Monday, June 22, 2015

Sick cookies

We live in a world of weirdos.

Weirdo 1: Larry Klayman, who argues that Barack Obama is responsible for the Dylann Roof massacre, as well Baltimore and Ferguson...
Obama’s race war, implemented in large part by the likes of Eric Holder, has real-world consequences. Real people get hurt and trampled as collateral damage in the progressive enterprise. From the small, family-owned businesses destroyed in Ferguson, Missouri, to the neighborhoods burned down in Baltimore, to the nine black church members gunned down Wednesday night in Charleston, inciting hatred between America’s races is not just a cheap “get out the vote” trick to elect Democrats.
Yes. Obama has been waging a race war.

Klayman seems to have redefined the term "race war" to mean "being black and president at the same time." Apparently, the anger expressed by black people in Baltimore and Ferguson has nothing to do with police tyranny. No, it all comes down to that black man in the White House stirrin' up trouble. If it weren't for Obama (says Klayman), docile "negroes" across America would smile and praise Jesus every time a cop arrests or kills one of their own for no reason.

How did Klayman get through that entire essay without once using the term "uppity"? Must've required great self-control.

Weirdo 2: Moshe Greenspan. This one is hilarious. A tech guy named Moshe Greenspan is using the Charleston massacre as an excuse to sell an Orwellian face-recognition system called Churchix.

As you read what follows, a moment will come -- the proverbial lightbulb will flash on -- and you will understand why Moshe's attempt to capitalize on the recent tragedy is really, really funny (in a morbid and cynical way).
A possible solution to this predicament recently came from an unexpected direction: an Israeli high-tech firm founded by an observant Jew that is using facial recognition to help American churches screen threats without turning a single Christian away.

Moshe Greenshpan, the 44-year-old founder and CEO of Face-Six, earlier this year launched Churchix – a system that his Tel Aviv-area firm designed to scan the faces of churchgoers to help religious communities analyze attendance, membership — and threats.

The system, Greenshpan told JTA, uses cameras and facial recognition algorithms to scan the faces of people who attend church gatherings and Mass.

“The need for the adaptation of facial recognition to churches stems from the fact that conducting this screening, be it in church or at religious conventions by thousands of people, is impossible to accomplish manually,” he said. “Still, churches want to know how many people frequent them and when to improve their services and measure performance more effectively.”
At what point did you start to giggle?

What's really funny is that Moronic Moshe still doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did not need his software to get the sense that Dylann Roof was in some way different from the other parishoners. Why, even I could do a job like that -- without a computer!

Churchix is ludicrous and useless (at least for its stated purpose). A church is a church. One either opens the doors to all comers, or one shuts those doors forever.

Added note: One of this blog's most appreciated regular readers has offered an interesting observation.
One poet friend of mine pointed out that the regular American flag can be construed as racist as the confederate flag, and that's a valid point.
Is the American flag as much of a symbol of racism as the Confederate flag? I'd like to know how (say) a Cherokee would answer that question.

3 comments:

Gus said...

I don't recall Jesus (or even Paul, for that matter) saying anything about threat screening in the Bible. It's been a while since I've read it though, so I could be wrong. I wonder if facial recognition would have helped Jesus weed out Judas from his disciples earlier on? ;-)

Stephen Morgan said...

I don't think the Cherokee need to be brought into it. There were some interesting articles in the last Lobster referring to the American declaration of independence as a UDI, obviously referring to the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence. And of course making the link between the 1776 declaration and the 1774 Somersett case which effectively ended slavery in England and many other Common Law jurisdictons. Slave ownership was just as important in the southern colonies then as it was in the southern states later.

Bob Harrison said...

Since I live next to the Cherokee, I think they might remark that a good deal of hypocrisy and irony were loosed upon the world when Europeans, followed by Americans, started complaining about the evils of slavery while simultaneously enjoying the fruits of slave labor. btw, the Cherokee were involved in both the Revolution and the Civil War. After the Trail of Tears can you guess what their attitude might have been?