US Intel said to warn of Iranian strike in next 24-48h; proposal to strip Qatar of “major non-NATO ally” status; behold the real “one percent” and how they differ

(a) According to a WSJ exclusive (see also Times of Israel liveblog) US intel is said to indicate a likely Iranian strike on Israeli soil in the next 24-48 hours. In response, Israel has threatened to strike Iran directly.

(b) Likely Quixotic, but it’s a start: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/republican-senator-to-force-vote-on-measure-to-strip-qatar-of-non-nato-ally-status/ (via Ace of Spades) Senate Republicans introduce legislation to strip Qatar of its “major non-NATO ally status” unless it mends its ways. But yes, too many politicians are financially in the pocket of the banu sittim alaf sharmuteh. The covert bribe of invitations to give lectures or consultations for a fat fee is a well-known stratagem for decades now (and not just of Qatar)…

(c) Who are the real “one percent”? Larry Elder, commenting on the NPR exposé by former editor Uri Berliner (link via Powerline):

Consider this proposition: “Suppose that your favorite candidate loses a close election. However, people on the campaign know that they can win by cheating without being caught. Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?” Just 7% of Americans said, “Win by cheating.” This is from a startling new Scott Rasmussen poll.

Rasmussen then put this question to those the pollster calls “the elite 1%.” They make over $150,000 per year, have a postgraduate degree, live in densely populated up areas and give President Joe Biden an 82% approval rating. Why poll this group? Rasmussen said: “A heavy concentration of them went to one of 12 elite schools. … [H]alf the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.”

Thirty-five percent of this group said they would rather their candidate win by cheating than lose by playing fair. It gets worse. Rasmussen put the question to a subset of this elite 1%, whom the pollster calls the “politically obsessed,” defined as those who talk about politics every day. Among this group, the number who would rather win by cheating jumps to 69%.

Rasmussen said: “Most Americans think we don’t have enough individual freedom. Among the elite 1%, about half say, ‘No, we’ve got too much freedom.’ And among that politically obsessed group, about 7 out of 10 say, “There’s too much individual freedom in America.”

As for why they think this way, Rasmussen said: “… part of the reason is because they trust government. In America, it’s been 50 years since most voters trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time. But among the elite 1%, 70% trust the government. … They really believe that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.”

As a renegade member of that same class, I have to say the picture of my colleagues and peers painted above rings entirely true.

TODAY IN HISTORY: on April 12, 1945, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly (but not unexpectedly) of a cerebral hemorrhage, and his vice-president Harry S Truman was sworn in as his successor.

In OECD bid, Indonesia seeks normalization of relations with Israel; Allister Heath on judicial overreach, and administrative rule by fiat as a threat to democracy

(A) No, this is not a “bizarro world” headline: the largest Muslim country (by population)in the world, Indonesia, is seeking to normalize relations with Israel!

No, they haven’t suddenly been overcome with love for us, but… they are seeking entry to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) — effectively a membership in the club of the industrialized nations. Israel became a member in 2010 (full list of member states here) and admission of any new member state requires unanimous approval of the current members.

(B) Meanwhile, the European Court for Human Rights keeps engaging in further and further overreach. Allister Heath, in the Telegraph (paywalled; cached copy herehttps://archive.fo/TXrWW ). Read the whole thing, but here is a taste

