Mistrial issue takes the stage again

Be darned if I know any more what's going on in the Rittenhouse case.  There was an oral motion last week for a mistrial with prejudice to refiling, but no ruling and no further discussion during the arguments on Friday or Monday.  Suddenly today a written motion shows up, adding an explosive new claim:  that the prosecution withheld its HD version of some crucial FBI drone video and supplied the defense, the court, and the jury only with the blurry low-res version.  This post contains the HD version.

It's still not easy to see what happened, and the clearer video certainly doesn't support the prosecution's argument that Rittenhouse twisted around in a bizarre fashion for an instant to point his rifle at the Zimisky couple just before the final, fatal portion of the chase began.  Nevertheless, I hope the judge will react very forcefully indeed if he believes that the prosecution deliberately showed the jury a blurry version, particularly after all the nonsense about having its expert blow up a blobby portion of it to make its weird "provocation" argument.  It was bad enough that the video showed up on the eve of trial as it is.

It seems the judge has suggested he's going to hold off on ruling on the mistrial motion until the jury renders a verdict.  The speculation, which I think is reasonable, is that he doesn't want to take the decision from the jury as long as it's possible they'll acquit.  A jury acquittal would be better for the country than a judicial interference--unless it's a conviction or even hung jury procured by prosecutorial fraud.  Since the defense has done no wrong, there's no problem with this unequal treatment.

The red circle is drawn around the pursuer, Rosenbaum.  Rittenhouse is to the left, about to get cornered in the pack of cars before he turns and shoots Rosenbaum as Rosenbaum is catching up and lunging at him.

An Islamic Confucianism

A paper recently awarded the Aristotle prize points to a largely unstudied tradition of metaphysics in the west of what is now China. 

Scholars have written much about the Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and his attempts to make Christianity and Confucianism palatable to each other. Yet, although Muslim communities have a long-established presence in China, we know little about the philosophical system that blended Islam and Confucianism in the heart-minds of Chinese Muslims. A careful search into the history of Chinese philosophy reveals a rich, fascinating, but hitherto understudied philosophical tradition indigenous to China, the Han-Kitab 汉克 塔布(a Chinese-Arabic compound literally meaning “the Chinese books”). In this groundbreaking project, I set out to investigate the creationist theory developed by Wang Daiyu, the earliest and one of the most influential figures in the Han-Kitab. My central undertaking is to provide a systematic analysis of Wang’s appropriation of two neo-Confucian concepts to articulate a creationist account of the origin of being: the Non-Ultimate ( wuji ⽆极 ) and the Great-Ultimate ( taiji 太极). My analysis shows these two Ultimates in Wang’s system are quite different in nature from their neo-Confucian counterparts. Deeply influenced by Sufism, Wang embeds the two Ultimates within an emanativist ontology, thereby offering a distinct model of the Ultimates from neo-Confucians’. I argue that in so doing, Wang makes a significant contribution to the history of Chinese metaphysics.

An 'emanativist' account, as she calls it, is an account of creation similar to (and probably ultimately derived from) the Neoplatonic account of creation. This system was adapted for Islam by Avicenna in his metaphysics, which is the thirteenth book of his The Healing. Wang Diayu, who was fluent in Persian and Arabic and translated the great works of Islamic philosophy into Chinese, would certainly have known of it. 

Avicenna's basic account was also adopted to Catholicism by St. Thomas Aquinas and others, and as such brings this full circle with the Catholic attempt to address Confucianism with which she begins. As it was also adapted for Judaism by Maimonides and others, this mode of thinking about how the world came to be has a claim to be the most important and widely-accepted one.

The basic way that it works in Neoplatonism is that originally all is One, and the One (which you will remember from our reading of the Parmenides -- see the sidebar if you want a refresher) is in an important sense the only real being. The One emanates the rest of creation when the One decides to examine itself, which necessitates a division between the part that is thinking, and the part that it is examining and thinking about. Such a division ends up creating more divisions as the thoughts proliferate: categories like good and bad are created, and number comes to be, and ordering these thoughts requires further divisions. Eventually the idea of everything exists, and as a further way of exploring the nature of those ideas the world is created so the ideas can play out. (An example: imagine the Platonic Ideal of a lion. It is a masterful hunter; but it cannot hunt, because it is just an idea. So the Thinker decides to make a place where lions exist, and can exercise this essence in practice).

