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How Media Elites Caused a Massive Crime Wave

Magical Thinking at The New York Times

Before the Dawn of Human Reason!

Ann Coulter
Red line is the date of George Floyd’s death. (Charts from Professor David S. Abrams University of Pennsylvania)

Ancient primitives — or as we now call them, “Indigenous people whose land we stole” — believed in talismans, voodoo, rain dances and other versions of “A preceded B, so A caused B.” Today, we consider such reasoning classic fallacy. Except at The New York Times.

First, you need to understand that the Times is no longer a newspaper, but more of a shaman. The paper used to report news. Anyone reading it for information these days might as well pull into a gas station and expect the nice man in a crisp white shirt to dash out and pump his gas.

Much like a Starfish tuna factory, the news comes in, then has to be cleaned, chopped up, soaked in oil and tightly packed into a tin can. If you peered into the Times’ back room, you’d find hundreds of woke scriveners repacking the news to fit the narrative.

Second, an urgent cleanup operation was needed to explain the paroxysm of violence that followed 2020’s anti-cop mania pushed at places like the Times. It simply could not stand to have people imagine that revering criminals while anathematizing the police would have any effect on the crime rate.

No, that wouldn’t do. The facts had to be retrofitted into an alternative narrative. What was the best backup explanation? The pandemic!

Attributing the massive crime wave to the pandemic solved two problems that would have arisen had the Times simply reported the facts: the upsurge in black crime, and the Times’ active encouragement of such.

Unfortunately, doing a rain dance to bring rain is quantum mechanics compared to the Times’ cause-and-effect theory about “The Pandemic” inciting the post-George Floyd violence.

Here are the facts.

During the first few months of the pandemic, violent crime plummeted everywhere. You couldn’t have missed it. The Washington Post, Politico, Voice of America, Cambridge University, and on and on and on — even the Times itself! — reported that violent crime had virtually disappeared in cities around the world due to the COVID shutdowns.

And then on May 25, a fentanyl addict with a bad ticker died in police custody in Minneapolis, whereupon the de-policing demands of Black Lives Matter swept the nation with the active encouragement of all organs of elite liberal opinion, especially the Times.

Cops, the only people who seem to really believe “black lives matter,” risking their lives to bring safety to dangerous neighborhoods, were viciously slandered and kneecapped at every turn. Again, especially by the Times.

You’ll never guess what happened next.

After going into free fall during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, homicides and aggravated assaults in the U.S. rose by about 35% from Floyd’s death to the end of June. Burglaries, mostly commercial, shot up by an eye-popping 190% the last week of May — the height of looting during the “mostly peaceful protests.”

Other countries, also affected by the pandemic, saw no such rise in violent crime.

Continue reading…

From Ann Coulter, here.

הרב אליהו ובר שליט”א: הקשר שבין נקמה לבנין המקדש

שנזכה לדעה לנקום באויב ולבנות את הבית

Feb 27, 2023

הקדוש ברוך הוא לא צריך את האור שלנו, אבל אנחנו צריכים להאיר • הקשר בין: וְנִקֵּיתִי דָּמָם לֹא נִקֵּיתִי לבין המשך הפסוק: וַה’ שֹׁכֵן בְּצִיּוֹן • השכינה בציון תהיה לאחר ששנקה את הדם באמצעות הנקמה באויב • הרב אליהו ובר • בית המדרש בהר הבית

מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

Aliyah: The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

We’ll Wait Until We Retire

Shmuel Sackett
Feb 9

I have spoken to thousands of people about making Aliyah and have received some very interesting reasons why – even though they would love to make Aliyah – have decided not to. I must state that my focus and direction on speaking to my brothers and sisters about this life-changing move is different from almost everyone else. I do not push Aliyah because of rising anti-Semitism, intermarriage or the high cost of Yeshiva education. I do not talk about the crumbling of America nor the change of the political map. I focus on the positive, always the positive because that is why I made Aliyah back in 1990 and that is what gives one the strength, attitude and relentless dedication to make it work, despite the difficulties and challenges.

A common response to why people cannot make Aliyah is something like this; “Shmuel, I just can’t do it right now. My wife and I are in our 40’s, the kids are set in school, and I just won’t flip my whole world upside down to make this move… but here’s what I can guarantee; My wife and I will retire in Israel. Don’t worry, we’re not interested in the whole “Collins Avenue – Miami Beach” scene… that’s not us. Jerusalem is a great place to retire so tell the mayor we’ll be there in 25 years!” Sounds good, no? The guy is honest and straightforward. He’s not making up an excuse… it’s real! He loves Israel and is not running away from the issue. In short, it’s not “no”… it’s “not now”.

While I appreciate honesty and direct answers, allow me to now offer mine. Let’s keep this scenario going for the 25 years he wants to wait. Our potential retiree is now in his late 60’s and he and his wife are ready to retire. The kids are married and, Baruch HaShem, they have the cutest grandkids on the planet. At this stage in their life, when they want to enjoy the grandkids… do you really think they will move 6,000 miles away from them? At this stage in their life, when medical issues are more important than ever… do you really think they will switch their doctors to brand new ones who have no idea who they are? At this stage in their life, when they can spend time with friends and finally relax after all those years of hard work… do you really think they will sell their home, pack their things and move across the world to start all over again in a new country, with a new language? The answer to each of my 3 questions – and another 10 that I can easily ask – is: Absolutely not.

Yes, there are some people who retire and move to Israel but 95% of those people do it because they already have children there. Virtually nobody – and I mean nobody – retires in Israel when their kids and grandkids live in a different country. They come for long vacations, lasting for several months at a time, but “home” is still in America, Canada, South Africa or Australia. The only ones I know – from an English-speaking country – who retired in Israel, without having their kids with them, are from England, where a flight to Israel is similar to NY-Miami.

