Lost in the shouting and cross-talk about legality is the fact that members of Planned Parenthood kill children

I think what Geraldo mean[s] is that it’s nobody’s business what a woman wants to do with her aborted child

writes Benny Huang.

I don’t think that it’s a misrepresentation of Geraldo’s views to use the word “child” either, as several comments he made in the course of the debate seem to imply that he believes the thing being ripped from a woman’s womb is in fact a child. So Geraldo concedes that we’re discussing baby corpses here, he’s just not bothered by it.

Like a lot of people, I reeled in disgust at Geraldo’s callous remark but I also found myself wondering why. We’re now so far down the slippery slope that the peripheral issue of how to use the byproducts of abortion moves front and center. The rest has all been decided.

Is it any wonder that Planned Parenthood’s phalanx of defenders have argued that the CFP videos are much ado about nothing? Its organ harvesting is always conducted with the woman’s consent, they claim, and is always done on a not-for-profit basis. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that neither of these two assertions is even true, that’s still a pretty shoddy defense. The Nazis didn’t make money on their organ harvesting either but that didn’t make it right.

But alas, there is a great gulf in this country between what is right and what is legal. In America you can legally kill an unborn child and legally sell her liver, brain, and heart; but if you charge one penny more than the costs of procurement and shipping, that’s a crime! What a silly point to quibble about—Planned Parenthood says that they don’t charge more for butchered baby parts than what it costs them, and it’s on the rest of us to prove they’re lying. (Watch the videos—it’s all about the money.) Lost in the shouting and cross-talk is the fact that they kill children.

Which makes Geraldo’s indifference almost understandable. Who cares what we do with the “products of conception” once we’re done sucking them out with a shop vac? Now is not time to get squeamish. We have to do something with our truckloads of mashed baby, so why not sell it to Alpo? It’s better than keeping it in jars in Kermit Gosnell’s refrigerator.

But people tend to get themselves in a tizzy when we creatively repurpose dead baby parts. Here’s a small example that I think illustrates the public’s unease with using aborted children for the betterment of humanity—last year, it was reported that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) was using fetuses to heat hospitals across the UK. The 15,000 incinerated fetuses were part of a “Waste-to-Energy” plan that used medical refuse and ordinary trash as a fuel. And who could be against that, except perhaps some sadist who delights in people dying of hypothermia? As it turned out, some people got their knickers all in a bunch and the NHS quickly put a stop to the practice—not the killing of babies, mind you, but the burning of their corpses for heat.

The NHS’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Sir Mike Richards, seemed oddly fixated on the wrong issue, namely that no one asked the mothers for permission. Said Sir Richards, “I am disappointed trusts may not be informing or consulting women and their families. This breaches our standard on respecting and involving people who use services…”

So there’s the real scandal—women didn’t consent to burning their children like firewood. But why should anyone ask them? To even pose the question implies that dead babies are somehow different from other kinds of medical waste.

 … Like the NHS, [the Covanta Waste-to-Energy facility in Oregon] also acted swiftly to halt the burning of unborn children, though I don’t understand why. Who are they to deprive us of an abundant renewable resource? We could even construct a baby sludge pipeline from Canada directly to trash-burning reactors here in the States. Think of it like Keystone XL, only Obama wouldn’t veto it. Energy independence is national security!

 … A society that kills the unborn has already conceded the moral argument against abortion. If killing the unborn is not immoral, then who can find fault with feeding their corpses to dogs? Certainly not us.

The Assassin of Two Kids Should Be Forgiven (the Poor Thing), While the Men in Her Life Deserve the Harshest of Condemnations

In her answer to Dalrock regarding Susan Smith's infanticides, Insanity Bytes does nothing if not show the feminists' double standards, seemingly proving the former right when he says feminism is only about giving women more rights to have fun while removing their responsibilities.

For those who don’t remember Susan Smith, she murdered her children and is now spending 30 years in prison. She was mentally ill, her brain broke, and she collapsed. No one knows why she did it, it was just one of those evil acts that defy explanation. 

What is seldom talked about however, is the fact that her father committed suicide when she was six years old and her step father molested her all through her teens, a relationship that continued well into adulthood. At 13 she tried to kill herself. By the time she finished high school there had been 3 more suicide attempts. She went on to marry David when she was 19 years old and had his two sons, but that relationship was rocky, full of infidelity, and he frequently abandoned her with the two children.

Susan Smith was a mentally ill 21 year old girl with a father who committed suicide, a stepfather who molested her, and a husband who cheated on her, abandoned with two small children. She broke. Women do that sometimes, we break, especially when all the men in our lives fail us, yes fail us Dalrock. Women do not just spontaneously combust.

So Insanity Bytes refuses to condemn the murderer (ress) of two children (the assassin's own). Why? There can only be one explanation. Because Susan Smith is a woman.

