Grant Park, Chicago, November 2008.
"In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long." ... "This is our time, .... to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one”. Fine words on the night of election victory. But times change; what a difference 8 years can make.
January, 2016. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of hope, and....
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bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and Obama made an important statement.
In Chicago, “unknown”, in their hundreds, are the assailants. Honored by Rappers and protected, implicitly or explicitly, by corrupt establishment politicians who have controlled the city for generations. The victims are neither known nor honored by the city politicians nor the Hollywood celebrities, for they were never of the value of Eric, Michael, Travon or, now, Philando; to be eulogized when face down in pool of their own blood.
These are the unkown dead. Of no value to rappers or to politicians. Just as unknown, even more unknown, are those crime statistics.
Of course you don’t want them read. Keep them secret, keep their content safe. Rig the election if you need too. Who actually believes that if you do the crime, you do the time anymore? We all know who is really guilty in all these, we read it where all the news that is fit to print is printed.
Not that long ago in Chicago and in the nation’s capital crowds thousands strong, tens of thousands strong, marched. Across the Republic, across the globe. In Paris, in Sydney, in the City of Angels and in the Windy City they marched. Speeches were given. Words, strong words, proud words, but not a single word from the windy orators for these nameless dead of the windy city . Ignored in life and now in death; ignored by community organizers, march organizers, millionaire celebrities, millionaire rappers, and most of all ignored by establishment politicians like those who have run our major cities for generations.
On January 20th another man came to our nations capital. Has it been 6 months already? He too swore an Oath. He spoke briefly. Here are a few of his words; strong words, proud words:
“At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a nation exists to serve its citizens.…We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it..
“… to all Americans in every city … hear these words -- you will never be ignored again.”…..
I wonder how long we have before we find out if he is "all talk and no action" or if he can get the DOJ to actually find out who is shooting whom in Chicago. The mayor seems to have more important things to do: "“I’d rather be a Democrat today going into 2018 than a Republican”
Chicago Death Statistics from 2016, the Twilight Year of the Hope and Change administration.
Total shootings 4379 Shot and wounded 3664 Shot and killed: 715
Total homicides 797
Police involved shootings: 11 killed, 14 injured
Assailant race by percentage
Black 12.6% White 1% Other 6.1% “Unknown” 80.3%
Chicago Population, 2016: 2,700,000
sources
If you are wondering why I did not link to the Chicago PD or City of Chicago websites for relevant crime data that is a very good question. I suggest you spend just a few minutes looking at those two places to see if you can find the “transparent” data on crime in Chicago.
........
........
Back so soon? Yeah, I couldn’t find them there either. Transparency from the establishment. It’s almost like the City is hiding something, like who is shooting whom; or who isn’t solving crimes being committed against Americans in one of America's biggest cities.
Chicago. Sanctuary City. An especially good sanctuary city if you plan on shooting someone.
Jacksonville. Viewed from above, it looks like an inverted hockey stick, with the St. John's river being the stick, the long part pointing south.
My wife and I watch the local news to confirm the Internet weather sources. The by product is seeing how many residents of the north and northwest sides of town have been shot. The news mentions the general street location and the type of crime -- gunshot or fatality -- but never a description of the assailants or a street map. The victims, well they are a gender. And anonymous by the time the next dawn comes along.
Posted by: BabelFish | 26 June 2017 at 08:19 AM
And Trump is going to change all this most rickey tic. spit
Posted by: raven | 26 June 2017 at 08:24 AM
Re: Philando
I live about a mile from the St. Anthony police
station and approximately 5 from the shooting.
When former officer Yanez was found not guilty
on all charges, first time an officer was put on
trial,the usual protests followed by BLM etc.
Coincidentally, 7 people were shot during that
time frame and of course not a peep from said
protesters. The constant denial by all the groups
mentioned by Fred of black on black crime is
staggering to say the least.
It seems each community has its Jacksons and
Sharptons ready to pounce except when the
nameless are killed by the unknowns.
BTW I thought Yanez should have been convicted.
Over reaction on his part and a series of fatal
mistakes by Castille. The police dash camera
the deciding factor, although the law says if
the officer fears for his life he has the right to
protect himself. Tough call.
Posted by: steve g | 26 June 2017 at 09:26 AM
Re the Philandro Castille killing, this piece at the Minnesota Public Radio website: "Yanez juror: 'Nobody was OK with it'"
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/06/23/74-seconds-yanez-juror
Posted by: ex-PFC Chuck | 26 June 2017 at 10:32 AM
Sorry. Maybe I missed the point of this posting. Is the author suggesting that illegal immigrants are the source of this recent spike in Chicago murders? Homicides in Chicago spiked upward in 2016, but they were still below the peaks seen between 1990 and 1995. Not sure about the current stats for 2017. And I can't find a breakdown of ethnicity of the perps. I'd be interested if this current spike is driven by cartel violence.
