The Vital Issue, Redux III

 This issue becomes more important with every election, especially in the United States post-Dobbs.  I've published this post twice before, here and here, but as it's fallen off the front page, and it's an election year, I think it's time to post it again.

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 Ludwig von Mises once said, "Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law."  My entire series, "Supply, Demand, and Price" is a catalog of sad examples of our rulers creating failures and tragedies by ignoring the laws of economics.

Unfortunately, these days our rulers are no longer content with pretending that only the laws of economics are subject to their control and revision.  They are trying to make the laws of biology subject to their will, as well.  And, like ignoring laws of physics and economics, this leads to tragedy and disaster.

Copybooks were the manuals used to teach children writing.  Back when Kipling wrote the poem referenced in my title, the exercises were basic moral doctrines.  

We Are Tin Ducks in a Shooting Gallery

 Even some liberals and Democrats are aghast at what has hppened, lately, to President Trump.  In the aftermath of the demonstrations and riots in Washington, DC, President Trump has been deplatformed and (for all practical purposes) censored, banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and his alternate platfrom, Parler, crushed in what certainly looks like action coordinated between Twitter (Parler's competition), Amazon (who owned the computers that Parler leased), and Google and Apple (Parler's distributors).

One liberal put the reason for her discomfort front and center:  "If they can do this to the most powerful man in the world, who or what can stop them if they decide to do it to us?"  And given how the revolution eats its own, it's a reasonable fear for those on all sides, not just those on the right.

So what do we do now?

First:  Get a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.  While his speculations about alternate marriage systems have been shown to be incompatible with real human nature, it contains a description of the best sort of network for a revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) organization devised yet to date.  

Second:  Download the latest version of The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, also known as TAILS Linux.  This will boot from a thumb drive on most hardware, connect to the Internet via multiple clients, using The Onion Router (TOR) to ensure that connections are anonymous.  It will also make sure that nothing you do is stored on the hardware you use.  It also bypasses any malicious software that may be on the system you use, but it would not bypass any malicious hardware, like keyloggers.

Third:  Learn and use GNU Privacy Guard, a free implementation of PGP.  Bear in mind the security-privacy axis:  The more secure your communications, the less likely they will be received quickly and accurately.

Finally:  If we do wind up with a Constitutional Convention, there's another idea that RAH put into The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- governments need to make deregulation and removal of bad laws easier, and to make the hasty passage of laws more difficult.  One suggestion that I rather like is an elected antilegislative body, whose members are only empowered to send repeals to the President's desk for signature or veto, and perhaps on less than a majority vote.  Another is to require at least a 60% supermajority to pass a law.

Some random thoughts on the passing scene.

One of the most infamous events in the rise of fascism in the previous century was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.  A bunch of German brownshirts went around in a planned riot, smashing the windows of their target minority group.  No doubt they said it was a righteous protest.

When somebody tells you "I am totally anti-fascist," while acting just like a fascist (for example, smashing windows and setting fires in an oppressed minority neighborhood), they are not just telling you a breathtaking, bald-faced insolent lie.  They are gaslighting you.  They are trying to make you lose hold of reality.  When they do this, you ought to ignore everything they say, and concentrate solely on what they do.  By their fruits you will know them.

When people start smashing windows and setting fires, you do not have a peaceful or even non-violent protest.  You have a riot.  When the window-smashing and fire-setting starts, it is time for all people of good will, who care at all about the community they are in, to leave and go home.  Leave the murderous, thuggish criminals out in the open, with no crowds to hide in, like a cockroach on a plate.  Let the cops round them up.  If they are smashing windows and setting fires, that proves that they hate you and everyone in your community.  They are your enemies.  Give them no aid and no comfort.  Let the cops have them.  Better yet, help the cops get them.

If President Trump is our first Jim Crow president, as Rebecca Hamilton says, he is doing a really bad job at it.  After all, the point of Jim Crow is to keep Blacks poor, disenfranchised, separated, and downtrodden. 

When an administration provides historically black universities and colleges with record funding (and at record durations), and oversees the lowest unemployment rates for blacks in decades, and sees blacks open 400% more small businesses in its first year than they had owned in the year prior, none of that helps keep blacks poor, ignorant, separated, disenfranchised, and downtrodden.  If that's a try at Jim Crow, it's a yuuuuuge fail.

The Carrot and the Stick

It is a truism of political science that there are two ways to get a mule to do what you want:  to use the carrot, or the stick.  These approaches are also applied to people, as broad terms to denote various enticements or threats.  Dale Carnegie pointed out that for the carrot to work, you must also be able to "arouse within another an eager want," that is, engage in salesmanship, and also that sticks are generally ineffective in the long term.