You can see how this initial division can readily model the two Confucian Ultimates she mentions. In Catholicism, the two are The Father and the Son, which need a third thing to hold them together in relationship, and that thing is the third person of the Trinity, and the beginning of Creation. 

If you would like to read her full paper, she has made it available online.

A Hundred Thousand Overdose Deaths

So reports the NYT. 

Maybe we're having another debate

 I remember my amazement when Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden of racism in a debate, only to accept the position of his Vice President later.  She laughed and shrieked, "It was literally a debate!"  Ace theorizes that she believes lying is a legitimate tactic in a political debate just as bluffing is a legitimate tactic in poker.

Apparently the coast is clear to deploy the tactic again, as Harris complains that the bad white men around her "failed to position her for success."

I hate it when men fail to position me for success.  As Ace puts it, I deserve to have them hold the door for me and carry me over the threshold, so I can be a star in my own right.

Any landing you can swim away from

 I stole the line from one of my neighbors, commenting on this small plane that went down in the small bay between us and the nearest small town.

We don't know what happened yet.  He was flying into our small community airport and lost power at the end of about an hour's flight, a mile or so from the runway.  He wasn't hurt so's you'd notice.  Apparently the fishing guide who was meeting him saw him going down and hotfooted it out to the bay to bail him out, so he didn't stay long in the only mildly cool water, still somewhere in the 70s.

Consideration: A Cookbook

Occasionally I have posted recipes here, recently for my barbecue sauce, several for chili and also several recipes for using datil pepper. I'm thinking of putting together a cookbook of my favorites, to include meat pies and breads, perhaps my mead recipe, and so forth and so on. Would any of you be interested in such a thing? I would probably self-publish it through Amazon like I did my other books. 

School Board Meetings Are Getting Spicy

I would never have thought that the local school board would turn out to be the most dangerous place in America, but lately people are being threatened with FBI investigations for attending them and opposing the bureaucrats.

This guy went a little further, suggesting that he has "a thousand soldiers" he'll be bringing to the next meeting. Now, I don't actually believe that he has any soldiers, not even metaphorical ones. He seems rather unhinged to be able to command the loyalty of a regiment-sized force that is not bound to him by any official military discipline. 

Still, who knows what the limits are here? PTAs across the country may transform into counter-revolutionary elements. These are strange times. 

"Everyone Takes a Beating Once in a While"

This is the standard they'd like to apply to all of us, not just Kyle. If you get attacked by Antifa or BLM, your duty is to take your licks. It's just part of life, getting beaten.

That's not the standard that our legislatures have set regarding self-defense. Nor is it in keeping with our legal traditions, nor our rights as free men and women. We do not have to submit to beatings. We have the right to defend ourselves from being beaten, even with rifles if necessary. That is the law, and these prosecutors are lying scoundrels of the worst sort. 

A Spectacular Collection of Lies

The prosecution's closing argument today in the Rittenhouse case fantastically misrepresented both the facts and the law. It is not the case -- contra the prosecution -- that you give up your right to self-defense by virtue of having brought a gun. The main reason most citizens carry guns who do is to provide themselves with an option for self-defense. The law fully supports defending yourself against criminal harm, including with lethal force if a reasonable person would fear death or grievous bodily harm from the criminal violence. 

Likewise, there is no standard whereby 'bringing a gun to a fistfight' is even wrong. It's tactically wise, and perfectly legal given that no one is obligated to submit to being made a party to a fistfight without his permission. Kyle didn't go there to fistfight. He went to put out fires and render medical aid. 

Furthermore, it wasn't 'a fistfight.' Testimony established that Kyle was fired upon, and one of the witnesses admitted pointing a gun at Kyle's head. One of the prosecution's witnesses!

Don't even get me started on the prosecutor pointing a rifle at the jury without even checking it to be sure it was unloaded. He should have been arrested on the spot. That's how people get shot -- ask Alec Baldwin. 

