Protestors have taken to the streets occupying some of Hong Kong’s most economically and politically important districts. On Tuesday, October 21^st, five representatives from the Hong Kong Federation of Students, dressed in black T-shirts that said “Freedom Now,” met with five Hong Kong government officials at a medical college. At the negotiating table the students reiterated their demands for a more open nomination process for Hong Kong’s leader and the abolition of the functional constituencies – the 28 industrial, professional and social groups that are represented in the Election Committee, the organization in charge of appointing Hong Kong’s chief executive and the Legislative Council, the legislative body of the Hong Kong government. Neither party made concessions or compromises. Thus, the negotiations failed to resolve the lingering political standoff.

At a high level, I’d like to point out the absurdity of the Hong Kong demonstrations. First and foremost, much to Hong Kong’s credit, it has never had “free democratic elections.” During the years of British dominance (1841-1997) the governor of Hong Kong was appointed by the English Crown. Upon the end of the 99-year long Sino-British agreement, in 1997, Hong Kong was given back to China under the condition that it remain a separate administrative region until 2047.

Hong Kong’s Basic Law created the electoral groups system in Hong Kong. Professional groups such as lawyers, teachers, businessmen, and doctors nominate their representatives. The representatives (or electorates), in turn, elect the Chief Executive. Demonstrations in Hong Kong are not a novelty, they occur from time to time – in 2005 people went out in the streets in protest against Donald Tsang’s proposed reform package, people often express their dissatisfaction with authorities’ reluctance to follow public opinion. In 2010 pan-democrats demanded a referendum for universal suffrage and the abolition of the functional constituencies.

The Hong Kong government has historically tried to compromise with the citizens. Thus, for example, the number of electorates has been gradually increased from 400, to 800, and now 1,200. Beijing has also been willing to compromise with Hong Kong’s professional groups regarding the Chief Executives. The first Hong Kong elected leader Tung Chee-hwa was soon recalled by Beijing once he had lost the support of the residents. His successor Donald Tsang, former Financial Secretary, was elected as a Hong Kong leader in 2005 and served two terms in office. Generally speaking, he was well-liked by people and attempted to pursue democratic reforms. Hong Kong is now ruled by former businessman and banker Leung Chun-ying.

In July this year, Beijing and Hong Kong authorities agreed to reform Hong Kong’s election system by 2017. In August, they proposed a universal suffrage-based system allowing voters to choose between two or three candidates selected by a nominating committee and approved by Beijing. Thus, if we compare Hong Kong under the British Crown and Hong Kong under Beijing, before 1997, the governor was appointed. After 1997, the governor was elected by a group of 1,200 people representing various constituencies, including business and professional circles. First and foremost, the governor is no longer appointed, a great improvement from the pro-democratic standpoint. By and large, the current political structure of Hong Kong was created by the British to protect that region from the imposition of Beijing’s communism. Once Britain ceded Hong Kong to China in 1997 following the 1984 agreement, Beijing has neither attempted to take over Hong Kong, nor has it stretched the rule of the Communist party over to the region. The territory has a great deal of autonomy from Beijing, and its people enjoy  freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and economic liberty. Residents of Hong Kong are freer than their Mainland Chinese counterparts on almost any metric.

The result of this complex mixed representational system has been the creation of one of the wealthiest regions in the world. It is the world’s 6^th richest country by GDP per capita and the 3^rd highest on the Doing Business Index. It is far ahead of Britain on both parameters. Despite having a population of only 7.2 million, Hong Kong has the 8th highest number of billionaires in the world. Moreover, unlike some countries that are ahead of Hong Kong by this criterion, such as India and Brazil, it has a large and thriving middle class. Long story short, Hong Kong is a well designed and a well functioning machine.

There is nothing major to fix.

What Hong Kong appears to be today–a prosperous society that attracts thousands of investors and tourists worldwide–is a direct result of the way it has been organized for decades.

Besides, Xi Jinping, the Chinese prime minister who announced his plan for serious economic reforms at the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18^th Congress, has reiterated that the way forward for China is the market economy. Beijing realizes that Hong Kong is China’s gateway to the rest of the world. To abandon “One country – two systems” is to destroy the Hong Kong economic model and a major part of China’s economic success story. Beijing simply won’t do it. So it retains the status quo, in which Hong Kong enjoys “a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defense affairs.”

So why are the Hong Kong students protesting? Why in Hong Kong and not in Mainland China? Even though Mainland China is far less democratic than Hong Kong, neither Shanghai nor Beijing students dare speak up. I spoke to a friend of mine from Shanghai to ask her about political activism there. She said that the major thing people in Shanghai are concerned about is how to make ends meet; they work day and night and have little time for political and ideological ruminations. In Mainland China, students are generally poor, so college education and hard work are the main ladder to success for them. By the same token, their parents have to work hard and save, so that they can afford to send their child to college. In Hong Kong, students come from relatively wealthy families (the median annual household income in Hong Kong is ~$35,000). So, students in Hong Kong are simply not burdened with the need to feed their families, or to work part-time to support themselves. They have plenty of time to do what they want, including pondering on political issues, human rights, social theories, etc.

