Goes to bolster my contention that half of everybody is below average. Some are way below.
[NYP] There are some buildings where the penthouse floors look spectacular. But the foundations and the lower floors are rotten.
It feels like that at the moment when looking at the US-Israel relationship.
At the top floors all looks good, clean and marble-covered.
To his credit President Biden gave a strong statement not so long after Israelis were massacred in their hundreds.
And this week he showed up in Israel to show his support as the country prepares its response to Hamas.
Yes. But that was for show, after he’d given billions of dollars to Iran, which functionally reimbursed them for the cost of the Hamas invasion. Not to mention that he has not only been pushing Israel to walk away from fixing the problem, he has been conferring with other countries to help him pressure Israel to walk away from fixing the problem. And then, of course, he promised Hamas millions of dollars to repair the damage Israel has caused by starting to try fixing the problem.
At the top of the Republican and Democrat parties similar sentiments exist. You might easily think that all is well with the American foundations.
No Republican would do such a thing — they know their voters are generally strongly pro-Israel.
But it isn’t. There is rot inside the building.
Of course Congress has its own voices who actually seem to favor Hamas over the Israelis.
Not seem. Do.
People like Ilhan Omar can’t summon up the briefest condemnation of Hamas before they move onto condemning a not-even-begun Israeli response.
It is the same with other Squad know-nothings.
Appearing in an interview this week AOC made clear once again that she’s no brainiac on the issue. Calling for a ceasefire, she was asked the easiest, most sympathetic questions by her CNN interviewer.
Funny thing kill the Jews pro-Palestine activists also known for anti-Racism, anti-capitalism, unrestricted immigration, and affirmative action. Is there a pattern?
#6
Fred- as an aside I was shocked to learn in Statistics, that in every data set, average was a single value point and therefore, "below average" was always half (50%-1).
4.2.1 Types of average
There are three main types of average: mean, median and mode. Each of these techniques works slightly differently and often results in slightly different typical values.
The mean is the most commonly used average. To get the mean value, you add up all the values and divide this total by the number of values. For example, if you wanted to find the mean of 11, 14 and 17, you would add them to give a total of 42, then divide that by the number of values you have, which is 3. So the mean of 11, 14 and 17 is 42/3 = 14.
The other types of average are:
The median, which places all your values in order from smallest to highest and finds the one in the middle. For example, the median of the values 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11 and 16 is 5.
The mode is the most commonly occurring value. For example, the modal value of 1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 12, 14 and 24 is 6 because it appears the most times.
#10
TW, were the annoying girl who sat behind me in Statistics 101?
I do hope not, NoMoreBS. I was the girl who put my hand up to ask the professor how we know any of what he was teaching was true. His answer was that it seems to work so far, which I found eminently unsatisfying after having spent the entirety of my life that far immersed in the hard sciences.
I memorized my way through Intro Stats for math and science majors, like my mother before me, concluding that statistics was not my intended career field. Mr. Wife, on the other hand, thinks in statistics, and was very happy that the course gave him a way to get an extra decimal place of accuracy at the end of his intuited calculations. It says something that I married him despite this major fault in his character. ;-)
#13
Sorry, it was still funny when George Carlin said, "By definition, half the population is below average intelligence." Technically incorrect, but still funny.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/22/2023 13:52 Comments ||
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Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/22/2023 14:54 Comments ||
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#18
Cartographers may not take pains
To distinguish their fancies from plains
When they carelessly plot
What is where and what's not,
But at least the grid always remains.
From the Facebook page of Vasily Sarychev. In search of lost time
Translated. Edited.
Posted at Rantburg.com and at my personal Blogger blog for archival reasons, because Facebook wants to remove it.
This story was repeated throughout the Nazi empire. The Danish Resistance evacuating the majority of the nation’s Jews to neutral Sweden was by far the exception, not the norm.
The girl in the picture is Brest resident Basya Melnik. After her, there were no diaries or anyone’s memories left - only this photo from the German registration sheet. Basya was killed in the Bronnaya Gora tract in October 1942, among 17,000 prisoners of the Brest ghetto (in total, about 50,000 were shot here).
