Comments At Steve Sailer

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Luke Ford

Link:

* Jacob Frey gave a TV interview in which he literally said the death of Floyd was murder. Then he gave a lengthy talk at a press conference in which he repeatedly seemed about to burst into tears about murderer Chauvin not being under arrest; as if as Mayor he was powerless to order Chauvin jailed. But Frey was clearly not powerless to have his order to abandon the 3rd Precinct obeyed, and to a mob that proceed to burn it down. Not even the Assault On Precinct 13 ‘s filmmakers conceived of such a scenario.

Jacob was elected in the aftermath of two fatal police shootings, one of an unarmed 24-year-old black by white cops that led to substantial and sustained (though underreported because Obama was pres) demonstrations, so Frey knew that his statements could bring people onto the streets. I think he associated such protests with his political stock going up as as they had previously, when they took him from young community organiser to Mayor.

A University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs said Frey was “out of his depth” as shown by his failure to realise what failing to hold the line at the station house would lead to.

* NBA star JR Smith had his windshield hit by an antifa. Smith subsequently beat the living hell (On camera including a punch to the head while the much smaller guy was on the ground) out of him despite being much bigger than the guy and the guy no longer being a threat. Smith’s defense is basically “But I’m a black man, he should have been hitting the windshields of white people, also he’s white”.

* Why do you think Trump and local authorities are allowing these riots? What’s their motive? Incompetence?

It seems like Anti-Fa is remarkably well-organized. They’re being flown city to city, causing anarchy with minimal reprecussions. For whatever reason, the police are hardly doing anything to contain them.

According to local Blacks in various places, it’s Anti-Fa (not Blacks) who are starting the riots and doing most of the severe damage (like burning down the police station in Minneapolis). Though most of the looting seems to be done by Blacks after Anti-Fa starts the riots.

A stunningly high fraction of the protesters in these major cities are White. Even in Detroit.

* Actually it reminds me of the Prague Spring. In previous times the Soviet forces would have ruthlessly killed protestors to put it down. In 1968 the Soviet soldiers couldn’t bring themselves to shoot them. Plenty of Soviet armour was set on fire similar to the police cars. The scenes of chaos are where the police are scared to act.

But the dynamic is different here, the Prague Spring was a national movement for autonomy and ethnic self-determination. Here was have a specific small minority (A central feature of the many riots from African Americans is that in other contexts this would be the beginning of an independence movement but African Americans don’t have a homeland, they were brought to America) asserting collective solidarity. They are joined by other protestors who want to express outrage at the killing of George Floyd but otherwise have no real concrete agenda other than animus against Trump/whites. How long can protests without concrete objectives last? It doesn’t seem to threaten revolution.

The arsonists and serious rioters need a critical mass of people on the streets to get away with their violence, if that number drops below that, they won’t be able or inclined to try it. The riots will fizzle out in at most 10 days but probably 8. That will leave only traditional protest marches and the antifa running around. Of course it looks like the other 3 cops will be acquitted and even Chauvin may be too, if and when that is announced there will be another night at least of serious rioting.

* All this talk of foreign intervention and hardly a mention of the foreigner chiefly responsible for these white rioters, George Soros. There’s been no mention at all in the fake news MSM.

* 2 things seem to be happening.

1. Overwhelmingly White Anti-Fa/Anarchist types are destroying property and causing damage.
2. Mostly Black rioters are stealing stuff.

* A rubicon has been crossed. Everyone now realizes a vote for Biden and the liberals means more looting and riots. This isn’t the 1960s. Everyone who uses social media is aware the riots are just an excuse to loot, despite the left’s feeble attempts to hide this. The left has lost the middle.

Now when everyone thinks of the left, they’ll automatically associate it with vandalism and looting.

* Doesn’t any sort of social distancing enforcement have to end now? How could anyone respect government edicts on business closures after this week?

* Well, the irony is that Christian Cooper did not want this whole scenario to go so far. Many animal rights activists were more upset with her because she was severely yanking the collar of her Cocker Spaniel.