The situation in Hong Kong today is analogous to that of France in 1968. In both eras, angry students took to the streets in a similar way. France in 1968 was, by the standards of the day, a very prosperous society–by that year it had completely recovered from the ravages of WWII. Its economy was experiencing “Les Trente Glorieuses,” a prolonged economic boom. France’s industrial output was 3.5 times higher than in the pre-war period, it had become the world’s second global food exporter, the average real wages rose by 25%, and vacation time was increased from three to four weeks.

Students of post-war France were no longer poor and hungry people struggling to get education and care for their parents. Most students came from middle-class families. They were well-dressed and well-fed. Like prior generations, France’s young people sought to channel their aspirations and energy, yet there were no wars to win or battles to fight. So, in May-June of 1968, thousands of students engaged in violent demonstrations in France. They criticized capitalism and the “bourgeois society of consumption,” called for solidarity with “oppressed people of the third world” fighting against colonialism, and demanded guarantees of employment after college. The ultra-left radical groups such as the “Gauchistes” protested against “the bourgeois university” and “the bourgeois society” and called for revolution. The protesters were eventually coopted by Marxist groups and the French Communist party. Unfortunately for France, many of the proposals of the protesters were eventually enacted, and even worse, many of the students themselves eventually became French bureaucrats, and are thus responsible for much of the economic quagmire France now finds itself in today.

Should Hong Kong capitulate to the protestors, today’s students could become tomorrow’s bureaucrats.

A strikingly similar situation is unfolding in Hong Kong. Students are protesting against a system that has propelled their society from being a backwards fishing village to one of the most economically prosperous and technologically advanced in the world. Do those students really want unfettered democracy? Do they understand democracy beyond liberal platitudes? So far, what the ongoing unrest has demonstrated is that these people are protesting against the key principles upon which Hong Kong is built on–free markets and non-democratic governance according to the rule of law. By their continuing unrest and blockage of the city center, these people are only damaging the economy of Hong Kong. They have undermined operations of local businesses, paralyzed shopping districts, hurt Hong Kong’s international reputation, and, lastly, harmed Hong Kong’s international competitiveness. A recent Bloomberg survey predicts that such a situation “will push the city’s full-year economic growth to the lower end of the government’s forecast range.” It is no accident that the protesters have called their movement “Occupy Central” as a tribute to Occupy Wall Street.

The Hong Kong protesters should look at their neighbors in Thailand to see how universal suffrage ultimately turns out. There, an educated and prosperous minority is now rioting against a government of corrupt populists and swindlers. How did they come to power? Through universal suffrage, whereby a poor and illiterate majority voted for the politicians who promised the most free stuff and greater equality. Unfortunately, the young and ambitious Hong Kong demonstrators are enthralled by naïve and romantic ideas of “democracy,” and they don’t fully realize what it entails.

Fortunately for the future of Hong Kong, not everyone has been seduced by democracy. A major recent opinion survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong residents thought protesters should clear the streets. Only 1 in 3 Hong Kong residents support the protests, and almost half say they oppose the unrest. So far, the older generation has demonstrated that they have learned a bitter lesson from socialist revolutions worldwide and that they follow news from neighboring populist “democracies,” including Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Business leaders, parents of the protestors, and political leaders of both Mainland China and Hong Kong remain circumspect and realistic in their interpretation of the potential consequences of universal suffrage –the current leader Leung Chun-ying openly admitted that open elections would give poor people a dominant voice in politics, bringing Hong Kong closer to the adage popularized by P.J. O’Rourke: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.”

The post Hong Kong: If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It appeared first on Social Matter.

In New York alone, 400,000 people jammed the streets. In the aftermath, the participants boasted on their Facebook pages and blogs: “Epic is too weak a word to describe the NYC ‪#PeoplesClimate ’march‘. It was big big BIG. City = shutdown”, “Thanks for the best weekend, NYC! I marched with 400,000 people to save the planet!”, “The latest count says 400,000 people to save the planet! Almost half a million people demanding climate action” and so on. New York City’s downtown area closed for the entire day. The protesters marched on Broadway, Times Square, and Wall Street with banners that read: “Keep the oil in the ground”, “Tax Wall Street – End climate change”, “disrupt fossil fuels”, “US out of Asia Pacific. No Free Trade!”, “Tax carbon”, “End capitalism before it ends us (and the planet!)”, “End Corporate Colonization”, “Capitalism is Killing the Planet! Fight for a Socialist Future!”, “Capitalism vs the planet. The case for ecosocialism”, “Capitalism has NO solutions to climate change”, and “End Capitalism – Save the planet”, etc.

As USAToday reports, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, who was one of the speakers at the march, published her latest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, last week. In her book, she describes the debate over climate change as a clash between “deregulated capitalism” and the welfare of mankind. “It’s part of the same story, the same logic,” she said on MSNBC last week. “It is the result of an ideology,” she says, “that values nothing but profit.” Effective action against climate change requires the type of government regulation that undermines the free market ideology currently driving companies, Wall Street, and — to the extent that politicians are hostage to big-money interests — Washington. “We need to break a whole bunch of the free market rules that these guys hold very dear,” she told Chris Hayes in the television interview. “We need to regulate.” This was DiCaprio’s message to the UN assembly as well.
In other words, according to Green activists, greedy Wall Street capitalists and manufacturers are to blame for the global warming, pollution, climate change, disastrous hurricanes, droughts and floods.