Another 10,000 Jews of the city died earlier, in the first year of the occupation. Of the entire huge Brest community imprisoned in the ghetto, nineteen people survived.
The most terrible document ever seen is a sheet of the Book of Registration and Control of Population Movements of Brest, kept in the regional archive, which was kept by the city government during the occupation. The line dated October 15, 1942 says: Poles - 15,829, Belarusians - 4,709, Russians - 2,342, Ukrainians - 1,169, Jews - 16,934, various - 88.
The next day there were no Jews. The clerk's hand automatically brought up the usual list of ghetto residents, but he was corrected. Behind this number crossed out with two horizontal lines is the entire horror of what happened. Further and until the end of the book, a dash was placed under the column “Jews”.
And thus, community by community, six million Jews were deleted from the world.
October 16, 1942 - DAY TO DAY 75 YEARS AGO - the Jewish population of Brest ceased to exist.
Freight trains packed with people were sent from the siding between the city and the fortress. The echelons moved to the Bronnaya Gora station and then along the branch line allocated by the Germans several hundred meters to the northwest. The Nazis forced those leaving the carriages to take off their clothes and take them along a narrow corridor of barbed wire to a clearing with already dug holes...
This carefully fenced clearing was already being talked about in the surrounding villages: it could only be that the Germans were preparing to build a secret facility. Signs were posted at the approaches: “Danger to life! It is prohibited to go further! Patrols shoot without warning! In the summer, villagers were driven into the forbidden territory and ordered to dig several huge rectangular holes. Those who dug had no idea what these pits were intended for...
Witness Roman Novis worked as the head of the Bronnaya Gora railway station before the war; during the occupation he was transferred by the Germans to the position of switchman.
From his testimony:
“...The carriages of the arriving trains were closed. All 5 trains were supplied to the branch line, which departs from the Bronnaya Gora station... at a distance of 250-300 meters from the central road. Near the branch, where 6 large pits were prepared in advance, each approximately 25 to 30 meters long, 10-12 meters wide and 4 meters deep, citizens were unloaded. Corpses were also thrown out of the carriages. I believe that the dead could only appear from exhaustion and severe pressure, especially with little air access.
Citizens unloaded from the carriages were forced to take off their outer and underwear, i.e. Everyone, men, women and children, stripped naked. After this, the fingers were examined and the rings were removed. After such a thorough check, the naked people were taken one by one to the pits and lowered down the stairs. In the pits they were placed face down, close to each other, and when the row was completely filled, they were shot from machine guns. After this, the second and third rows were placed in the same way until the hole was filled. I personally saw all the bullying and executions of citizens, I heard their groans, the screams of children, women, men: the railway switches and the booth where I was were no further than 250 meters from the pits...
...In March 1944, the Germans brought about 100 free citizens on foot. I don't know where they come from. They were placed in a camp at the Bronnaya Gora station and were kept under strict surveillance. At the beginning of May 1944, these people excavated holes near the railway line, in which the executed citizens, previously delivered by train, were placed. During excavations, corpses were burned on site. The Germans dismantled 48 military barracks to burn the corpses. In addition, they apparently used some kind of liquid. I conclude from the fact that when observed at night, a blue fire was visible. During the burning of corpses, an unbearable smell was felt in the village of Bronnaya Gora... The burning continued for 13-14 days. They burned continuously, day and night.
...After finishing the work of excavating and burning the corpses of the party of 100 driven citizens, I did not see anyone. I believe that they were also shot and burned.
In total, 186 carriages with Soviet citizens arrived at the Bronnaya Gora station and were shot. The trains were sent back to their place of departure. On the way back, the carriages contained clothes from those who had been shot.
I was on good terms with the station chief, Hailem, and he shared a few things with me during conversations. So he said that in total more than 48 thousand Soviet citizens were brought and shot. Heil also reported that the Germans sent 2 large passenger cars containing gold coins and gold items from the scene of the execution in 1943.”
