See more at The Blaze:
Author: Papa Giorgio
WH Outs CIA Agent ~ Recalling the Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Debacle
(Compare the above remarks [around the 1:08 time marker] to that of the video of Richard Armitage [below-right])
What a difference a sitting President makes. I wonder if my old (“old” – in years and history) nemesis thinks of this? We may never know. Anyhew, the Obama White House released a name mistakenly included in a list meant for the media. The Washington Examiner explains WHY this is relevant.
Valerie Plame doesn’t deny that blowing the cover of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan is a serious matter. It’s just that, discussing the issue at a Wednesday evening forum sponsored by The Atlantic, Plame seemed to view the outing of the CIA’s top spy on the front lines in the Afghan war as more of an embarrassment than an outrage.
“My understanding is … it was a military aide who compiled this list of those that were greeting the president when he came,” Plame said. “Colossally stupid, but I think it was inadvertent. It was an error … really stupid. The White House apparently has said that they’re going to do an investigation, and they’ll find someone who’s really embarrassed at the end of it.”
The leak, if that’s what it can be called, happened over the weekend as President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. In a routine email to the press, the administration included a name with the description “Chief of Station” after it — a clear reference to the ranking CIA official in Kabul. It’s hard to imagine a more sensitive assignment in a more dangerous place, and blowing the station chief’s cover — in an email to 6,000 reporters, no less — will surely have repercussions.
The White House quickly explained that a mistake had been made, but did not offer any details. Top officials announced that White House counsel Neil Eggleston, a veteran of many Washington investigations, will “look into” the matter. “It shouldn’t have happened,” deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told CNN on Tuesday. “We’re trying to understand why it happened. In fact, the chief of staff, Denis McDonough, asked the White House counsel to look into it, to figure out what happened and to make sure it won’t happen again.”
Many observers seem satisfied with the White House’s explanation that the incident was just a regrettable error. And that is indeed what it appears to be. But such assessments represent a remarkable change in tone from the discussion several years ago, when the George W. Bush administration leaked Valerie Plame’s identity as part of a bitter fight over the origin and direction of the Iraq war. Back then, it was quite common to hear the words “traitor” and “treason” used to describe top Bush officials involved in the controversy.
There’s no doubt the Bush officials deliberately revealed Plame’s CIA connection, if not her name, to the press. But the Plame leak could be characterized as inadvertent in one sense: the leakers, both in the State Department and the White House, did not know that Plame’s status at the CIA was classified when they mentioned her to reporters. That is why no one was ever charged with leaking her identity; they did not knowingly and deliberately reveal classified information. So in that sense it was all a mistake. Yes, it was inadvertent, colossally stupid, an embarrassment — but it was a mistake.
In fact… so relevant is this case, that Plame herself has hit the circuit (she and her husband gravitate towards press) saying there is no comparison. Hmmmm.
…This is a man [Colin Powell] who allowed the spending of millions of dollars in a witch-hunt of a law-enforcement investigation even while personally knowing that his own top aide had been the one who inadvertently leaked the name of a second-tier CIA agent with a dishonest and histrionic husband. One word from Colin Powell, and the “Valerie Plame” case would have come to an end with no prosecutions, but with a few days, maybe just one or two news cycles, of public admonishment of his office for its carelessness. But no… Powell remained silent, thus settling some score with vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and his boss, Vice President Richard Cheney — letting Libby twist in the wind for an alleged cover-up of a non-crime for which Libby himself wasn’t even responsible, but for which Powell’s aide Dick Armitage was culpable instead. (Libby was convicted on a highly dubious perjury charge, based on a years-old conversation with newsman Tim Russert that Russert remembered differently. This was the same Tim Russert whose own memory had been shown to be horrifically wrong in another major court case, but who suddenly was supposed to be perfectly inerrant. Meanwhile, famed newsman Bob Woodward produced notes that Woodward himself said might tend to support Libby’s recollection — but no matter.)…
(American Spectator ~ editors note: sounds the same to me. See also: “The Lost Scandal” and “Scooter Libby’s Bigger Picture“)
The New York Daily News reports the following:
Valerie Plame chided the Obama White House for being “colossally stupid” in accidentally releasing the name of the CIA station chief in Kabul.