Bill Clinton was regarded as a master of offering carrots.  Better observers of political science than I have said so.  They also mention his reluctance to use the stick.  It really is no wonder that he got elected, as American electioneering is largely a matter of offering various carrots to people. 

The carrots that Donald Trump offered the electorate were largely tax cuts, deregulation, improved border security, and returning patriotism to a socially acceptable stance (something the Common Core standards for history largely make untenable).  The only sticks he really had to wave during the election were the policies of Barack Obama, and the history and character of Hillary Clinton, who was promising to expand them.

What I've observed about Donald Trump, especially when it comes to his foreign policy, is that he makes ready use of not only the carrot and the stick, but also salesmanship and showmanship, in order to get what he wants (e.g., an end to Chinese protectionism, which I support, as well as an end to Chinese dumping, which I do not), and often in rapid succession or even simultaneously.  He's done so in the contexts of NAFTA renegotiations, the China trade deal, and his attempts to get North Korea to denuclearize.  I don't care for all of his foreign policy goals, but I have to admire how straightforward and how effective he is in pursuing them.  And I think that part of that is due to his salesmanship and showmanship.


It hasn't always worked.  Many people were aghast when President Trump lavished praise and offered status to Kim Jong Un, but I saw it as an offer of some carrots (and fairly cheap carrots at that), combined with salesmanship and the possible offering of more carrots in the future. 

Admittedly, Iran has thus far mostly gotten the stick from President Trump.  The closest he's come to offering a carrot is to announce that he's ready to negotiate for peace, but only on his terms, particularly verification of their denuclearization.  But given the pallets of cash that the previous US President lavished upon the Iranian government, while getting very little for his constituents, Trump may have quite reasonably concluded that they were feeling too entitled to getting carrots from us while fomenting (at gunpoint, when necessary) demonstrations demanding "Death to America!"

Mercy, Compassion, and the Prodigal

I am a huge fan of These Stone Walls.  Fr. Gordon Macrae has an entirely unique point of view in the blogosphere -- a priest sent to jail, probably for life, for crimes of sexual abuse he did not commit.  His voice is consistently one of justice, mercy, and compassion.  He deserves your attention and prayers.

In this post (go read it first.  Go read it now.), he takes Raymond Arroyo and Laura Ingraham to task for their expressed desire that soon-to-be nonogenarian Theodore McCarrick be sent to jail for his crimes.  They argue that because McCarrick has not repented, he deserves no mercy.

Perhaps he doesn't, Fr. G will admit.  But he is eighty-nine years old.  The elderly and frail are treated very badly in prison by the young and thuggish who make up the majority of its population.  Justice perhaps need not offer mercy to the unrepentant, but compassion says we should not put a man who will soon be ninety into a population that greets those like McCarrick with chants of 'Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!'  And if we are not going to kill McCarrick ourselves, then it is unjust to put him among those whom we can reasonably foresee will do so without our sanction.

Read the comments too, where compassion is likewise extended to Arroyo and Ingraham.

You know, you could do worse

So we have the bad, instead of the worse.  That is only a bit of a relief.  In truth, I really have no idea how Mr. Trump is going to govern.  His current overview/summary is at www.greatagain.gov is largely heartening, and it deserves its own post.  He may actually deeply love America with an agape love, as he has said many times over the years.  But given his failures of Christian charity that the Clinton campaign was so at pains to show us, and his lack of Christian humility, this is not a man who deserves our unqualified support.  His actual policies will bear close scrutiny, and I expect a number of them will merit fierce opposition.

While it's possible that his governance will be even worse than what we could have reasonably expected from Mrs. Clinton, I regard that as unlikely, just because her predecessor set the bar so low, and every indication suggests that she would have been Progressively worse.

If there's anything I really hope the Clinton supporters take away from this election, it would be that they notice and remember how wildly the mainstream network news shows and mainstream news networks lied to promote their candidate and demonize her opponent, and how hard the social network sites like Google, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter worked to suppress the voices of Trump supporters and interfere with their ability to collaborate.  They are nothing like objective, fair, or balanced.  They are in the tank for their side, and they are more than willing to resort to propaganda and lies, because they have no standards.

If there's anything I hope that Republicans take away from this, it is that they have to go a lot further from the Democrat party's platform than they have been of late (for that matter, since I've been old enough to vote).  Trump did a LOT better with traditionally Democrat voters like Blacks, Hispanics, and the poor than Mitt Romney did (see this video), and probably better than any of the others he faced in the Republican primaries would have.  He didn't win majorities of any of these groups, but well enough that they swung a lot of battlefield states to Republican red instead of Democrat blue.  This ability to appeal to groups that are regarded as solidly Democrat is something he shared with Ronald Reagan.

