Thursday, March 27, 2014


Great News! NJ Immigration Enthusiast Officials Congratulated By President Of Guatemala!

Recently, NBC 10 News Philadelphia ran the usual “Robbery Gone Wrong” story (Teen Beaten to Death While Walking Home With Groceries, by David Chang, February 17, 2014) about a killing in Trenton NJ. The victim was Julio Cesar Cruz, an “immigrant” from Guatemala.  Two black teenagers allegedly beat him to death. 

The original story included the MSM weasel phrase “Police have not yet released a detailed description of the suspects,” which apparently now means that the police told the reporter that all they know was that it was “two black teens”, but the reporter isn’t going to tell you that, because it’s not news and will just give you bad feelings about black teens.

When the perps were caught and charged, the same station did run a picture—but no description, of course:



 BLACK Teens Charged in Trenton Beating Death, NBC February 28, 2014

This is a common story in Trenton. Guatemalans, who have recently begun flooding into Trenton, are viewed by the Black underclass as easy marks.  They are small of stature and, being mostly illegals and working for cash, carry a lot of money.   There have been literally hundreds of such robberies.

But this one triggered something different:

Cruz’s murder galvanized the community as they rallied and coordinated with law enforcement seeking justice. Days after Cruz’s death, a rally of 350 people seeking justice took place on the steps of City Hall.  And on Tuesday community leaders met with the Trenton Police and the prosecutor’s office to coordinate efforts.

[Guatemalan president joins those reacting to arrests in Cruz's murder, By Carlos Avila, The Trentonian, Posted: 02/28/14, 3:03 PM EST

And thus the two young black American thugs were hunted down by a combined taskforce composed of local, county and state police.

What set all the gears in motion?  The local power structure is as Democrat as it is possible to be.  Hispanics of various types (as we are incessantly told) are the coming demographic.  They fill the many urban service jobs local black Americans “will not do.”  They have many advocates within the power structure in New Jersey (including, notoriously, GOP Governor Chris Christie).

So the Guatemalan “community,” which is overwhelmingly illegal, can feel safe in organizing like citizens and demanding their (non-existent) rights.

Note that The Trentonian, the prosecutor, and the police chief, all use the term “immigrants” although they know for a fact that the people they are helping are themselves criminal trespassers. 

Indeed, the local County Prosecutor Joseph Bocchini went further.  He is quoted in The Trentonian story as claiming:

“The fact of the matter is that those who control these types of events (referring to elected officials) need to do something to make immigrants be able to become documented somehow…Let them get a driver license, let them open savings accounts, let them pay their taxes, and their [sic] willing to.  We as a society need to wake up.”

And no, Bocchini isn’t an immigrant from Central America.  He actually talks like that.

We also learn that the victim’s brother got a call “from the office of the Guatemalan Presidency congratulating the local Guatemalan community for coming together for justice.”

So, in the state capital of New Jersey, we have a complete inversion of the legal process.  The government is taking up the cause of one set of foreign criminals against another set of domestic criminals. 

Of course the illegals are committing a status crime and the resident blacks are committing murder, so there is a question of proportion to be considered.  But, to state the obvious, if the illegals weren’t here in gross violation of our law, they wouldn’t be the targets for our resident savages.

There is another aspect of this story to consider.  The Trentonian reporter, the chief of police and various community leaders quoted, are all Hispanic.  The Mayor of Trenton, who is black, was convicted on federal charges and evicted from his office while all this was going. [New Jersey judge orders convicted Trenton mayor to step down, By Dave Warner, Reuters, February 26, 2014]

There is an inexorable changing of the guard in the New Jersey’s capital.  Guatemalans are moving into whole neighborhoods while Blacks are being displaced out to the margins of the city. 

Trenton just may become the first State Capital in America with an illegal majority population.

It already appears that the President of Guatemala feels himself to be a councilman of sorts.

SOURCE




The Right Not to Be Implicated

“Everything not forbidden is compulsory,” or will be soon enough under our “liberal” regime.

The Left would not have it that way: Homosexual behavior is not to be tolerated, or homosexual unions recognized under law — rather, homosexuality is to constitute a special class of blessedness, and the failure to celebrate it is to be a sin, which in the liberal mind must be identical to a crime. It is not enough for religious conservatives, such as the ones who own Hobby Lobby, to tolerate the legal sale and use of things such as the so-called morning-after pill — rather, they are expected to provide them at their own expense. Abortions are not to be legal, but legal and funded by the general community, with those funds extracted at gunpoint if necessary.