So, let’s be honest; even though you have the best intentions, you are not retiring in Israel… but there’s still something you need to do right now, and here it is: Figure out a way to buy an apartment in Israel as soon as possible. As the expression goes; beg, borrow or steal but make sure you make funds available to purchase an apartment in Eretz Yisrael. (Note – I was just kidding about the “begging”, whoops, I mean “stealing” part…) Why buy an apartment, if you’re not going to actually live in it, you ask??? One second, I never said you won’t live in it, I said you won’t retire in it. Allow me to explain.

First of all, buying an apartment or house in Israel will be the best financial investment you can make. That’s not the reason I am advising you to buy… that’s an added bonus and proven fact. Ask any friend or relative who bought an apartment in Israel, how much it has increased in value, and you will be amazed by the answer. It is not uncommon to find that it has doubled and even tripled in value! But let’s go to the main reason.

People who own apartments have a completely different experience when they come to Israel. Yes, its wonderful to be “wined and dined” in the Waldorf or Ritz-Carlton but you are a tourist and a visitor. When you arrive in Ben Gurion and drive your rented car to your apartment… you are home – even if its for 10 days! You shop at the local makolet, daven in the same shul (maybe even have a regular place to sit), and start getting to know the neighbors. You become buddies with the butcher, have a favorite café, and enjoy reconnecting with friends in the local Daf Yomi up the block. And… (drumroll please…) you come to Israel much more frequently!

But wait, there’s more! As soon as you own an apartment, not only will you use it, your kids will use it as well! Your son, daughter in law and grandkids will come for winter vacation and may even spend a month in the summer. They will work in the apartment via Zoom and find how great it is to be free all morning and start work at 3pm. Your daughter, son in law and their 3 kids will come for Sukkot – since its much cheaper than staying in a hotel – and will love seeing the thousands of people walking with lulavim. As each year passes, and flying to your apartment – for you and your family members – becomes a regular part of life, the idea will start to grow that this could definitely become more permanent and less vacation….

Therefore, dearest friends, stop the retirement idea and start the rearrangement idea. Find a place in a community that makes you feel comfortable and rearrange your finances to buy a modest home. Then rearrange your vacations, Pesach plans and summer schedule so that they center around your new home and community. Get to know the people and join the local WhatsApp groups. Plant a fruit tree in your Israeli garden, sign up for healthcare in Kupat Cholim and learn how to wash your floor with a “sponjah”.

Retire in Israel?? No way!

Be smart and find a way to live here – without flipping your life upside down?? Yes way!! (Is that even an expression??) You can do it – but hurry! Since you started reading this article, that apartment you wanted in Israel just went up 10%.

From Am Yisrael Chai!, here.

Blast from the Past: An Apt Article for Our Time by Murray Rothbard

The Town Caper

A remarkable thing has happened: Let the Pueblo be seized by North Korea, and every man-on-the-street becomes an international law “expert.” “An outrage!” “An act of piracy!” “Nothing like this has happened since 1815!” The air is filled with declamations on the law of the sea; I expect at any time to hark back to the eighteenth century and find the press teeming with discussions of the law of capture, contraband theory, and how many puffs at the hornpipe are required for a party to board ship.

The first point one finds striking is the sudden devotion of American politicians to rules of international law, after America has violated it time and again, and consistently in Vietnam for several years, and after releasing pictures showing American soldiers aiding and supervising torture of prisoners in Vietnam. The stench of hypocrisy in this affair is overwhelming.

Even on the narrow point of the capture of the Pueblo, there are enough fuzzy areas and ambiguities to give pause to even the most hopped-up patriot. North Korea, like many nations of the “free world,” claims twelve miles offshore as its territorial waters. The US claims that the Pueblo was accosted sixteen miles out; the North Koreans said that the ship—which all sides acknowledge to have been a spy ship, pure and simple—was eight miles offshore. Four miles at sea seem to be pretty flimsy grounds for launching World War III.

And for those four flimsy miles, we are forced to rely on the word of a government which, as the astute and witty columnist Murray Kempton has reminded us, has consistently lied, and lied mightily, to the American people: during the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, and now, it seems, at the Gulf of Tonkin, that mysterious incident in October, 1964 which served as the groundwork for all the escalation of the Vietnam war that the Johnson Administration has waged ever since. The American story about Tonkin has been changing steadily for years: At first a massive attack by North Vietnam’s PT boats hurling numerous torpedoes at innocent American ships, the story has now been whittled down to one lone torpedo — maybe — against ships which admittedly had zig -zagged inside North Vietnamese territorial waters. But of course truth never really does catch up, in the public mind, with the Big Lie. Kempton concludes that, in this dispute, he is at this point forced to believe the North Koreans since they have not been lying to him lately.

With the advent of the Pueblo crisis, the air of Congress was filled with the predictable cries of the addled war hawks. Several joined Governor Reagan in calling, in the best John Wayne fashion, for an American fleet to go steaming up Wonsan Harbor to rescue ship and crew; one of the many difficulties, of course, is that the crew has long since been removed inland. Other statesmen want to bomb the ship to smithereens; apparently it makes no difference whether we rescue the ship or blow it up — so long as there is some mighty act of American violence. Meanwhile, we face the fact that, apart from one airborne division at Fort Bragg, NC, there are no troops left with which to launch another war in Korea. As a result, some politicians are calling for the ultimate atrocity: atomic weapons. For this suggestion we can thank Senators [Henry M. “Scoop”] Jackson (D., Wash.) and [Strom] Thurmond (R., SC). Are we to blow up the Korean people, the ship and crew, and maybe the whole US as well, over four disputed miles in the waters off Wonsan?

From Mises.org, here.