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

If Anybody Is Making Common Cause with Radicals in Iran, Wouldn't It Be Obama?

President Obama saying that Iranians “are making common cause with the Republican caucus” is twisted logic.  Obama is making common cause with the radical Islamic terrorists who he doesn’t admit exist.

David Lawrence has a piece on The Twisted Logic of Liberals in Eagle Rising website.

Being liberal is twisted logic.  It is seeking short term hedonistic satisfaction instead of patiently chasing long term results.

 … Obama’s spending millions on vacations and trillions on failed projects while pretending that he is a hero of the middle class is twisted logic with a dash of gourmet hypocrisy.

Obama having a distaste for American exceptionalism is twisted logic. He lives exceptionally well.  He has private chefs while he spits us out like fast food.  He turned self-reliance into food stamps.

Allowing Iran to get its hands on one hundred and fifty billion dollars and opening its path to a nuke is twisted logic. It’s arming our enemy.  It is Chamberlain giving weapons to the Nazis.

"Dare we now keep the Swedish flag on our walls without being racist?"

  … in the Swedish society … more and more Swedes are afraid to display their own flag

While Americans are (rightly) predicting that a ban against the Confederate flag will eventually lead to a campaign on the Stars and Stripes, Front Page's Nima Gholam Ali Pour points out that the war has already started in Scandinavia (thanks to Ben Duffy).

In … some 14-year-old boys in a school in Malmö wanted to pay tribute to the Swedish national soccer team by having shirts with the Swedish flag on the school photo. The headmaster forbade the students who wanted shirts with the Swedish flag from being on the school photo. The headmaster did not want that it would be perceived as that there is racism in the school.[3]

Ahead of Sweden's national day, June 6, 2014, which is also celebrated as the official flag day, the extreme left organization the “365 movement”[4], called on the people to engage in a "flag hunt," which meant that people would gather Swedish flags on the national day, burn them and take pictures.[5] [6] [7] The most flags and the greatest fire would be rewarded by the 365 movement.[8] According to the 365 movement the Swedish flag was "the ultimate symbol of the nation state, the racist structure that puts up boundaries between people".[9] In Malmö, the 365 movement staged a flag burning on national day evening where a hundred people attended.[10]


In Sweden, the message of an extreme left organization is usually not isolated. Their call to burn the flags was spread to politicians like Foujan Rouzbeh, parliamentary candidate for the Feminist Initiative, a party that has a seat in the European Parliament. Rouzbeh wrote on Twitter on national day in 2014: 

"To desecrate the flag tomorrow is to say that enough is enough now. Tear all the barriers, smash all the walls. Down with the nation-state! Long live us"[11] [12]

A letter to the editor of the Swedish union newspaper "Kollega" from 2015 asks: "Dare we now keep the Swedish flag on our walls without being racist?"[13] This is a question that more and more Swedes ask today because one incident after another shows that the Swedish flag is being challenged by sectors of the Swedish society. It is a legitimate question to ask because putting the Swedish flag on the balcony of your residence has in establishment and media circles become a symbol of xenophobia.[14]

"Long live us"!

As I write in The Era of the Drama Queens (Every Crisis Is a Triumph ), that, in a nutshell, is what leftist "opinions" and "talking points" boil down to…

Every time some leftist gets caught on tape saying what leftists really believe, they resort to the same defensive strategy—claiming to have been taken “out of context”

As the Center for Medical Progress continues its drip-drip-drip release of undercover videos that incriminate Planned Parenthood, The New York Times has pronounced the videos to be cruel tricks perpetrated by opponents of “women’s reproductive rights.”

writes B.A. Duffy.

The editorial board of The New York Times is not amused. They complain that the video was “edited” to the point of taking quotes out of context.

Wrong. Nothing was taken out of context. Prominent officials at Planned Parenthood really did haggle over prices, joke about buying a Lamborghini, and identify the organs of a dead child in a petri dish. They talked about how to alter the abortion procedure for the best harvest and how to maximize profits through the piecemeal sale of parts. One video even showed an official admitting that some children were delivered alive before an abortionist could get to the “patients,” and were therefore human beings even under our demented laws.

Nor were the videos “edited.” They were excerpted of course, much the same way ESPN extracts the highlights of a football game in order to summarize the big plays. That does not mean that the highlight reel is somehow illegitimate, as if it has something to hide.
 … All of this wailing and gnashing of teeth is getting tiresome. Every time some leftist gets caught on tape saying what leftists really believe, they resort to the same defensive strategy—claiming to have been taken “out of context,” and alleging that undercover videos are somehow deceitful. They try to portray themselves as victims and the media are glad to assist them. Undercover videos are dirty pool!