This has been a travesty. How is it acceptable for a prosecutor to lie to the jury about the legal standards, or the facts in evidence? These aren't matters of interpretation. They're black letter law, or matters proven by undisputed eyewitness testimony.

Fake News Today

DB: Draft dodgers vote to make women register for the draft.

BB: 'Kamala Harris is extremely likeable and good at her job,' announces Psaki for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Actually, that last one's not fake. I don't think the first one is either.

Georgia Ballots Missing

The ballot images created by the electronic Dominion systems in almost half of Georgia’s counties have been destroyed, in spite of Federal laws requiring keeping them for approximately two years. 

Satire or Prophecy?

Hard to tell, these days. From the prophets at SNL, The Bubble:

And in just one example of the prophecy being fulfilled, NYPD Cops Settling Into Florida Nicely.

Happy Birthday, Sandhal Bergman

She is 70. In 1982, she played Valeria in a film of some renown. 

Brilliant solution

In what is proving to be the standard cognitive avoidance technique, pioneered by the Commander in Chief, one of my neighbors first objected that the $450K number was ridiculous and demanded to know where I got it, then did a quick search and came back to change her argument to "But you know they actually deserve it." Either way, Mr. Cruz's proposal is sound: pay them with Hunter Biden paintings. Win-win.

Nailed it

Admitting Rittenhouse acted in self-defense means admitting the fiery but mostly peaceful protest in Kenosha was really just a straight-up riot. That's why a large part of the American public can't allow the thought to intrude on their consciousness.

Diversity is Our Greatest Weakness

The United States Marine Corps, which just got its ass handed to it by the British Royal Marines in a major wargame, has decided that the biggest problem facing it is a lack of diversity.

Now there's nothing wrong with losing a wargame, even catastrophically. That can mean that you have an opportunity to learn something about a weakness you hadn't suspected or noticed. That can only happen, however, if you are focused on learning those lessons. Combat effectiveness is what matters; this stuff is at best a distraction, and can become a poison. 

It's All Anyone Wants to Talk About

The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association and its JAMA network of other periodicals have published about 950 articles on race, racism, and racial and ethnic disparities and inequities in the past five years – about a third appearing in just the past year.

Isn't there a named medical condition whereby one becomes obsessed with something, to the exclusion of legitimately urgent matters? Allegedly there was a pandemic going on last year, but they found time for hundreds of articles about this stuff instead.  

"Now I Know Why You've Got So Many Rock Walls in this Country"

The quote is from The Quiet Man, but New England also has a lot of stone walls. 

WALK INTO A PATCH OF forest in New England, and chances are you will—almost literally—stumble across a stone wall....  estimates [are] that there are more than 100,000 miles of old, disused stone walls out there, or enough to circle the globe four times.

Who would build a stone wall, let alone hundreds of thousands of miles of them, in the middle of the forest? No one. 

Rather, they were built around farms that have fallen back into forest.

The supply of stone seemed endless. A field would be cleared in the autumn, and there would be a whole new crop of stones in the spring. This is due to a process known as “frost heave.” As deforested soils freeze and thaw, stones shift and migrate to the surface. “People in the Northeast thought that the devil had put them there,” says Susan Allport, author of the book Sermons in Stone: The Stone Walls of New England and New York. “They just kept coming.”

This is also true here. There are a lot of rock walls on the mountain, where once there were cattle pastures. Now there is forest again, with a few groves of old apple trees marking where once someone's home stood.

Though the population continues to climb, we are over a demographic cliff in much of the world as birth rates drop below replacement levels. China, for example, is likely to have fewer people than the United States by the end of the century.  It will be interesting, for those who come after, to wander in the renewed wilderness where once were farms -- neighborhoods -- cities. 

This racism stuff is hard

Maybe I need to get my hearing checked, because I'm having trouble detecting the dog whistles.

Fifth Circuit stays the vax mandate

States have extensive public health powers. It's less clear that the feds do, and even less clear that OSHA has the power to enforce a vaccination mandate, let alone the particular mandate the White House came up with. This is not a final ruling, however, and no matter how clearly it expresses the views of a 3-judge panel, we don't know yet how it will fare en banc or in the Supreme Court.