The destruction of the Brest community took place not only on Bronnaya Gora. The executions were carried out directly in the Brest ghetto (along Karbysheva Street), in the southern suburbs, in the fortress, on Rechitsa in the area of the eighth fort... Random witnesses who managed to survive revealed the terrible truth to people.
It is a known fact that 200 girls from the Brest ghetto were brought to Belsky’s estate (the area of the current Leninsky village near Zhabinka). Young Jewish women were settled in barracks and used in peat mining and in the fields. In the fall of 1942, a large group of German soldiers arrived. The estate was surrounded by a tight ring, the girls and several dozen other Jewish families brought in the car were brought to a huge freshly dug hole at the end of the alley, forced to strip naked and began to be shot...
The non-Jewish population behaved differently towards Jews. This was a certain moment of truth, a manifestation of the measure of the soul. Brest residents Pyotr Grigoriev, Pelageya Makarenko, the Golovchenko spouses, Floria Budishevskaya, the Kurianovich spouses and many others who remained unknown, risking their lives, hid and looked after the doomed. “He who saves one life saves the whole world,” is a saying from the Hebrew Bible engraved on the Righteous Among the Nations medal.
There were examples of the opposite kind.
From the report of the Brest-Litovsk gendarmerie dated November 8, 1942:
“...The sympathy of the local population for the Jews during the action against them in October 1942 was very great. Over the past month, it has been established that the population no longer fears execution. (Rumors spread throughout the city that after the Jews they would deal with the Russians, and then with the Poles and Ukrainians. - V.S.) Now the local population is especially diligent in helping to locate the Jews who have taken refuge in the forests.”
That autumn, the extermination of the Jewish population was carried out everywhere in the occupied territories of the Brest region. During the days of the Kobrin punitive expedition, when the doomed were driven through the streets, several children escaped from the column.
Miraculously, they bypassed the chain of encirclement, dived into the opening of a stone fence and disappeared. The children hid in the park next to the church on Pervomaiskaya Street, where priests discovered them at night. Seven more frightened children were holding onto the coattails of a boy of about eight years old. The priests sheltered them in their plebania.
The rumor that Jewish children were being hidden in the church spread to nearby houses. Parishioners carried food and clothes. But someone betrayed the compassionate priests. They were shot right at the walls of the church - priests Vladislav Grobelny, Jan Volsky and eight children, to whom the ministers gave several days of life at such a high price.
Another terrible fact was told by a random witness to the extermination of Jews near Chernavchitsy. The execution was over, everyone was dead, and the wind blew across the field the photographs that the victims carried with them as their most precious possessions.
[ChicagoBoyz] Almost as horrifying as Hamas going all murderously Einsatzgruppen in Israel two weekends ago, is the realization that yes, indeed — is the realization there are a not-inconsiderable number of Americans (and Americans-in-name-only) cheering them on. Cheering the remorseless slaughter of young and old alike, kidnapping for extortion and/or jollies, mutilation, torture, burning whole families and individuals alive, gang-rape ... it’s a sobering spectacle. I expect any minute a rousing chorus of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" from the Jew-hating undergrads and their professors on the campus too many colleges and universities.
I used to wonder how Germans under Adolph Hitler came around to accept, support, or at least turn a blind eye towards the so-called "Final Solution", during the 1930s and ’40s. Well, wonder no more — I’ve seen it play out now in real time. Corked up resentments, envy and pure unadulterated hatred, given voice in classrooms, newsrooms, in social media and from the pulpits of certain churches, spewing from so-called leaders of various communities ... all spilling out, in the wake of October 7 ... it’s as sick-making as reports of all the rejoicing in the Arab streets, and the comments about how we Americans had it coming, after 9-11. To try and focus on the horror and misery inflicted on the innocent and the self-justifying replies from the usual pro-Palestinians boils down to something like the rationale from an abusive spouse — "Look at what you made me do!"