It seems to me that Christian is the anti-Minnesota, city burner, black man. Notice msm dropped this story from the moment that Christian accepted Amy’s apology and, on record, stated that he did not wish to have led this to her losing her job. In other words, he did not accept the role of the victim in this incident.

Frankly, because I am a dog-lover, I think the dog was the victim and Amy was a just a garden-variety SJW asshole…and generally, the type of women I loathe.

* A week of this has exhausted me. The evil of the rioters, lies of the media, stupidity of the people, cynicism and cowardice of our leaders, is discouraging.
At times like this it is good to set your feet on the high road and remind yourself how things should be.
In a civil democracy the police work for us to protect us from criminals. We are loyal to the police and they are loyal to us. When a question arises whether a policeman has himself committed a crime, we take a deep breath, ask all the right questions, listen to many sides of the case, and render as just and wise a judgement as we are able. We have formal procedures, courts, to make this possible. When the verdict comes down we accept it, whether with satisfaction or with reservation.
Wouldn’t it be great to live in that world?

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Violent protests in Los Angeles tear through Jewish neighborhood

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Luke Ford

From the Forward:

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How LA’s Orthodox Jews averted the worst of the pandemic

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Luke Ford

From the Forward, May 4, 2020:

According to Yossi Manela, director of Chevra Kadisha Mortuary, only three Orthodox Jews with Covid-19 on their death certificate — all men, average age 75 years old — had passed through his funeral home. He estimated the mortuary sees about 80 percent of LA’s deceased Orthodox Jews.

Moshe Sarto, who runs the local Orthodox community news site and daily e-newsletter Hillygram, estimated that he had sent fewer than ten obituary notices over the past two months…

The decisions by LA’s Orthodox leaders to close their doors and proscribe religious gatherings did not occur in perfect unison, and some rabbis said they regretted not doing it sooner. An extra week of regular Shabbat services may be the reason why one Orthodox neighborhood seems to have been hit harder than the others…

The key moments in the trajectory of the pandemic here date back to the Shabbat of February 29, when a Pico-Robertson resident attended services at Congregation Kehilas Yaakov in the La Brea area. The following week, two congregants who had been sitting near him began exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms.

To Rabbi Gershon Bess, who leads Kollel Los Angeles in addition to Kehilas Yaakov, the coronavirus was still “a Chinese story” in early March, a few days before a deluge of Covid-19 cases hit New Rochelle, New York.

“At that point, none of us realized how bad it was,” Rabbi Bess said.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Bess advised his congregation in an email that anyone who had come in close contact with the visitor to self-quarantine. The visitor eventually tested positive for Covid-19.

Altogether, six men in shul that day contracted the illness — one of whom required several weeks on a ventilator. But all of them survived…

In the Hancock Park-La Brea area, whose Orthodox population is comparable to Pico Robertson’s, only Kehillat Yavneh shut down that Shabbat, the rest staying open until the following Shabbat.

“It appears that caused a toll on them,” said Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City, one of the large synagogues in Pico-Robertson area that closed March 14. “A number of people got very sick. Our side of town was more spared, I think.”

Simcha Mandelbaum, director of public relations for Hatzolah Los Angeles, said the majority of Hatzolah’s coronavirus-related calls had come from the Fairfax-La Brea area, which was also where the highest concentration of Covid-19 illnesses was in LA County at one point. Those calls surged in the weeks after Purim and did not drop until after Passover.

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Kosher stores, synagogues, vandalized and looted in ongoing LA protests

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Luke Ford

From the Jerusalem Post:

A number of kosher stores and synagogues were vandalized and looted in the uptown Los Angeles neighborhood of Fairfax, between Saturday night and Sunday morning, by people protesting police brutality following the killing last week of George Floyd, an African-American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Some of the synagogues damaged as a result of vandalism, graffiti and looting by protesters include Congregation Kehilas Yaakov, also known as Rabbi Gershon Bess Shul, and Tiferes Tzvi (Rabbi Ganzweig Shul) on Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles…

It was also reported that Congregation Beth Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in Los Angeles and also on Beverly Boulevard, was defaced with antisemitic graffiti that read “F**k Israel” and “Free Palestine” scrawled along its walls.