No, actually they’re pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread. No one should apologize for exposing lying dirtbags wherever they may be found. Can’t we all agree on that? I think most people would—until they discover that it’s their own lies, or the lies of a confidant that are being exposed to sunlight. They can think of a hundred reasons why their lies shouldn’t be compared to someone else’s, but the simplest explanation remains the best—that it’s their lies.
 
I don’t mean to imply that lying is restricted to those on the political Left, but leftists do more of it because they’ve got more to hide, and are thus much more practiced. Don’t believe what they say when they’re answering reporters’ questions with poll-tested talking points. Listen to what they say when they think no one else is listening. That’s when the truth comes out.

 … Hidden cameras are, of course, fair game when they catch other people—truly bad people—in their own malfeasance. The New York Times won’t form a defensive perimeter around those people, and they won’t mimic their press releases, a service they gladly provide to Planned Parenthood. For example, when Texaco executives were caught on tape in 1996 making racist remarks about blacks, The New York Times didn’t make the preposterous claim that their words had been taken out of context or that the recording was highly edited. In fact, the Times’ reaction to the Texaco scandal was to publish an editorial supporting affirmative action in perpetuity.

Nor did The New York Times feel compelled to protect meat producers from animal rights activists and their hidden cameras. … An industry that abuses and slaughters livestock gets very different media treatment than an industry that abuses and slaughters unborn children.

 Dare I say that the Times is now in the news suppression business? What they’re doing can’t properly be called journalism. As the English novelist George Orwell once said, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is just public relations.”

 … The institutional media can truly turn on a dime, and without the least bit of shame, from praising undercover exposés to excoriating them.

Conservatives Discuss Republican Debates on French TV

On Thursday, August 6, two conservatives in Paris were interviewed about the Republican debates by Olivier Galzi's summer stand-in, Romain Desarbres, on iTélé's Grand Décryptage, including the outstanding performance of Donald Trump (the US election sequence starts around 08:18).

  … l'émission s'intéresse au premier débat de la campagne présidentielle américaine qui se déroule ce jeudi soir. Pour en débattre, Ellen WASYLINA, expert de la Politique Américaine, et Erik SVANE, membre des Républicains de France, sont invités sur le plateau.

Back in 2009, Vaclav Havel Predicted the (Downward) Path of Obama's Foreign Policy

From the archives: back in October 2009, Václav Havel predicted the path of the Apologizer-in-Chief's foreign policy (“It is only a minor compromise,” Havel says of Obama's snub of the Dalai Lama; “But with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous problems"):

Vaclav Havel had a question as he opened a meeting with the New York Times' Alison Smale.

Was it true that President Obama had refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington?

Mr. Havel is a fan of the Dalai Lama, who was among the first visitors to Prague’s storied castle after Mr. Havel moved in there as president, the final act in the swift, smooth revolution of 1989. A picture of the Dalai Lama is displayed prominently in Mr. Havel’s current office in central Prague.
Told that Mr. Obama had made clear he would receive the Dalai Lama after his first presidential visit to China in November, Mr. Havel reached out to touch a magnificent glass dish, inscribed with the preamble to the United States Constitution — a gift from Mr. Obama, who visited in April.
“It is only a minor compromise,” Mr. Havel said of the nonreception of the Tibetan leader. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems."

One letter to the editor noted that the Nobel Prize winner (i.e., the Tibetan leader) snubbed by the Nobel Prize winner (i.e., the Apologizer-in-Chief) is nothing less than a modern-day Gandhi and that

The American president would do well to heed Mr. Havel’s warning that coddling of rights-abusing nations is a “road to hell.”

(Incidentally, at least four paragraphs of the International Herald Tribune version were omitted in the online version of Smale's Václav Havel report, including the final para with the "road to hell" quote.) Even Maureen Dowd has dropped her usual scorn and irony to say that

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

Mistral Warship Sale Sunk, France to Refund Russia

France says it has reached an agreement with Russia to cancel the contract for the sale of two French warships

reports the Associated Press.

France will fully refund Russia for the amount the country has already paid, the French president's office said Wednesday in a statement, without giving the figure.

The delivery of a Mistral-class warship to Russia was suspended last year over the Ukrainian crisis. A second French-built warship which was part of the deal was due to be delivered to Russia later this year.

The 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) deal was supposed to be the biggest arms sale ever by a NATO country to Russia.

