Gwynne Dyer predicts "President Pence"

Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian-born journalist and military historian, based nowadays in London. His columns are syndicated across Canada and the USA, and in an astonishing number of foreign (non-North American) papers, including the Wanganui (New Zealand) Chronicle. His books include Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq (2003) and The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq (2007), both best-sellers. He also wrote all of which were number one or number two on the Globe & Mail’s non-fiction best-seller list.

Mr Dyer also wrote Crawling from the Wreckage (2010), which, according to his website, "traces the world's halting emergence from the dark tunnel of the past decade, a time marked by exaggerated fears of terrorism, futile and unnecessary wars in the Middle East, neglect of climate change, and financial near-collapse." Seven years later, the uncharacteristic optimism of that book suggests that the author either had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, or had lost his touch in predicting the future.

Walt thinks that Mr Dyer, a confirmed liberal, had drunk too much of the Obama Koolaid. Still, his track record since then has been pretty good, which is why I still read his columns regularly, taking his predictions with only a couple of grains of salt. Today I saw (in the aforementioned Wanganui Chronicle, "Still not the smoking gun", in which Mr Dyer analyzes the latest episode of the Russia-helped-elect-Trump saga.

As the headline of his column suggests, Mr Dyer think that the junior Trump's revelation of his meeting with Russian lawyer and lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya is still not the "smoking gun" which will lead to the impeachment of the senior Trump. As Mr Dyer puts it, "The dead will continue to walk around for a while yet." But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more.... SPOILER AHEAD!!!

Although Mr Dyer doesn't think President Trump will be impeached, he feels that Mr Trump, who some time ago stopped having fun in his new office, will get bored enduring the death of 1000 cuts, and will resign. Then, he says, we will get... President Pence. Thus endeth the column. I can only add, "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."

VIDEO: San Francisco BART won't release video of black yoofs mugging pax because "it will make people racist"

San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has surveillance videos -- hours and hours of them -- showing crimes such as mugging being committed on its trains. But it won't release them, because, in a feat of PC self-censorship remarkable even for San Francisco, the snowflakes at BART are concerned that the videos might "perpetuate racial bias and stereotyping." Seriously...

KPIX-TV reports that in just three months, at least three robberies have been perpetrated at BART's San Francisco station by groups of teenagers who were, errr, non-white. One such "swarming", on April 22nd, was committed by some 40-60 teens. Debora Allen, a director of BART, admits in the video embedded below, "I think people are genuinely concerned. They are fearful about the stories that have come out about the recent attacks, the assaults, the thefts."

Why, then, don't they release the surveillance videos so people can see what's going on and judge for themselves whether it's safe to ride on the system? Ms Allen says that when she asked BART management that question, they told her that releasing the videos "would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains."

That would seem to suggest that the poor disadvantaged yoofs involved were black. Well, maybe Hispanic. Ummm, no... let's call a spade a spade. In a follow-up e-mail, Ms Allen said, "I don’t understand what role the color of one's skin plays in this issue. Can you explain?"

BART Assistant General Manager Kerry Hamill answered, "If we were to regularly feed the news media video of crimes on our system that involve minority suspects, particularly when they are minors, we would certainly face questions as to why we were sensationalizing relatively minor crimes and perpetuating false stereotypes in the process."

Walt has highlighted the weasel words in that response. "False stereotypes" indeed! Seems to me the stereotypes are based on fact. The criminal behaviour which we assume is shown in the videos goes on 24/7, not just in San Francisco but in every city in the USA fortunate (?) enough to have a BART-type mass transit system. Riding mass transit in the USA is like inviting 20 random hitchhikers into your car. Do so at your peril.

8 years and counting

Ed. here. Walt was too modest to say anything, but the fact is that WWW has been on the Net for just over eight (8) years, which I believe is way beyond the longevity of the average blog. Moreover, we've averaged just over 30 posts per month, for a total (not including perhaps 3 which were deleted for one reason or another) of 2961 counting this one. Walt, Poor Len Canayen [and Ed.! Ed.] are planning to get together on the weekend to bend elbows and pat each other on the back.

"The Wolf Who Cried Trump"

Walt very much enjoyed this fable from The People's Cube, and trusts you will too... unless maybe you're Agent 17! LOL

Not female, not blonde... just not thinking!

Agent 6 (to whom be thanks) sent us this interesting photo. These contractors are installing bollards (steel pillars) in concrete to stop vehicles from parking on the pavement outside a downtown sports bar downtown. They are pictured cleaning up at the end of the day, anxious to go home.

Agent 6 asks an innocent question: How long do you think it'll be before they realize where they parked their truck?

The man who foresaw the Titanic disaster 14 years previous

Even if you never saw the movie, you will doubtless know of the Titanic disaster, which occurred in the early morning of 15 April 1912. RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner, belong to the White Star Line. While on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City, she struck (or was struck by) an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean, about 375 miles south of Newfoundland. Of the estimated 2224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1500 died, making the calamity one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history.