Meanwhile, she feels no empathy for, say, the parent for committing suicide. Why? There can only be one explanation. Because he is a man.

("What is seldom talked about however…" What is not talked about at all in Insanity Bytes's post is the heinous way in which she carried out the murders, allowing the car in which her two toddlers were strapped to their seats to slowly slide into a lake.)

Referring to Insanity Bytes' description of Susan Smith as "a mentally ill 21 year old girl", incidentally, an anonymous reader points out that

Funny how the difference between a “strong, independent woman” and a mere girl has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with blame shifting from the girl onto some man or men.

Let's take Insanity Bytes' comments and try to turn them around, applying them, and her attitude, to the men in the story:

• "her father committed suicide when she was six years old":
"No one knows why [he] did it, it was just one of those evil acts that defy explanation."

• "her step father molested her all through her teens":
"No one knows why [he] did it, it was just one of those evil acts that defy explanation."

• The relationship with David "was rocky, full of infidelity, and he frequently abandoned her with the two children":
"No one knows why [he] did it, it was just one of those evil acts that defy explanation."

And how about this one?

She broke. Women do that sometimes, we break, especially when all the men in our lives fail us, yes fail us Dalrock. Women do not just spontaneously combust.

Why can't that one apply to the men in her life?

• "her father committed suicide when she was six years old":
"[He] broke. [Men] do that sometimes, [they] break, especially when [all the people? when all the women? when all the something else? when a particular woman?] in [their] lives fail [them], yes fail [them] Dalrock. [Men] do not just spontaneously combust."

• "her step father molested her all through her teens":
"[He] broke. [Men] do that sometimes, [they] break, especially when [all the people? when all the women? when all the something else? when a particular woman?] in [their] lives fail [them], yes fail [them] Dalrock. [Men] do not just spontaneously combust."

• The relationship with David "was rocky, full of infidelity, and he frequently abandoned her with the two children":
"[He] broke. [Men] do that sometimes, [they] break, especially when [all the people? when all the women? when all the something else? when a particular woman?] in [their] lives fail [them], yes fail [them] Dalrock. [Men] do not just spontaneously combust."

Now turn it around the other way: imagine if one woman had committed suicide, another had molested a teen-ager, and a third had cheated on the husband/boyfriend while abandoning their children. Surely Insanity Bytes would have used the the exact same arguments (sic) and that, needless to say, in these three hypothetical women's — sorry, these three hypothetical girls' — defense.

You see, Insanity Bytes, what it boils down to is a person (male or female) committing suicide, an adult (male or female) molesting a teenager, a spouse or boy/girlfriend cheating on the significant other while abandoning him/her and the kids, AND (drumbeat), a parent (male or female) murdering their offspring.

Is it inconceivable that there is nothing anti-feminine about (males or females) thinking that the final one is far worse than the first three? Is it inconceivable that the comments section (comments by females as well as males) would argue as much for the death penalty (if not more) were the murderer a man?

Apparently those things are inconceivable:

Rather than attempting to understand the Susan Smith case, rather than applying some mercy, you just exploit the tragedy and use it as an example of the evil nature of women. Your comment section is filled with hateful words condemning her to hell, wanting to see her executed, reveling in your perceived  moral superiority, and dehumanizing women in general.

Shall we try that one too — and directed at Insanity Bytes?

"Rather than attempting to understand the Susan Smith case, rather than applying some mercy, you just exploit the tragedy and use it as an example of the evil nature of [men]. Your [post] is filled with hateful words condemning [the three men] to hell, wanting to see [them reviled], reveling in your perceived  moral superiority, and dehumanizing [men] in general."

Related: In response to news of a husband and father driven to suicide, a feminist writes a screed showing nothing but scorn and mockery

• More Dalrock writings here…

Was the 1945 liberation "an explosion of liberty” for French newspapers or a “moment of purge"?

Alberto Toscano turned a page of a 1780 issue of Journal de Paris, France’s first daily newspaper. He touched the back of the newspaper and then delicately turned it over, savoring the faint, musty smell that rose from the bound book of newspapers that held it.

Thus writes Elian Peltier in his New York Times article about the man who for the past 30 years has been collecting English- and French-language newspapers dating from the 1960s to as far back as 1673.

Toscano, a 67-year-old Italian retired journalist living [in Paris], considers his extensive collection of over 100,000 newspapers the best history books he has ever read. About 70 examples from the collection are now on exhibit outside the Paris City Hall until Sept. 15 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

 … At the inauguration of the City Hall exhibition last month, Mr. Toscano explained to Anne Hidalgo, the mayor, that with this particular selection, he wanted to show “the explosion of freedom in French journalism after the liberation” of Paris from the Nazis in August 1944.