Geneticist Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene” (1976) writes that in the living world, a gene is a replicator, whereas its carrier – an organism – is a vehicle. By the same token, the social world also has its own vehicles (people) and genes. Dawkins calls them “memes”. Both genes and memes are replicators – they will act purposefully for their own survival. A meme is a form of information or knowledge that replicates itself in the human society in the most advantageous fashion to itself, sometimes at the expense of a society. A group of interacting memes is called a memeplex. It replicates itself and thereby promotes a certain idea through the society irrespective of how much value it adds to the society. Like genes, memes may be useful, harmful, or neutral. Useful memes benefit the society. They can include skills, scientific innovations, discoveries in medicine, etc. Neutral memes may include linguistic units such as stories, songs, or idiomatic expressions. Harmful memeplexes are sometimes called “mind viruses”. On a societal scale it could be ideologies, religions, or mental epidemics. Just as a virus replicates itself in other’s body and ultimately kills its host, “mind viruses” take hold of the society and eventually kill it.

Generally speaking, harmful memeplexes are a complex combination of memetic “amino acids” – the constituents of a “mental protein” that allows the resulting memes to hold a strong grip over society. To sustain itself, such a harmful memeplex creates a group of people whose status and welfare depend on how quickly the memeplex takes root in the society – at the expense of the society’s well-being. After libertarian Russian journalist Yulia Latynina, I would call such a destructive memeplex a “yellow sky syndrome.” It is common knowledge that the sky, by and large, is blue. As such, if you tell people that the sky is blue, people will rarely create a group to support and propagate the idea of a blue sky.  Similarly, you could scientifically explain why the sky is blue, thereby creating new knowledge and contributing to human society, however, you would barely boost your personal status and prestige. To the contrary, if you tell people that the sky is yellow, but some bad people have colored it blue, you will most certainly find adherents who would believe that sky being blue is violation of their most basic rights and that the sky should be restored to its natural color. With such an approach to the sky issue, you will most likely strengthen your status – as a leader of a “yellow sky” movement and as an ardent fighter for justice. The notion of “yellow sky” is not a spontaneous locution. In China, 184-204 A.D., a series of “yellow band” riots actually took place. Dao prophets, the leaders of the riots, promised that if the rebels won, the sky would turn yellow. Hence, the color of the rebels’ bands.

By and large, “yellow sky” memeplexes are suicidal for the society. They consolidate status and power in favor of a small group of people at the expense of the majority, and so in the long run, destroy the society. The idea of global warming is a great illustration of the “yellow sky” memeplex. To obtain power and popularity one needs only to convince the masses that all of society’s misfortunes stem from “climate change”.
A close study of climate change, average global temperature fluctuations, as well as floods, droughts and other natural phenomena, suggest an incredibly complex interplay between underlying causes. Alas, masses won’t take interest in it. An elaborate scientific study with hard to analyze numbers are simply too much for an ordinary citizen. People at large are either unwilling or unable to wrap their heads around such complex issues. People are much more inclined to view themselves as victims in the hands of greedy exploiters, and in response, demand execution of the evil party and compensation for themselves.

Ideology is one mechanism used to maintain power. An ideology which explains humanity’s role in the universe, which the masses believe and which they proselytize, is called a religion. Religion doesn’t need materialistic evidence; it solely needs to be emotionally attractive and compelling. Dawkins singles out another category of the religious memeplex and calls it “faith”. For Dawkins, “The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.” In the early 20^th century, socialism was such a faith. Socialist intellectuals would propagate that capitalism is evil, and that capitalists and bankers exploit poor people and steal their money. “Abolish private property and we will have a better society,” they preached. The Russian Bolsheviks demonstrated the logical result following the elimination of property and markets. Today, environmentalism is a massive religion that blames capitalists and scientists for all the disasters that modern society struggles with, including global warming.

Skeptics are inevitably called names and treated as evil heretics. A civic religion based on faith, not reason, turns society on its head – a belief that would largely be considered lunacy in one person alone, suddenly gains universal support. Speaking of environmentalism as a religion, Michael Crichton emphasized that “one of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.”

Environmentalism, that is, ecological fundamentalism, along with Islamic fundamentalism, is an ideology that poses an existential threat. Eco-fundamentalism is widely considered to be respectable, even admirable. Its adherents teach at prestigious universities, write for newspapers of record, and implement policy as administrators within national and international bureaucracies. In the guise of international agreements, such as the Kyoto protocol and numerous UN summits, environmentalists are trying to promote the idea of global governance and the notion that they should decide how and what the rest of humanity should produce.

Recently, I had a conversation with a sustainable development bureaucrat. She worked in Kenya, Tanzania, and Romania. Here is a brief excerpt:

E: “Romania is a poor country with a predominantly traditional agrarian economy. Life is hard there.”
Sonja: “So the farming should be mechanized? Might Romanians need to be assisted with imports of fertilizers and machines and attract more foreign companies to produce farming equipment?”
E: “I’m not an expert in technology – I don’t know what they need exactly, but I think it’s nice that they use traditional forms of farming. It’s bad when everything is mechanized.”