[…] In an incendiary judicial coup this week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) greatly expanded its own remit while downgrading democracy another notch. In a ruling that would almost be funny if it weren’t so serious, its Grand Chamber ruled that countries that don’t reduce carbon emissions fast enough are violating their citizens’ right to private and family life. […] The problem is obvious: if a rise in temperature violates our right to a private and family life, what doesn’t? Where will the ECHR power grab end?
The game here is clear. By making everything about “human rights” that cannot be questioned, then the democratic sphere, where we can debate and disagree and vote for different approaches, is drastically curtailed, and the influence of Left-wing lawyers massively increased. […] I spent hours wading through the judgment, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz [“Association of Seniors for Climate, Switzerland” — Ed.] and Others v Switzerland, and found it hard to discern anything in it that could qualify as actual legal reasoning, as opposed to verbiage from a “court” that has given up on any pretence of self-restraint.
It simply decrees that the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention must now encompass “a right for individuals to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life”.
The Convention’s original authors never had anything like that in mind, and surely never dreamt that their post-Second World War document would be traduced and distorted in such a way.
Today’s ultra-activist judges are treating the Convention as a “living document”, reinterpreting its meaning as they see fit. The only legally rigorous section in the ruling was the partly dissenting view by Tim Eicke, the sole British judge, who perhaps realises this latest preposterous overreach will one day be remembered as the moment the UK was finally tipped over the edge on the question of withdrawal.
One line in the judgment reveals the deeply authoritarian impulse underlying the decision: in a classic case of Orwellian doublespeak, it reverses the meaning of “democracy” to justify disregarding what the public actually wants. “Democracy cannot be reduced to the will of the majority of the electorate and elected representatives, in disregard of the requirements of the rule of law”, we are told.

[…]This might be interpreted simply as meaning that an angry mob has no right to impose its will without going through proper constitutional procedures.[…] Yet this isn’t what the ECHR has in mind, and it conflates the “rule of law” with “rule by lawyers”. It believes democracy should be radically constrained, that the people aren’t wise enough to take decisions […] If you trust the voters, you can get Brexit – horror of horrors – or the Swiss rejecting net zero, which is clearly intolerable. Democracy is the political equivalent of pocket money: it should only hold sway over unimportant matters. The real decisions should be taken by objective judges. “

They say they want to protect “democracy” from threats — even if that requires destroying the village in order to save it. But what they really stand for is not democracy at all, but kritarchy [rule by judges] as a manifestation of what I have been calling “transnational oligarchic collectivism” for many years. (This is a portmanteau of John Fonte’s “Transnational Progressivism” and George Orwell’s “Oligarchic Collectivism“.)

ADDENDUM: “Vodkapundit” had suspected for some time that most of the hostages held by HamaSS were dead. He is saddened to be (probably) vindicated.

Konstantin Kisin on Gen Z and nihilism; Bidenflation; Trump on abortion; NPR owned by former editor, NPR’s response proves his point

(a) This short discussion between Konstantin Kisin and John Anderson AO may be the most importain few minutes of TV to watch if you want to try and understand the biggest challenge facing Generation Z: nihilism.

(b) “Vodkapundit” wonders what the hell is wrong with Tucker Carlson. I know hindsight is 20/20, but even when Tucker was on a roll and I regularly quoted him, something always nagged at me. Like he wasn’t truly interested in the truth for its own sake, only in what slick polemical talking points he could derive from it.

Is he suddenly on Vlad the Invader’s payroll? I doubt it — it’s more like he’s decided that he’s going to drive out the devil of “woke” (and it is “el excremente del diablo”) with the Beelzebub of Putin’s Russia. As much as I despise Karl Marx and all his works, his famous quip when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Napoleon III does ring true: “history occurs twice, first as tragedy, the second time as farce”. The tragedy was how some European paleoconservatives in the 1930s were under the delusion that they could combat Communism by wooing its twin brother National Socialism as an ally. The farce is what we are seeing with Tucker today.

ADDENDUM: Powerline gives it to Carlson from all four barrels.

(c) If you live in the US, unless you were living under a rock, you know that Donald Trump released a statement on “abortion rights” that basically boils down to: the Supreme Court decided it’s a matter for the states; I agree with that; the federal government should not get involved.

This of course disappoints the pro-life wing of his party which was hoping for a nationwide ban on abortion past 15 or 18 weeks.

That hence Trump has robbed the antiDemocratic Party of a prime tool to mobilize the most fanatical part of their base will not stop them and their attack poodles in the media from trying to paint Trump as a fanatical opponent of one of the sacraments of the “progressive” religion. So they don’t want the uncommitted to find out how moderate Trump actually is on the issue.