The Mistral-class vessels can carry 700 troops, 16 helicopter gunships and up to 50 armored vehicles.

It is an issue that No Pasarán has been diligently covering since 2010.

Related: France Seeking New Buyers for Mistral Warships

"These are good ships," [the French defense minister] told RTL radio, "ships that can serve multiple purposes," from force projection and command to acting as floating hospitals.

Jean-Yves Drian … said a number of unspecified countries have "made their interest known" in the boats, which are similar to the U.S. Navy's San Antonio class of amphibious transport dock ships.

 … Whoever finally ends up with Mistrals will need to repaint them to cover up the Russian navy names and markings they now bear.

Surely It Can't Be True That Not a Single Civilian Died in the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?!

What would you say if someone were to come up to you and make the following statement: that during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not a single civilian was killed? What would you think of the person, what would be your conclusion as to what kind of person could possibly be making such an inane statement?

That the person was mad? That he was delirious? That he was an extreme example of a conspiracy theorist? Surely, that he must be American (and an American conservative to boot)?!

In fact, there is only one conclusion to make, and that is the following: that the person was a member of the Japanese government in the 1930s and 1940s.

As I mention in several of my plethora of Horoshima quotes, the Tokyo government did not recognize civilians — elderly, women, or children — and certainly did not recognize them as noncombatants. (As paradoxically, its successors have been doing — incessantly — in the following seven decades, harping on their status as innocent victims…)

Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics [Thomas Sowell]

Testified one Japanese-American:

Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing. My uncle, who was disabled, had been sent to a mandatory training camp to practice with wooden bullets and makeshift weapons to do his civilian share in greeting American forces.

An article by Jonathan Soble reinforces this, in spite of the fact that, obviously, the New York Times is (as usual) horrified by America's actions and firmly in favor of the victims:

Hiromi Hasai was being trained to make machine gun bullets when the flash from the atomic bomb that destroyed his city lit up the already bright morning sky. Just 14, he had been pulled from school a week before to help Japan’s failing war effort.

So, a young teenager of only 13 or 14 ("just 14"), and already working on weapons?

It confirms — if need be — everything we knew about Japan's plans for the war to continue — to the very last man, woman, cripple, and child.

Related: Witnessing the A-Bomb, but Forbidden to File

Smiley face fascism is here: These days we can count on the MSM to be several steps ahead of the government in its zeal for violating our most basic freedoms

The first clue that Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine is afraid of religious liberty is that she writes for the New York Times Magazine

quips Benny Huang in his piece on The New Liberalism (Their Hurt Feelings Trump Your Constitutional Rights).

The second clue is that the headline of her column places religious liberty in sneer quotes: “What are the Limits of ‘Religious Liberty?’”

As in, so-called religious liberty. Religious liberty exercised by people she doesn’t like. Therefore, not real religious liberty.

And to think that journalists used to act as bulwark against governmental tyranny. These days we can count on the press to be several steps ahead of the government in its zeal for violating our most basic freedoms. If Emily Bazelon actually cared about our constitutional rights she would ask the opposite question—namely, what are the limits of government coercion? The fact that she doesn’t tells us a lot.

Why exactly does she believe that the right to decline a business transaction is somehow not protected by the free exercise clause of the Constitution? What makes this kind of exercise different than say, refusing to serve in the armed services during wartime, or refusing to serve ham in a kosher deli? I think the substance of her objection can be found in two sentences—“Women who have been refused abortion services report feeling judged and mortified. Gay couples turned away by wedding vendors say the same.”

And we wouldn’t want anyone to feel “judged and mortified!”

 … Either religious freedom includes the right to make other people feel bad or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then neither the florist nor the pastor is safe.

Another problem is that anyone declined service for any reason could claim to be “judged and mortified.” I’m sure Chuck Netzhammer felt “judged and mortified” when he ordered a confederate flag cake, superimposed with the words “heritage not hate,” from Walmart, and was refused. In fact, I know he was. “I am highly offended, distraught, and in tears…”said Netzhammer.

 … The third problem with Emily Bazelon’s argument is the most troubling. Never in a million years did I believe we would get to the point that actual adults—Americans, no less—would make a serious argument that hurt feelings trump constitutional rights.

… Louise Melling [of the ACLU] essentially argues that religious freedom must never include the right to engage in economic transactions on a voluntary basis because people are somehow harmed when they are turned away. … Melling argues that there is real harm done…to people’s feelings! “People turned away by an inn or bakery suffer the harm of being told that their kind isn’t welcome,” she writes.