“What an error of huge proportions with tremendous consequences,” she said Wednesday on CNN.
But Plame, the CIA operative outed during George W. Bush’s administration, warned against those drawing a “false equivalency” between her situation and the recent press office mistake.
“Apparently some low-level either military and diplomatic officials put the name down on this list that was given to a reporter who submitted it as a pool report,” she said of the Obama failure, whereas “my name was intended to be leaked in retaliation against my husband, who was a fierce critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq War.”
State Department official Richard Armitage is believed to have been responsible for leaking Plame’s status as a covert operative to the press in 2003. Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was convicted of obstructing the federal investigation into the disclosure but no individual was actually convicted of leaking the classified information that blew Plame’s cover.
Larry Elder discusses the Movie, “Fair Game,” and the real story of Joe Wilson & Valerie Plame:
Video Description:
Firstly, I want to than J. White (http://www.thevastconspiracy.com/), where the original audio file came from.
Secondly, while this is an old story and review of a 2010 movie, “Fair Game.” The White House’s recent outing of a CIA covert operative and how the media and White House reacted to it. Why? Because when the shoe was on the other foot, or more specifically, Bush’s foot, the media went MAD!
For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: http://www.larryelder.com/
Taking Care Of Your Kids Has Become A “Right-Wing” Issue
VOLUME Warning at the very beginning (the “Daily Caller” intro):
Curious about his MANGRIA? Here is the link.
Gay Repub Running for Cali’s 52nd Congressional District – Harassed
The Inquisitr brings us up to speed on the main issue at hand, and it is this — totalitarian thinking of the LEFT, which includes the Gay Laeft:
Gay Republican congressional candidate Carl DeMaio feels he is being attack by liberal groups and LGBT-friendly organizations simply because he is a Republican. Ads mocking DeMaio have included putting his likeness on the body of a drag queen.
Dana Perino of Fox News first brought the Carl DeMaio race to national attention after flying to the state to meet the man who might become the first openly gay Republican to be elected to the state Congress. Perino was moved by Demaio’s life story and achievement working across the aisle to foster economic growth when serving in other elected positions. The man referred to by many as “the gay Republican” was orphaned at 13 when his dad left the family a few weeks for his mother died. He and his brothers and sisters were separated into different foster homes by social services.
As a young adult, Carl DeMaio worked to put himself through a top-tier college and ultimately went on to build and then sell two multi-million dollar companies. The Californian’s story sounds like the embodiment of the American dream, but the attack ads he has endured since throwing his hat into the ring for a congressional seat have been deemed as demonizing, demoralizing, and full of “gay-baiting” hate speech. Media Matters is among those who appear to not support DeMaio and have mocked Fox News for supporting the candidate. The gay Republican was also booed during a gay pride parade in California…
The story was brought to my attention (and the video starting out the post) are with thanks to Gateway Pundit. GP puts it thus:
Carl DeMaio was orphaned when he was 14. He was taken in by Jesuits and earned his way to Georgetown University. After college, Carl founded two successful businesses before the age of thirty. He sold the businesses and was elected to San Diego City Council. Now Carl DeMaio is running for Congress.
That’s why the liberal gay groups hate him. Ads mocking DeMaio, by far left groups, have included putting his likeness on the body of a drag queen.
On Wednesday Carl DeMaio’s San Diego office was vandalized. Computers were destroyed and electrical cords were cut only six days before the primary election.
Another recent story that encapsulates the totalitarianism (total thought) of the LEFT is this story via Gay Patriot about a law professor at the University of Virginia, WHO ACTUALLY SUPPORTS GAY MARRIAGE, has a campaign by the gay-left against him because his thinking also includes “religious freedom.” This apparently is not “total” enough for the left: 
Douglas Laycock is a law professor at the University of Virginia, a supporter of gay marriage, but also a supporter of religious liberty. Therefore, he is now the target of an intimidation and harassment campaign from the intolerant gay left.
An outfit called GetEQUAL (led by its co-director Heather Cronk) has launched a national e-mail campaign attacking Laycock for his role in shoring up the legal arguments of those who support what it calls “religious bigotry.”
