"Declaration of Independence BAD" -NPR, Biden Ships American Oil Reserves to Europe & Asia, IL State Police Could Have Stopped Highland Park Killer (The Five For 07/05/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
A couple of quick notes before we dive into the news.
If you missed the last issue, the delivery schedule for The Five may be altered during this summer, as my wife and I wait for baby #2 to be born later this month (or, you know, tomorrow. Or today. Kinda hard to predict these things).
Due to this schedule, The Best of 2022 (So Far) issue of Culture & Commentary dropped on Friday. Check out the top 5 Movies | TV Shows | Books | Albums | Singles.
[one]
In a deeply divided America…celebrating the Fourth of July is becoming increasingly controversial.
A newsletter from the city of Orlando, FL kicked off this year’s “we hate America” content stream:
Elsewhere, a local contingent of Democrats in Arizona tied the anti-Fourth-of-July sentiment to the recent Supreme Court Decision overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Hey, at least they included the Statue of Liberty, I guess.
Elsewhere, NPR dropped their longstanding tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence with a “discussion of equality.”
Note that NPR seems to forget the early treaties between the settlers and the “Five Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole), at least some of whom were looking for alliances against the bloodthirsty Iroquois.
French Priest Father Isaac Joques was taken by the Iroquois, and held alongside a handful of Algonquins, who were forced to torture the French prisoners under threat of the same torture.
The Iroquois then sent the prisoners around to be mutilated, piece by piece, in multiple villages:
Here they cut off his left thumb, and two fingers of his right hand, after first, slitting his hand between the second and middle fingers….After he had been so tortured in that Village, he was taken to another, at a distance of two or three leagues, where again he had to suffer the same torments. He was, moreover, hung up in chains, by the feet; and, when he was taken down, his feet, his hands, and his neck were bound with the same chains. Seven days passed in this manner, and new tortures were added; for he was made to suffer in places and in ways concerning which propriety will not allow us to write.”
It’s certainly true that Andrew Jackson would break every Indian treaty a generation later, but that had nothing to do with the founding of the U.S., or the fact that several tribes welcomes alliances to fend off the Iroquois. (The same can be said for the Southwestern and Mexican tribes who lived in constant fear of the human-sacrificing Mayans).
Simply put, whether or not you viewed the Europeans as conquerors or liberators depended on which side of the torture equation you were on.
Again, everything would change a few decades later…but NPR brings none of this nuance to the discussion about “equality.”
Oh yeah, and NPR also ran an excellent segment featuring the descendants of Fredrick Douglas reading his 4th of July address, in which the abolitionist appeals to the Declaration of Independence to argue for the freedom of slaves:
The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
So…which one is it? Is the Declaration of Independence BAD, or is it the document that pointed us towards freedom for all mankind? Is the Fourth of July a celebration or a reason to riot in the park?
We’re going to have to answer these questions very soon, given the current tempature of the United States.
As the calls for (and caution of) a Second Civil War and/or some kind of National Divorce of States have increased in recent years, I’ve been dead set against such an idea.
However, Americans self-sorting to Red and Blue states may increase the probability of something like that happening.
And the fact that we apparently can’t hold anything in common anymore doesn’t help—sports, holidays, music, movies, TV are all pretty partisan these days—even diets, like whether or not to eat meat have a political tinge.
[two]
A handful of shooting deaths have rocked the world in in just a few days..
The first mass shooting happened in Denmark, one of the strictest nations for gun control. However, the suspect broke the law (duh) in order to kill three people at a shopping mall.
The suspect, identified as a 22-year-old Danish man, was carrying a rifle and had access to a pistol, both of which are legal in Denmark, but he did not have permission to possess them, Soren Thomassen, the commander of the Copenhagen police, said at a news conference on Monday. It was not clear how he obtained the weapons.
Stateside, Akron, Ohio resident Jayland Walker ran from police in his car and fired a shot from his vehicle. When he exited the vehicle and fled on foot, he was killed.
Walker is seen on police body camera footage eventually pulling off the road and running away.
Officers contend they saw Walker reaching for his waist. They then fired over 90 bullets, striking him at least 60 times.
Walker was unarmed when he was shot. Police say they found a handgun in the vehicle, per AP.
There have been some protests, but nothing close to the levels of unrest that occurred after the death of George Floyd.
The event was somewhat overshadowed by the 4th of July shooting in Highland Park, IL, a Chicago suburb I once had close business ties to.
