Too fat to fly!?

America is the land of the free, right? A land where you can't be discriminated against for being the wrong race, the wrong religion, the wrong gender or even... weight for it... the wrong size. Fat-shaming is not allowed in the new, woke USA. Stuff your face full of that junk food and don't be afraid  of being called names, or of having people make mooing or oinking noises behind your back.

What about losing your job? Can they fire you for being obese? Well, we're going to find out. 

Chelsia Blackmon (who is actually Blackwoman), is taking legal action against Spirit Airlines, her former employer, claiming she was wrongfully terminated for being too overweight to buckle the seat belt on the jumpseat on an Airbus 319 operated by the Florida-based airline.

She accuses Spirit of discrimination for not being offered the same treatment as a white colleague who could not "fit" in the jump seat. 

The claim filed on her behalf in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, stipulates that when Blackmon was hired, she'd completed and passed all training and compliance protocols, including being strapped into a jump seat (not the one in the picture). 

However, when she was assigned to one of Spirit's A-319s on September 3rd, she failed to strap herself into the seat, and was not allowed to get an extension belt to accommodate her great girth. In fact, she was asked to leave the plane and was put on administrative leave.

Ten days later, according to her complaint, Ms Blackmon was asked to meet with airline managers, and prove she could buckle into a jump seat. When she tried again, on October 8th, she found the jumpseat to small for her. She was suspended from service for five days [to go on a crash diet? Ed.], and fired a month later.

Ms Blackmon accuses the airlne of discriminating against her not just because she's observably obese, but also because she's black -- your classic BBBW. Her complaint alleges that a Caucasian flight attendant -- only a BBW -- who was also in the early stages of her career at Spirit had the same problem but was given several months before she had to prove she could strap herself into a jump seat.

The complaint claims that, because of "discriminatory and illegal differential treatment based upon her race," Ms Blackmon has suffered "lost wages, compensatory damages, mental anguish and suffering." The flight attendant also says that Spirit's actions "were in willful and malicious and in reckless disregard of her civil rights." 

Ms Blackmon is seeking back pay, damages, including punitive damages (of course) and legal costs (more of course) in a trial by jury. Spirit Airlines and Ms Blackmon's attorney didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Agent 3, our resident legal beagle, says jury selection for the upcoming trial ought to be really entertaining. He adivses Ms Blackmon to withdraw the Florida action and file a new claim in Louisiana, where whoever has the biggest alligator wins.

UPDATED: Feds mull "civil rights" charges after Rittenhouse acquittal

A Wisconsin jury has acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges arising from the killing of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz during a "mostly peaceful protest" in Kenosha WI in August of 2020. 

The "protests" erupted after a white police officer shot a black man. The now-customary riots, vandalism and looting ensured, prompting an online call for armed patriots to come to the city to protect lives and property. 

Mr Rittenhouse, who answered the call, is white. The three people he shot were/are also white. Nevertheless, this being America, you can expect further rioting, vandalism, looting ["reparations shopping", shurely. Ed.] and general mayhem. not just in Kenosha but across the country, in the name of "justice" for those who were shot. Businesses are already boarding up their windows. 

I'm happy for Mr Rittenhouse, but caution him and his defence team to keep their guard up. The federal Department of Justice has yet to weigh in, so expect charges under the Civil Rights Act to be filed very shortly. Lifetime pct .991.

UPDATE ADDED 20/11/21: As Walt predicted (lifetime pct .992), Democrats are now calling  on the Brandon Department of Justice for Some to consider federal charges against Kyle Rittenhouse. Within hours of the announcement of the not guilty verdict, Rep. (((Jerry Nadler))) (D-NY), who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted his call for a federal review.

Many of the "progressive activists" (read: loonie Social Justice Whiners), who so nonchalantly and callously dismiss the damage done to people and property by BLM and Antifa, support Mr Nadler’s call for a federal investigation. 

Why? Because Democrats are so accustomed to things going their way that they can't handle it when they lose. Legal Insurrection warns Mr Nadler to step away from his emotions over the verdict, and think about the repercussions of pushing the narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist who violated the civil rights of his attackers. 

