Richard Fernandez

Future economists will ask why land conflicts in MENA [Middle East North Africa] could not be settled by negotiation. The Coase Theorem states that under ideal conditions, parties can negotiate terms that accurately reflect the full costs and underlying values, resulting in the most efficient outcome.
But in a multi-religions region without a consensus on right and wrong and without clear standards of evidence, territorial disputes cannot easily be argued according to accepted law or facts. The historical remedy in such doubtful cases was “trial by combat”.
“Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be right.”
In cases where the court could not decide who was right, the contending parties could fight it out, in the belief that if no man knew who was innocent, God or the fortunes of war would decide. In way, war is trial by combat when the international order cannot enforce a decision.
MacArthur’s Japanese surrender speech: “We are gathered … to conclude a solemn agreement whereby Peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battle fields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate.”
Because international diplomacy failed Israel and its enemies are resorting to war, to trial by combat, to settle the issue. This, alas, is how much of the world’s boundaries were drawn throughout history and we are no nearer replacing it than our caveman ancestors.

Oregon removes writing, reading, and math mastery from high school graduation requirements

The Oregon State Board of Education unanimously voted on Thursday to remove proof of mastery in reading, writing, and math in order to graduate from high school until 2029.

The board argued that requiring all students to pass one of several standardized tests or to create an in-depth assignment their teacher judged as meeting state standards was a harmful hurdle for students of color, disabled students, or those learning English as a second language. The standardized tests will still be given but will not play a role in determining whether students receive their diplomas.

“We haven’t suspended any sort of assessments,” state board member Vicky Lopez Sanchez said during the board meeting. “The only thing we are suspending is the inappropriate use of how those assessments were being used. I think that really is in the best interest of Oregon students.”

Opponents of the new order argued that removing the requirement devalues an Oregon diploma. The opponents argued that helping students with low academic skills through extra instruction in writing and math has helped them. However, supporters claim that forcing students to spend extra time on schoolwork eliminates their opportunity to take an elective and does not translate to how they perform after graduation.

“We are unable to ethically make a different decision at this point. It is also unethical for us to continue to require this when we know it can continue to cause harm and has had no change in how students are performing,” Board of Education Chairwoman Guadalupe Martinez Zapata told ABC’s KATU-2.

Hundreds of state residents have filed public comments on the subject, and most are in favor of keeping the requirements. But mastery is not the only graduation requirement. Students also need to earn a certain amount of credits and create an education plan that helps them achieve their goals after high school.

The pause was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when schools across the country were forced to shut down

Repost- How Armed Israelis Stopped Terrorists

I may not know a lot, but I know when to ask someone with more experience. I read reports of armed Israeli citizens stopping the Hamas terrorists who attacked their kibbutz. There are important differences between a deliberate terrorist attack and the armed defense that happens every day in the US. I asked Ben Branum for his opinion on these events. Ben is a marine, a civilian contractor for the military, an instructor in church security, and a civilian firearm instructor. We talked for about an hour about the recent attack on the kibbutz Nir Am.

Give us a listen on Ben’s site, Modern Self Protection Podcast or listen to the mp3 from Libsyn.

Here is a second report (an archive version outside the paywall) about an attack at a slightly larger kibbutz, Mefalsim.

The Last Three Years Prove We Need The Second Amendment More Than Ever

Guns can save your life and your livelihood but only if your right to own them hasn’t been taken from you.

The right to keep and bear arms has long been under attack but now, as violent crime, international terrorism, and grave abuses of government power abound, Americans need the Second Amendment more than ever.

A majority of Americans say they already own or want to own guns in the future. Nearly three-fourths of gun owners polled cited protection as a major reason for retaining their firearms.

For anyone paying attention to the rapid erosion of Americans’ civil liberties over the last few years, pro-Second Amendment sentiments like this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In 2020, during the height of government-mandated lockdowns, Americans were sentenced to their homes with court-ordered ankle monitors, dragged off of public buses for refusing to wear a mask, and fired from their jobs over a shot that didn’t even do what the government said it would.