GetEQUAL has also recruited a University of Virginia law student (Greg Lewis) and an alum (Stephanie Montenegro) to send an open letter to Laycock asking him to consider the “real-world consequences that [his] work is having.” And they have submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking e-mails between Laycock and various right-wing and religious liberty groups.
Laycock has apparently committed the unforgivable Thoughtcrime of valuing religious liberty and freedom over the oh-so-delicate feelings of … I’m just going to say it… pansies. (Not used as a pejorative against their sexuality, but against their mewling, whiny, complete lack of emotional strength.)…
“War On Boys” ~ Christina Hoff Sommers (via Prager University)
Poet and Radical, Maya Angelou, Dead at 86 ~ Supported Butchers
The problem with the above video is that the idea leftist have of “love” are never born out in their lives. It is used, rather, as a cover for their more radical ideals, which in thew twentieth century have been the bloodiest in all of history.
(Click Pic)
Gateway Pundit notes that “Angelou was a talented poet. She also was a hardened leftist who supported killers Fidel Castro and Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Here is more via Discover the Networks:
…In the early 1960s, Angelou championed Fidel Castro‘s rise to power in Cuba. Her first published story appeared in the Cuban periodicalRevolucion. In September 1960, she was deeply moved by the sight of Castro’s exhuberantly warm public embrace of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in New York, where both men were attending a United Nations session. “The Russians were O.K.,” Angelou laterreminisced. “Of course, Castro never had called himself white, so he was O.K. from the git. Anyhow … as black people often said, ‘Wasn’t no Communist country that put my grandpappa in slavery. Wasn’t no Communist lynched my poppa or raped my mamma.’”
Also in the early Sixties, Angelou supported the anti-South African apartheid movement and worked as a journalist and editor in Egypt and Ghana.
During the ensuing decades, Angelou gained enormous renown for her writing. She authored seven autobiographies—most famously, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)—as well as several collections of essays, theatrical works, and volumes of poetry. In 1993, at the request of president-elect Bill Clinton, Angelou composed an original poem, titled “On the Pulse of the Morning,” which she read at Clinton’s inauguration.
In 1994 the NAACP presented Angelou with the prestigious Spingarn Medal, which has been described as the “African American Nobel Prize.” In 2009 Angelou was again honored by the NAACP, receiving an Image Award for her book, Letter to my Daughter.
In 1995 Angelou spoke at the Million Man March organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. That same year, she lent hersupport to the convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Indeed, Angelou joined such luminaries as Alec Baldwin,Derrick Bell, Noam Chomsky, Spike Lee, and Norman Mailer in signing a full-page New York Times ad advocating a new trial for Abu-Jamal.
In a 1997 interview, Angelou lamented: “A black person grows up in this country — and in many places — knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue.” Reasoning from that premise, she lauded affirmative action and Head Start as programs that were not only “good for the country” but quite necessary—because, she said, “the playing field” had been “terribly unlevel, terribly unfair for centuries.” In the same interview, Angelou was asked if she thought “our free-market system—capitalism itself—creates divisions and inequality,” to which she replied: “Yes. Absolutely. Unfortunately, I can’t find many other ‘isms’ that don’t do the same thing.”
In March 2006 Angelou participated in a New York City event honoring the late Rachel Corrie, an American anti-Israel activist who had been accidentally killed while trying to block an Israeli anti-terror operation in 2003. Angelou praised Corrie as a “peace lover” who possessed exceptional “courage.” Others who spoke at the New York gathering included Anthony Arnove, Huwaida Arraf, Brian Avery,Eve Ensler, Hedy Epstein, Amy Goodman, Vanessa Redgrave, Ora Wise, Howard Zinn, and James Zogby….
Bill Murray Crashes Bachelor Party and Gives Advice
Why Not Discuss Elliot Rodger’s Secularism? (Misogyny Claims)
Dennis Prager brings up an issue of secularism in regards to Elliot Rodgers and the many generalities already being discussed about misogyny, spoiled, male-nature, mental illness, gun-control, the NRA, and the like. But no one generalizes about one of the most restraining aspects in our culture. Religion.
