Daily Archives: 10 May 2016

Institutional Racism

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Now our public schools are actively teaching racism to our children.

…administrators at Raoul Wallenberg High School decided last September to forgo the democratic process in student elections and appoint members of the freshman class to most of the seats on the student council.  The freshman president and all student leaders for other grade levels were still elected.

Part of the reasoning behind the change was to “encourage more diversity in our student leadership,” according to Principal Cheryl Foster, who responded to questions from the San Francisco Examiner through a district spokesperson.

Because, like all voters in the eyes of the Left, these students are just too grindingly stupid to know what they must do, and so their Know Betters (at least one of whom was either too afraid, or too contemptuous, of the press to respond directly) must choose for them.

But these worthies gave their game away.

…school officials tried to court her [Christina Martinez] son, James Ortiz, 15, onto the student council because of his surname.

And

Assistant Principal Zaia Vera reportedly told Martinez she wanted Ortiz in office because it would make the student government look more diverse.  Asian girls were the predominant candidates for student office in recent years.

“She said to me, ‘Mrs Martinez, you could understand as a fellow Latina what we’re looking for here,” Martinez, who is not Latina, recalled.  “‘We only have Asian girls run for office and we want the Wallenberg website to show not only Asian girls.'”

Asian girls are the epitome of evil, you see.  But that’s not all of it.  Of course, Vera knew Martinez and her son were not Hispanic; like any competent high school official, Vera knew her students and their parents.  This is just Vera’s and Foster’s stinking racism.

Their racism is doubly damaging: not only does it deny others a fair shot—they’re explicitly held back in this case solely on the basis of their race—or perceived race—it tells the favored minority—Hispanics in the present case—that they’re inherently inferior, with no hope of success without such precious coddling.

If the district officials had any integrity, they would fire Foster and Vera for cause.

Ballistic Missile Defense—Who Needs It?

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No one, according to George Friedman in Geopolitical Futures.  The US has installed and brought on line a ballistic missile defense system site in Romania, but Friedman evidently misunderstands the purpose and the need.

The system is designed to block one or a few (the precise number is likely unknown) missiles targeted toward a large area.  This would be ineffective against Russia, should it wish to launch a nuclear strike against Europe, because the system would be easily saturated by a relatively small number of missiles….

Maybe yes, maybe no.  Russia has already threatened Poland with nuclear attack, and it has already attacked the Baltics with cyber weapons—a useful prelude to a nuclear strike.  It wouldn’t take many missiles to destroy those nations, and even fewer to crush them into surrender.  A BMD system enormously complicates such an attack.

The problem with this is that it is unclear why a country with relatively few missiles would launch a strike at all, and totally unclear why their target would be Europe.

This is his biggest misunderstanding.  He can’t posit a rational reason for a country launching a nuclear strike against a nuclear power, therefor there cannot be a rational reason.  But he’s mistakenly applying his logic system—a typically Western logic system—to an enemy nuclear capable nation that doesn’t subscribe to our rules of logic.

It is always posited that the current enemy doesn’t value human life as we do.  Thus, Iran and North Korea might launch attacks.  Kim Jong Un is clearly enjoying playing God too much to spoil that.  In Iran, the sheer corruption is comforting.  People who love accumulating money are rarely suicidal. The madman theory doesn’t work.

Actually, Iran’s leadership does value human life—they just value the end game differently than we do: the path to Heaven is through martyrdom in this life, and what greater martyrdom than to die for Allah?  Iran’s sheer corruption is at a level below the mullahs.  The mullahs are the ones who will make the decision to strike, not any of those alleged corrupt persons.

Baby Kim does like playing God.  What better way to do that than to visit god-like death and destruction on his enemies?  It may be that he hasn’t yet because he hasn’t yet reliable enough delivery means.

A nuclear attack would be terrible, and however unlikely, it is a threat that must be negated.  …  [However] Ballistic missile defense addresses an apocalypse for which even great novelists could not imagine a convincing origin.  …  The money spent on BMD should have been spent on far more probable threats.

Because gun-free zones are so useful in defending against those with guns.  And there’s that need, again, for a specifically Western rationale for a nuclear attack.

His madman theory is a straw man, offered out of lack of understanding of the new reality.  Friedman may be willing to bet millions of lives on his version of rationality.  I’m glad of the BMD installation; we need to spend the bucks to install more such sites around the world.