Vox Popoli

If a member of a self-declared minority reports a “hate crime” that is enthusiastically covered by the mainstream media, it is a hoax perpetrated by a member of that minority, usually the “victim” who reported it:

A firefighter who reported finding a knotted rope and a threatening note with a drawing of a noose in an East Baltimore station house last month had placed the items there himself, city officials said yesterday.

The man was suspended last week for performance-related issues and will likely face additional punishment, fire officials said. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Police Department and for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said the man admitted to the hoax and will not face criminal charges. Officials identified the firefighter who they say acknowledged writing the note as Donald Maynard, a firefighter-paramedic apprentice who is black. Maynard could not be reached for comment.

The rope incident sparked outrage two weeks ago and prompted a federal investigation into possible civil rights violations. It was the latest in a series of incidents that have cast the Fire Department in a poor light over the past year, including the death of a recruit in a training exercise and accusations of racism.

This is an interesting confession of the existence of thought crime in the USA. Had a white firefighter in that firehouse done precisely the same thing, he would have been charged with a crime. Thus it is the improper thoughts which are the criminal factor, so watch out, those of you who read the linked story and find yourself thinking, “gee, I wonder if it was the improper grammar was the FBI’s first clue…..”

American society is a place where everyone wants to be a victim. Poor black gangstas in the ghetto are victims, rich housewives in the coffeehouse are victims, everybody’s a victim. Given that, it should come as no surprise that those who feel they are insufficiently victimized should occasionally take steps in order to justify a better public claim on victimhood.

Adrian Peterson is back! I have to say, I’m impressed with how Childress kept the team together after the shellacking at Lambeau. Tarvaris is playing very well in a conservative capacity, the offense is multi-dimensional and they really look like like the solid, wild card-caliber team that DVOA has basically been asserting all along.

And one can’t complain about the rookie haul this year. Peterson and Rice have already made their mark, now Allison is proving himself to be a genuine contributor as well. Maybe Zygi knew what he was doing when he announced that Childress’s job was not imperiled… I’m starting to suspect that Childress may simply be too conservative until it becomes clear that his back is up against the wall. The Vikings almost look like a different team now, and they’ve done it in part without their best players on either side of the ball.

UPDATE – Great game between Cleveland and Arizona, one with playoff implications no less! But the review rules are insane, there’s no question that Kellen Winslow was forced out on that great last-second non-catch for a touchdown. Terrible decision by the ref, absolutely terrible.

National Review gets rocked:

The new poll from the Des Moines Register shows some dramatic changes in the Republican race in Iowa. The headline is that Mike Huckabee, who was 17 points behind Mitt Romney in the paper’s October poll, now leads Romney by five points. The second headline is that Fred Thompson, who was in second place (behind Romney) in October, is now in fourth place, with half the level of support he had last month. The third headline is that Ron Paul has moved up to a level just behind Thompson and equal with John McCain.

29 Huckabee
24 Romney
13 Giuliani
09 Thompson
07 Paul
07 McCain
06 Tancredo

That poll has got to make Joe Carter happy, anyhow. I’m interested to see who will drop out first, Thompson or Romney. If Romney doesn’t win either Iowa or New Hampshire, he’s done. Thompson is already done, but who knows when he’ll notice. Paul will stick around regardless, and Huckabee’s apparent strength tends to demonstrate the complete incompetence of those so-called analysts who think that social conservatives should be ignored.

But it’s early yet. I don’t put much faith in modern polling and I find it very, very hard to believe that Obama can actually beat Hillary in Iowa. We’ll find out soon enough.

Washington isn’t even pretending to be legitimate anymore:

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects. The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

I’m just curious to see how much longer those who try to deny that the USA is a criminal and dictatorial empire will be able to hold out. Just what would it take for you to accept the concept? Now that kidnapping is “legal”, what’s next, disappearances?

Do you still wonder why the citizens of so many other Western nations scoff at the idea that America is a “free country”? They already can’t believe that Americans aren’t allowed to take their own money out of a bank or pay cash for a car without being reported to the Festapo; this asserted right to kidnap takes it to a whole new level.

I know there’s a fair number of you here who play World of Warcraft, but is there anyone who plays Lord of the Rings Online? If you do and you have a character high enough to do require Fellowship Quests or PvP, please email me as I have a few questions for you.

Thanks very much.

AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different.

This is hardly surprising. Any time you see the words “new discovery” and “Jesus” in the same sentence, you should be as wary as a male drama student who finds himself alone in an office with the drama teacher.

Nate explains why the urban assumption that hicks in the sticks are the clueless class may be a little misguided:

Yankee:”We’re from Chicago… we’ve never seen no woods or nuthin’ like this before. You just don’t know what Chicago’s like.”

Nate: “Ma’am… I’ve been to New York and Chicago. I know what its like… and I hope I never have to go back there.”