For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/
This comes via Truth Revolt: Rutgers Professor: Killing Spree Result of White Privilege
Salon.com contributing writer Brittney Cooper, who also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, has figured out what caused Elliot Rodger to go on his rampage: white privilege. Absent from the article is any acknowledgment that the shooter was half-Asian.
“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”
She then states, “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”
Cooper offers an analysis of Rodger’s video and 140-page note and says that his behavior is definitively attributed to white privilege:
And make no mistake: from my standpoint as an arm chair therapist — having read transcripts of Rodger’s videos — his anger is about his failure to be able to access all the markers of white male heterosexual middle class privilege. He goes on and on about his status as a virgin, his inability to find a date since middle school, his anger and resentment about being rejected by blonde, sorority women. In fact, he claims he will “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see.” As Jessica Valenti so thoroughly demonstrates: “misogyny kills.” I am struck by the extent to which Rodger believed he was entitled to have what he deemed the prettiest girls, he was entitled to women’s bodies, and when society denied him these “entitlements” he thought it should become the public’s problem. He thought that his happiness was worth the slaughter of multiple people.
As noted by the Daily Caller, there are several examples that dispel Cooper’s narrative that mass shootings are done exclusively by white men:
- Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 in last year’s Navy Yard shootings in Washington, D.C., was black.
- And the largest university campus mass murder in U.S. history was carried out by Seung-Hi Cho, who was Asian. He killed 32 at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
- In 2004, Chai Vang, an immigrant from Laos, killed six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin.
- Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, was Palestinian.
Breitbart has more on the woman mentioned by Miss Cooper:
It would be quite wrong to attribute the Isla Vista killings to the work of a lone madman, a U.S. feminist author argues today in the pages of the UK Guardian.
The real reason, says Jessica Valenti, is much simpler: “misogyny kills.”
According to Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown, the murders were clearly the work of a deranged individual, as evidenced by the killer Elliot Rodger’s YouTube videos and also by his “141 page rambling… combination of an autobiography and a diary.”
Brown said: “The fact that he had been and was continuing to be seen by a number of healthcare professionals makes it very, very apparent that he was very mentally disturbed when he made that document.”
However, Valenti—an American blogger and feminist author of books including He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut—has ruled out mental illness as the cause of the killings.
According to his family, Rodger was seeking psychiatric treatment. But to dismiss this as a case of a lone “madman” would be a mistake.
It not only stigmatizes the mentally ill—who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it—but glosses over the role that misogyny and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society. After all, while it is unclear what role Rodger’s reportedly poor mental health played in the alleged crime, the role of misogyny is obvious.
She goes on:
Rodger was reportedly involved with the online men’s rights movement: allegedly active on one forum and said to have been following several men’s rights channels on YouTube. The language Rodger used in his videos against women – like referring to himself as an “alpha male” – is common rhetoric in such circles. These communities are so virulently misogynist that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups, has been watching their movements for years. Yet, as the artist Molly Crabapple pointed out on Twitter: “White terrorism is always blamed on guns, mental health—never poisonous ideology.”
Most women are not convinced of the above arguments… that is, unless they went to graduate school and spent $30,000 a year to be brainwashed. For instance, the Independent Women’s Forum, after quoting Jessica Valenti profusely, says “What can you say about something as unhinged as this?”
IWF quotes psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, who writes about the feminist take on the Rodger rampage over at PJ Media, she writes:
The Left is making an intensive effort to change mentally-ill spree killer Elliot Rodger into a caricature that will better enable the agenda of disarming law-abiding citizens and demonizing White Males. Whatever the real Elliot Rodger was, the Narrative has decided that he is a misogynistic right-winger representing the White Patriarchal Rape Culture.
Just like the left created the myth of that nice, 12-year-old Honor Student, Trayvon Martin, an innocent who was brutally gunned down by a trigger-happy White Supremacist on his way home after buying some Skittles to further… well, essentially to further the same agenda.
Mythologies require archetypes, not real, actual people. It is highly inconvenient to the left that Mr. Rodger subscribed to a left-wing YouTube Channel and that three of his victims were men….