Posted by: beowulf888 | 26 June 2017 at 01:06 PM
That's a lotta bangs for the huck-of-it.
Posted by: ked | 26 June 2017 at 02:45 PM
I was born(1943) and lived 24 years in N Jacksonville.It has certainly changed a lot since my birth.And it is NOT for the better.
Posted by: phil cattar | 26 June 2017 at 03:40 PM
BabelFish,
No one wants to disturb the narrative. Isn't Jacksonville the city where ex-Congresswoman Corrine Brown was given 18 felony convictions?
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 04:04 PM
beowufl888,
No I am not suggesting that. You should read it again. You can't find ethnicity stats? Neither could I. It seems the elected government in Chicago manages to keep them secret. Maybe Hilary should have hired them to run her email system.
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 04:06 PM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls
Most of those who kill blacks are other blacks. Interracial crime is relatively rare, but it is preponderantly committed by blacks against other groups. A lot of those fit the definition of hate crimes. But the various social engineering establishments are too obsessed with "white privilege" to acknowledge any of that.
Posted by: Thirdeye | 26 June 2017 at 04:20 PM
FBI ethnicity stats linked below.
Posted by: Thirdeye | 26 June 2017 at 04:22 PM
"...below the peaks seen between 1990 and 1995" seems like damning with faint praise. A lot of people bitch about the 1994 crime bill but it does seem to be one factor driving crime down during the second half of the 1990s. Another was Generation Crack literally killing each other off. Now we've got the children of Generation Crack coming of age and it's not pretty. I also suspect that the Obama "disciplinary equity" initiative is giving rise to a new generation of kids learning that there is no consequence to aberrant behavior, i.e. training them to become thuglets. There is a surge in school violence that we could be seeing spill over into into street crime.
Posted by: Thirdeye | 26 June 2017 at 04:48 PM
Thirdeye,
The sad truth - from the FBI statistics - is that while only approx. 13% of the population, blacks commit >50% of all violent crimes (including murder). It is true that most of their victims are also black. However, with regards to interracial crime, blacks are more likely to victimize whites than the reverse.
The knee jerk reaction in assigning a cause to the propensity for violent crime is usually "poverty" (i.e. blacks are far more likely to be poor and being poor leads to crime). However, the correlation between poverty and violent crime is not strong enough to explain the situation (e.g. poor whites do not commit violent crime at anything like the rate that poor blacks do).
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 26 June 2017 at 04:59 PM
It is, Fred. It was so blatant that the local news was messaging 'guilty as hell', all through the trial.
The real looney tune came up when one of the original jurors confided in deliberations that the Holy Spirit had told him she wasn't guilty. The first alternate juror was seated and, as you mention, the jury convicted her on all those charges.
Now we have the movement to take down statues of Confederate historical figures and even of changing the city name. I wonder where that all goes, once they have purged Washington and Jefferson from our history. Perhaps the Romans?
Posted by: BabelFish | 26 June 2017 at 05:00 PM
fred
Please remember to "moderae" comments addresses to your work. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 26 June 2017 at 06:00 PM
BabelFish,
George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” That's part of another post. It has been quite successfully done to the various segments of our society to our great detriment.
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 07:15 PM
Col.,
Will do sir.
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 07:15 PM
Eric, Thirdeye,
35,000 or so shootings with almost 4,000 dead in one city alone in 8 years and on the surface it appears there was little done to address the issue besides, to use Eric's phrase "knee jerk reaction". I want to point out that I believe race is not the important factor here but rather the failure by city and even federal authorities to focus on the level and type of violence. The statistics are only that, statistics. How they are interpreted is another story.
From what I see in the data 80% of the shootings were unsolved. (I originally collected that data in early February.) Catching the actual shooters is important and it does not, it certainly should not, matter what color they or their victims are.
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 07:48 PM
steve,
The data sadly doesn't show who shot whom but does show that 80% of the shootings were unsolved. As to the Castille shooting it looks like the police officer panicked. It should lead to a review of how candidates for police forces are screened and how police officers are trained. There are some people who by temperament should not be in law enforcement in any position.
