Category: Uncategorized

One thing that was bothering me about my previous democide/homicide calculation is that it didn’t account for the changing world population over the century, which went from 1.65 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000. Also, one or two people objected to my assertion that the USA has one of the highest homicide rates in the world – it seldom leaps to the very top, as South Africa has replaced Colombia, but it is always in the top 5-10.

First, I used a spreadsheet to work out that the average world population over the course of the 20th century was 3.82 billion. This is an estimate, of course, but much closer than assuming it was always 6 billion. As to the global homicide rate, what worked out to 1.6/100k did seem too low, so I decided on a different method.

Taking the most four populous “countries” – China, India, the USA and the EU – (using France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy for the EU) – provided homicide rates of 1.3, 3.74, 5.64, and 1.79 respectively, resulting in an average 3.12 murders per 100,000. 3.82 billion divided by 100,000 and multiplied by 3.12 gives 119,184 annual homicides. (This means that with 4.83 percent of the global population, the US accounts for 7.84 percent of the global murders, which sounds about right.)

Over the course of the century, that’s 11.9 million murders by individual criminals, which is horrific, but still only 6.43 percent of the 185 million bodycount racked up by governments the world over from 1900 to 2000. This method of calculation thus concludes that government is 15.55 times more lethal than crime.

Just when you think he can’t possibly top himself – after the combination of his comments on Miss Spears and the vengeance story – he produces this:

Feh…you people. When it’s inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it. You don’t hear the frog whining, now do ya?

Perfect. If I was going to rename this blog, I think I’d call it Whining Frog.

The assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services responds to Jonah Goldberg:

All good conservatives want smaller government. To achieve that end, we need a plan. Merely wishing it were so is not a plan. The fact is that children (and adults) living in healthy and stable marriages are less in need of government services. By offering marriage-education services — on a purely voluntary basis — to interested couples whereby they can develop the knowledge and skills necessary to form and sustain healthy marriages, we will help reduce the need for more intrusive government interventions later on.

Granted, this is new work. Nobody knows for sure whether it will succeed. But one thing is certain: Unless we can reverse the decline of marriage, demand for an ever-expanding welfare state will continue. The president’s Healthy Marriage Initiative is no panacea, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Here’s a safe prediction: no matter how much money is spent on the Healthy Marriage Initiative, marriage will continue to decline and the welfare state will continue to expand. This initiative is rampant idiocy. Rampant, I tell you! Rampant! You can’t cure cancer with cancer, you don’t treat a patient with a bullet wound by shooting him in the head, and you can’t solve government-created problems with more government!

Charles Krauthammer begins the martial drumbeat… again:

Did we invade the wrong country? One of the lessons now being drawn from the 9/11 report is that Iran was the real threat. It had links to al Qaeda, allowed some of the 9/11 hijackers to transit through, and is today harboring al Qaeda leaders. The Iraq War critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq.

There may be no deus ex machina. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the “Great Satan” will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive strike.

Both of which, by the way, are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away — in Iraq.

Charade. The common wisdom is always a charade. Never forget that. It is looking more and more likely that total war in the region was the plan all along, and that an important part of that plan was to drag the American people into it step by unwilling step. I imagine we will not bother to declare this war, either.

I’m not saying that one can’t make a reasonable case for war with Iran, not at all. But the way in which the administration has gone about manipulating the situation from the start makes it clear that these neoconservative Wilsonian imperialists are the very last people who can be trusted to wage it.

Third of a third. (shakes head)

Some of you might wonder how I obtained the number indicating that governments kill 22 times more people than individual criminals. First, to obtain a maximum murder bodycount for the world, let’s trace the following train of logic.

1. The USA is one of the most violent countries in the world.

2. There were 17,298 murders in the USA in 2000.

3. The USA has 5 percent of the world’s population.

4. 20 times 17,298 is 345,960 murders per year.

5. 100 times 345,960 is 34.6 million, our maximum bodycount.

Remember, this assumes that criminals in populous countries such as France, China and Japan, where the murder rates are as low as 8.8 percent of the USA’s, are as murderous as in the USA. The 20th century government body count, on the other hand, is estimated to be 185 million. So, governments the world over are at least 5.3 times as likely to commit murder as private individuals.

However, this 34.6 million number is far too high. If we substituted the relatively peaceful Japan for the USA as a stand-in for the world average, we’d have a grand total of 3 million murders for the century, which would make governments 56.4 times more lethal. I haven’t spent a lot of time investigating international homicide statistics, but a Google search provides an estimate of 8.4 million global murders for the 20th century, which amounts to a global homicide rate of approximately 1.6 per 100,000 for the century. This is higher than China’s 1.3, much less the United Kingdom’s 0.9 or Japan’s 0.6. Dividing 185 million by 8.4 gives the aforementioned 22/1 ratio.

These are crude approximations, of course, as the number of people on the planet has changed dramatically from 1900 to 2000, Rummel’s numbers for the century only go to 1987, and most countries do not have reliable statistics for most of the period in question. But regardless of whether the correct multiple is 22 or 5.3, it should not be hard to see that strong government is worse than crime.

