-crime.

Even thinking certain ways is dangerous nowadays — apparently

Evolution is “Evolving” ~ The Failure of Neo-Darwinism (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is not to suggest that new paradigms triumph ultimately through some mystical aesthetic. On the contrary, very few men desert a tradition for these reasons alone. Often those who do turn out to have been misled. But if a paradigm is ever to triumph it must gain some first supporters, men who will develop it to the point where hardheaded arguments can be produced and multiplied. And even those arguments, when they come, are not individually decisive. Because scientists are reasonable men, one or another argument will ultimately persuade many of them. But there is no single argument that can or should persuade them all. Rather than a single group conversion, what occurs is an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances.

At the start a new candidate for paradigm may have few sup­porters, and on occasions the supporters’ motives may be sus­pect. Nevertheless, if they are competent, they will improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it. And as that goes on, if the paradigm is one destined to win its fight, the number and strength of the persuasive arguments in its favor will increase. More scientists will then be converted, and the exploration of the new paradigm will go on. Gradually the number of experi­ments, instruments, articles, and books based upon the para­digm will multiply. Still more men, convinced of the new view’s fruitfulness, will adopt the new mode of practicing normal science, until at last only a few elderly hold-outs remain.

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd Edition (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1970), 158-159

(This is recovered audio from Vimeo*) I wanted to isolate how Denis Noble defines “what a gene is”? To wit, a great question starts out the above video — and as science advances, the neo-Darwinian model weakens immensely. See Dr. Noble’s lecture on this (here:

British Biologist Denis Noble Debunks… ). I do wish to add that biology… our physiology really, is also made via influences on the quantum level. ALL THIS is to say that the simplistic view of “gene to organism” is a lagging theory NOT based in current science… AND, it makes the irreducible complexity issue worse for the naturalist.

A great definition of the Modern Synthesis can be found HERE

The first two articles are a report about the Royal Society meeting in regards to the failure of the neo-Darwinian model. The Royal Society is the world’s most distinguished and historic scientific organizations. The first article is an introduction to the upcoming event, the second is a partial description of it. What follows it are articles from scientific literature calling into question the General Theory of Evolution (GTE/NDT).

  • SCIENCE ALERT, “The world’s top biologists have met to discuss whether we should update evolution: Bringing Darwin’s theory into the 21st century,” Nov. 28, 2016

The world’s top biologists have met to discuss whether we should update evolution: Bringing Darwin’s theory into the 21st century. (Science Alert)

Evolutionary biology has helped scientists understand why the world looks the way it does for more than 150 years, since Charles Darwin released On the Origin of Species back in 1859.

But a team of researchers has now proposed an update to our current understanding of evolution – one that could completely shift our understanding of how species evolve.

Some of the world’s best known biologists just converged in London as part of a Royal Society meeting to discuss if it’s time to upgrade one of the most fundamental theories in science.

[….]

The researchers also argue that natural selection isn’t necessarily the primary force in evolution – the limitations of development and the environments organisms live in can also play a role.

  • MINA, “Scientists see the obvious, confirm Darwinism is Broken,” Dec. 14, 2016

Darwinian theory is broken and may not be fixable. That was the takeaway from a meeting last month organized by the world’s most distinguished and historic scientific organization, which went mostly unreported by the media. 

The three-day conference at the Royal Society in London was remarkable in confirming something that advocates of intelligent design (ID), a controversial scientific alternative to evolution, have said for years. ID proponents point to a chasm that divides how evolution and its evidence are presented to the public, and how scientists themselves discuss it behind closed doors and in technical publications. This chasm has been well hidden from laypeople, yet it was clear to anyone who attended the Royal Society conference, as did a number of ID-friendly scientists.

[….]

The opening presentation at the Royal Society by one of those world-class biologists, Austrian evolutionary theorist Gerd Müller, underscored exactly Meyer’s contention. Dr. Müller opened the meeting by discussing several of the fundamental “explanatory deficits” of “the modern synthesis,” that is, textbook neo-Darwinian theory. According to Müller, the as yet unsolved problems include those of explaining:

-Phenotypic complexity (the origin of eyes, ears, body plans, i.e., the anatomical and structural features of living creatures);

-Phenotypic novelty, i.e., the origin of new forms throughout the history of life (for example, the mammalian radiation some 66 million years ago, in which the major orders of mammals, such as cetaceans, bats, carnivores, enter the fossil record, or even more dramatically, the Cambrian explosion, with most animal body plans appearing more or less without antecedents); and finally

-Non-gradual forms or modes of transition, where you see abrupt discontinuities in the fossil record between different types.