Yankee: “So do y’all have a whole bunch of land and put your own potatos in the ground and stuff?”

Nate: “We have a garden.”

Yankee: “Do y’all have coyotes? We talk to some farmers at smith’s farm in illinois and they said them coyotes was eatin’ people up!”

Nate: “We have wild dogs… but I’ve never heard of one attacking a human. Most folks just shoot ’em.”

***insert wide-eyed terror here***

Yankee: “You have guns?”

Nate: “Sure. Otherwise folks might get eaten by wild dogs… or bears… or something worse.”

Yankee: “So ummm… you know… is it safe? I mean to drive around alone at night?”

Nate: “Huh? What do you mean? Of course its safe. We leave our house unlocked. We don’t even lock the cars.”

Yankee: “You can’t do that where we’re from.”

Nate: “I know. I’ve been there. That’s why I don’t want to go back. There are all kinds of things you can’t do where you’re from.”

Yankee: “Oh my! What’s that? Is that a coyote?”

Nate: “No. No that’s a deer.”

Yankee: “Is that safe?”

Nate: “Ma’am… that’s supper.”

That went on for literaly 2 hours. We could not get away from this moron. But the best… the best was her 12 year old son… See… he started yapping about rocks… special rocks… deep down under the ground… and there was all this heat down there… and after about 300 years of that heat under the ground… these special rocks became….

Bacon.

I remember Spacebunny telling me about her urban cousins that were shocked when they discovered that cows were not actually the size of dogs, as they had previously assumed. In light of the decline of the arts and culture that used to be the one genuine benefit of urban life, there really isn’t much reason to mourn the inevitable destruction of whatever city is required to instill a fighting spirit in Americans for their next war.

One of the problems of organizations that rely primarily on volunteers is that all too often, the people most prone to volunteering are the very last people you want in charge of anything. Charles Stross rightly waxes apoplectic:

The core of our report, in a nutshell, was this: SFWA should represent its members interests when asked to do so. (It should also poll the membership to figure out what they want to do.) In order to deal with members asking SFWA to act against copyright infringements, SFWA should establish a new copyright advisory committee to replace of the piracy committee, with set procedures (and a quorum of members required to implement them) to avoid anything like the earlier debacle recurring.

In addition, we made various other recommendations. (Mine included: avoid, at all costs, emulating the activities of the RIAA and MPAA. Rule #1 of being a professional writer should be: your fans are Not The Enemy. Unlike RIAA or MPAA, SFWA is actually a loose trade association of content producers — RIAA and MPAA are rather different organisms, funded by a cartel of major content distributors. Following their example would not only be disastrous and make enemies — I trust I don’t have to explain why — but would rapidly bring individual writers into disrepute with their readers, something I think most SFWA members have enough brain cells to realize would be disastrous.)

A further recommendation was discussed, but the general feeling was that it would be inappropriate to put it in the committee’s formal report. It was my understanding that it would be brought to the attention of the president of SFWA via a back channel. This recommendation was simple: that at all costs, Andrew Burt must be kept the hell away from the copyright committee. In view of his earlier activities, his appointment to it would automatically destroy any credibility the new body would have — not to mention sending out a clear signal that SFWA is a dysfunctional organization, institutionally incapable of learning from bad experiences.

Guess what’s happened?

Yup. I am not privy to his thinking, but our dear president and executive have voted to reinstate the old piracy committee, with Andrew Burt to chair it, under the new name of the SFWA copyright committee.

To say that this is a fuckwitted decision is an understatement. Under Dr Burt, the new copyright committee will almost inevitably devolve into a reincarnation of the old piracy committee. If I thought it’d do any good I’d be resigning in protest right now; only the expense of a life membership purchased a couple of years ago is restraining me right now. Clearly the current executive of SFWA is making damaging decisions and ignoring input from committees it appointed, and and in view of this I call on SFWA president Mike Capobianco and the rest of the SFWA executive — including Andrew Burt — to resign immediately. Meanwhile, I’d like to call on all other SFWA members who don’t want to see their organization commit public relations suicide to make their voices heard.

I don’t think Capobianco needs to resign, but I do think he needs to encourage Burt to get his poky little nose to get out and stay out of all of the various committees and sub-committees which he seems to find so very irresistible.

I predicted a backlash against the New Atheism, but I had no idea that the Pope would get involved. Interestingly, he cuts right to the heart of the materialist matter:

Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized modern-day atheism in a major document released today, saying it had led to some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” ever known to mankind….

“We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power,” Benedict wrote. “Only God is able to do this.”

It is interesting how every significant atheist idea for making the world better and reducing human suffering almost invariably ends up with a recommendation to impose murderous dictatorship on mankind. From Meslier to Marx, from de Rouvroy, to Russell, from Heinlein to Harris, the atheist solution is inevitably simplistic, brutal and devoid of positive result.

And yet they consider themselves freethinkers, apparently without any sense of irony.