The Democrats, from Sleepy Joe on down, and their propagandists in the controlled media failed to make that case. And a basic lesson of military strategy is that you shouldn't reinforce failure!

VIDEO: Max Bernier: Non à l'implantation d’un passeport sanitaire! / Say No to the Vaccine Passport!

Seems hard to believe that it was just over two years ago that our good friend Poor Len Canayen was enthusing about the formation of the People' Party of Canada / le Parti Populaire du Canada, facing its first ever test in that fall's election. The party was new, and faced tremendous challenges, not the least being the studied silence -- shall we say ignorance -- of Canada's lickspittle media. 

The PPC did not fare well in the polls, failing to elect a single Member of Parliament. "Mad Max" just missed being re-elected in the Québec riding of Beauce. (He had been elected previously as a Conservative.) 

It would have been easy for M Bernier and his followers to give up, and some did. But Max stuck with it, putting out a regular newsletter, hosting "The Max Bernier Show" on YouTube, and posting regularly on Facebook and Twitter. Max also toured the country from coast to coast, speaking at rallies in defence of freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom from political correctness, and freedom from control by Trudeau's overweening leftist nanny state. 

The most successful demonstration to date was held just yesterday in Montréal. 1000s of freedom-loving Canadians turned out to protest the Québec (and now Canadian) governments' plans for "vaccination passports", which would relegate the unvaccinated to the status of second-class citizens, unable to go where they please in the no-longer-Great, no-longer-White North. Here's part of Max's speech.

Discours du chef du Parti populaire du Canada, Maxime Bernier, dans le cadre de la manifestation contre l'implantation d’un passeport sanitaire tenue à Montréal le 14 août 2021.

   

Speech by the leader of the People's Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, at the protest march against the implementation of a vaccine passport held in Montreal on 14 August 2021. 

Good stuff, EH! Whether or not you've had your shots (as we at WWW have, by the way), you should support the right of all people to decide for themselves whether to do so, not be forced into it by an authoritarian state bent on controlling every aspect of our lives. If you agree and would like to donate to Max and the PPC's campaign for election in September, click here. And tell Max that Walt sent ya!

NY Jews get swart gevaar

Swart gevaar. You can look it up. It's an expression I learned over my years in southern Africa. Oxford calls it "a threat perceived as being posed by black people to whites." Negrophobia. Or in the Jewish neighbourhoods of New York City, fear of the schwartzes, the shtarkes.

But (I hear you ask), why would the Jews be afraid of blacks... or African-Americans or whatever the PC term is this week? Surely what they're afraid of is anti-Semitic racists! After all, in metro New York, police have gotten at least six reports this week (and eight since the 13th of this month) of attacks possibly propelled by what the lamestream media are calling "anti-Jewish bias".

Just last night, the last day of Hanukkah, a man attacked a Hanukkah celebration at the home of a rabbi in Monsey NY, about an hour's drive north of NYC, one of several Hudson Valley towns that have seen an influx in large numbers of Hasidic Jews in recent years. The assailant, whose colour has not yet been disclosed by the police, stabbed and wounded five Jews before fleeing in a vehicle. The attack is the latest in a string of assaults targeting Jews in the New York area, including a massacre at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey earlier this month.

Top New York state officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, released statements condemning the attack. The Gov called the stabbings a "cowardly act", and directed the State Police hate crimes task force to investigate the attacks. "Let me be clear," he said. [Why do all politicians use that expression? It's been done to death! Ed.] "Anti-Semitism and bigotry of any kind are repugnant to our values of inclusion and diversity [Aaaaargh! Ed.] and we have absolutely zero tolerance for such acts of hate. In New York, we will always stand up and say with one voice to anyone who wishes to divide and spread fear: you do not represent New York and your actions will not go unpunished."

The Gov, responsible only for his state, not New Jersey, didn't refer to the Jersey City murders. The perpetrators in that case were themselves vizmins from the so-called African-American community. They were identified as coming from an extremist religious group called Black Hebrew Israelites, making them a minority of a minority. The attackers in that case were described as a "militant fringe" within that minority.