…As many people have pointed out, Rodger killed more men than women, including himself. Of course, the men he killed don’t count; the main story here is that women were targeted and it makes for a more sympathetic story. Also, writers like Hess above can use the killings to really stick it to Pick-Up Artist types that she sees as deserving of blame. It’s all political fodder.
Judgy Bitch makes the best interpretation I have seen thus far:
The fact is that Elliot’s outburst does indeed highlight an issue of central importance to the MHRM – the inadequate, almost non-existent treatment of mental health problems for young men. Socially, our treatment seems to be to wait until the tortured young man puts a bullet in his own head, and just pray that he doesn’t take innocent victims with him.
As a strategy for health, it’s not working very well.
Compare that to how we respond to women who are mentally fragile after giving birth. We screen for Post Partum Depression and throw money and resources into keeping both the women and their children safe, because if we don’t do that, a lot of babies will end up dead. Women struggle with mental issues, too, and take it out on the innocent. But rather than ignore those women and hope for the best, we create programs designed to identify and help them.
Perhaps it is the feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys’ and men’s issues that are to blame. Case in point? Warren Farrell tried to give a talk in Toronto about suicide in young men and other topics and was accosted by nasty feminists who did not want him to speak.
As a psychologist who has worked with men and boys for over 20 years, I can say that our society is devoid of programs and help for mental health issues for men or we try to give help that is not helpful….
See Also:
- Astute Bloggers, “UCSB SHOOTER, ELLIOT RODGERS: PSYCHO SPEWING POSTMODERNIST CRAP.”
- And previously, “Spoiled Hollywood Leftist Elliot Rodger Mass Murder in Isla Vista at #UCSB.”
European Happiness and Crime Rates Compared To America’s
“It’s become common knowledge that Denmark, Sweden and Norway routinely rank highest on lists of the world’s happiest nations…” (The World’s Happiest Countries Take The Most Antidepressants)
(As usual, all graphics/pics are linked to other resources.) Often I hear about how much lower the crime rate is in Europe, at times having the “Peace Index” thrown into the conversation without any meditation on what exactly this “index” says. Happiness is another moniker often thrown around without any comparisons of “what constitutes ‘happiness’.” So lets deal first with happiness, and then get into the peace index and gun-control/stats.
HAPPINESS
What constitutes happiness between the States and Europe? Let’s delve — quickly — into this topic via Forbes (2006):
The average American works 25 hours a week; the average Frenchman 18; the average Italian a bit more than 16 and a half. Even the hardest-working Europeans–the British, who put in an average of 21 and half hours–are far more laid-back than their American cousins.
Compared with Europeans, Americans are more likely to be employed and more likely to work longer hours–employed Americans put in about three hours more per week than employed Frenchmen. Most important, Americans take fewer (and shorter) vacations. The average American takes off less than six weeks a year; the average Frenchman almost 12. The world champion vacationers are the Swedes, at 16 and a half weeks per year.
Of course, Europeans pay a price for their extravagant leisure. The average Frenchman produces only three-quarters as much as the average American, even though productivity per hour is slightly higher in France.
This raises more than one interesting question. First, why do Americans choose to work so much? (Or, if you prefer, why do Europeans choose to work so little?) Second, who’s happier?…..
Why indeed.
I think this is answered a bit later in a newer poll/study, found at Live Science (see also FoxNews):
Americans really do love to work, it seems, while Europeans are much happier if they skip burning the midnight oil in favor of leisure. That’s according to a new study finding longer work hours make Europeans unhappy while Americans get a very slight (albeit not statistically significant) bliss boost from the extra grind.
“Those who work longer hours in Europe are less happy than those who work shorter hours, but in the U.S. it’s the other way around,” said study author Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, a clinical assistant professor of public policy at The University of Texas at Dallas. “The working hours’ category does not have a very big impact on the probability of happiness of Americans.” [Happiest States’ List]
The study, based on survey data, can’t tease out whether work causes happiness or unhappiness, though the researchers speculate the effect has to do with expectations and how a person measures success.
Okulicz-Kozaryn used surveys of European and American attitudes for the study. The surveys included questions about the number of hours worked and asked respondents to identify if they were “very happy,” “pretty happy” or “not too happy.”