OF COURSE NOT, THEY SEE THE ISSUE AS THEIR LAST-HOPE DISTRACTION: Democrats Don’t Want You to Kno

Well, it’s not like they have no reason to be worried 😉

(d) NPR gets owned by own former editor, responds in typically clueless fashion. “The CPSU is diverse, with communists of all ethnicities” is only a mild paraphrase.

(e) Bidenflation at work (via Insty):

HOLY SHIT!!!🤣🤣🤣

Shopping during Bidenomics!!!

Whoever made THIS👇🏼 FREAKING ROCKS!!!😆😂 pic.twitter.com/g6TB3K29nM

— SaltyGoat (@SaltyGoat17) November 13, 2023

(f) Ben Shapiro: America is now in the business of losing wars

Exit quote:

BIDEN: "Elect me. I'm in the 20th Century."

We are in the 21st Century.

This guy has the nuclear codes… pic.twitter.com/HxndFlYLIw

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 10, 2024

Transvaluation of all values, April 9 edition: Richard Dawkins as “cultural Christian”; Amnesia International prostrates for HamaSS; a former Islamist speaks out

(A) Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and onetime unofficial Pope of the “New Atheists”, now calls himself “a cultural Christian”. He was at pains to explain to his interviewer that that did not mean he embraced any aspect of Christian theology, but that he infinitely preferred living in a Christian society over an Islamized one.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/im-a-cultural-christian-declares-richard-dawkins-the-worlds-most-famous-atheist/

The statement was made in response to his neighborhood trading Easter celebrations for Ramadan.

We have reached a sort of bizarre hell world where a Richard Dawkins may have more common ground with an Intelligent Design advocate (outside their intrinsic area of disagreement) than with most of the intellectual class.

(B) meanwhile, an organization that I used to respect, and that I volunteered for in my college days (35+ years ago) had already morphed into Amnesia International — but now it has been thoroughly skinsuited by pro-HamaSS thugs.

Mrs. Arbel has been watching the new version of “Shogun” as I was writing for my day job at night. At one point the series had the following insult (unbelievably, taken straight from James Clavell’s text): “May she be reborn as a back-passage wh*re of the Fifteenth Rank”. I think I know where the reborn character is working…

(C) this is long but fascinating —- good to listen to during a long commute by car, or household chores. Winston Marshall (formerly of folk-rock band Mumford and Sons) interviews Ed Husain about how he, as a youngster looking for belonging, got sucked into radical Islam and found himself a HamaSS member without realizing it. He has meanwhile turned his back on his radical past and embraced a more liberal, tolerant Islamic tradition. He compares Sayid Qutb, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, to Karl Marx and says both men have corrupted their respective cultures similarly and left nothing but death and destruction in their wakes.

Mr. Husain, however, sees a different path – one of peaceful coexistence and symbiosis with Westwrn civilization, and indeed “with my beloved cousins” (I.e., Jews).

And on this hopeful note, Eid Karim to any moderate Muslims who may find themselves reading these words.

Israel winding down operations in Gaza?; The pernicious role of Qatar enabled Oct. 7; cancel culture is real

(a) It looks like Israel is winding down operations in Gaza, under pressure from “Abu Hunter” Biden who has clearly gotten his marching orders from Beijing (which has no love lost for Islamism, but has a vested interest in the USA and its ally Israe remaining tied up in a perpetual proxy war — so Israel cannot be allowed to win outright). Yesterday, as Mrs. Arbel was watching the new version of “Shogun” (that she’s fluent in Japanese helps) while I was turning around backlogged peer review, she had a good laugh when some character was being referred to as “a back-passage wh**e of the 15th rank”. (The juxtaposition of these sentences is purely concidental, I pinky-swear ;))

(b) Relatedly, a report jointly prepared by US and Israeli intelligence specialists details the pernicious role of Qatar and its duplicity vs. its supposed ally the USA, Times of Israel editor David Horowitz reports.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/intel-report-qatars-funding-policies-led-directly-to-oct-7-it-shouldnt-be-key-mediator/

A confidential report by a team of veteran US and Israeli intelligence professionals working on behalf of lawyers for the families of October 7 victims contends that Qatar should not be allowed to continue to serve as a key mediator in the Gaza conflict, notably in negotiations for the release of hostages.