As Müller has explained in a 2003 work (“On the Origin of Organismal Form,” with Stuart Newman), although “the neo-Darwinian paradigm still represents the central explanatory framework of evolution, as represented by recent textbooks” it “has no theory of the generative.” In other words, the neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection lacks the creative power to generate the novel anatomical traits and forms of life that have arisen during the history of life. Yet, as Müller noted, neo-Darwinian theory continues to be presented to the public via textbooks as the canonical understanding of how new living forms arose – reflecting precisely the tension between the perceived and actual status of the theory that Meyer described in “Darwin’s Doubt.” 

Much of the conference after Müller’s talk did discuss various other proposed evolutionary mechanisms. Indeed, the prime movers in the Royal Society event, Müller, James Shapiro, Denis Noble, and Eva Jablonka – known to evolutionary biologists as the “Third Way of Evolution” crowd, neither ID theorists nor orthodox Darwinists – have proposed repairing the explanatory deficits of the modern synthesis by highlighting evolutionary mechanisms other than random mutation and natural selection. Much debate at the conference centered around the question of whether these new mechanisms could be incorporated into the basic population genetics framework of neo-Darwinism, thus making possible a new “extended” evolutionary synthesis, or whether the emphasis on new mechanisms of evolutionary change represented a radical, and theoretically incommensurable, break with established theory. This largely semantic, or classificatory, issue obscured a deeper question that few, if any, of the presentations confronted head on: the issue of the origin of genuine phenotypic novelty – the problem that Müller described in his opening talk. 

Indeed, by the end of Day 3 of the meeting, it seemed clear to many of our scientists, and others in attendance with whom they talked, that the puzzle of life’s novelties remained unsolved – if, indeed, it had been addressed at all. As a prominent German paleontologist in the crowd concluded, “All elements of the Extended Synthesis [as discussed at the conference] fail to offer adequate explanations for the crucial explanatory deficits of the Modern Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism) that were explicitly highlighted in the first talk of the meeting by Gerd Müller.” 

[….]

Rather, these complex behaviors were taken as givens, leaving the critical question of their origins more or less untouched. While there is abundant evidence that animals can learn and transmit new behaviors to their offspring – crows in Japan, for instance, have learned how to use automobile traffic to crack open nuts – all such evidence presupposes the prior existence of specific functional capacities enabling observation, learning, and the like. The evolutionary accounts of niche construction theory therefore collide repeatedly with a brick wall marked “ORIGINAL COMPLEX FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY REQUIRED HERE” – without, or beyond which, there would simply be nothing interesting to observe.James Shapiro’s talk, clearly one of the most interesting of the conference, highlighted this difficulty in its most fundamental form. Shapiro presented fascinating evidence showing, contra neo-Darwinism, the non-random nature of many mutational processes – processes that allow organisms to respond to various environmental challenges or stresses. The evidence he presented suggests that many organisms possess a kind of pre-programmed adaptive capacity – a capacity that Shapiro has elsewhere described as operating under “algorithmic control.” Yet, neither Shapiro, nor anyone else at the conference, attempted to explain how the information inherent in such algorithmic control or pre-programmed capacity might have originated. …

So one should be aware, while almost all the info posted here are from evolutionists or journals and magazines in the evolutionary field of study, intelligent design theorists have been ringing this bell for a LONG time. The more recent line of thinking that has devestated neo-Darwinian thinking the most started in 1986 with Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory In Crisis. Then came Phillip Johnson’s 1990 book, Darwin on Trial. Then came Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe (1996). (I would include in the mix a 1993 book by a non-theist, Richard Milton entitled Shattering the Myths of Darwinism.)