They found that the likelihood of Europeans’ describing themselves as “very happy” dropped from around 28 percent to 23 percent as work hours climbed from under 17 hours a week to more than 60 hours per week. Americans, on the other hand, held steady, with about a 43 percent chance of describing themselves as happy regardless of working hours.
The results held even after the researchers accounted for possible confounding factors, such as age, marital status and household income….
[….]
“Happiness depends upon satisfaction with your income, satisfaction with you family life, satisfaction with your work, satisfaction with your health,” he said.
“People trade off work and leisure,” Easterlin explained, and so any attempt to explain the results of this study would have to take that into account. “[Happiness] has to do with what you think the goals are of people in the two countries.”
American happiness is a pursuit important enough to include in one of our Founding documents, right next to life and liberty. This “pursuit” we are use to (and is being harmed/deformed by the welfare state growing larger) creates innovation. For instance David Mamet notes the following:
In my family, as in yours, someone regularly says, “Hey, you know what would be a good idea … ?” And then proceeds to outline some scheme for making money by providing a product or service the need for which has just occurred to him. He and the family fantasize about and discuss and elaborate this scheme. Inherent in this fantasy is the unstated but ever-present truth that, given sufficient capital and expertise or the access to the same, the scheme might actually be put into operation (as, indeed, constantly, throughout our history, such schemes have), bettering the lives of the masses and bringing wealth to their creators. Do you believe such conversations take place in Syria? In France?
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), [FN] 120.
Some can be happy with less pay and trusting the state will care for them enough to go on 12-week vacations. While doctors, for instance, may enjoy a month-long vacation in France [mandatory vacation], this “happiness” rather than hard-work often has deadly consequences, one being — for instance — nearly 15,000 people dying in a heat wave in France in 2003 (a record for Europe… previously Italy held it with 3,000).
- …Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei has ordered a separate special study this month to look into a possible link with vacation schedules after doctors strongly denied allegations their absence put the elderly in danger. The heat wave hit during the August vacation period, when doctors, hospital staff and many others take leave…
So Europe being “happier” than the United States is something of a misnomer.
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We pursue it, not expecting government to provide it for us. If government doeas, a simple economic law states — basically — that creativity is squelched:
- “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”
George Gilder, Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world.}
When people do, austerity more-often-than-not leads to riots and collapse. And why in many European countries the EU is being rejected, and conservative parties are getting landslides (like UKIP in the UK). People are fed up with horrible health care, no incentive to succeed, taxes, crime, and immigration issues. 
Okay, I feel my point has been made. Innovation comes by a drive to work hard, as much as you wish in fact… whereas Europe forces people to work less, and thus is stagnant in relation to this said innovation. What about crime rates and violence, yes, even gun violence? Lets see. Firstly, I deal with some of the more pressing issues with the Peace Index here. But in this conversation, I wanted to deal with violent crimes… which include more than gun violence. As Europe gives birth to a generation divorced of their cultural heritage, you will see a rise in violence, and then a rise in reaction to it. Maybe an over-reaction?
VIOLENCE
Firstly, if you are an in-depth kind of reader, at this link you will find multiple debates and appearances of John Lott on CNN and other programs discussing gun crime. But let’s deal with a place that has for years made gun ownership illegal, the United Kingdom. Here is the headline from The Telegraph on the topic:
Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.
The total number of violent offences recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Opposition leaders said the disclosures were a “damning indictment” of the Government’s failure to tackle deep-rooted social problems.
The figures combined crime statistics for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The UK had a greater number of murders in 2007 than any other EU country – 927 – and at a relative rate higher than most western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
It also recorded the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU, and the highest absolute number of burglaries, with double the number of offences recorded in Germany and France.
Overall, 5.4 million crimes were recorded in the UK in 2007 – more than 10 a minute – second only to Sweden.
Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said: “This is a real damning indictment of this government’s comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock-on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.
“We’re now on our fourth Home Secretary in this parliament, and all we are getting is a rehash of old initiatives that didn’t work the first time round. More than ever Britain needs a change of direction.”