Um…so? She’s clearly implying that we as Americans lack the right to tell someone else that their kind isn’t welcome. Her statement represents a sea change in the ACLU’s philosophy which used to take a strong stance in favor of our first amendment rights, even if it hurt people’s feelings. A telling example is the one they always trot out to prove that they aren’t a bunch of left-wing hacks. In 1977, the ACLU took the side of a Nazi group that was denied a permit to march through Skokie, Illinois, a city with a substantial population of Holocaust survivors. The ACLU maintained that supporting the Nazis’ constitutional rights in no way amounted to supporting their abhorrent ideology. I agree.

But I’m not sure that today’s ACLU would take that case and if they did they would be hypocrites.

Why? Because the clear message of the march was “Your kind is not welcome.” The ACLU used to believe that conveying such a message was within our rights but they’ve recently had a change of heart and decided that we all have a right to feel welcome. That right cannot be secured without the kind of heavy governmental coercion heretofore found only in novels about the dystopian future. And Canada.

Not everyone has this right, of course. Chuck Netzhhammer can still be made to feel that his kind isn’t welcome because he’s a poor white southerner. But homosexuals’ delicate feelings are always and everywhere protected.

This trend of elevating some people’s feelings over other people’s rights is absolutely terrifying. The government can’t make us be nice to each other and it shouldn’t try. All of our rights are on the chopping block. Expect hate speech laws in the British or Canadian tradition, an end to parental rights, and a governmental invasion of your church. As the late George Carlin once said,

“When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.”

Smiley face fascism is here and it’s up to us to fend it off.

How the Welfare State Begins and What the Welfare State Evolves Into

The welfare state starts with small programs targeted at a handful of genuinely needy people

writes Dan Mitchell, referring to the artwork of Cato's Silvia Morandotti.

But as  politicians figure out the electoral benefits of expanding programs and people figure out the that they can let others work on their behalf, the ratio of producers to consumers begins to worsen.

Eventually, even though the moochers and looters should realize that it is not in their interest to over-burden the people pulling the wagon, the entire system breaks down.

Then things get really interesting. Small nations such as Greece can rely on permanent bailouts from bigger countries and the IMF, but sooner or later, as larger nations begin to go bankrupt, that approach won’t be feasible.

Hiroshima, 70 Years Later

Discussing the means that brought the War in the Pacific to an end:
Erik Svane: Unlike the endgames of the majority of wars, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (read more)…

Lt. Paul Fussell:

On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other … the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over (read more)…

Thomas Sowell:

the atomic bomb spared us (and the Japanese) a bloodbath that would have dwarfed the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (read more)…

Charles de Gaulle:

Les trois cent mille morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires (read more)…

The Wall Street Journal:

The Japanese army was expected to fight to the last man, as it had during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Since the ratio of Japanese to American combat fatalities ran about four to one, a mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (read more)…

Thomas Sowell:

Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (read more)…

A Japanese-American:

Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing (read more)…

The New York Times's Martin Fackler on Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's:

…most Japanese are shocked to hear that their nation also tried to build an atomic bomb. “I have no doubt Japan would have used it if it succeeded,” former schoolteacher Kiwamu Ariga, 81, said (read more)…

Bret Stephens:

Whatever side one takes here, the important point is that the debate fundamentally is about results. … In other words, the question here isn't about the intrinsic morality of the bombing. It's about whether the good that flowed from the bombing outweighed the unmistakable evil of the act itself (read more)…

Le Monde's Philippe Mesmer:

Although it is not said so openly, Hiroshima also played a purifying role, i.e., the baptism of a new Japan, the event that put an end to fifty years of crimes (read more)…

Paul Fussell: Thank God for the Atom Bomb (essay; available for download)

Victor Davis Hanson:

Post-facto critics never tell us what they would have done instead — lay off the German cities and send more ground troops into a pristine Third Reich; don’t bomb, but invade, an untouched Japan in 1946; keep out of WWII entirely; or in its aftermath invade the Soviet Union? (read more)…

Japan's defense minister forced to resign for having the gall to admit that

dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 "ended the war," adding, "I think that it couldn't be helped" … Fumio Kyuma [added that] he did not resent the United States because the bombs prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan [and that] if Japan had not surrendered, northern Japan could have been occupied by the Soviet Union (read more…)

S L Sanger:

In my interviews with some 60 physicists, engineers, military men and ordinary working people who had been closely connected with Hanford and the Manhattan Project, the consensus was that both bombs were necessary, with a bit less consensus on the Nagasaki bomb (read more)…