There is one death penalty I could support. Allowing the government to execute government employees who use the color of the law to commit murder and escape the consequences of their actions. I despise the militarized police, the DEA and the FBI. They are predators far worse than those they claim to be defending Americans against. Law-and-order government cheerleaders tend to be ignorant of the fact that an individual living in the 20th century was 22 times more likely to be murdered by a government employee than by a private criminal. No democidist ever obtained power by promising chaos; they always promise Recht und Ordnung to the foolish and short-sighted.

As soon as DEA agents realized they had killed an innocent Hispanic girl, they began a vigorous damage control effort. They closed the crime scene neighborhood and sent a team of agents to Nelly Villarreal’s house….

With the little girl lost and the community in an uproar, the DEA’s spin machine kicked into high gear. DEA spin doctors alleged Ashley had driven a darkened car without its headlights on, had accelerated toward agents, then backed up to try to hit them, and that agents shot at the car only in self-defense. Other sources floated ludicrous stories implying that Ashley, Danny, and Nelly were fronts for Joey’s alleged coke sales. Pro-DEA sources said Ashley “caused her own death” because she was “driving a car without a driver’s license.”

The San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) Homicide Unit, Bexar County District Attorney’s office, and a team of DEA investigators from Washington, DC, began looking into the incident, but lawyers for the Villarreal family, along with journalists and civil liberties groups, say the investigation is being mishandled and carried out with an unreasonable degree of secrecy.

The DEA refuses to comment on the case, other than to disparage Ashley and her family while staunchly defending its agents’ actions.

All in the unholy name of the Drug War. As with Waco, they have to murder the children in order to save them. Since the government always protects its own, however heinous the the crime, it seems that there’s no alternative but private vengeance in matters such as these. I certainly won’t shed a tear if those DEA agents are hunted down, one by one, and exterminated like the insects they are.

And spare me the forgiveness lectures. Forgiveness is for those who repent, not those who insist that they were justified in their crimes and slur the murdered dead.

I have been outspoken in the past about my opposition to women in the military. I have, however, decided that my position was completely incorrect due to new details regarding the facts of women’s service in the military of which I was previously unaware. I apologize for my inappropriate male insensitivity, and furthermore, would also like to declare my support for a women’s draft.

Courtesy of Jonah Goldberg:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Army has long lured recruits with the slogan “Be All You Can Be,” but now soldiers and their families can receive plastic surgery, including breast enlargements, on the taxpayers’ dime.

The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free — something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

Ellis writes:

“Besides, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics completely negates the Anthropic Principle and is currently more accepted by physicists than the Copenhagen Interpretation.”

Ah yes, those many worlds, for which there is absolutely no scientific evidence. I love how “scientists” so quickly resort to fantasy in order to escape the logical conclusions of science. Oh, but it’s more accepted by physicists, is it? I always understood science to be driven by replicable experiments, not opinion polls.

The significant word, of course, is “currently”. The same was true of the once-current state of archeology, which “proved” the Bible wasn’t true thanks to the historical absence of the Hittites and Assyrians – both peoples have since been found – and with the advent of Intelligent Design the secular faithful are now desperately cooking up untested theories, (otherwise known as hypotheses, first steps not to be confused with the whole of the method), which are then, ironically, blindly cited by the ignorant as proof of their non-belief. When a physicist demonstrates the existence of another world and his demonstration is replicated by others, I’ll take these arguments seriously. Otherwise, it’s not science, it’s just science fiction.

And here I thought it was the religious nuts who were supposed to be into baseless superstition. As of today, there is more evidence for God than there is for “many worlds”. And as for me, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that both exist outside our space-time continuum.

Remember how “scientists” such as Freud once convinced several generations that religion was unhealthy? Decades later, actual scientific studies demonstrated that quite the opposite was true. Christianity has nothing to fear from science, only those addicted to their dogma need worry. And that holds true for the atheist as well the Christian.

Mr. Farah writes:

In a way I would never have imagined possible, the news media have allowed themselves to be led by the Democrats’ disinformation campaign to the point where they have forgotten the story.

Pardon me, but the story remains Sandy Berger’s inexplicable actions. Why did he do it? Which papers did he pilfer? What was he trying to conceal? Whom was he trying to protect?

I hope the Justice Department is focused on these questions like a laser beam, but I sincerely doubt it. It’s been nine months and no FBI agent has even interviewed Berger yet. What’s that about? He should have been indicted, tried and convicted by now.

Sandy Berger is a lowly member of the bi-factional ruling party. Nothing will come of this, any more than one of the king’s courtiers would be punished for raping a peasant lass back in the day. There is no Law, there are only legal weapons wielded against the masses to keep them in their place.

I don’t know how anyone who pays any attention to the political process can think that there’s a genuine conflict between the heavy hitters of the Democratic-Republican Party. The Michigan-Ohio State rivalry is far more convincing. Of course, it has the advantage of being genuine.

Okay, I just turned it in and I’m still laughing. I have the feeling that I’m going to be receiving some seriously irate emails on Monday. Any big fans of The Factor here?

I’m just curious… no reason….