The authorities are now looking at the case as "domestic terrorism fueled by anti-Semitism". But that's not how the (((controlled media))) are playing it. They're dismiss the murders as "isolated incidents" and therefore unimportant. The New York Times described the Black Hebrew Israelites as being "known for their inflammatory sidewalk ministers who employ provocation as a form of gospel." Yeah, well, there's a bit more to it than that. The Black Hebrew Israelites describe Jews are described as "white" and "fake". The way they see it, the "real Jews", and all true prophets and religious figures, are black... black as the ace of spades.

According to the (((Anti-Defamation League))), this group views itself as the real "chosen people", and sees people of colour as the real descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were in the media earlier in the year in Washington DC, when they shouted insults at Catholic high school students. The lamestream media wants to call BHI's actions "provocation", because if they admit that the BHI is part of a burgeoning violent movement targeting Jews, then they would have to confront it and ask tough questions of why it is tolerated in a community.

A self-proclaimed expert on racism told AP that in fact this group takes pride in "confronting Jewish people everywhere and explaining that they are evil." The trouble is that in American society only far-right white supremacists, Republicans and conservatives can be called "racist". Everyone else gets a pass. To keep the focus on the white supremacists, the (((controlled media))) rabbits on about how "right wing terrorists" have killed more than jihadists. Other types of terrorism are watered down a bit.

While the Prez was in office, Islamist-inspired terror was even rebranded as "violent extremism" so as not to mention the religion of the perpetrators. Even though Islamist terror is also a far-right ideology, it is portrayed as something else. For instance, when Jews were targeted at a kosher supermarket in France they were called "random folk in a deli". They weren't random! They were targeted, like the Jews in Jersey City, but they needed to be "random" or else we'd have to discuss the anti-Semitism that permeates Islamist terror.

Looking at the race and the ideology of the perpetrators of the attacks on Jews makes people, especially Jews, uncomfortable. The liberals and apologists for the Islamists want all the anti-Semites to be "far-right" and "white". Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) blamed "white supremacy" for the Jersey City attack, but her tweet was deleted when it was discovered that it wasn't "white supremacists" after all, therefore didn’t fit the narrative.

The fact is that it was the Jews themselves who orchestrated and funded the "civil rights" movement of the 60s, because, after all, the Jews, like "people of colour" were the victims of centuries of discrimination of persecution. Right? Now, it seems, the beneficiaries of all that enforced diversity and inclusivity are biting the hands that fed them. What a surprise.

Canadian money more funny-looking than ever

Americans have long made fun of Canada's "funny money". As you can see, the paper "beaverbucks" come in different colours. On the front are pictures of a foreign woman and four dead white men who many Canadians fail to recognize.

Four men and only one woman seemed politically incorrect to the Liberal government of Canuck Prime Minister "Mr Socks" Trudeau. To make matters worse, not one of the five people pictured is a vizmin. So a decision was made -- an egregious example of tokenism, even by Canadian standards -- to replace one of the white men with a black woman.

Conveniently, the white man who was the first to die was Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first prime minister (and a Conservative!), about whom there has been a good deal of controversy in recent months, similar to the controversy in the Excited States of America about Robert E. Lee. So, away you go, John Eh, and a big welcome to Viola Desmond, now appearing on the new $10 (= $7.50 in real money) banknote which goes into circulation this week.

featuring Viola Desmond’s portrait will go into circulation in a week, just over 72 years after she was ousted from the whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, N.S.

The Canadian Ministry of Truth describes the late Viola Desmond as a civil rights pioneer and businesswoman. Her business was a hairdressing salon (surprised?) which she operated in the "historic north end" of Halifax NS, home to one of Canada's oldest black communities. On 8 November 1946 -- nearly a decade before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama -- Ms Desmond was dragged out of the Roseland Theatre by police, arrested, kept in the lockup for 12 hours and fined. 63 years later, the provinice of Nova Scotia issued her a posthumous pardon and apology.

A spokesthingy for the black community said he hopes the new banknote will "inspire young girls to pursue their dreams and push back against injustice." He went on to say, "I'm hoping having Viola on the bill will prompt people to want to know what's the story behind her, because still, there's a lot of people who have no idea who she was and what she stands for."