The attitude of the French press toward the occupying forces and the Vichy government remains a sensitive topic in France. During the war, newspapers were divided between clandestine publications of the Resistance and collaborationist newspapers that the writer and philosopher Albert Camus called the “shame of our country” in an editorial published in the Resistance journal Combat in August 1944, when he was its editor in chief.

Patrick Eveno, a French historian of the press based in Paris, said: “The official French newspapers didn’t resist the Germans during the war. They were seen as traitors when Paris was liberated.”

In 1944, a spate of new publications changed the landscape of the French press, with 92 percent of the newspapers that existed during World War II banned by the government and their resources confiscated for the new publications, Mr. Eveno said. He called the liberation a “moment of purge for newspapers rather than an explosion of liberty.”

The new press, he said, became too moralizing and editorial, with French people soon tiring of the lack of information. At that time, in several editorials, Camus denounced the laziness of the new newspapers, such as when they would repeatedly announce the death of Hitler or the resignation of Franco at the end of 1944, based only on “hypothetical dispatches or mysterious suppositions.”

The Paris newspaper exhibition emphasizes the journalistic enthusiasm at the time, with 21 newspapers, including ones that are still published today, like Le Figaro or Le Monde, some printed in black and white and some in color. They vividly depict the momentous news of the day, including the capitulation of Germany and the atomic bombings.

 … the press of that time reflected public opinion, when French society wanted to forget about the years of collaboration with German forces and find a fresh impetus. 

 … Toscano plans to organize a show in 2016 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, which led to peace treaties between the Allies and Italy along with several other European countries the following year. He also dreams of putting together an exhibition about the invention of aviation and cars, told through newspapers.

“Already in the 1880s, newspapers would debate about electric motors, thermic ones or steam engine,” he said. “Looking more at the daily past would light up a lot of today’s debates.”

Where there is capitalism, ordinary people are with each passing year better fed, better clothed, better housed, better doctored, better entertained, and better employed

The genius of the free market is that is replicates the most powerful earthly force—evolution—in the realm of material development. We try new stuff all the time, some variations thrive, and some variations die. Things adapt to their environment—an environment composed of human desire—through millions of tiny, iterative changes. As with the case of biological evolution, those changes are inherently unpredictable.

Kevin D Williamson makes an important point about the free market (thanks to Instapundit):

Those of us who favor market-based solutions to social problems don’t do so simply because we don’t like government or the sort of people who go into government, or don’t like to pay taxes, or because we want to create profit opportunities, or because we are on some sort of Taylorist quest for efficiency, whatever “efficiency” means in the current context. What really matters is that in the free market things get better: Where there is capitalism, ordinary people are with each passing year better fed, better clothed, better housed, better doctored, better entertained, and better employed. Better and cheaper and cheaper and better — except where politics inserts its big ugly snout.

At 18 I was fighting the Japanese in Burma

At 18 I was fighting the Japanese in Burma

Vic Knibb tells the BBC's Daniel Rosney.

"It's terrifying," he admits. "War is so frightening - it's a terrible thing.

"People are trying to kill you and it's no joke. You'd shoot them first and ask questions afterwards."

 … "I wrote a diary and it just said, 'Wrote to parents', 'Slept well' or 'Marched seven miles' or something like that.

"It's not marching - it's walking through the jungle in virtual single file with potentially the enemy about."

Vic remembers the day he was shot and narrowly avoided death thanks to his diary.

"This diary I've got here has a bullet hole in it from where I was shot."

"We were woken up about half-past four by the Japanese who attacked us.

"The diary was in my small pack which I was using as a pillow sleeping on the ground and I got this terrific thump on the back of my head."

• On 15 August 1945 Japan surrendered and it's known as VJ Day - abbreviated from Victory over Japan Day.
• Some countries mark this day on 2 September, which is when the formal ceremony of surrender happened in Tokyo, Japan's capital.
• Earlier this year VE Day was marked on 8 May - remembering the day the Nazis surrendered in World War Two.

A bullet had ripped through the spine of the notebook.

He says "you just accepted it" when his comrades would die in battle.

"War is no joke. You're dirty, you're thirsty, you're hungry.

"You haven't got any news. We didn't know what was happening at all."

Victory over Japan

"We got to Rangoon [now Yangon] - Burma's capital - and someone says, 'They've dropped a bomb' and you hear they've surrendered," Vic remembers.

"We had no idea how big the bomb was. We knew it was an atom bomb but we had no conception what an atom bomb was."

Read how one woman survived Hiroshima's atomic bomb 

"There were 26,000 dead young British soldiers in Burma that didn't come back," Vic explains.

"With the VJ Day coming up it's in the memory of those 26,000 men that didn't come back. If it hadn't been for them the whole history would have changed."

Making Mountains Out of Molehills and Molehills out of Mountains