Around that same time, crime spiked and race rioters in cities all across the nation dealt billions of dollars worth of damage to civilian and government buildings alike.

Americans were confronted by violent crowds on their streets, at their businesses, and even on their front lawns. The chaos quickly turned deadly but that didn’t stop leftists from pushing a national campaign to defund the armed law enforcement sworn to protect civilians.

The crime problem was only exacerbated when Democrat mayors and district attorneys committed to releasing violent criminals back into the streets in the name of “equity.” Their soft-on-crime policies are almost exclusively responsible for the murder rates in the nation’s top 10 most homicidal states.

Those numbers aren’t helped by the millions of people, including convicted criminals and potential terrorists, who began pouring freely across our open Southern border the moment President Joe Biden took office.

In the last few weeks alone, Americans learned that the FBI targets Trump voters as domestic extremists, judges will gladly overstep their bounds to dictate Americans’ right to free speech, and a former first lady and failed presidential candidate can make public calls for re-education programs for conservatives without scrutiny from her party or the press.

They also learned in the wake of the massacre in Israel that strict gun laws make people vulnerable to surprise attacks that not even trained military can quell quickly enough.

It’s a tough pill to swallow but one that everyone should be thinking about as pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American sentiments brood at home and abroad.

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October 22

451 – The Chalcedonian Creed, a further refinement of the original Nicene Creed of 325 A.D.  that defines that Christ is acknowledged in two natures, truly God and truly Man, which come together into one person and one hypostasis, is adopted by the 4th ecumenical council held at Chalcedon in what is now modern western Turkey.

1746 – The College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University,  is chartered

1777 – During the Revolutionary War, American defenders of Fort Mercer  on the left, New Jersey side, of the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, repulse several attacks by Hessian mercenary forces, delaying British plans to consolidate gains in Philadelphia, and relieving pressure on General Washington’s forces to the north of the city.

1784 – Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1879 – Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb with it lasting over 13 hours before burning out.

1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod’s Faust.

1884 – The International Meridian Conference designates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich as the world’s prime meridian.

1907 – A run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sets events in motion that will spark the financial Panic of 1907.

1934 – Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis in a corn field in East Liverpool, Ohio

1962 – President Kennedy announces to the public that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval quarantine of the island.

1981 – The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) for its strike the previous August.

1983 – Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.

2012 – Cyclist Lance Armstrong is formally stripped of his 7 Tour de France titles after being charged for doping.

2015 – During hostage rescue operations near Hawijah, Iraq, in which then U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Thomas Payne, for his actions, becomes the first living member of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment- Delta, to be awarded the Medal of Honor; U.S. Army Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, also a Delta Operator, is killed in action and is posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action and later, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, awarded its Medal of Patriotism.

You simply can not make up such a lie as this bureaucrap’s affidavit.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN GUN OWNERS, V. THE TOWN OF SUPERIOR Yurgealitis Report

I kid you not:

1) “Assault weapons” are too complicated to use in self-defense because you may have to use a charging handle, turn off the safety, and load a magazine
2) AR-15s are too heavy and require two hands, which is why he recommends people use a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun with buckshot instead
3) You should store your shotgun with the internal magazine loaded
4) You should use a revolver with hollow-point bullets instead of a semi-auto pistol for self-defense because “there are no complicated safety mechanisms” and speed loaders are easy to use
5) AR-15s are just as lethal as full-auto M-16s

RMGO_v_Town_of_Superior_Yurgealitis_Report-1-90

 

A New Report Throws Cold Water on Man-Made Global Warming Pseudoscience

“To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” may prove to be the most important scientific paper in the last 10 years.

Climate Discussion Nexus offers an introduction to why this paper is so important:

Well, this is awkward. Statistics Norway, aka Statistisk sentralbyrå or “the national statistical institute of Norway and the main producer of official statistics”, has just published a paper “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?”