Such was the extent of her knowledge of actual “development.” These days, the Greens are trying to install a sense of sin in us for using chemistry, biotechnology, and other basic science. Environmentalists have gone so far in their critique of human progress to make terms like “private business” and “venture capital” nearly synonymous with environmental destruction and selfishness. No wonder that Sunday’s “Flood Wall Street” march suggested such tactics as burning down the homes of Wall Street executives and politicians and smashing buildings as ways to combat climate change.

Being skeptical of the ecological fundamentalism, I’m not claiming that there are no global ecological problems. To the contrary, there are plenty of problems. But the vast majority of them are of local character. In fact, the most enduring problems are predominantly concentrated in poor, underdeveloped counties. Meanwhile, environmental activists are fighting against abstract problems of a very generic character such as climate change, global warming, and the greenhouse effect. Ironically, the people protesting and “fighting” global warming in their rich and technologically advanced countries are the ones whose industries have already started to adopt safe and low carbon methods of production.

At the same time, Sub-Saharan Africa is in the midst of an ecological catastrophe.The continent, whose population is set to more than double from the current 900 million to 2.1 billion by 2050, and to quadruple to 3.9 billion by the end of this century, is on the verge of dire shortages of drinking water. Another ecological catastrophe is the deforestation and soil erosion of Haiti, with its population density of 367 people per square kilometer. Finally, an ecological catastrophe is when you have a country like India, with over 3,000 towns and cities, only 209 have partial sewage treatment facilities, only 8 have full wastewater treatment facilities, and over 100 cities dump untreated sewage directly into the Ganges River.

All these problems could be effectively solved by technology and demographic control. Should eco-activists go to Haiti (instead of marching in the streets of New York or drinking coffee in their Paris offices) and fight the eco-challenges there, they would soon find out that their problems could be tackled with fertilizers, insecticides, genetically modified plants, and building of power plants. In other words, most problems could be easily solved with the very technological progress and scientific inventions, against which the Greens have been fighting. Environmentalists almost universally believe that global warming is the direct result of heavy industries with excessive carbon dioxide emissions, in addition to oil extraction. “No fracking! No Canadian oil sands!”, “Yes to renewable energy!”, they chanted in the streets on Sunday. Yet at the same time, they reject the best solution to the problem, which is nuclear power. Essentially, environmentalists don’t address the core problem, human well-being, because they simply overlook it. What they are calling for, instead, is to get “back to nature”.

How exactly does “back to nature” work in practice? How do we return to an agrarian economy? In reality, the agrarian economy is the most destructive form of economic organization ever developed. The agrarian civilization cuts forest, salinizes soil, turns a rice-terrace into a hotbed for malaria mosquitos. Besides that, there are 7 billion people on the planet today. It is impossible to feed all of them using traditional farming. Such countries as North Korea, Haiti, and Rwanda still practice almost exclusively organic farming – with no improved seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. 84% of North Korean households have “borderline” or “poor” levels of food consumption; 67% of Haitian population “goes without food some days”, and in Rwanda, 43% of the children are chronically malnourished. People in these countries practice primitive forms of agriculture not because their citizens are environmentally ”conscious,” but because they lack both the technology and fertilizers to improve their yields.

In Rwanda, for instance, the competition for free land resulted in genocide in 1994. Arduous March, the North Korean famine, killed between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans from 1994 to 1998. It is universally acknowledged that these countries are zones of extreme ecological risks. Traditional agricultural economy can only be effective once it yields enough time for the land to recover. It is only possible when the population pressure on the land is weak. If the population pressure is high, it will destroy the local environment and sometimes cause cannibalism amongst the population.

In fairness, there are indeed societies that use no technology and thus do not alter their environment. They don’t contribute to global pollution and climate change. They live in precisely the way eco-activists advocate – in harmony with nature. The Bedouins in the Arabian Desert enjoy symbiotic coexistence with camels and goats, practice polygamy and use slave labor. The Inuit tribes, indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic region, practice infanticide, polygamy, and infant marriages. Their elderly who are a burden to their relatives “are put to death by stabbing or strangulation”. Natives of Papua New Guinea engage in cannibalism and institutionalized pedophilia.

Back to the climate change concerns. The Earth has been around for approximately 4.5 billion years. 3.8 billion years ago, life on it began. Throughout all this time, the climate has been changing. Even the atmosphere doesn’t remain the same. Early life contributed to the most dramatic changes in the planet’s biosphere – the so called “Great Oxygen Event”. The atmosphere at the time was composed of methane, ammonia, and oxygen dioxide. Cyanobacteria, which appeared about 2.5 billion years ago, began producing oxygen by photosynthesis. Following the GOE, free oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere completely changing the flora and fauna the Earth could support.