Erik Svane: A critical examination of some common charges against the Americans regarding the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (racism, intensification of the war, war on civilians, and the peace feelers ignored) (read more…)

Robert Maddox: the veteran historian ("I regard Hiroshima [revisionism] as the greatest hoax in American history") is interviewed by Victor Fic on every Atomic bombing subject imaginable (read more)…

Father Wilson Miscamble:

Truman's use of the bomb should be seen as his choosing the least awful of the options available to him (4:04, thanks to Instapundit)

Bill Whittle:

But the Japanese were warned … Over one million of these [Office of War Information warning leaflets] were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on the 1st of August, 1945 — that's five days before the Hiroshima bombing (01:10, aligato to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit)

Glenn Reynolds: 

the fact is that hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just so much virtue-signaling by people who probably never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders.  (read more)…

In addition, check out the information below the subhead "Watching for the 'Fool-Proof' Cards", about two thirds to three fourths down the drag zone of the AA page…
PJTV - Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs - Bill Whittle from adrv on Vimeo.

A woman at the centre of a paedophile ring setting children up as “sexual playthings” over more than a decade has been found guilty

A woman at the centre of a paedophile ring which set children up as “sexual playthings” over more than a decade has been found guilty of offences including rape, conspiracy to rape and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity

reports The Guardian. As Glenn Reynolds often says, Teach Women Not to Rape.

Ten people – six women and four men – had been on trial accused of the abuse of five children. Marie Black, from Norwich, was alleged to have been at the centre of the abuse.

Black, 34, denied 26 charges during a three-month trial at Norwich crown court, but on Monday the jury convicted her on all but three counts after 19 hours of deliberations. She sobbed uncontrollably in the dock as the verdicts were delivered and was heard saying: “I’ve been stitched up.”

 … Opening the trial, prosecutor Angela Rafferty QC had said Black, previously known as Marie Adams, played an instrumental role in using the children as “sexual playthings”. The abuse, which is said to have happened in and around Norwich and London, included forcing the children to have sex with one another.

On some occasions, the adults threw parties and played card games to decide who would abuse which child, Rafferty said. In interviews the victims described how they were abused in front of one another and other adults. Some of the abuse involved children’s toys, including Barbie dolls.

They said the abuse became so routine that the victims came to accept it as normal. One of the male victims said: “There would be parties and they would do some games where the boys were in one room with the men and the girls were in another with the women. The adults would have a card game and the winner would get to choose a boy to start touching their private parts and then hurt them afterwards.”


 … All of the defendants denied abusing the children, saying it simply did not happen. During the trial it emerged that police had launched an investigation into the conduct of Norfolk county council social workers involved in the case.

Report on a Recent Occurrence of Russian Racism Is Watered Down by Focus on Western Company Involved

The Guardian's Alec Luhn reports that

a video from a Red Bull event in Moscow showed a Barack Obama impersonator chasing a banana. … In the video, at least four shirtless men who appeared to be in blackface makeup, and one dressed as the US president, chased another dressed as a banana off the Flugtag ramp.

But, of course, racism only counts when it takes place in the United States or a Western country, or when anything related to the West is involved.

Thus, much must made of the fact that Red Bull is involved in the controversy that emerged in

a highlights video from last week’s Red Bull Flugtag competition, in which participants send whimsical “flying” machines crashing off a ramp into water.

It is only as an aside, almost, that we learn that

Photoshopped memes showing Obama with bananas and calling the US president a monkey have appeared frequently on the Russian internet, including on a site of images often used by paid pro-Kremlin trolls. 

The Republic of Cronyism

A French magazine takes on the French state's network of cronyism and patronage.

Nominations de complaisance, recasages discrets, en trois ans, le pouvoir socialiste a fait main basse sur l’État et satisfait l’appétit de ses courtisans. Aux dépens de la République irréprochable.

When Blacks Are Harrassed by White Police Officers, Who Do They Call Upon to Broadcast the Video?

Not many people seem to have noticed what may one one of the most interesting parts of the 58 Year Old Woman Slapped by Cop, Other Cop Tries to Snatch Camera from Son video: the dude does not say he will send the tape to ABC, to NBC, or to CBS (2:02). While he does—briefly—mention CNN, for some reason he thinks (or… he knows?) that America's conservative TV network is the station to turn to, for the TV station of the supposed racist Tea Partiers seems to be the most likely one to air the video of white police brutality towards a black family. In the mind of this black man, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News is the TV station that will stand up for the little man.