The figures were sourced from Eurostat, the European Commission’s database of statistics. They are gathered using official sources in the countries concerned such as the national statistics office, the national prison administration, ministries of the interior or justice, and police.
A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.
It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.
Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.
By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.
France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 – a 67 per cent increase in the past decade – at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population.
Which segways into a recent comparison in crime and gun-control in a Wall Street Journal article by Joyce Lee Malcolm, entitled: “Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control: After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.” Here is an interview of her in regards to the article, followed by excerpts from said article:
Larry Elder Interview & Wall Street Journal Article
Here are portions of the article:
…Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.
In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.
Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.
Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of “good reason” gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.
After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.
Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.
The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.
[….]
Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.
At the time, Australia’s guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom’s. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a “good reason,” Australia required a “genuine reason.” Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn’t.
With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported “a modest reduction in the severity” of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.
What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.
Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” (Harvard, 2002).
Of course America’s worst massacre involving a school is the Bath Bombing (below), Michigan (1927). And a bomb killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City Bombing. So if someone wants to kill another… no amount of government regulation will decrease this fact:
- “…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6.
See The Northern Lights Come To Life in This Time-Lapse
ENCOUNTERS from Stian Rekdal on Vimeo.
Hollywood Libs Caught On Camera (UPDATED w/ Simpsons)
(H/t ~ Gateway Pundit) EPIC! Via Progressives Today:
Via The Hollywood Reporter:The conservative journalist duped progressives Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemmingway to get involved in an anti-fracking film that was funded by Middle Eastern oil interests. O’Keefe will unveil the movie at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday!
James O’Keefe says he duped Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemmingway into agreeing to get involved with an anti-fracking movie while hiding that its funding comes from Middle Eastern oil interests.
Journalist James O’Keefe, known for his controversial undercover sting operations aimed usually at liberals — is set to unveil at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday the first of a group of videos that he says will reveal hypocrisy among Hollywood environmentalists….
Just Press Play, It Works:
This is one of the scenes from the Simpsons in 1999 where Ed Begley Jr.’s made a cameo appearance:
MSNBC Panel Is Reminded That the UCSB Killer Also Used a Knife and Car
“You know, I wonder if I missed something. My understanding is that some of his victims were stabbed to death. Other of his victims were hit by a car that he was driving. And all of a sudden one weapon is, in fact, under attack. And not only is it under attack, people are talking about stepping on the constitutional rights of law-abiding people.”
(Via Truth Revolt) n MSNBC this afternoon, commentator and Republican politician Ken Blackwell was on as part of panel discussion about guns and gun control in the wake of this weekend’s killing spree in Santa Barbara. Host Craig Melvin runs down a laundry list of various ways of saying gun or shooting and so on before finally asking Blackwell how something like this could happen. Blackwell’s response was absolutely pitch perfect.
Of course, he immediately interrupted by the host. Diverting attention away from MSNBC’s anti-gun agenda is the fastest way to get cut off during an interview on the network. Melvin says he didn’t mean to “attack guns” and the he was just trying to lay out “the facts.” Only the facts are as Ken Blackwell laid them out, contrary to Melvin’s one-note recitation.
There were three weapons used in this murderous rampage. That is the fact. It’s a fact that the hosts at MSNBC clearly aren’t interested in dealing with. Ken Blackwell, however, isn’t going to let them get away with it.
Gay Patriot notes a story about registering cars like you do guns:
For every purchase, you will have to fill out a questionnaire confirming you’re a US citizen, do not use drugs or abuse alcohol, have never had a conviction for alcohol related incidents or reckless driving. Lying on this form will be punishable by 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.
New cars will only be purchased from Federal Automobile Licensees who must provide fingerprints, proof of character, secure storage for all vehicles, and who must call the Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles to verify your information before purchase. They may approve or decline or delay the sale. If they decline, you may appeal the decision in writing to a review board. If they delay, it becomes an approval automatically after 10 days. However, the dealer may decline to complete such a sale in case of later problems.
Federal Automobile Licensees must agree to submit to 24/7/365, unannounced, unscheduled searches of their entire homes, businesses and any relates properties and personal effects to be named later.
Read the whole thing.