All that being said, we are seeing a backlash of sorts, this time around. The loud, proud, and indiscreet Jew-haters are getting called out, substantially. Fired from jobs, having job offers rescinded, wealthy alums withdrawing support from various schools ... outrage from parties who heretofore were rather sedate. I can see several reasons for this — First, because the Hamas raid into Israel was so brutal, duplicating Nazi atrocities in Occupied Europe, right down to setting fire to houses to smoke out anyone hiding who might have escaped. Second — because the Hamas raiders videoed themselves doing so, every sickening second. They posted to social media, to boast of every revolting bloody detail — and more than just their sympathizers could watch. The rest of us can watch, too — if we have the stomach for snuff videos. It’s almost impossible to explain all that away, to claim exaggeration, war propaganda, bias ... when it’s all out there on the internet, unmediated by reporters and a media which likely has a bias of their own. The internet and social media have become a double-edged sword. We can see events unfiltered.
Third — I do wonder how many Americans really have any warm feelings towards Islam and Islam-inspired wars of conquest. More than forty years since the Iran hostage crisis, twenty years since 9-11, how many years since the Beslan school murders, and the romp of ISIS and the new caliphate in the Middle East, a little more than a year since the debacle in Afghanistan ... it all adds up. Never mind how often in movies and TV series the obligatory Moslem character appears, whether in a historical epic or one set in the modern day. They are invariably painted as wise, kindly, tolerant, worldly, sometimes as a foil to bigoted and ignorant Christians, sometimes as a victim of the same. In the years since 2001, a fair number of American military personnel have served a rotation or two (or more) in Muslim-dominated countries and overall have been less than enchanted with what they saw there or experienced.
Are we finally seeing a turning point? Discuss as you will and while we still can.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
10/22/2023 05:09 ||
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[AnNahar] As desperate Paleostinians in sealed-off Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... try to find refuge under Israel's relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas ...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... ' brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don't take them in. The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Paleostinian population. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, "but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt." He warned this could wreck peace in the region.
Continued on Page 49
#5
Because they've seen them up close on a daily basis. Bad enough that they're neighbors.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/22/2023 13:30 Comments ||
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#6
Because Palestinian People were invented as a weapon against Israel - one designed to take advantage of Western gullibility. And, despite all Peace Treaties, Arabs remain Israel's (and the rest of Humanity's) enemies.
[PJ] The latest Islamic attack conducted by Hamas was not about the politics surrounding the Gaza Strip. It wasn’t even about Israel; those are just the two most recent excuses for a bloodletting that, in the eyes of extremists, is not only justified but obligatory.
Islam was established in Anatolia, but, between the 14th and 16th centuries, the religion spread via Ottoman conquest to the Balkan Peninsula and central Hungary. The Ottoman state based its authority on religion. The first warrior-sultans expanded the empire in the name of Islam. Sultans claimed the title of caliph, or successor to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Alongside the sultans, religious scholars, called ulama, played a significant role in running the state.
The Siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first attempt by the Ottoman Empire to capture the capital city of Vienna, Austria. Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottomans, attacked the city with over 100,000 men while the defenders, led by Niklas Graf Salm, numbered no more than 21,000. Nevertheless, Vienna was able to survive the siege, which ultimately lasted just over two weeks from September 27 to October 15, 1529.
During that first siege of Vienna in 1529, the invading Muslim horde decided that "children were to be cut out of their mother’s wombs and stuck on pikes." Are we to believe that was just a protest against colonialism or capitalism? When a Muslim chronicle boasted that, during the genocide against the Sikhs in the 18th century, "the shrieks of the women captives who were being raped deafened the ears of the people," was this a response to globalism or Zionism? Perhaps was this simply Islam.
In 1929, a Muslim mob attacked the Jewish city of Safed. The attackers burst into an orphanage and "smashed the children’s heads and cut off their hands." Later that same year, another attack known as the Hebron massacre killed 69 Jews. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged, and synagogues were ransacked. Some of the 435 Jews who survived were hidden by local Arab families. The attackers were supposedly triggered to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
#2
At this stage of human history I find it appalling that virtually none of the loudest Islamic allies have ever troubled themselves to actually read the Koran.
Neither do they give any consideration to the circumstances of that book. That to their faithful it is the dictate word of their god as presented to their anointed prophet. For them, truly it is written. Period.
Read the damned book. If not for your own survival how about Western Civilization or the United States of America.
