As the racially motivated violence unfolded in Northern Ireland this week, a striking dissonanace could be seen behind the mobs and flames and smoke. The knife attack that triggered the disturbances occurred in a nationalist area yet the mayhem played out against a backdrop of union jacks and loyalist murals. You could watch rioters hurl missiles and target foreigners on Shankill Road, then cross a few blocks to Falls Road, bedecked with Irish tricolours and republican murals, and experience serenity. History, demographics and psychology can explain some of the diverging community reactions, but there is also a familiar factor at play under the surface – paramilitaries. The security services and some academics say there are more loyalist paramilitaries today than in 1998 when the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles. One estimate from 2020 put the number as high as 12,500, albeit with many members inactive. The Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association, which are proscribed as terrorist groups in the UK, have endured despite engaging in a state-sponsored process of “transitioning” that is supposed to phase out their existence. The groups have split into sub-groups. Some are involved in drug dealing, extortion and racketeering while others have cooperated with politicians and civic society organisations that seek to consign them to history. The riots have renewed scrutiny because they happened in areas where paramilitaries wield influence. Ryan Henderson, an assistant chief constable, said police had no evidence that paramilitaries orchestrated the violence. Instead, there is evidence that some paramilitary leaders chose neutrality, neither stoking nor impeding the violence, to make a point: beware a vacuum.

I was tracing my genealogy on ancestry and found out a lot of interesting facts about my mom's side of the family. My mom's mom's side were Loyalists living in New York State during the US War against Britain. They fled north to Canada due to persecution and violence in their area as mobs of vigilantes harassed and assaulted people who they deemed weren't loyal enough to the idea of America for them. The harassment escalated to acts of violence like tarring and feathering, where hot tar was dumped on people and feathers were spread on the tar.

Fleeing death and rape threats (and actual cases of murder and rape) the Loyalists fled north and the violent mobs took possession of their homes and stole their property and livestock.

Not really looked at as a civil war, I would argue that this was the first grand scale American Civil War which was followed by the War of 1812 and the great Civil War after. (It's seems like it took some time but looking at the politics of now, I would say the South has won in the end).

Anyways, back to the Loyalists. The British gave the Loyalists land and protected them from the Americans during the wars in the 1770's and 1812. Some fought for the British against the Americans, some quietly tried to go back to the US with the help of family who stayed in America. My family split in half with parents and siblings fleeing north and some remaining in New York. Two kept fighting the American militias during the Revolution and the War of 1812. They were captured and imprisoned and then released at wars end and returned to Canada.

I wonder what my great-great grandparents felt and went through during this terrible period of family against family, neighbour against neighbour warfare. The surveillance by neighbours, the tests to see if you were 'american enough' during the wars. The threats of violence to you and your children. The constant stress of wondering if your neighbour wants to kill you and steal your stuff because they don't like your opinions and beliefs. It all sounds so...

I also had a strange dream where everything was black and all I could do was hear myself tell a group of important individuals that they needed to completely “end” an entire family. These were the instructions from the LORD. It had me shooketh. Whoever this “family” is, they are the cause of a lot of pain and sorrow and some kind of plan that was executed in the past.

PS. The LORD showed me the word

“S O U N D E R S”

Just like that, spaced out. I find out there’s a soccer team by that name so don’t think this message from God is just for political leaders.

The loyalist gaslighting is out of control. I'm genuinely stunned at the back flips people will do to defend BJU. When other alumni said that BJU lied, BJU Class of 1979 member Deborah Ausburn Bailey actually tried the ol' reverse-Mitt-Romney-corporations-are-not-people trick:

I'm going to go through her "observations" in red here.

These sort of lapses happen regularly, and each SOS has a procedure for rectifying them. However, not all of the SOS websites are clear about the process, fees, boxes to be checked, etc.

Except this was clear. And we had the documentation. And I published the documentation. This was painfully clear.

A week to resolve the problem is not a long period of time for these sort of things, especially for a large organization. It may take a while, particularly over a holiday weekend, to find the person with authority to pay the fees, sign the document, name the relevant parties, etc. That's particularly true if you're trying to find someone who agrees to serve as registered agent. That alone can take a week.

What are you even talking about? You are clearly not paying attention to the dates.

1/16/2025 Paracorp resigned as BJU's agent.

2/27/2025 The SC SoS notified the Attorney General and BJU that they had no agent.

5/6/2025 The SC SoS wrote BJU to say that it was administratively dissolved.

7/5/2025 WutBJU published the dissolution notice.

7/9/2025, afternoon The SC SoS posted that BJU was now "in good standing.

That's not a week, Counselor. That's 174 days between resignation and resolution. Within minutes the SC SoS updated their site clear enough that everyone could see it.

I wouldn't put in any stock in the SOS statements about when BJU first called. Agencies, like all organizations, are masters at protecting themselves. I have called numerous agencies, only to (1) get bad information from the person I talked to, and (2) have that person deny giving me the information AND even having talked to me. That denial was easier than confessing to giving bad information. So, I would not jump to conclusions about which side here has the most accurate recollection about who called whom when.

Um. BJU said they they called on Wednesday afternoon to fix this. Do you believe them?

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a media outlet like all media outlets. Its writers rarely know the details of what they are writing about (in this case law—they made several elementary mistakes) and they always prefer a juicy story over boring facts.

Let's not compare our grasp of basic facts and timelines here, honey. You're not up-to-speed on several things. But okay -- so the media lies. That's a typical conservative trope.

I have represented numerous organizations, and there's no such thing as an "organization" being truthful or not. Individual people know different things, and spokespeople don't always know all the relevant facts. Individual people may be lying, but it's really hard to attribute individual knowledge to everyone in a group.

This is rich. This is just rich. The Post Office lies. The "media" (as if it's one organization) lies. The Secretary of State's office lies. But BJU is just a group of separate and unconnected individuals whose spokespersons have a variety of actual knowledge.

I honestly can't believe you ever were on DeWitt Jones' intercollegiate debate team, Debbie. He would not have allowed that kind of bad logic.

This is a tempest in a teapot. It's an ordinary clerical snafu that, unfortunately, landed on the public record. I have my disagreements with BJU, but if this were the biggest mistake they had made in the past few years, we could declare victory and shut down this group.

Hon, it's over now because I spoke up and others spoke up and we spoke up loudly enough that they found out their colossal stupidity before any major calamity happened.

There was widespread shock in Washington final month when Lew Olowski, a lowly and little-known official, was appointed performing director-general of the US international service — one of many state division’s most senior management posts. A former nationwide safety lawyer, Olowski entered the international service simply 4 years in the past. In his new job, which normally goes to a veteran…