I am not particularly surprised that Mr. Trump went after the Deplorable vote, in addition to the Pro-Life vote.  We will see which group(s) he decides to throw under the bus.  While we Pro-Lifers are probably on the short list, Trump's sudden abandonment of his "Prosecute Crooked Hillary" rhetoric suggests that the Hillary Derangement Syndrome Voters are already there, and so too, perhaps, the Deplorables.

The very funniest thing I've seen, and it made me laugh out loud, was an item on David Warren's antiblogue:  "I will hope he [Trump] is sufficiently Machiavellian to nominate Ted Cruz for the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court."

Oh, what a BRILLIANT maneuver that would be!  Cruz is an actual constitutional scholar, a man who has a collegial relationship with the rest of the Senate, the man to present the largest number of oral arguments to the SCOTUS, and it takes him out of the running for President in all future elections!!

Should the strong kill the weak?

I've discussed this issue before. 

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

Citizen vs. Subject

One of the reasons that gun controllers tend to wind up on the left is that they think that the masses should be subjects. They won't say it that way, but time and again, you'll see on the left an attitude that most problems should be handled by way of people ceding control to the government.

For example, when ordinary people can go to anyone they want for medical services, they can choose quacks or other incompetents. Thus, to protect people from quacks, the government should forbid anyone from practicing medicine until they get a license (permission) from the government.

The same principle may also apply to child care, electricians, taxi drivers, barbers, hairdressers, lawyers, plumbers, or any of as many as a hundred or more professions. Or it may be a matter of prior restraint because of the potential for endangering the public, as for truck drivers, pilots, and so forth.

And if somebody has any sort of trouble meeting basic needs, then it is incumbent upon the government to allocate resources to them. Examples include public housing, Women, Infants, and Children, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, and public schools, which have the additional benefit -- cited by the likes of John Dewey and John D. Rockefeller -- of giving the government the opportunity to mold young people like plastic.

This also applies to owning and carrying guns. The basic Leftist attitude towards gun ownership is that when ordinary people own guns, that causes problems, so they shouldn't.

Thomas Sowell would put it a bit differently, as far as the internal thinking on the Left tends to go. In his estimation, the left would tend to think that if they were in control, they could make everyone else into the sort of good people they know themselves to be. All they need to transform human nature is enough time and enough power. How much of each?

They'll let you know when they're done. Until then, the answer is "more."

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"

As Moxie Marlinspike points out, the idea that only people who have something to hide have anything to fear from our surveillance state is a load of crap. As he points out, there are far too many laws for any of us to know what they are and not break them.

The common law dictum that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" can only rationally apply to common law. It is impossible to be knowledgeable about all the new federal statute, regulatory, and case law of the last year alone!

There is greater risk: California's state legislature has previously done away with the statute of limitations, and is planning to do so again. There is a WSJ article entitled "Sacramento's Nonprofit Shakedown," but I don't have access to it behind the paywall.

We are not trying to walk through a minefield of legal problems. No, we are law enforcement's targets in a shooting gallery, and either blasted or spared based upon their whims, prejudices, and moods. We live under appointed despots.

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

PRISM Break

If you haven't heard about the PRISM scandal (where the feds copy and store everything going through numerous web services, including but not limited to google, facebook, yahoo!, and msn), you really have not been paying attention. Even if your stuff's encrypted now, the feds plan to keep it until they can crack it. But there's a bit of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://prism-break.org/

Murder vs. Justifiable Homicide

So libertarian Charles Murray recently said of abortion: "It’s a murder—it’s a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified." (Salute to Matt Archbold.)

Sometimes homicide IS justified. When the only way to prevent an imminent murder is to slay the imminent perpetrator, that is justifiable homicide. There are other cases. Justifiable homicide is the entire point of Just War Theory -- to delineate the cases where nations may engage in mass, military homicide. But it is ALSO to delineate where such use of force is NOT justified. In fact, it makes the case that it is possible for soldiers fighting a just war to commit murder on the battlefield.

By having sex with a man, a woman voluntarily assumes the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy is certainly not the fault of the child. Even if she becomes pregnant from rape, bear in mind that the child is neither the perpetrator of the rape, nor his accomplice, nor his co-conspirator. The child is every bit as much a victim of the rapist as the mother; he has denied his child its inherent right to be reared by its own parents in a stable, permanent marriage. I don't see any justification for slaying the child.