The Earth didn’t start suddenly getting warmer in the 20^th century. During the Jurassic era, the North Pole was warm enough for tomatoes to grow. In 982 A.D., Eric the Red, an Icelandic Viking, discovered lands to the north of Iceland and called them “Green land” because the lands were green and had flourishing grape vines. In the 14^th century, the climatic optimum was taken over by a minor Ice Age, which ushered in the 1315-1317 famine and dramatically decreased the population of Europe. By early 17^th century, Europe got warmer again. However, during 1645 to 1715, the world suffered from the cold, yet again. Despite the assertions of eco-activists about constantly rising temperatures, since 1998, however, the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that global temperature has actually been flat.

Long story short, there is no doubt that climate change is occurring. Does it occur as a direct outcome of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere? That remains a complex debate. Simply blaming manufacturers and scientists for all global problems is a naïve fantasy. It is also naïve to assume that we have final control over climate and the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

The climate is a very complex system that is affected by numerous factors, including long-term internal oscillation in the ocean and the atmosphere, the composition of the ozone layer, the variations in solar output, tectonic activity levels, etc. Changes in the climate have been caused not solely by humankind since the Industrial Revolution onwards. Reducing a complex problem to carbon dioxide levels is simplistic at best. If policymakers make their decisions based on such a myopic vision of the climate and environment situation, they are going to miss opportunities to deal with far more serious problems of humanity – such as vulnerability to hurricane landfalls, potential water shortages, deforestation and land erosion – the issues which have the largest socio-economic impact.

Thus far, the most terrifying ecological problem is, in fact, poverty caused by population pressure on the land and its resources, lack of property rights, and the lack of high technology in the developing world.

The post Which Presents the Greater Threat to Civilization: Global Warming Or Ecological Fundamentalism? appeared first on Social Matter.

Michael Brown was a product of teenage parents, his mother and father being 16 and 18 at the time of his birth, respectively. He was raised by a mother and stepfather. He socialized with gangs, played video games, and dabbled in drugs, not uncommon activities for a black lower-class North County teen. “He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor,” reports the New York Times. He barely “overcame early struggles in school to graduate on time” – quite an achievement given that in America, only 67% Black students finishes high school on time. Once on summer vacation, rather than taking a menial part-time job at the local Walmart, Brown instead preferred smoking pot and robbing local convenience stores.

Johnson, Brown’s accomplice and subsequently the primary eyewitness to his shooting, has a noteworthy background in his own right. Currently, Johnson is wanted in Jefferson City, MO, on a 2011 theft charge. He is also being prosecuted for filing a false police report that same year. Johnson allegedly gave a bogus name and age to investigators in the case. Keeping in mind that Johnson is in the habit of lying to authorities, he is nevertheless trusted by the rioting crowds, their sympathizers, the leftist media and, most importantly, by Brown’s attorney.

Now, back to the story. After the shopkeeper was robbed, he called the police, and police officer Darren Wilson was dispatched. Meanwhile, Brown and his friend were walking down a street – or rather, in the middle of a street, to be more precise – when Darren Wilson intercepted them and told them to get on the sidewalk. The young men ignored the order. What happened next is unclear. The versions greatly diverge here – ranging from the testimony given by Johnson, who was hiding behind the police car at the crucial moment, to bystanders, and finally Officer Wilson himself. I tend to believe the following sequence of events, as put forth by Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson. As the officer started to get out of the car to question the two young men, they shoved him back in and Brown started beating the officer. Wilson tried to pull Brown into the squad car.

In response, Brown physically assaulted the officer, punched his face, and began struggling with him for his gun. Now imagine for a second – a 6-foot-4, 292-pound man (which are exactly Brown’s parameters) beating a police officer, a medium-sized man. The officer was nearly beaten unconscious and was left with severe facial injures including a bone fracture near one eye. Brown refused to get into the squad car and instead started to run away, which prompted the officer to draw his gun and order Brown to raise his hands. Brown refused to follow the order and instead started putting down his arm. The police officer was unaware whether Brown had a gun on him or not. Keep in mind that the young gentleman was high and had recently physically engaged with a shopkeeper just minutes before the encounter with the police. When Brown charged Officer Wilson, the officer unleashed a torrent of bullets to stop the apparent threat.

The shooting angered the predominantly Black community and sparked three nights of violent protests. The riots were generally driven by mass sentiments that could be boiled down to “racist White cops just killed another innocent unarmed black teenager!” Such sentiment was immediately followed by the idea that “racist Whites are discriminating and harassing us poor, honest people of color.”  The crowds broke store windows, looted, vandalized, and set fire to buildings. The angry people also taunted police and assaulted journalists. More than three-dozen people have been arrested. In other words, to protest their unfair treatment at the hands of racist White cops, Blacks spent several days destroying the very businesses that serve their community. While this was transpiring, official Black spokespeople publically insisted that White policemen view poor Blacks as potential criminals for no reason. Ironically, many felt that the best way to prove how unfairly discriminated against they were, was with arson and vandalism. It also bears mentioning that the overwhelming majority of the protesters were not Ferguson locals – they came from the nearby towns to “support” their neighbors. If only those people were similarly passionate about working or at least finding a job.

A scenario where a white policeman injures or kills a black man (“for no reason”) with a series of violent riots that follows is not unique. In fact, examples are worldwide and abound.