This is not merely, or even mainly, a question of economics. A monthly dose of emergency contraception (which seems like a lot) paid entirely out-of-pocket would run less than the typical cell-phone bill. One does not suspect that Americans would find it very difficult to locate gay-friendly firms in the wedding-planning business. The typical first-trimester abortion costs less than an entry-level iPad — hardly an insurmountable economic barrier for a procedure that is, if we take the pro-choice side at their word, absolutely fundamental to a woman’s health and happiness.

The economics are incidental. The point is not to ensure that we all pay, but that we are all involved.
The Left may be morally illiterate, but it is not blind. The effects of the pathologically delusional tendency that once styled itself “the sexual revolution” are everywhere to be seen. In the 1960s and 1970s, our cultural discourse was dominated by the benefits side of that revolution’s ledger; since then, we’ve had sufficient time to have a good long look at the cost side, too, and the tradeoffs are more severe than our bell-bottomed Aquarian prophets had predicted. It reads like an Old Testament genealogy: Sexual chaos begat family chaos, family chaos begat social chaos, social chaos begat economic chaos, economic chaos begat political chaos. And so the generations unfold. The relevant political reality is that those costs and benefits are not distributed equally: The benefits of license accrue mainly to the well-off and educated, who have the resources to make the most of their enjoyment of them; the costs accrue mainly to the poor, who cannot afford to live, economically or morally, beyond their means. Kate Moss can afford to be a single mother in her $20 million London townhouse. Not everybody can. Our so-called liberals find themselves in the queasy position of having created a moral culture that has destroyed millions of lives and many communities among the very disadvantaged people they claim to care most about, but they are incapable of criticizing a culture of license that none of them can imagine living without, even if they themselves are square as houses in their sexual habits. 

The result of that is, if not guilt, at least a nagging awareness that this all turns out to be a great deal more morally complex than our liberationist-latitudinarian forebears had imagined. The way to assuage the collective liberal conscience is to institutionalize and normalize liberal social preferences: There is nobody to be blamed for social anarchy if that’s just the way things are. And if everybody is involved — as taxpayers or as employers providing health insurance — then everybody is implicated. They are a little like those addicts who are uncomfortable in the social presence of abstainers, taking that abstention as a rebuke, whether it is intended as one or not. In the United Kingdom, the government-run hospitals are burning the corpses of aborted children for heat, and we are all expected to get cozy by the fire.

The Hobby Lobby case is in part about private property and whether we are to have it. If we hold capital only at the sufferance of the politico-sexual whims of those who hold power, then we do not really hold capital at all — we only rent property from our rulers, serfs in the world’s most sophisticated fiefdom. The property right is the fundamental right upon which all other political rights have their foundation. But there is a separate question — the right of conscience, which is, at minimum, the right not to be implicated, to at least stand apart from that which is no longer forbidden but is not yet, as of Tuesday morning, compulsory.

SOURCE




What Kind of Fool Am I?

by Mark Steyn

Daniel J Kornstein's Order of the Crown of Romania. Unlike Michael E Mann's Nobel Prize certificate from Kinko's, this is genuine.

Ever since I ended my joint representation with National Review and fired my lawyers on Boxing Day, the endlessly reprised refrain has been that "Mark Steyn has a fool for a client". As I wrote here:

That's an old English joke, of course. Circa 18th century, I believe, when English life was very lightly lawyered. Whether it applies a quarter-millennium on in a sclerotic dungheap of a system that, as my old boss Conrad Black likes to point out, employs as many lawyers as the rest of the planet combined, who between them invoice ten per cent of GDP, is an interesting question. My own view is that, if the lawyerization of American life needs to snort up its nose the entire GDP of Australia every year, then you're doing it wrong.

I wrote that after a hugely enjoyable and inspiring day in Madam Justice Matheson's courtroom in Toronto watching a performance that would be impossible in the objection-choked procedural swamps of American "justice". I have come to the conclusion that the system here is, in fact, evil - which is perhaps not the most helpful perspective when one is on the receiving end of it.

So I am pleased to be able to announce today that several other fellows also have a fool for a client - see here, here and here.