Compiled on the basis of research in English, Arabic, and French in the Middle East, Europe and the US, as well as public sourcing, the report concludes that Qatar is a fundamentally disingenuous actor, falsely presenting itself as an honest broker, moderating influence in the region, and “friend of the West.”

In fact, the report states, “Qatar operates not as an independent mediator as it claims, but benefits directly from the bloodshed and geopolitical fallout and unrest that result from its policies.”

As regards Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were massacred and 253 abducted, the report specifies that “Qatari funding and policies led directly to October 7.”

The “Doha-Gaza Alliance at all levels — financial, political, and military — has resulted in the current regional upheaval, the impact of which is being felt worldwide,” it further states.

[..] Its findings include material known for years to US intelligence about Qatar’s malign activities but not strategically acted upon — a failure, the authors argue, that allowed Qatar to advance policies harmful to the interests of the US and its allies in the Middle East and beyond, including the souring of the Arab Spring, the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the rise to power and arming of Hamas, culminating in October 7 and its ongoing regional and global consequences.

[…]

While Qatar “utilizes the cover” of claiming that its funding for the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliates like Hamas is for “welfare” projects, it is “completely cognizant of the fact that the money is instead going to support terror and political ends,” the authors say.

More broadly still, the report concludes that Qatar’s “symbiosis” with Iran, support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates such as Hamas, and backing for other militant and terror groups deeply harm the interests of US allies such as Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, and negatively impact America’s own critical interests. Among such groups cited in the report are the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda) in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Al-Shabab in Somalia, Shiite militant groups in Iraq, and terror groups in Libya.

“The negative impact of the Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood nexus to US policy interests includes bloodshed, unrest, and instability in a wide range of locations, most immediately in the Middle East and Africa,” the report elaborates. “These ‘local’ conflicts have far-reaching implications for US policy going beyond the region — with Russia and China oftentimes appearing to be the main beneficiaries of the instability these conflicts have created.”

Go read the whole thing. I’m old enough to remember when, now almost 30 years ago, the then-Syrian minister of defense referred to Yasser Arafat [y”sh] by the colorful Arabic epithet bin sittim alaf sharmuteh [literally: son of sixty thousand wh*res]. It fits the Emir of Qatar to a tee as well.

(c) The latest claim is that “cancel culture doesn’t exist” because J. K. Rowling or Elon Musk haven’t been canceled — conveniently ignoring that she is an outlier because they have what in crude American slang is called “F*** you money”. But for the rest of us? Andrew Doyle — the creator of the satirical “Titania McGrath” — goes dead serious on the subject on the Triggernometry channel.

Closely related: Rita Panahi refers to the insane new “hate speech” laws in Scotland of Humza “Ghoffaq” Yousef’s misadministration, and J. K. Rowling effectively offering herself up as a human shield against them, by retweeting every “offensive” gender-critical comment and inviting the police to prosecute her

Opponents of the asinine and Orwellian law have apparently latched upon another tactic: massively filing hate speech complaints against… First Minister Humza Yousef himself. https://youtu.be/wEIdqqrGZ24

Israel apologizes for accidental killing of aid workers; Is a “Black September 2.0” coming in Jordan?; fentanyl crisis

(a) According to the Times of Israel, following a grave battlefield identification error that led to the unintentional killing of several aid workers, Biden and Netanyahu had a tense phone call on which the former supposedly threatened the latter with dropping support unless some drastic changes happened.

(See also WSJ coverage — h/t Mrs. Arbel.)