LA Riots 1992

Rodney King, a black multiple convict and crackhead was stopped and beaten by the Los Angeles police, which resulted in days-long public unrest and millions of dollars damages to local businesses.

March 3^rd, 1991, Mr. King is driving his car with two passengers around LA. The Police attempted to pull him over for speeding. Instead, King stomped the gas pedal to avoid arrest for driving while intoxicated. During the chase he reached speeds as high as 115 miles per hour. The police chased him, forced his car to the side of the road and ordered him to get out. King resisted, and the policemen started beating him. Besides being drunk, King was likely under some drug, because he was giggling at the policemen while they tried to handcuff him. At that point some passersby pulled out his video camera and started videotaping the scene of the beating. The video got spread across national TV-channels and provoked an immediate reaction. The mixed race jury found the officers not guilty in an 8-2 verdict. Soon thereafter, the locals, mostly Black, began rioting. 53 people died during the uprising, over 2,000 were injured, while damages to private property exceeded $1 billion.

Poor oppressed Rodney, who was beaten by cops for no reason in the middle of the road, got $3.8 million in compensation, money that he immediately wasted on drugs and alcohol. In between his stays in rehabs, poor oppressed Rodney repeatedly got involved into multiple car accidents. Once, while drunk, he drove over his wife, another time he crashed his car into his own house breaking his tailbone. Another time he engaged in a hit and run. Ultimately, King drowned in his own swimming pool, or maybe was murdered by his fiancé; it’s unclear.

Oakland Riots 2009

A wave of riots engulfed Oakland, California, in 2009, after a white policeman shot and killed Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed Black man. On January 1^st, 2009, following “a night of celebrating New Year’s Eve in San Francisco,” Mr. Grant traveled on the BART back to the East Bay. In response to reports of fighting on a BART train, police detained Oscar Grant and a few other passengers at Fruitvale Station. Grant resisted arrest and “appeared to be moving one arm toward the waistband of his pants,” prompting Officer Mehserle to decide to subdue him with a Taser. The officer instead accidentally drew his pistol, fatally shooting Mr. Grant with a single bullet.

Following the death, Oakland erupted with riots. “Rioters, some dressed in black and wearing black masks, smashed shop and car windows, helped themselves to goods ranging from jewelry to groceries and trainers, and attacked police lines. Journalists were also attacked,” the Guardian reports. As many as a thousand rioters descended on downtown Oakland, raiding Foot Locker, a jewelry store, a pawn shop, a beauty shop, a Sears store, a Subway sandwich shop, and a Whole Foods store. More than 100 people were arrested during the riots. The angry, mostly Black mob, raged, accusing the police of racism, mass incarceration, and brutality.

The liberal press unanimously depicted Oscar as the most innocent and kind young man with a bright outlook. As a boy, he would “open up in prayer in front of the congregation,” recalled Oscar’s mother. “He took pleasure in helping people in small ways.” He wanted to become a barber. “He just wanted to change his whole life,” said Grant’s girlfriend, also a mother of his 4-year-old daughter. As an aside, again we see a pattern of unmarried, teenage parents. And as in other cases: another innocent Black life ended by a racist White cop. An angel, deprived of everything – of his life, of his family, of his dear dream to become a barber. Understandable that the rioters were chanting “Justice for Oscar!”
Consider a few other choice moments from Oscar’s biography, which again have been painstakingly ignored by liberal journalists, that might explain how and why he found himself handcuffed face down on a BART platform.

Oscar Grant was born to a single mother, because his father was already in jail serving a life sentence for murder. Grant dropped out of high school and was arrested five times between age 18 and his death, records show, spending a total of nearly two years behind bars. In 2006, Grant was stopped by the police while illegally carrying a loaded handgun. Grant turned to flee, but the officers used their Taser to stop him. Despite being tased, he still required a kick to subdue when he refused to put his hands behind his back. Witnesses on a train before the fatal shooting said Grant had been in an altercation, described as either a scuffle or a fight, over little more than pride – with another Black man, whom prosecutors identified as David Horowitch, a man that had once served time with Grant.

London Riots 2011

North of London, August 4^th, 2011. Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black drug dealer and a senior member of Tottenham Man Dem gang (which traded in violence, intimidation, and drugs) collected a BBM Bruni model 92 blank-firing replica handgun from Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, another drug dealer. He got into a minicab and headed back to Tottenham. Police started to chase him. Duggan’s cab was pulled over. Refusing to obey the police officers, Duggan attempted to escape and pulled the gun from his sock. The police officers shot and killed him. “What an appalling example of racism and police brutality! Those bloody Whites have apparently declared open season on Black men!” cried the crowd in the aftermath. Might not some context regarding the innocent “peacemaker” Mark Duggan help? Eight years before his death, Duggan was repeatedly arrested for a range of serious crimes, including murder, attempted murder, and a range of firearms offences. The gangster was said to have shot a reveler in a crowded nightclub on Christmas 2010, and fired shots in a car park outside a club in February the following year. Quite a typical English gentleman, isn’t he? Somehow, commentators thoroughly ignore these facts.