Walt says good luck with that. It won't be surprising (to me) if a lot of Canucks refuse to accept the new bill on the grounds that it just doesn't look like money, at least not Canadian money. Some will wonder if the queen had a facelift. I also predict some comments from the usual gang of NPCs that Ms Desmond has been made to look as if she was "passing". All this for political correctness!

VIDEO: Speaking the truth at Aretha Franklin's funeral

Rev. Jasper Williams Jr., pastor of Atlanta's Salem Baptist Church, was chosen to deliver the main eulogy at yesterday's funeral celebration -- word chosen with care -- for the late Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Rev. Williams had form, having had the same role at the 1984 funeral of Ms Franklin's father, C.L. Franklin, a noted civil rights activist. So when he chose this occasion to speak the truth about problems in the black community, there was shuffling of feet and nervous sideways glances, followed by a Twitterstorm. The usual gang of SJWs and progressive thinkers piled on Rev. Williams, calling his eulogy a "disaster" and questioning why he was chosen as the one to honour the poster girl for strong black women everywhere. "No R-E-S-P-E-C-T!", said one angry tweet.

What was it that Rev. Williams said that caused such gnashing of teeth and rending of garments on the part of America's black leaders and black lovers? Check out this compilation of key quotes from his sermon.



To my mind, the key thought is: "Black America has lost its soul." "Where is your soul, black man?", asked the fiery orator. "As I look in your house, there are no fathers in the home no more." He went on to say that "as proud, beautiful and fine as our black women are, one thing a black woman cannot do, a black woman cannot raise a black boy to be a man." And he described as "abortion after birth" the idea of children being raised without a "provider" father and a mother as the "nurturer".

Rev. Williams blamed integration and the civil rights movement for ripping the heart out of black micro-economies that once relied on black-owned small businesses such as grocery stores, hotels and banks. Then he moved on to black-on-black crime, which apologists claim is caused by poverty and the social effects of being "disadvantaged".

The preacher, in cadences familiar to anyone who's ever attended a service in a black evangelical church, declaimed, "It amazes me how it is when the police kills one of us we're ready to protest, march, destroy innocent property. We're ready to loot, steal whatever we want, but when we kill 100 of us, nobody says anything, nobody does anything. Black-on-black crime, we're all doing time, we're locked up in our mind, there's got to be a better way, we must stop this today."

But what about Black Lives Matter? "No, black lives do not matter," said Rev. Williams. "Black lives will not matter, black lives ought not matter, black lives should not matter, black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves."

For his candour, Rev. Jasper Williams Jr was excoriated, immediately and savagely, on Twitter and elsewhere for "misogyny, bigotry and the perpetuation of false science on race." That's what happens when you tell the truth. The only surprising thing is that he hasn't been charged with "hate crime", but then he was speaking in the United States, where freedom speech is protected by the First Amendment, not in, say, Canada, where the liberal thought police punish those who say double plus ungood things about minorities, even if the things they say are, errr, true.

Apartheid comes to USA: UConn opens segregated dorm

We begin a new month with a story which has to be true, because you couldn't make up something this ironic. Half a century after LBJ's great "civil rights", designed to end once and for all discrimination against anyone on he basis of race and ensure equality for all -- especially as regard accommodation in housing -- a blacks-only dormitory is being built at the University of Connecticut, with the official endorsement of that school's "progressive" authorities.

The segregated accommodation -- separate but equal, you understand -- will be called "SCHOLA2RS House". "SCHOLA2RS" stands for the "Scholistic [sic] House Of Leaders who are African Amercian [sic] Researchers and Scholars". Of course these "schola2rs" have a website. Here's a screen grab.

You may think that a couple of them don't look, errr, African-American, but you don't have to be black to get into the dorm. You only have to "identify as African American/Black". You know, like Rachel Dolezal, the former head of the NAACP in Spokane WA, a white girl who somehow felt black.

You might wonder why, in an America where (according to the Prez) great strides have been made in overcoming racism, a "black living space" would be not just tolerated but deemed a necessity. Dr. Erik M. Hines, Faculty Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at UConn, has the answer. The good doctor says it's because blacks do so poorly at academics that he believes they will do better "in an African-American environment."

