A message from the Mayor ot Bethlehem about Christians in Palestine

 There's a reason those 1,000 "Christian Influencers" didn't visit Bethlehem. That trip was such propaganda that it's not worth thinking about.

What's worth thinking about is how they can let other Christians be persecuted.

 

Don't forget Palestinian Christians

 And this comes from the Instagram page forgotten_christians:

Palestinian Christians living under Israeli occupation face daily hardships: movement restrictions, checkpoints and permit systems that limit access to work, schools, hospitals, and holy sites, alongside land confiscation and settlement expansion that squeeze livelihoods and community life. 

In Christian villages like Taybeh, residents have faced repeated Israeli settler attacks and intimidation targeting homes, farmland, and church property, creating fear and insecurity with little accountability.

For some reason, Christian Zionists neglect Palestinian Christians and their persecution by the State of Israel. Unless it blows up in their faces the way it did for Mike Huckabee, but even he turns a blind eye to the persecution of Christians and the destruction of churches.

 

The real problem here is that the Palestinian Christians are the "wrong sort of Christians" to get support from Evangelicals who support lsrael. we need to bring back the 1975 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379.

 

The real history of the Second Amendment.

Let's start this with this precursor to the Second Amendment from the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 for a good idea of what the founders' mindset happened:

13. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

I've gone on ad nauseum about how the current interpretation is an ultra vires act that has no historical basis. After all the complaints in the Declaration of Independence were:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

This gets into the real history of the mindset behind the Second Amendment which is the conflict between a professional, full time standing army and a part time force (the militia).

And you can show me where the US Constitution explicitly mentions "self-defence", or any other non-military use of arms if you think I am wrong.

There is far more evidence that my interpretation is the correct one:

What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Now, it must be evident, that, under this provision, together with their other powers, Congress could take such measures with respect to a militia, as to make a standing army necessary. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins. This was actually done by Great Britain at the commencement of the late revolution. They used every means in their power to prevent the establishment of an effective militia to the eastward. The Assembly of Massachusetts, seeing the rapid progress that administration were making to divest them of their inherent privileges, endeavored to counteract them by the organization of the militia; but they were always defeated by the influence of the Crown. --Elbridge Gerry, House of Representatives, Amendments to the Constitution 17, 20 Aug. 1789, Annals 1:749--52, 766--67  

See also:

• Schwoerer, Lois G. “No Standing Armies!” The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England, ISBN: 978-0801815638

Can one peacefully protest while armed?

Something that is annoying me is watching British commentators condemn ICE for shooting Alex Pretti.

My usual question to them is "what would be the reaction of British police if someone showed up at a protest with  a holstered handgun?"

And unlike a lot of people out there: this blog has been pretty consistent about carrying weapons to a protest as being a no-no. 

I'm sorry I can't say too much if Alex Pretti was going to show up with a firearm and get in the way of police. My experience is that is an incredibly bad idea from my long career of dealing with the police in various capacities.

But, as the quote from My Cousin Vinnie goes: "It's your ass not mine."

I know that some jurisdictions make it illegal to carry a weapon during a civil unrest (e.g., 18 Pa.C.S. 6107), which is why I said that I am surprised the real militia (national guard) didn't shoot Kyle Rittenhouse for walking about armed in Kenosha.

I had a manual on protesting from the 1960s which made it clear not to bring weapons to a protest, that I can't find. And there are states which prohibit this activity.

As does common sense.

To quote the Everytown page where I got the graphic:

White supremacists and anti-government extremists have sought to undermine our institutions with armed protests that too often escalate to violence. An 18-month study of 560 events where demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, or other individuals or groups were present and carried or brandished firearms found that at least 18% of these events occurred on the grounds of government facilities, with more than 100 reported at legislative buildings and vote-counting centers. The study also found that armed demonstrations are nearly six times as likely to turn violent or destructive compared to unarmed demonstrations. 

That comes from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Armed Assembly: Guns, Demonstrations, and Political Violence in America,” August 23, 2021.

The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law pretty much agrees with this:

The right to peacefully assemble is enshrined in the First Amendment and has driven political progress in the United States since its founding. While the overwhelming majority of recent protests in the U.S. have been peaceful and have not involved weapons, a growing number have included individuals with firearms—whether participating as protesters, counter-protesting, or claiming to provide security.

Armed individuals undermine protests’ core democratic nature: They intimidate and discourage people from exercising their rights to speech and assembly, and they have interfered with basic democratic processes like voting and lawmaking. Amidst unprecedented political polarization and heightened fears of political violence, the presence of firearms at protests today threatens to be a particularly combustible trend. 

I could quote extensively from that report on how stupid Pretti was for being armed and how counterproductive it was, but he learned that lesson at the cost of his life. It's worth reading. https://www.icnl.org/wp-content/uploads/Guns-at-Protests-Briefer-vf-02.2022.pdf

So, you may not like what I say about Alex Pretti getting shot, but someone needs to toss some cold water on the practise of carrying weapons, particularly firearms, to protests. Pretti was "too soon oldt and too late smart" when it comes to this. And, like Rittenhouse, his heart was in the right place, but his head was up his ass.

Unfortunately, Pretti DID get killed for his ignorance.

See also:

• Protests might be one place you can't carry guns. Slate Magazine

Smile, you're on camera: Facial recognition becomes widespread in London...

I tried to write a post about the differences in US and Europan Union privacy laws which somehow got trashed, but the gist of it is that the US doesn't have strong data protection laws. That means law enforcement is working with the crap data mining services provide.

On the other hand, digital ID these days is biometric and works well with facial recognition.

And immigration services worldwide are using biometrics for law enforcement. 

I would also add in that immigration is tightening up worldwide. So, it feels hypocritical that people outside the US are condemning ICE. Especially since the Schengen Area in Europe fines people 1,000€ a day for overstaying. There is also a possibility of being banned from the Schengen zone.

 

Fortunately, people in the US are too distracted with ICE to notice that they are handing the data miners information. That was an important part of the lost post, a reference to this article: How is ICE tracking people in Minnesota? An expert explains.

It might make more sense to demand strong data protection laws which allow people to control what is private information being sold. Especially since your private information is one of the things making money for big tech.

And helping ICE do its job.