Duggan’s death sparked several days of riots in London and across much of the UK. The rioters blamed the state authorities for institutionalization of racism and decried the brutality of Scotland Yard. The angry predominantly Black mob set buildings on fire, threw bottles at patrol police cars and then set them alight. Angry crowds looted local stores, pushing trolleys full of goods – “They owe us! They are racist and believe we are prone to violence!” In the end, more than 500 people were arrested, at least 111 police officers were injured, a 68-year-old man was killed when trying to prevent the violent outbreak, and several buildings were burned to the ground.

Riots in East Flatbush, Brooklyn 2013

Kimani Gray, a 16-year old Black (also known as Kiki), was shot dead in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, on March 10, 2013. Walking back home from a party, he separated himself from a group of other young men to allegedly adjust his waistband and was stopped by two undercover police officers. In response to the officer’s remarks, the teenager turned and pointed a .38 Special Röhm revolver at them. The officers fired and fatally injured the man. Following the standard pattern, Gray’s death ignited violent clashes with angry protesters in East Flatbush. The Flatbush residents, predominantly of Jamaican and Afro-Carribean descent, marched on the streets tossing bottles at cops and looting local businesses for four subsequent days. The Church Farm Market was ransacked by a mob that stole money and destroyed produce. At U Farm Land, CBS New York reported that, “produce was thrown and $1,000 from the register and flowers were taken,” a Rite Aid was looted, and at least 46 people were arrested. The shooting again was clearly an assault by “racist policemen” on an innocent, unarmed young man of color. Actually, despite his young age, Kiki had already scored a notable criminal record, including charges for breaking into a car, possession of stolen property, grand larceny, and rioting.

Additionally, Gray was a member of the infamous Bloods, a dominant gang in Brooklyn. “He didn’t have no gun,” said Mark King, a witness who also lives on Kimani’s block. “The cops planted a gun on him.” Yeah, right. It was out of question that the revolver was recovered from the scene. Additionally, the officers were themselves minorities. One was a dark-skinned Egyptian, who identified himself as Black, and the other was Hispanic.

Conclusion

By and large, all the earlier riots carry one and the same quintessential edifice: “racist Whites are harassing us, people of color.” Sharing their sentiments, the progressive media complains how America is cruel and unjust towards its minorities. The dominant left-liberal interpretation can be paraphrased to the following: “White America bears infinite guilt for prior discrimination and enslavement of its minorities. Even today, when people of color have finally found some peace, once they step outdoors they immediately risk being gunned downed by the Wilsons and Zimmermans of America.”

The picture that the preceding anecdotes paint, however, is not that White cops are waging a racist war against Black men. The problem remains: people who fail to integrate into a modern civilized society, who fail to even take steps towards such a goal through honest work and respect of the law. To make matters worse, such an indolent lifestyle is encouraged by the state itself. The state disincentivizes work, discourages stable two-parent households, and tries to use public schools as a replacement for effective parenting. Unfortunately, the people most affected by these policies are the Black and Hispanic underclass.

The preceding should not be seen as attempt to completely exonerate the American police from the excesses well-documented by Radley Balko. The American police clearly suffer from a competence problem. Three of the more common types of accidental killings by policemen occur from either poor judgment, poor gunhandling skill, or poor marksmanship. Almost weekly we see nervous cops shooting people making “furtive movements” aka reaching for their cellphone, wallet, keys, or ID card. Also, as in the Oscar Grant shooting, officers drawing their service weapon rather than their Taser have fatally shot suspects on multiple occasions. Finally, police marksmanship is abysmal. Recall the recent shooting at the Empire State Building, during which the police accidentally shot and wounded 9 people while trying to stop one armed individual.

Looking back at the Michael Brown riots, even if you view them as a righteous response to police brutality, what is next for Ferguson?  It brought about irreversible damage to numerous local businesses, whose owners are most likely to flee the area and settle in safer neighborhoods. The remaining shops will likely raise their prices to compensate for the risk of operating in such a climate, making matters even worse for the locals. The remaining Whites of Ferguson who see the handwriting on the wall will move away. The consequences of the demographic replacement of Whites by Blacks can be explicitly seen by “thriving” examples such as Detroit, Gary, Birmingham, Newark, and Camden.

Lastly, instead of breaking negative stereotypes by having civil protests, waiting until evidence is gathered,and respecting the rule of law, Ferguson residents have rioted, proclaimed the guilt of Officer Wilson, and threatened further insurrection should Wilson’s Grand Jury return an unfavorable ruling. Thus by their own actions, the rioting Blacks of Ferguson are only boosting their stereotype as uncivilized brutes.

The post Looking Back And Wrapping Up: A Brief History Of Black Hooliganism And Rioting appeared first on Social Matter.

At times, the tolerance of Westerners seems to exceed all reasonable limits. Here are a few concrete examples.

Instances of truculent behavior on the subway abound. A drunk and disheveled man will enter the subway car and start loudly cursing, sometimes addressing specific people – for no obvious reason. The entire car falls silent. No one dares to confront him, call the police, or otherwise attempt to dispose of him. Each person sits quietly and pretends that there is no crazy man shouting in his face.