Read what they are commanded to do by their prophet in what they believe are direct orders in equally direct language from their god. For in those words are the relatively simple directions they have been following for 1,400 years.
They have a de facto state of War with every non-believer. Fight when you are winning, beg for truce when you are losing and passively invade civilized countries always. Exploit any sign of weakness.
Read it in their own words and understand. Bibi said the great lesson of the Holocaust was if people said they were coming to kill you, believe them.
They say it every week in mosques all over the world and they want to kill us, it really is that simple. Jews? Jews-schmews, in Islam a non-believer is a non-believer.
#6
You are 'other', infidel to them similar to the Nazi untermenschen. Your life has no worth to them other than subservience. Depending upon the 'brand' of Islam, they're also kill other Muslims as heretics with just as much fervor.
[AmericanThinker] On October 7, 2023, the Sabbath of the Joy of the Torah, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust took place. It took place not in the Diaspora, but in the Jewish state, in the south of the country, in the areas bordering Gaza. In an independent, strong Jewish state founded to protect Jews from pogroms, there was a very real pogrom. Why did it happen?
October 7 was a holiday, and the soldiers and officers wanted to be at home with their families, not on military bases in the Israeli south. They wished to keif and enjoy themselves. Hedonism had taken hold of the Israeli youth. There were very few soldiers on the Gaza border. Military intelligence was apparently on vacation as well. It was obvious that Israelis were possessed by a sense of people of the West who do not understand the East and who live in the belief that the desire for peace and life and respect for family and community interests is also shared by Hamas militants.
Westerners cannot comprehend the cult of death and are unable to understand the importance and value of the "holy war," "Jihad," against the "infidels." The Israelis were blinded and by the inertia of Westerners perceived the conflict with the militants as a conflict with people who, like them, are all about life, building and development. They allowed themselves to relax and be undisciplined. Freedom turned to promiscuity.
They have allowed themselves to ignore the fact that they are surrounded by people of a different civilization. They probably lack the sensors to pick up the insidious and cunning thoughts and actions of their opponents who are the spawn of Islamic extremism.
They prioritized democracy, for which they fought each other for nine months, not wanting to see that the main danger to their country comes not from a different understanding of democracy, but from enemies who want neither democracy nor life, not only other people's but their own. The sudden insidious attacks on American democracy at Pearl Harbor and on the Twin Towers are repeated on Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel.
The hedonism and arrogance of fed and free societies overshadowed the threats. The hedonistic relaxation of the spirit of Western man and Western culture reveals the vulnerability of modern democratic societies.
Those who want to establish peace in the Middle East, who want to sign peace treaties that will mean the end of the state of enmity, fantasize. No Islamic extremist will honor a peace treaty drawn up and signed by Westerners, even if he has signed it. The holy war against the West, the "Jihad," is his "peace."
...Western politicians in suits and ties want a businesslike and quick solution to Middle East conflicts that have lasted tens and hundreds of years. They want to behave beautifully and ethically in an area where beauty and ethics are treated very differently. They act in the East as if they were in the West.
...Israel's retreat from Lebanon and Gaza turned not into peace, but into a rocket attack on the north and south of the country. The retreat from Gaza, the expulsion of Jewish settlers and the loss of control over the Gaza strip led to escalation and rocket attacks on "uncontested" Israeli territory. The hand extended by Israel as a sign of goodwill to the Arab side bifurcated and appeared to be two hands raised upward. In 2005, the Israelis left the "territories" - Gaza was given to its Arab inhabitants. They did not make it an island of peace, but a hotbed of danger for peaceful Jews and Arabs. As a result of the Palestinian Authority elections, power in Gaza went to Muslim terrorists from Hamas. For withdrawing from Gaza, the Israelis received not a laurel wreath but bunches of anger in the form of rockets, not a peace prize but an expansion of the insecurity zone.
Instead of sanctifying life, the militants of Gaza sanctify death. And not just Gazans, but all Muslims. That's why Nation Building failed and the West lost WoT. Now Muslims are building their Nations throughout the West.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
10/22/2023 05:40 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