We now know that the killer was able to purchase guns legally due to errors by both local and state police, as well as his father co-signing the teenager’s FOID Card (Firearm Owner’s ID), despite his son’s violent tendencies and history of suicidal ideation.
In September 2019, a family member contacted police after Crimo allegedly said he wanted to "kill everyone." Police responded and removed several knives, a sword and a dagger, Covelli said.
Illinois State Police said they received a Clear and Present Danger report in September 2019 about Crimo.
The report was in connection to a threat he allegedly made against his family. No one, including members of his family, was willing to move forward on a complaint, ISP said.
No arrests were made at that time.
At the time of the incident, Crimo did not have a FOID card to revoke, and did not have a pending FOID application to deny, police said.
Then, in December 2019, at 19, Crimo applied for a FOID card and was sponsored by his father.
At the time, ISP said there were insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the application.
In other words, Illinois, which has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, didn’t enforce them.
Finally, a “good guy with a gun” stopped a potential mass shooting in a Texas apartment complex.
A man rampaging with a rifle at a Texas apartment complex was shot and killed by a neighbor, according to authorities, and that likely saved a woman’s life. Deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to the shooting at an apartment complex in the 300 block of Highland Cross in north Houston early July 5, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a tweet.
A woman was celebrating the Fourth of July when her son, 22, showed up at the complex behaving erratically, KHOU reported. They left the festivities and went into the mother’s apartment. A short time later, the son began firing an AK-47 inside the unit, sending rounds flying into nearby apartments, investigators told news outlets. One bullet narrowly missed a teen girl sitting in her kitchen.Witnesses saw the mother exit the apartment with blood on her face, KRIV reported. Her son followed behind and shot her “in the lower extremities” several times, and a neighbor then opened fire on the 22-year-old, the station said.
We had mass shootings in areas where guns were heavily regulated in Europe and suburban Chicago, a particularly bloody police killing, nearly a score of gang murders and a citizen who stopped a Texas murder in process.
Whatever your views for, or against, gun control are…something happened this week to reinforce them.
[three]
The Biden Administration is under heavy criticism for shipping oil to Europe and Asia while prices at the pump remain at crisis levels for everyday Americans.
More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.
The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden to lower record pump prices. Biden on Saturday renewed a call for gasoline suppliers to cut their prices, drawing criticism from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
About 1 million barrels per day is being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through October. The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986. U.S. crude futures are above $100 per barrel and gasoline and diesel prices above $5 a gallon in one-fifth of the nation. U.S. officials have said oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.
[four]
A county in Florida is under quarantine over an invasive species of snail.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) confirmed there were giant African land snails in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County on June 23, according to FDACS' website.
The snails pose a health risk to humans because they carry a parasite called rat lungworm, which can cause meningitis, Christina Chitty, a public information director at FDACS, told CNN.
They can produce up to 2,500 eggs per year, so the population is difficult to control.
The headline is hilarious…but the story itself is pretty scary.
These snails could have a higher death county for a local area than COVID, as Meningitis can have a 70% mortality rate.
[five]
Finally, the Russia-Ukraine war is now causing casualties in Somolia, where food shortages from Ukraine, the bread basket of Europe, are being felt.
More than two dozen children have died of hunger in the past two months in a single hospital in Somalia. Dr. Yahye Abdi Garun has watched their emaciated parents stumble in from rural areas gripped by the driest drought in decades. And yet no humanitarian aid arrives.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a donor who was preparing to give a half-million dollars to a Somali aid group told its executive director Hussein Kulmiye it was redirecting the money to help Ukrainians instead.
And now, as Somalis fleeing the drought fill more than 500 camps in the city of Baidoa, aid workers make “horrific” choices to help one camp and ignore 10 others, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Jan Egeland said, telling The Associated Press he is “angry and ashamed.” His group’s Ukraine appeal was fully funded within 48 hours, but its Somalia appeal is perhaps a quarter funded as thousands of people die.
The war in Ukraine has abruptly drawn millions of dollars away from other crises. Somalia, facing a food shortage largely driven by the war, might be the most vulnerable. Its aid funding is less than half of last year’s level while overwhelmingly Western donors have sent more than $1.7 billion to respond to the war in Europe. Yemen, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and the Palestinian territories are similarly affected.
If you’re interested in making a donation to famine relief, I’ve worked closely with World Vision in the past, which has an excellent rating on Charity Navigator.
Until the next one,
-sth