Posted by: Fred | 26 June 2017 at 07:52 PM
I was walking my dog in the park one day. He was well trained and didn't bother anybody, in fact, he ignored a group of teenage black girls who started screaming hysterically when they saw Max. It was a game for them, screaming and giggling. A young black boy, about 10, well dressed, with thick lense glasses, trailed the girls, looked at me and asked, "Why are blacks so violent?" I said, "I don't know." The young man looked studious, the type of kid school thugs picked on for not being violent and stupid, the type of behavior they imitated. There are good people in the hood living in fear of the mindless terror endemic to their neighborhood. It's those people abandoned by society I feel sorry for.
Posted by: optimax | 26 June 2017 at 09:27 PM
Optimax,
The young man you describe sounds like a young version of Ta-Nehisi Coates. When I entered second grade at Woodlawn Elementary in Fairfax County (VA) in 1968 there was only one black student in the school. That was due to the end of legal segregation.
"It's those people abandoned by society I feel sorry for."
Me too. What are we going to do about it?
Posted by: Fred | 27 June 2017 at 08:58 AM
Fred,
I do think that the racial component to the problem cannot be ignored. However, that is not to suggest that there is something inherently wrong with "those people"; especially not from a racist/genetic theory perspective.
That said, there is a cultural divide that has formed, roughly, along racial lines. The urban black culture is the sea that the murderers swim in. We have seen in recent years public displays of the distrust that the various species of fish - both criminal and victim - have for law enforcement and the judicial system; as well for the dominant "white" culture in general. IMO, that rift is why we see the 80% unsolved rate.
This seems to me to be a situation where something like COIN might actually work. Among the techniques, there would have to be an effort to win the hearts and minds of those within the sea who are being victimized.
It seems to me that the left is doing everything it can prevent that from happening. Moreover, The Left has been working hard to reinforce the rift. So we have, in the midst of our big cities, insurgent controlled communities that are not open to influence by the agents of integration, civilization, peace and prosperity.
Studies have shown that it is not simple poverty that leads to violence. It is poverty in the face of great prosperity of others who are seen as being fundamentally different, whose success one feels one is barred from achieving due to an unfair system or a rigged game; again essentially what The Left keeps telling blacks.
For the murder problem of Chicago (or any other big city) to be ameliorated, the first step would be to remove Leftists from power or for Leftists to change their message.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 27 June 2017 at 10:42 AM
Fred,
As an addendum to my response to you; it isn't just the ideology of The Left. In cities like Chicago, the political machine benefits financially from favoring the gangsters, who, in turn, are a big part of the violence producing culture. In Chicago this goes back at least to the days of Al Capone. It occurs in others big cities as well and, I strongly suspect, that money flows right up to the top in DC.
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 27 June 2017 at 11:35 AM
Eric,
Public policy will not change genetics. "insurgent controlled communities that are not open to influence by the agents of integration, civilization, peace and prosperity."
Chicago is controlled by insurgents who are attacking civilization itself? You are reading far more into the murder statistics than I am. The rate is actually declining, which many point out. Having 80% of shootings unresolved is something they don't point too however.
"the first step would be to remove Leftists from power or for Leftists to change their message."
Eric, we have elections to remove people from power. The message that would need to change isn't only from the left.
Posted by: Fred | 27 June 2017 at 11:40 AM
Fred,
IMO, if you spent time in those neighborhoods you would get the sense that civilization itself is under attack. I was in Detroit last month and, yes, it is that bad in mile after mile of "neighborhoods" (if they can still be called that). When you fear, daily, being beat down, robbed or hit by a bullet, aimed or stray, that is not civilization. That is a wild frontier, a jungle a Mad Max world.
What do genetics have to do with any of this other than humans being simple creatures that instinctively make often artificial divisions of in-group/out-group based on superficial characteristics? Are you saying that blacks kill each other because they have a genetic predisposition to predatory violence? I do not buy that argument. Rather, I would say that some % of all of us have a tendency in that direction and some cultures allow, perhaps encourage, its expression.
I thought we are all supposed to be Americans contributing what we can to the improvement of our society. How do we get the people in question, especially the victims, to buy into that? That is where leftist memes are counter-productive. You're not going to solve more murders and get the murderers off the streets if the people don't want to cooperate with law enforcement and the judicial system. You're not going to prevent the next generation of murderers from developing if you keep sending the message to the culture that they are being screwed by a privileged racist society that will always hate them, when you issue incentives for single mother homes, when you message that law enforcement wants to genocide them, when you construct ready made excuses for failure to adopt a culture of success. All of that needs to be countered in conjunction with enhanced law enforcement; which won't happen with Democrats in charge.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 27 June 2017 at 11:59 AM