The awkward part isn’t trying to grasp the subtleties of Norwegian since it’s also available in English. It’s that the Abstract bluntly declares that “standard climate models are rejected by time series data on global temperatures” while the conclusions state “the results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations.”

But the really awkward part is that a paper from a government agency dares to address openly so many questions the alarmist establishment has spent decades declaring taboo, from the historical record on climate to the existence of massive uncertainty among scientists on it.

What the Norwegians did was conduct statistical analyses of observed and reconstructed temperature series and test whether the recent fluctuation in temperatures differs systematically from previous temperature cycles potentially due to the emission of greenhouse gases. For example, the researchers gathered all the data from various sources, including those related to the four previous glacial and inter-glacial periods, and did a statistical analysis to see how more recent Global Climate Models (GCMs) compare.

In the global climate models (GCMs) most of the warming that has taken place since 1950 is attributed to human activity. Historically, however, there have been large climatic variations. Temperature reconstructions indicate that there is a ‘warming’ trend that seems to have been going on for as long as approximately 400 years. Prior to the last 250 years or so, such a trend could only be due to natural causes.

The length of the observed time series is consequently of crucial importance for analyzing empirically the pattern of temperature fluctuations and to have any hope of distinguishing natural variations in temperatures from man-made ones. Fortunately, many observed temperature series are significantly longer than 100 years and in addition, as mentioned above, there are reconstructed temperature series that are much longer.

I was recently discussing the fact that Earth is warming from its last glaciation period. The Norwegian statisticians’ comprehensive temperature review takes the long view into account by looking at the last 420,000 years.

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Corrupt bureaucraps…but I repeat myself.

Former U.S. firearms investigator illegally trafficked guns to Mexico, government document alleges
Jose Luis Meneses, who worked as an investigator for ATF, admitted to buying firearm parts online and at a California gun store and then trafficking them to Mexico.

A former investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is accused of smuggling guns into Mexico while employed by the agency in 2017, according to a letter sent to ATF’s head this week by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley.

Jose Luis Meneses, a Mexican national who worked as an investigator for ATF at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, admitted to buying firearm parts online and at a California gun store and trafficking them into Mexico for profit back in 2017, according to the letter and an ATF memo from the time obtained by Reuters.

The case has not been previously reported.

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Only the gullible were fooled.

Mask Off! ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Group 97percent’s Executive Director Joins Gun Control Group Brady

97percent calls itself as “a bipartisan group of gun owners and non-gun owners,” and describes their purported mission as follows:

We are bringing gun owners directly into the conversation about gun safety — creating spaces where both gun owners and non-gun owners can have an honest, civil discussion about ways to reduce gun-related violence, while respecting the 2nd Amendment.

How bipartisan is this group, and how seriously do they take the concerns of gun owners? For starters, their website has several instances of the phrase “gun safety” but not a single mention of “gun control.” 97percent’s research (archived links) led them to support violent misdemeanor laws, universal gun registry (i.e., universal background checks), red flag confiscations, and permit requirements to purchase any gun. They want these laws implemented federally, and where the Constitution bars the federal government from doing so, they want the federal government to “incentivize” the states to do it. They have expressed concern over Bruen (archived links) because of its removal of corrupt discretion from the hands of government apparatchiks.

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A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither.
A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
ー Milton Friedman

Oklahoma Ban on Sex Changes for Minors Upheld by Federal District Court
Judge has ruled that the state law banning procedures or therapies for children under 18 doesn’t violate parents’ constitutional rights

U.S. District Court Judge John F. Heil has ruled that an Oklahoma state law banning sex-change procedures on children was constitutional and therefore could be enforced.

The ruling on Oct. 5, 2023, came as a result of a motion for injunctive relief to restrain the state from implementing the law.

Five young people identifying as transgender and in some degree of transition, their parents or legal guardians, and a health care provider are the plaintiffs in the case.

The defendant is Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican.

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