In addition to destruction and graffiti inflicted upon the synagogues, a number of kosher restaurants, bakeries and stores were ransacked by protesters, looting much of the merchandise and causing extensive property damage. Some of the stores impacted include Ariel Glatt Kosher Market, Mensch Bakery and Kitchen, and Syd’s Pharmacy and Kosher Vitamins, all located in the Fairfax district.

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Where Were The Police?

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Luke Ford

From the Los Angeles Times:

Aaron Landy watched for hours on Saturday night as people on foot and then in cars moved up and down Melrose Avenue looting stores and setting them on fire, doing wheelies in the street and tagging walls with graffiti.

All the while, not a single police cruiser rolled by, Landy said, even though officers were staged in huge numbers not far away, squaring off with protesters.

Landy’s longtime Fairfax neighborhood, it seemed to him, had been completely abandoned to lawlessness.

“Where are the police? They’re nowhere. There’s not a policeman in sight. It’s just like a free-for-all,” Landy remembered thinking. “It was just shocking. I was outraged.”

He wasn’t alone. From the Grove shopping mall and Santa Monica’s business district to downtown Long Beach, television beamed live images all weekend of looters breaking into stores and stealing merchandise — often without officers in sight…

Other longtime residents and business owners, meanwhile, also said the police were in the wrong, but for different reasons. They said they felt police weren’t tough enough with looters on Saturday, sticking to large tactical formations and tracking protesters even as they abandoned other streets to criminals hellbent on filling their cars with stolen goods and torching establishments.

And, some law enforcement officials, current and retired, also criticized the LAPD response, saying it was riddled with flaws — from acquiescing to protesters gathering in huge numbers in a business district like Fairfax, to delaying two moves that would have increased manpower sooner: mobilizing the entire police force into action by canceling off-days and vacations, and calling in the National Guard.

Well into Saturday afternoon, Garcetti dismissed the idea of calling in the National Guard, saying the LAPD had the situation under control and calling on Angelenos and show their “better angels” by avoiding mayhem. He requested the guard enter the city hours later, leading to their arrival in the overnight hours…

Charles “Sid” Heal, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s commander, said the LAPD decision to allow protesters access to an area like the Grove and Farmers Market was a miscalculation. Keeping crowds away from vulnerable areas is a key part of crowd control, he said.

“That means place sentries where you don’t want them to go in advance,” Heal said.

He also questioned Moore’s decision to be on the ground in one specific neighborhood, interacting with individual arrestees himself, instead of being in a command center where he could assess the entire picture of protest and unrest across the city.

Being on the front lines can endear a police leader to his officers, but doesn’t make much tactical sense, he said.

“As a commander, you need situational awareness. You need to be able to see the entire events to best manage and decide how to respond,” Heal said. “As a leader, you don’t want to get down in the weeds.”

Councilman Paul Koretz said he spoke to Rick Caruso, the developer of the Grove and a former police commissioner, “before it got as bad as it was,” and Caruso was not happy.

“I would just say that he did not think well of the City Council and the mayor [and] our ability to protect the city and the businesses,” Koretz said. “It is devastating.”

Landy, a 59-year-old filmmaker who had been taking video of the mayhem, ended his Saturday night in the emergency room getting a head scan after being attacked by four men who believed he had recorded them looting stores, he said.

Throughout the night, he said he observed a city that had been left to be destroyed, in ways that were, in his judgment, entirely preventable. A single store would be looted two, three or four times in a row, before finally being set ablaze, he said.

Landy and other locals personally prevented multiple fires that otherwise would have taken off, he said, including by pulling a burning mannequin out of Urban Outfitters. Neither police nor fire officials responded.

“It was just madness. And you were like, ‘Where is a cop? Where is a single cop?’” Landy said. “It was just an absolutely failed strategy.”

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