Daniel J Kornstein and his co-counsel Mark Platt were the driving force behind the most consequential free-speech legislation this century. Dan is an expert libel lawyer and a principled freedom-of-expression fighter whose clients have included Vanessa Redgrave, Bill Clinton, the Monkees, Harvey Keitel, Wilford Brimley, Fatal Vision author and sometime Sarah Palin neighbor Joe McGinnis (who died earlier this month), and King Michael of Romania, who made Dan one of the first inductees into the Order of the Crown of Romania in over 60 years. I've promised Dan that if we win this case I'll get him made a Knight of the Garter or at least a Companion of the Order of Canada. Where I fall on that spectrum of clients, I'm not sure - I'd like to think somewhere between King Michael and Wilford Brimley, but it may be closer to the Monkees, and Peter Tork at that.

Dan also has a touch of the poet about him. He delivered a speech on Balzac and the law at the Palais de Justice in Paris - in French. Which will come in very useful when I flee across the New Hampshire border to Quebec and Dr Mann applies to have me extradited.

Dan and Mark's most important client in the last decade or so was Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose book Funding Evil happened to include rather more details of Khalid bin Mahfouz's bankrolling of al-Qaeda than the Saudi billionaire cared to have revealed to the world. So he sued her in a London court. Dan and Mark got Dr Ehrenfeld to countersue in New York to prevent Mahfouz from ever collecting, and, when the court declined to acknowledge it had personal jurisdiction over Mahfouz, they got the legislature to take up the issue and pass "Rachel's Law". This law prevents New York courts from enforcing libel judgments from other countries with lower standards of freedom-of-speech protection.

It was and is a big issue. A few years ago, Dr Ehrenfeld and I participated in a conference hosted by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and The New Criterion on "Free Speech in an Age of Jihad". The litigious end of the jihad had been skilfully using "libel tourism" to pick and choose the most favorable venues in which to strike at their opponents. It was a particular challenge for authors. I wrote in 2007 about another American book, Alms For Jihad, that attracted Sheikh Mahfouz's attention:

Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of "Alms for Jihad" and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons:

"Throughout the book there are serious and defamatory allegations about yourself and your family, alleging support for terrorism through your businesses, family and charities, and directly.

"As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that all of those allegations about you and your family, businesses and charities are entirely and manifestly false."

Yeah, right.

Had this kept up, it would have severely constrained the kinds of things American authors and publishers were permitted to write and publish on Islam and other controversial topics. Instead, "Rachel's Law" made it impossible for the likes of Mahfouz to use "libel tourism" to hollow out the First Amendment. It was replicated by several other state legislatures and eventually in 2010 by the United States Congress, after a unanimous vote by both the House and Senate. As Jerry Gordon wrote, "Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the stubborn perseverance of Dr Ehrenfeld and the unsung hero in this fight her counsel, Daniel Kornstein, a pillar in the First Amendment bar." But it goes beyond that. The first serious reform of English libel law (last year's Defamation Act) was in part the result of "Rachel's Law" and Dan's discrediting of London as the first resort of libel tourists.

Sheikh Mahfouz made the mistake of taking on Dan Kornstein and Mark Platt and lost comprehensively. Obviously, I don't think anyone's going to be passing Marky's Law any time soon, but there are certain similarities between Mahfouz and Mann in respect of "libel tourism". When the Sheikhdown maestro sued in the English courts, he did at least have a pad in London (and, mysteriously, an Irish passport). Michael E Mann doesn't live or work in the District of Columbia, and nor do I. Nevertheless, his Amended Complaint states:

Mr. Steyn's writings are widely read and circulated in the District of Columbia. Accordingly, Mr. Steyn is transacting and doing business within the District of Columbia and is subject to the jurisdiction of this Court pursuant to DC Code §13-423(a).

By that definition, if "I'm A Believer" by Dan's old clients the Monkees is played on a radio station in, say, Tuvalu, the Monkees are "transacting business" in Tuvalu and subject to their jurisdiction. This kind of procedural flimflam is what gives American "justice" its appallingly bad odor.

At any rate, joining Messrs Kornstein and Platt will be Michael J Songer, co-chair of the Litigation Group at Crowell & Moring in Washington, DC. Mike won a big $919.9 million payout for DuPont over a trade-secrets theft case involving Kevlar, which I was planning to wear to court anyway. A critical element of that case, interestingly enough, was the other party's deletion of emails. Mike is also a freespeecher, who teaches a course on the Law of Cyberspace at Georgetown University. He's big on issues of copyright and intellectual property, which Mann has frequently hidden behind in his attempts to avoid disclosing the data and research that produced his "hockey stick". In addition, Mike is a science graduate, so he understands both the technical jargon and, just as importantly, how to distill it for a jury.