Murder is unjustified. The lack of justification is what defines "murder" as a subset of "homicide." Cases of homicide which are murder and cases of homicide which are justifiable have NO overlap. Mr. Murray's statement is profoundly irrational. He needs to either admit that abortion is murder, or make the case that it's justifiable homicide, and not equivocate the two.

Defang the HHS Mandate

Salute to Frank Weathers.

According to the USCCB, Rep. Diane Black (along with 50 cosponsors, has introduced legislation to require the HHS to respect the first amendment civil rights of believers. It's HR 940; you can search the Library of Congress for the bill; you can tell your representatives to cosponsor and support it (if they haven't already).

Obamacare: Bad law.

Ever since I first heard of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I've been saying that it is a very bad law. Everything about it, from its length (over 2000 pages), to the secrecy in which it was passed (nobody had been given time to actually read final version of the bill when it was passed), to the naked vote-buying that went on, to the artificial emergency-crisis atmosphere used to rush it through Congress, to the well-documented (but little-known) nature of the man who demanded it, indicated that it was a very bad law.

Nothing has happened that might suggest I was mistaken.

Indeed, many things great and small strongly suggest that I was right. At the small end is the HHS mandate. I don't mean to diminish its tyranny or its unconstitutionality, but I recognize that it doesn't really involve a whole lot of money or people (yet). On the other, we have the Energy and Commerce Committee's Obamacare Burden Tracker, which tallies up Congressional Budget Office estimates of hours spent on compliance with Obamacare. Their current estimate: 127,602,371 hours. To borrow from them:

What could be done in 127,602,371 hours?

• Mount Rushmore, which took 14 years to build, could be constructed 1,040 times.
• Halley’s comet, seen from Earth once every 76 years, could be spotted 191 times.
• The Empire State building, which took 7 million hours to build, could be constructed 18 times.

Is 100% of the new regulatory burden wasted time? It's doubtful. But it is 100% cost, and I very much doubt it was factored into the original CBO estimate of how much the ACA would cost when it was being debated in Congress.  And 100% of that cost will come out of our pockets.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.

here's somebody who knows this stuff better than I do, taking it to pieces far better than I can. Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist.

Blogrollin' on Executive Fiat Mass Murder

Was Bush's decision that his people could torture captives gravely evil and utterly inexcusable? You bet. Has Obama done even worse? You bet! (salute to The Anchoress, whose post here is worth reading.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hot Air's story, which has the video, in case embedding doesn't work right.

Does this excuse Bush's use of torture? Nope. It just demonstrates that our Ruling Class has no respect for the rule of law, for morality, or for us, regardless of which side of the aisle they may call home. I have no solutions. I agree with Zippy when he says that national office elections are basically theater meant to reconcile us to being the subjects of the Ruling Class.

Blogrollin'...and TERRORISM!!

Well, it would appear that my government may well regard me as a terrorist. (Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist for the link.) I have strong political views, I dissent from the policies of the regime, and there are those who may find me intimidating. We've come a long way from the original usage of the word, which was the means the Revolutionary French government of the 18th century tried to intimidate its people into complete and utter submission.

Vive l'Eglise! Vive la Justice! Vive la Liberté!

I Want This Gun Control!!

Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist:  Some gun control I can give my ringing endorsement!!

Want to know why I'm in favor of this proposal?  Here's the numbers.

Assault Weapons Round-Up!

I could spend a lot of time writing about the new attempts to impose victim disarmament gun control, but others have done it for me, and better than I was likely to do.  So that means it's time for an assault weapons round-up!

First, William M. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars!

Firearm Homicides Dropping.  Assault Weapons Ban Not Correlated With Decrease In Homicides. No Need For New Restrictions.

Darwin Catholic, on the whole matter:

Assault Weapons Part 1:  Battle Rifle to Assault Rifle

Assault Weapons Part 2:  Assault Rifles vs. "Assault Weapons"

Assault Weapons Part 3:  Gun Control

I'll add that beyond target shooting, high capacity semi-automatic battle carbines are the deterrent weapon of choice for (say) a single shop proprietor or home owner, faced with a rioting mob.  This is all the more so if he's using highly frangible rounds, which do not have overpenetration issues.

On Newtown, CT, and Policy

I ran across Larry Correia's statements on mass shootings and what makes people safe in Mark Shea's commentariat.

Larry Correia may truly be one of the most qualified of people to discuss the issue of how gun ownership and use affect criminal behavior, including mass shootings like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have seen nothing I think you would do better to read if you wish to be informed on the relevant issues, especially not anything I've written.