Here are some key definitions defined and built upon by Dr. Jay Richards:

Scientific Journals/Magazines

Now, here are some journal or science magazine partial comments that call into question the Darwinian theory:

  • NEW SCIENTIST, “Evolution evolves: Beyond the selfish gene — For more than 150 years it has been one of science’s most successful theories, but we need to rethink evolution for the 21st century,” Sept. 21, 2016

…Some biologists are trying to shoehorn the new knowledge into traditional evolutionary thinking. Others, myself included, believe a more radical approach may be required. We don’t deny the roles of genetic inheritance and natural selection, but think we should look at evolution in a markedly different way. It is time for the theory of evolution to evolve.

  • NATURE, “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?” Oct 8, 2014

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Yes, urgently

Without an extended evolutionary framework, the theory neglects key processes, say Kevin Laland and colleagues.

Charles Darwin conceived of evolution by natural selection without knowing that genes exist. Now mainstream evolutionary theory has come to focus almost exclusively on genetic inheritance and processes that change gene frequencies.

Yet new data pouring out of adjacent fields are starting to undermine this narrow stance. An alternative vision of evolution is beginning to crystallize, in which the processes by which organisms grow and develop are recognized as causes of evolution.

Some of us first met to discuss these advances six years ago. In the time since, as members of an interdisciplinary team, we have worked intensively to develop a broader framework, termed the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES), and to flesh out its structure, assumptions and predictions. In essence, this synthesis maintains that important drivers of evolution, ones that cannot be reduced to genes, must be woven into the very fabric of evolutionary theory.

We believe that the EES will shed new light on how evolution works. We hold that organisms are constructed in development, not simply ‘programmed’ to develop by genes. Living things do not evolve to fit into pre-existing environments, but co-construct and coevolve with their environments, in the process changing the structure of ecosystems.

The number of biologists calling for change in how evolution is conceptualized is growing rapidly. Strong support comes from allied disciplines, particularly developmental biology, but also genomics, epigenetics, ecology and social science. We contend that evolutionary biology needs revision if it is to benefit fully from these other disciplines. The data supporting our position gets stronger every day….

  • NEW SCIENTIST, “The chaos theory of evolution,” Oct 13, 2010

…Palaeoecologists like me are now bringing a new perspective to the problem. If macroevolution really is an extrapolation of natural selection and adaptation, we would expect to see environmental change driving evolutionary change. Major climatic events such as ice ages ought to leave their imprint on life as species adapt to the new conditions. Is that what actually happens?

[….]

“The link between environmental change and evolutionary change is weak – not what Darwinists might have predicted”

[….]

This view of life leads to certain consequences. Macroevolution is not the simple accumulation of microevolutionary changes but has its own processes and patterns. There can be no “laws” of evolution….

  • JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY, “Epigenetics: Scope And Mechanisms | Evolution beyond neo-Darwinism: a new conceptual framework,”  2015 (218: 7-13); doi: 10.1242/jeb.106310.

Experimental results in epigenetics and related fields of biological research show that the Modern Synthesis (neo-Darwinist) theory of evolution requires either extension or replacement. This article examines the conceptual framework of neo-Darwinism, including the concepts of ‘gene’, ‘selfish’, ‘code’, ‘program’, ‘blueprint’, ‘book of life’, ‘replicator’ and ‘vehicle’. This form of representation is a barrier to extending or replacing existing theory as it confuses conceptual and empirical matters. These need to be clearly distinguished. In the case of the central concept of ‘gene’, the definition has moved all the way from describing a necessary cause (defined in terms of the inheritable phenotype itself) to an empirically testable hypothesis (in terms of causation by DNA sequences). Neo-Darwinism also privileges ‘genes’ in causation, whereas in multi-way networks of interactions there can be no privileged cause. An alternative conceptual framework is proposed that avoids these problems, and which is more favourable to an integrated systems view of evolution.

Denis Noble developed the first mathematical model of cardiac cells in 1960 using his discovery, with his supervisor Otto Hutter, of two of the main cardiac potassium ion channels. These discoveries were published in Nature (1960) and The Journal of Physiology (1962). The work was later developed with Dick Tsien, Dario DiFrancesco, Don Hilgemann and others to become the canonical models on which more than 100 cardiac cell models are based today. All are available on the CellML website. 

He was elected President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) at its Congress in Kyoto in 2009, and the opening speech is available as a pdf on this page. He was then elected for a second term at the 2013 Congress in Birmingham, UK. He also delivered the opening plenary lecture at the Congress (see Music of Life link) which is also published as an article in Experimental Physiology (2013). 