So I'm no longer an out-of-control full-bore crazy. Instead, I'm an out-of-control full-bore crazy who's lawyered up to the hilt. This will leave me free to concentrate on my core activities of insulting judges and mocking Mann's self-conferred Nobel Prize, while Dan, Mark and Mike do the boring stuff like looking up precedents and knowing what a tort is. It would not have been possible to put this team together without your patronage of the SteynOnline bookstore. I said that I wanted this to be a jurisprudential landmark - the first legal campaign entirely funded by sales of my Christmas disco record. Sadly, there seems to be a certain resistance to my intoxicating rhythms from some readers, so we're also having to rely on book profits, commemorative mugs and mousepads, attitudinal T-shirts, gift certificates and the full cornucopia of delights at the Steyn store. But we're keeping our heads above water, and for that, as we prepare to mount the first serious forensic investigation of Mann and his work, I'm enormously grateful.

I'm also overwhelmed by the number of lawyers from across America who have offered their services and advice pro bono or at steeply discounted rates. It is heartening to know how many understand the stakes for free speech in America. Dan, Mark and Mike believe in this case, understand its importance, and together we will prevail.

SOURCE





Dianne Trussell and human mating

I knew Dianne Trussell over a quarter of a century ago.  I was her  landlord for a while.  And she was into diving -- with airtanks and other diving stuff prominent among her possessions.  She was happy and optimistic in a fixed-smile, brittle sort of way.

I could see where she was going wrong then but said nothing.  But perhaps now I should say something.

Psychologists have been interested in human relationships for a long time and they have converged on a "trading" view of relationships.  Each partner brings to the relationship something of equal value.  The value will be subjective but is nonetheless real.  The subjective does matter.

And the valued items are very upsetting for those who believe in romance.  Both males and females value physical things highly. Women are particularly fixated on height.  Few women will tolerate their man being shorter than them. This is particularly bad for short men -- making their prospects of offering value to a woman very poor.  So many short men will end up going to  the Republic of the Philippines for brides -- because Filipinas  are usually only 5' or 5"1" tall.

There is one group of women who value the physical above all else  -- Chinese women living in the Western world.  Australia is about 5% Chinese so one sees a lot of Chinese ladies about the place.  And if the lady is attached to a man, he will normally be a Caucasian man  -- a TALL Caucasian man.  If you see one with a Chinese man, he will be a TALL Chinese man.  So lots of unremarkable Australian men get devoted wives that way.  Chinese ladies will put up with a lot in order to get tall fathers for their children.  They know how genetics works and they think ahead.

Men are slightly less rigid.  They look for an hourglass figure in a woman but insecure men will accept a relatively flat-chested woman because they don't like other men looking at her.

But the whole process often grinds to a halt because individuals overestimate the value of what they offer.  There are skinny, gangly, flat-chested  women who think that their own wonderful self is sufficient to interest a man.  So they aim for high value men -- good looking, competent men.  But such men are not interested in them.  Such men can get a much higher value woman -- probably one with a good figure.  So the woman concerned wonders:  "Where are all the men?"  And they keep up that misjudgement into their 30s, by which time most of the good-deal men of their age and circle are married off.

I remember a singles party for people in their 40s and 50s that I once went to.  I was talking to a lady who said:  "Where are all the men?"  I pointed out that there was actually a majority of nen present. She replied: "No, not THOSE men".  She was looking for men much younger than herself.

And I think Dianne Trussell was one woman who valued herself too highly.  She was mixing with divers  -- who would generally be very fit and confident men.  And such men would have a lot to offer and would want a woman with a good figure.  But Diane was flat-chested.  So she would have sparked only fleeting interest from the men she mixed with.  She was fairly tall so could have got herself a short man but her value of herself was too high for that.  Short men will have almost any tall woman who will have them.  They know how genetics works too.

I gather it is the selfsame Dianne who now does alternative things down at Byron Bay.  Alternative things are a way of coping with the fact that you are not getting what you want in life.

I knew she was fishing in the wrong pool all those years ago and it has always bothered me that I said nothing to her about it  -- JR.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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