Walt kids you not. He really said that, and somehow managed to escape being hauled in front of a "human rights" commission. What would have happened if Mark Steyn had said it? But Dr. Hines is no Mark Steyn! Dr. Hines is a certified (or certifiable) progressive. He explained that "African-American males graduate at a lower rate than their peers."

He went on to say that SCHOLA2RS House is "a space for African-American men to one, come together and validate their experiences that they may have on campus. [sic] umber two, it’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience."

Translated into plain English, Dr. Hines is actually sayings that just being in the presence of whites somehow makes blacks do poorly at school, and that the only way this can be remedied is for blacks to have their own dorm. Need we add that all the UConn students and academics who turned out late last year to protest what they called "white racism" have remained completely silent on this project, which reeks of black racism.

Thanks to Agent 3 for alerting us to the original report in The New Observer.

It's NOT about "black lives"

Walt waited 24 hours to see if the rioting and looting in Ferguson MO would get worse or better [better rioting? better looting? Ed.] but last night was quiet, by comparison with the night before. Al Sharpton appeared. The Prez said (not in so many words, since the words are copyrighted by Bill Clinton) that he felt the pain of "the community", which Walt understood to mean not the entire community of Ferguson, but the black part of it.

And 1000s of people marched, danced and boogied through the streets carrying signs which read "Black lives matter!" There were relatively small and peaceful marches in other US cities and even in Canada's blackest city, Toronto. Marchers in those places carried the same signs. Walt suspects there's a factory somewhere -- probably in China -- that turns them out for sale at dollar stores. [Now there's an entrepreneurial idea! Ed.]

What's wrong with these pictures? Specifically, what's wrong with these signs? Walt will tell you. It's not about black lives or even the life of Michael Brown. It's about a breakdown of law and order in the black community. And it's about that community being a crime-ridden, undisciplined underclass.

How did it get like that? How did they get like that? Walt will tell you that too. For 50 years the majority (read "white") community has been bending over backwards [and forwards! Ed.] to accommodate the "civil rights" of every minority group ever conceived -- not just blacks, but gays, wimmin, non-English speakers, Muslims, refugees, atheists, etc etc and so forth.

Nowadays everyone -- except straight white males -- has not just rights but "entitlements". They are all "entitled", all "owed" everything from food and housing to preferred admission to college, where their education will, of course, be free. The world owes them a living! Well, not the world actually, but the rest of us -- the majority -- as embodied in The Government. After all, it was The Government who (especially around election time) promised all these minorities the sun, moon and stars. And if those who feel entitled have received only the moon, of course The Government is to blame.

Notably absent from the half-century of yammering and promises about "civil rights" has been any talk of civic responsibility, or civic duty. When I took civics in grade school [long, long ago. Ed.], I was taught that a good citizen had certain responsibilities and duties which he owed to his community. For instance, a good citizen should keep his home and neighbourhood clean and tidy. He should get a job and do his best to support himself and his family, so as not to be a burden on the community or the state. (After all, the tax monies used to support those who could not support themselves came from the community.)

A big part of civic duty was promoting and maintaining law and order. In the 19th century, many parts of the country did not have police forces, as we understand them today. Perhaps there was a marshal or sheriff or chief magistrate who, if there were criminals to be dealt with, would swear in a posse of ordinary citizens to do the necessary. And criminals would be brought before the courts to be further dealt with by judges and juries. Serving on a jury was part of one's civic duty. But who wants to do one's "duty" any more?

The Prez, in his mushy and caring plea for calm, said that the black community needs "good policing" -- quite a remarkable statement for him to make, when you think about it. If Michael Brown's lawyers, the "Reverend" Al Sharpton et al. complain that they are getting "bad policing", that the cops a bunch of white racists, could they answer a simple question.

Where are the black police officers? Where are the black National Guards? Why is the black community not able to police itself? Isn't that a part of civic duty -- particularly in Ferguson MO, at this very moment?

Further reading: Walt recommends The Police Officer's Dilemma, a landmark study by Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, and Charles M. Judd (University of Colorado at Boulder) and Bernd Wittenbrink (University of Chicago) published in 2002. Once you get through the academic jargon -- the subtitle is Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals -- you'll learn that participants in the authors' study "fired at an armed target more quickly if he was African-American than if he was White, and decided to not shoot an unarmed White target more quickly than an unarmed African-American target".