Afterward, however, Biden said “Israel is doing what he asked for”.

It was the first conversation between the two since an Israeli strike in central Gaza late on Monday killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen. Israel has called the strike on the WCK convoy a “grave mistake,” and vowed an in-depth investigation into how it occurred. But Netanyahu also said that “these things happen in war” — a line that wasn’t well received internationally.

Military people (and anybody in the know) would find Netanyahu’s observation a truism (especially during urban combat) — indeed, the IDF has lost a number of soldiers to “friendly fire” which for certain was not intentional.

Hours after the two leaders spoke, Israel announced that it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries into famine-threatened northern Gaza through the Israeli port of Ashdod and the Erez border crossing in the northern Gaza Strip for the first time since it was significantly damaged during the Hamas-led October 7 terror onslaught that sparked the ongoing war, when many Israelis were killed and abducted there.

Israel will also increase the amount of aid from Jordan moving through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.

[…] During a security cabinet meeting after the call, Netanyahu noted that the White House readout similarly didn’t explicitly condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal.

It said that Biden told the Israeli premier “that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians, and he urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home.”

An Israeli official noted that after asking the White House to privately and publicly clarify whether it has changed its position regarding the need to condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal, the administration followed through both privately and publicly.

The White House’s Kirby told reporters earlier Friday, “Let’s get a deal in place so that we can get a ceasefire for a matter of weeks in place, so that it’s easier to meet those commitments on humanitarian assistance being increased.”

“Our position remains that there should be a ceasefire as part of a hostage deal, and it should happen immediately. That’s why the president urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay,” a US official told Axios.

Israel has vowed an in-depth investigation, but has already dismissed two senior commanders.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-dismisses-2-senior-officers-over-deadly-drone-strike-on-gaza-aid-convoy

“We express our deep sorrow for the loss, and share in the grief of the families and the WCK organization,” the IDF said, adding that the “vital humanitarian activity of the international aid organizations” is of “utmost importance.”

“We will continue to work to coordinate and assist their activities, while ensuring their safety and safeguarding their lives,” the military continued.

“The IDF once again emphasizes its commitment to uncompromising fighting against the Hamas organization, alongside upholding the values ​​of the IDF, the laws of war and avoiding harming innocents.

“The IDF will learn the lessons of the incident, and will implement the lessons,” it added.

As part of the lessons learned, the IDF decided to brand aid vehicles with special stickers that are visible with thermal cameras. The WCK vehicle had a sticker of the organization’s logo, although it was not visible to IDF drones at night.

(b) MEMRI notes rising calls from the pro-HamaSS axis to topple the Jordanian regime and draws a parallel with the “Black September” (eilul al-aswad) 1970 attempt by the PLO to supplant King Hussein. (The latter was able to thwart the planned coup, several thousand dead later.)

https://www.memri.org/reports/black-september-2024

Check out the main MEMRI page for extensive updates on the developing situation. Radical Islamism (a.k.a. IslamoNational-Socialism) is a cancer that threatens not just the West and Israel, but moderate Muslim societies as well.

(c) Douglas Murray has a depressing video report on the opiod and “tranq” crisis in the USA.

Evergreen song apropos:

“The pusher don’t care / If you live or die.”

Always remember. And let pushers be rewarded for their efforts by letting them “enjoy” their own wares themselves — all at once. A near-0% recidivism rate is to be expected 😉

Shabbat shalom

The katabasis of American academia; how the most therapeutic generation begat the most neurotic

The word “catabasis” or katabasis in classical Greek refers to a descent to the underworld.

It isn’t bad enough that certain “elite” universities have become hotbeds of support for a regressive theocratic of Islamist National Socialism. Other types of insanity abound.