Morgan Robertson, pictured at right, was not one of the 800 or so survivors of the shipwreck. He never sailed on the Titanic. Indeed, he may never have heard of the ship until he saw the newspaper reports on that fateful day. Mr Robertson was an American author of short stories and novels, and the self-proclaimed inventor of the periscope. One of his works, virtually unknown until after the event, was a novella, published in 1898 -- 14 years before the event -- called Futility or the Wreck of the Titan.

After the Titanic sank, some said that Morgan Robertson was something of an amateur mystic. Others said he must have been clairvoyant. Although no other predictions or "premonitions" were ever attributed to him, the similarities between his fictional SS Titan, which struck an iceberg and sank, and the ill-fated Titanic are simply amazing. The authors of The Riddle of the Titanic have put them in tabular form, which Ed. has recreated for us.

"It would be very satisfying," the authors write, "to be able to say whether any of the key figures in the Titanic saga knew of this Awful Warning before the event it "foresaw", but we found no such indications. Walt recommends: The Riddle of the Titanic, by Robin Gardiner and Dan van der Vat, Orion Books, 1996. For an in-depth study, the book is eminently readable and highly recommendable.

Help Kids Canada scam back under new name(s)?

Long-time readers may remember that Walt has been writing since April of 2010 (!) about the activities of a dubious "charity" which calls itself "Help Kids Canada" and/or "Kare for Kids". See "Help Kids Canada - a scam or only half a scam?", WWW 10/4/10, and "'Help Kids Canada', 'Kare for Kids' -- still out there?", WWW 14/6/16. These two posts have received literally 1000s of hits and numerous comments, mostly in the summer when the weather is nice and they send kids out into the streets to sell cheap chocolate bars to the philanthropically minded.

Just yesterday, Walt received and published not one but two comments from readers, presumably in Canada, alerting us to another questionable charity, which they think may be run by the same scam artists.
Anonymous wrote: "I may be wrong but the same address and number belong to Disabled Veteran Support Canada. Being a veteran we strongly believe this is a scam organization. They are set up in Ontario but set tables at Sobeys, Walmart, etc in other provinces (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia)."
Gail Silva added: "They are now operating as Disabled Veterans Support Canada and Rainbow Seniors Support Canada. They canvass door-to-door and set up tables in grocery and liquor stores. Right now they have a presence in Nova Scotia. They have a website and are registered with CRA but there's very limited information on exactly where the money is going. Every time I check their websites info is deleted or changed."

Walt doesn't have a huge staff of investigative journalists to ferret out the truth [Like CNN? LMAO. Ed.] but asked Agent 3 to do a little checking. As regards the address, the Kare for Kids website gives their address as:
7 Bishop Avenue, Suite 2107, Toronto, Ontario, M2M 4J4, CANADA. That part of Toronto is also known as "North York". The address is that of a residential condominium, not an office building, half a block east of a part of Yonge Street occupied mainly by shops and businesses, such as carpet stores, run by people of Middle Eastern origin -- Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian etc. You know the type I mean.

Just around the corner and a couple of blocks north on Yonge Street, not far from the Iranian Plaza (really), is 6021 Yonge Street, which turns out to be a UPS store. Among other services, the UPS store will be pleased to rent you a mailbox, which gives you an address like: 6021 Yonge Street, Suite 323, North York, ONT M2M 3W2. "Suite 323" makes it sound like an office on the third floor of a tower block, but really it's just a mailbox. That address turned up in a thread on an Internet forum: "Beware buyer using address: 6021 Yonge Street Ste#323, North York, ONT M2M3W2, CANADA". (That was a dispute about "molded carpet kits", whatever they are.)

A similar address -- 6021 Yonge Street, Suite 811, Toronto, ON M2M 3W2 -- appears on the websites of... wait for it... Disabled Veterans Support Canada and Rainbow Seniors Support, the "charities" mentioned by our doubtful readers!

If you check out the websites, you will see that besides the address, the two "charities" share a phone number -- 416-733-7691. Neither of the sites offers any of the information that a legitimate charity should disclose: directors, officers, staff list, finances. They just ask for your money for such things as hiring entertainers to perform at senior citizens homes.

Rainbow Seniors Support claims to have been operating since 1996, and provides a "charitable registration number": 88909 2565 RR0001. Since it was Saturday, Agent 3 was unable to verify the number or Rainbow's status with the Canada Revenue Agency (the Canuck equivalent of the IRS). It's interesting, though, that Disabled Veterans Support Canada doesn't claim to be a registered charity. Rather, its website says: "DVSC is a division of Rainbow Seniors Support. Registered Charity Number: 88909 2565 RR0001".

That's as far as Agent 3 was able to get yesterday. Other than addresses in the same "Little Levant" neighbourhood, I can't make any connection between Help Kids/Kare for Kids and Disabled Veterans Support/Rainbow Senior Support, but they look dodgy to me. I have suggested to him, and advise you, dear Canadian reader, to contact a media outlet such as the CBC or the Globe and Mail with your concerns. Use the comments box to let us know what happens.