And -- here's the "Wow!" -- a test with actual police officers, conducted give years later, showed that it didn't matter whether the cop was white or black! A black cop was just as likely as a white cop to shoot a young black man. Young black men are much more likely to die of lead poisoning (i.e. gunshot wounds) than young white men. And when you look at all the shooters, not just police, the shooter of a young black man is more likely to be another young black man than a white. And that's a fact.

Still more reading (added 29/11): "Progressive Mythography", by  Andrew C. McCarthy, on the National Review website. Mr. McCarthy explodes the myth that white cops kill black kids.

Whuffo everything in Armerica is about blacks? Fred Reed explains

Walt had kind of forgotten about Fred on Everything, a blog of scurrilous commentary written by Fred Reed. Agent 17 poked me (by e-mail) to tell me to read Fred's rant on "Black Power". I'm glad to have done so, and recommend that you, dear reader, do likewise. [He means you should read Fred's blog. Ed.]

To compare Walt's views with Fred's is to compare mayonnaise with five-star chili. I have to think that Fred is somewhere beyond the reach of the PC police [Maybe in Mexico? Ed.], that he gets away saying flat out what Walt only dares to suggest. I'll quote just a bit of Fred's question about why, half a century after the passage of laws guaranteeing "civil rights" (for everyone except us straight white men), "black issues" continue to dominate American politics.

It is curious that blacks, the least educated thirteen percent of the population, the least productive, most criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit.

Indeed. If you want to get down to specifics, click here to read the entire post. Kudos to Fred for being brave enough to call a spade a spade.

Note from Ed.: The only thing missing from Fred's post is a good illustration. Thanks to Agent 6 for this one.

In praise of demagoguery

You will have noticed, dear reader, that elections are in progress -- if such it may be called -- in many of the English-speaking Western democracies. Scotland, New Zealand, parts of Canada and, yes, the Excited States of America are being subjected to an onslaught of political speech-making.

Politicians of all stripes get up on their hind legs and flap their gums in an effort to convince the electorate to turn out in great numbers to vote for them. Yet, with the exception of last week's referendum in Scotland, voters are staying away from the polls in droves. Apathy reigns. In one small Ontario municipality, a newspaper poll suggested that voters prefer "Nobody" to the incumbent mayor or any of the challengers.

Why is this? Why do so few voters nowadays seem to care about who rules them or what policies their governments pursue? The answer, in Walt's humble opinion [!!! Ed.] is that no-one who speaks from a public platform is willing or able to deliver a truly inspirational stump speech -- the kind that gets people roused up, cheering spontaneously, throwing their hats in the air, and rushing into the streets to demonstrate, or at least vote.

I have to go back a half-century to recall the last time I heard a politician give such a speech. It was in 1964, in a state far away. The major issue dividing the USA at the time was "civil rights". Political correctness was in its infancy, then, and you had to be mighty careful about how you stated your views on the question, or on the group of people the great civil rights revolution was supposed to benefit.

Southern politicians had to learn a variant of the N-word to refer to folks who were later to be called "black", and, still later "African-American". But at least there were still some who had the courage to stand up and oppose forced integration, affirmative action, and all the other brilliant ideas which the Eastern eggheads assured us would result in equality for all Americans. This will all end badly, the "antis" said, because people are not all the same, and you can't legislate character and attitude. For saying so, those politicians were called "racists", "rabble-rousers" and "demagogues".

They had committed the grievous sin of standing up for what they believed, and shouting it from the rooftops or the courthouse steps. That was because they were white. It's OK, even today, to be a "demagogue" but only if you're black. A "demagogue", the dictionary tells us, is "a person, especially a political leader, who wins people's support by exciting their emotions". Like this gentleman.



Now that's what Walt calls demagoguery! You don't hear that kind of speechifying nowadays, at least not from white men. Jesse Jackson can still get a crowd to rise up. So can "Rev." Al Sharpton. Barack Hussein Obama would like to do it, but suffers by comparison, perhaps because he's torn between trying to sound like a (white) university professor and a "real black" leader.