Sometimes a troglodyte enters the subway car with a boombox blaring loud music. He passes station after station.  New people come on the train and hear the music but not a single person dares to challenge the boor. Passengers turn aside, set their noses deeper in their books, and put on their headphones rather than stand tall and simply hit the off button.

The third example is fresh in timing and outrageous in its conduct – a woman washing her small dog in a drinking fountain of Central Park. In the video and the photo you see numerous people observing this situation while doing nothing. They stand and stare; no reproaches, no intervention. No one tells the woman what is acceptable and what is not.

Common spaces such as subways and parks have rules to protect both the safety of users and to codify norms against public nuisance.  Without rules and their vigorous enforcement, each user becomes an unwilling victim of whatever the indignity of the day happens to be.

At first glance, we might consider these annoying transgressions “minor” because they hurt no one in the long run.  But these small infractions in the aggregate lead to the breakdown of the social norms that enable tolerance in the first place. Many choose to ignore the nuisances out of narrow selfishness or aloofness or rationalize them within the framework of political correctness.

These attitudes ultimately lead to abuse on a much, much higher level. Eventually a educated, law-abiding, and tolerant minority works hard to pay half of their earnings to the government, which then subsidizes uneducated, unemployable, rude, and abusive Morlocks, who are allowed to run roughshod over the civilized. Some of the latter group even use racial animus to justify these types of behavior – in essence claiming it is payback for centuries of unjust white exploitation.

In America, the rapacious state seems particularly content to tax the civilized and subsidize the uncivilized. Public housing (“NYCHA projects”) in New York City demonstrates this clearly.  In order “to increase opportunities for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers by providing safe, affordable housing and facilitating access to social and community services,” New York City government moved lower-income residents out of slums and ghettos into decent housing closer to middle-class people.

In theory, middle class family values and work ethic were supposed to spread to their lower-income cohabitants. Yet in the past 40 years, social scientists and behavioral geneticists have obtained reams of evidence suggesting that behaviors are more immune to social experiments. Indeed, genetics play a much stronger role than environment in determining behavior. The notion that man is shaped primarily by his environment is a stringent myth held by both the right and the left.

Fifty years later, we are witnessing how “well” the values of the civilized have rubbed off on those who live in the projects. Merely overlay a map of recent homicides and a map of the City’s projects. On the NYCHA’s own map, the projects appear as red spots–one is almost reminded of a PET scan highlighting cancerous tumors that have spread across the city-body.

Besides the thousands of hardened criminals they house, the projects occupy approximately 5 sq. miles of the City (Manhattan by comparison is only 23 sq. miles), they account for 12.4% of the City’s rental stock (~180,000 apartments), and contain over 600,000 people (7.4 percent of New York City’s population). If the NYCHA were its own city, it would be the 21st most populous city in the nation, larger than Boston and Seattle. Are all these people employed by the world’s largest companies in midtown? Hard to believe. Do these people get up at six in the morning and go to the office? No. Over half of them receive government benefits and fewer than half work.

New York is the business and intellectual center of the Western Hemisphere; it attracts the brightest and hardest working people from all across the world – to work, create, and contribute to human flourishing. Yet, in part because of NYCHA, these young, bright, ambitious people have no place to live–a simple matter of supply and demand. As more such people arrive, absent an increase in the supply of housing, prices will rise. As a result, the prices for apartments in the City are staggeringly high and are barely affordable for a young professional who just started his career at Google, IBM, or a bank.

Long commutes and shoebox apartments are fine for an entry level employee. A few years go by, however, and the same employee now wants to raise a family, Manhattan becomes practically off-limits. The middle-class has to either move to the suburbs (where the commute becomes measured in hours) or cram a family in a small one-bedroom. Thus, instead of living in Harlem, which is in Manhattan and has a 12 minute ride to midtown by subway, this relatively large category of people instead relocates to a safer area outside the city and suffers through a two hour daily commute.

So, while many middle-class families and young professionals tolerate the commute, others instead pay $4000 a month for an apartment that resembles a walk-in closet while their neighbors in the projects pay $445 per month. On top of this obscene rent differential, imagine 20% rent increases and $8,000 broker’s fees. As if the discrepancy in rent were not enough, many NYCHA projects have $30 per month parking. Parking in Manhattan for taxpaying citizens costs $300-500 per month. Should not those parking spaces be leased to working citizens to at least defray the cost of subsidizing the projects?

Given the rampant crime and social decay, how much longer will those who “work for a living” tolerate those who “vote for a living”? Will people subject to anarcho-tyranny finally say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”?  If the “Camp of the Saints” really is our future, and the government forces “the privileged” to invite “the oppressed” into their homes, will they continue to pretend that “everything is fine”?

Realistically speaking, change will be slow. The taxation system, welfare programs, and immigration policy won’t change favorably any time soon. However, each of us can do something on a day-to-day basis to remind people that they should respect themselves and those around them. Tolerance does not automatically imply submission to barbarism. If each and every harbinger of civilization stood up and expressed indignation with the ongoing boorishness and flouting of social norms – that would be a notable step forward.

The post To What Extent Can Our Tolerance Stretch? appeared first on Social Matter.