He is the author of the first popular book on Systems Biology, The Music of Life, and his most recent lectures concern the implications for evolutionary biology. To follow the debate on this see the FAQ (Answers) pages on the Music of Life website. 

Denis Noble has published more than 500 papers and 11 books. A new book is in preparation. (SOURCE)

The Below presentation notes at the 40:40 mark he asks:

  • do we know what the precise mechanisms for speciation are?

Then he said:

  • I think the honest answer is that we don’t know yet.

And from Tome Bethal’s book (via UNCOMMON DISSENT):

  • “The science of neo-Darwinism was poor all along, and supported by very few facts. I have become ever more convinced that, although Darwinism has been promoted as science, its unstated role has been to prop up a philosophy—the philosophy of materialism—and atheism along with it.” (Page 20)
  • “The scientific evidence for evolution is not only weaker than is generally supposed, but as new discoveries have been made since 1959, the reasons for accepting the theory have diminished rather than increased.” (Page 45)
  • “Darwinian evolution can be seen as a way of looking at the history of life through the distorting lens of Progress. Given enough time, society in general, including human beings, would be transformed into something superior and perhaps unrecognizably different.” (Page 248)
  • “Lewontin’s worldview encouraged him to take a critical look at natural selection, which Darwinians have almost always been reluctant to do. Today, in fact, some of those who might well agree with Lewontin about natural selection are likely to remain silent lest their unorthodoxy should attract reprisals within the academy. Lewontin had no such fears, and he made an impression on me and many others for that reason.” (Page 69)
  • “Darwin might well have been dismayed if the meager evidence for natural selection, assembled over many years, had been presented to him 150 years after The Origin was published. ‘A change in the ratio of preexisting varieties? That is all you have been able to come up with?’ he might reasonably have asked. It is worth bearing in mind how feeble this evidence is, any time someone tells you that Darwinism is a fact.” (Page 79)
  • “Natural selection functions in the realm of philosophy, not science.” (Page 81)
  • “Evolutionists, of course, believe that they are appealing to science, in contrast to the religionists’ reliance on faith. But the truth is that when they utter their two-word incantation, ‘natural selection,’ they are not being remotely scientific. Nor are they expected to provide any details.” (Page 123)

“Muhammad” Talks To “Jesus”

Published by Papa Giorgio

I am not a fan of the show… I think it is borderline blasphemous; but was listening to him (Neil Saavedra, AKA, “Jesus Christ”) on the way to get coffee for the wife and I while we were watching the niece. I enjoyed the call. I may start listening and uploading stuff like it in the future. BUT KNOW that a dude who responds like Jesus, is, …well… creepy and again ~ borderline blasphemous in my mind.

BBC vs Blogosphere |or| Fake vs. Real News (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is via VLAD TEPES (with a h-t to GATEWAY PUNDIT). Mind you, the BBC report may have been right after the event, but they had the audio and I will comment on searches today on their YouTube Channel and site. Here is what the BBC reported was said: “Reportedly witnesses say that he shouted out ‘Aleppo’ and ‘revenge.'” Here is the report:

After perusing the BBC’s YouTube Channel and website, I continually find this written:

  • He can be heard yelling “Don’t forget about Aleppo, don’t forget about Syria” and uses the Islamic phrase “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).

And in a later broadcast recapping the event, you can see the same is said:

There seems to be a whitewashing of the message for the larger audience. Here is the fuller “yelling” his allegiance to the founder of Islam:

  • Killer: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! We are those who have given a pledge of allegiance to Muhammad that we will carry on Jihad as long as we live. Allahu Akbar. Don’t forget Allepo. Don’t forget Syria. Don’t forget Allepo. Don’t forget Syria. As long as our towns are not secure you won’t have taste of security. Back off. Back off. Only death will take me away from here. everyone who has contributed to this cruelty will pay, one by one.

VLAD has the video subtitled

JIHAD WATCH has some great reporting on the issue as well. Terror Attacks Since 9/11Jihad Watch quickly noted for instance that the assassin is making the one-finger-upraised signal that has come to signify allegiance to the Islamic State. The shooter is said to be part of a special ops team, as well as being on the private security detail of Erdogan on multiple occasions. This death will surely be added to the counter to the right!