Being an effective speaker -- like King, Jackson and Sharpton -- doesn't mean, though, that you have to be black. Nor does it mean you have to believe sincerely in what you're saying. (Hello, Reverend Sharpton!) Nor does it mean your ideas have to be sound. Your ideas can be crazy or downright evil. (Wie gehts, Adolf Hitler!) But you have to be able to express them clearly and forcefully. You have to be able to get the crowd with you, not just nodding their heads and applauding politely, but frothing at the mouth and champing at the bit to go out there and do what must be done...or at least vote.

Where are the orators of yesteryear? At the moment, Walt's favourite conservative politician is Dr. Ron Paul. (Yes, I know he's really a libertarian -- even better!) I've heard him speak. He speaks common sense. He speaks the truth. And he believes most sincerely in what he's saying. But, sadly, the passion isn't there.

In defence of Dr. Paul and all the other politicians and leader wannabes of our day, it must be said that the means of public communication has changed the style of public communication. The days when people would turn out in their 1000s to hear a speech by a politician are long gone. If there's a celebrity factor in play, as used to be the case with the Prez, you might still see a sizable crowd, but inevitably the speaker doesn't play to the audience, but to the video cameras.

A live speech to a large crowd is a hot medium. But, as Marshall McLuhan said, television is a cool medium. TV watchers don't want to be shouted at in their own living rooms. So people "making a speech" on TV adjust their styles, reading from the autocue -- no-one speaks off the cuff any more -- in the quiet, gentle voice of sweet reason. Histrionics and demagoguery are out. Being cool is in.

But how do people respond? Tepidly or not at all! People don't stand up in their living rooms and cheer! They don't even applaud. If the speaker makes a good point, without passion, the hearer thinks -- not "says", but "thinks" -- yes, that's a good point, I'll keep it in mind. They don't get up off the couch to go and vote or do anything else. That explains the declining turn-outs on election days and the general disinterest in politics and politicians.

Would an old-style politician who could deliver, sincerely and passionately, a barn-burner of a speech -- without notes -- ignite the fire in our bellies and under our asses? Walt doesn't know, but would like to see someone try.

Is Ferguson really about race?

Arentcha getting sick of reading about the riots and looting in Ferguson? Walt is getting tired of writing about this subject, but thinks Americans need to understand what's going on there, in the broader context of the half-century struggle for "civil rights" and "equality".

Today's post is prompted by "Is Michael Brown's shooting death really about race?", by veteran CBC News reporter Keith Boag, on the scene. There's a short video too, in which Mr. Boag steps away from the scene of the crimes to ask some "normal" citizens of Ferguson what's really going on.

In the article, he describes watching two white people having their cellphones snatched, in broad daylight, by young black thugs -- the kind of trash who might well deserve the N-word epithet. Says the reporter, "I have had race relations and "crime and punishment" issues buzzing around in my head constantly since I arrived in Ferguson. Suddenly, some things I thought were settled in my mind came loose and started to float around again. All because of foolish young men behaving like caricatures."

"Foolish" young black men, dressed in their saggy pants uniforms, grabbing stuff they want without regard to law, decency or morality. Call it a caricature. Call it a stereotype. That's how the rest of America -- including older blacks -- sees African-Americans today. And not without reason.

The USA today [Hey, that could be the name of a newspaper for 5th-graders! Ed.] is beset by a large and growing back underclass -- ignorant, uncouth, loutish, drug-ridden, welfare-dependent bastards. (Nearly three-quarters of births to black mothers in the USA are illegitimate.) This in spite of half a century of civil rights and other US government laws designed to ensure that all Americans would be "equal"...and integrated too.

Americans were promised that the civil rights acts of the mid-60s would usher in an era of racial harmony and equality, not just equality of opportunity but equality of result for the hitherto disadvantaged members of society. African-Americans -- or "Negroes", as they were called in those days -- thought they were going to get white jobs, white cars, white houses and [that's enough. Ed.]

Affirmative action programmes were devised to put blacks at the head of the line for government jobs, admission to college, and just about everything else. That was supposed to pull them up out of the ignorance and poverty which white Americans supposedly forced on them. But that's not what happened. What happened was that the rest of society was mongrelized, debased and degraded. And still African-Americans are not "equal" -- not the same as white Americans. Should we be surprised?

At the very end of Coming of Age in Mississippi (Dell, 1970), Anne Moody, a civil rights activist in the `60s, quotes the last two lines of "We Shall Overcome" and adds, "I wonder. I really wonder." Walt wonders what Anne Moody thinks about racial equality and the "events" in Ferguson. Sadly, we won't be able to ask her. According to Wikipedia, Ms Moody does not appear in public or grant interviews.

AN ALtogether horrible rights violation by New Mexico cops

Walt has just been shown the story of what Albuquerque NM attorney Shannon L. Kennedy calls "the most egregious case of law enforcement abuse" she ever saw in eighteen years of practice. She has filed a lawsuit against the police department of Deming NM, plus a district attorney and a number of doctors, on behalf of one David Eckert, a man with a reputation for concealing illegal substances in his, errr, nether orifice.

It was his reputation, according to the report ("NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN") on Albuquerque TV station KOB-TV, that landed Mr. Eckert in a "traffic stop nightmare" -- a considerable understatement as will be seen from the video and newspaper reports of what happened.

The lawsuit alleges that Deming police pulled Mr. Eckert over at a Walmart parking lot for failing to yield at a stop sign. When he stepped out of his vehicle, the cops thought he was "clenching his buttocks". Not thinking that perhaps Eckert had a bad case of the runs, they suspected him of hiding drugs in his anal cavity, so they got a warrant for an internal search.

Acting on the warrant, the police took Mr. Eckert -- buttocks still clenched, presumably -- to a nearby ER, where doctors refused to look into the matter (geddit?), calling it "unethical". Undeterred [Stop it. Ed.] the cops transported him to Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City.

The doctors there agreed to do the necessary. First, they x-rayed Mr. Eckert. No narcotics were found. Then they performed two rectal examinations, and still found nothing. But did they stop there? Noooo. The docs gave him an enema, and forced him to evacuate in front of them and the boys in blue. Still no result.

Not satisfied, the good doctors gave Mr. Eckert a second enema, then a third, followed by a second x-ray. Still, they found nothing. But the story doesn't end there! Determined to get to the bottom of things [I said stop it!. Ed.], the doctors sedated Mr. Eckert and performed a colonscopy, sticking a camera up his rectum, into his colon and large intestine. No drugs were found, and Mr. Eckert was released, some 12 hours after his arrest.

Said Attorney Kennedy, "You could never anticipate this happening in the USA." I hate to cast aspersions on those whose mission is "to serve and protect", but I find it very easy to anticipate. The police in the USA (and every other police state on earth) do what they like. They may not have the right, but they have the power.

Toronto: the new Detroit?

Walt's been away for a couple of days, emerging timidly from his woodland retreat to prowl the streets of three cities on the shores of the lower Great Lakes: Toronto, Detroit and Buffalo. It used to be fairly easy to tell which side of the border you were on. Now, I'm not so sure.

Just after WWII, Toronto was a small, sleepy, provincial city -- a collection of towns, really. People used to go to Buffalo for a good time. (Can you imagine?) The American border cities were where you found the nightlife and the excitement.

And the business. Detroit's booming auto plants turned out millions of exciting new cars every year, and people bought them. Canada's "Little Three" went along for the ride. Even Buffalo had businesses of some sort, not just dollar stores and pawn shops.

Then came the 60s and 70s. Toronto grew like Topsy and reorganized itself as "Metro" -- the city that worked. Torontonians started thinking of their city as "the Little Apple" -- Canada's answer to New York. Peter Ustinov called Toronto "like New York, if New York were run by the Swiss".

At the same time, the American cities of the rust belt fell apart, or, in the case of Detroit, got burned down in the race riots which marked the "civil rights" era of Kennedy, Johnson and, yes, Nixon. In my view, America has never recovered from the impact of the social engineering policies of that time and the economic turmoil of that time.

Detroit is a hollow shell. Buffalo is, by one recent estimate, the third-poorest city in the U.S.A. You can trace the beginning of the end back to the Kennedy-Johnson era and the liberal humanist economic and social policies of that time. See America in Our Time, by Godfrey Hodgson (Vintage Books, 1976).

What happened to Toronto? See following post.