Such as the recent decision of Harvard (!) to have graduation ceremonies that are segregated by race and bedroom “orientation”. What next, defending Jim Crow as an expression of Diversity, Equity, and and Inclusion? https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-offer-segregated-graduation-ceremonies-based-on-race-class-sexuality/

My online friend Tom Knighton has concluded that academia has become so corrupted it is beyond help. https://open.substack.com/pub/tomknighton/p/this-is-why-the-university-system? The “burn it all down” title may be hyperbolic, but I completely “grok” the level of frustration and disappointment that inspired it.

I saw the writing on the wall over a decade ago, discreetly put the word out I was “moveable”, and got a chair abroad that may pay a bit less than its equivalent at a Tier 1 US college, but where the rot hasn’t (yet) set in that far, where there is no permanent academic admin class (people serve stints and rotate back to the ranks, having to live with the consequences of their own policies) and where freedom of thought still counts for something.

An administrative class filled with empire builders and (increasingly) activists pushing radical agendas has executed a hostile takeover of US academia. The beginning of a pushback has emerged, but the “anabasis” (the climb out of the abyss) will take many years, and may entail (in tandem with technological revolutions in progress) the complete transformation of academia as we know it.

And speaking of the abyss, we have reached one where “Dr. Phil” counts as a voice of sanity

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/dr-phil-on-hamass-october-7-atrocities-i-dont-give-a-damn-why-they-did-it-its-wrong/

Finally, this discussion between Gad Saad and Abigail Shrier – on her latest book (more here: https://greglukianoff.substack.com/p/abigail-shrier-versus-the-perfect ), which explores how the most coddled and the most “therapized” generation to date is also the most anxiety-ridden and emotionally least resilient. The interlocutor reach the conclusion that all therapizing has actually made young people less able to cope than any preceding generation. Guess where all this counterproductive garbage was dreamed up… right, in an environment where rhetoric and politicking are king and there are no consequences for policiesbthat do not work (at best) or actively make things worse.

ADDENDUM: FIRE chairman Greg Lukianoff remembers Prof. Mike Adams, who seemed the least likely person to be affected by a ‘cancellation’ campaign — yet was ultimately driven to suicide. Read the whole thing, including the flippant reaction of one of his colleagues.

https://greglukianoff.substack.com/p/professor-mike-adams-suicide-still “When I spoke out publicly about my struggle digesting the news of Mike’s suicide, I heard the cruelest reaction of all: another professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (whom FIRE had once defended) said I shouldn’t feel bad about my friend killing himself because, after all, he was a right-winger.”

Looking around, April 2, 2024: Joel Kotkin on the coming revolt against woke capitalism; rodent infestation at Harvard; “They don’t love science, they just say that to get it into bed”

So much going on, so little free time.

(0) But first of all, Joel Kotkin:

The coming revolt against woke capitalism

(a) “The newly elected rector of Glasgow University, Ghassan Abu Sittah, ‘”“Recently-Elected Rector Of Glasgow University Ghassan Abu Sittah Calls For Expanding Gaza War Into Regional Conflict In December 2023 Speech: Unless The U.S. Is Forced To Deal With Regional War, There Will Be No Negotiating With Its Subordinates” . https://www.memri.org/tv/british-palestinian-surgeon-activist-ghassan-sittah-war-gaza-regional-change-system-israel-subordinate

(b) Even after condemning her ideas as ‘racist’ UCSF still employs medical prof who suggested that ‘Zionist doctors’ are a threat to patients https://www.campusreform.org/article/even-condemning-ideas-racist-ucsf-still-employs-medical-prof-suggested-zionist-doctors-threat-patients/25111 [via Instapundit, who sarcastically comments: “Racism is the worst thing in the world unless it’s on behalf of approved groups.”]

(c) Metaphor alert? Harvard freshmen complain about mice, rats in dorms. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/4/2/rodents-freshman-dorms/

(d) https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/we-are-sorry-idf-chief-says-misidentification-led-to-strike-on-aid-convoy/ IDF apologizes for deadly strike on aid convoy, citing “misidentification”.

Let’s be realistic: in war, shiite happens — and even if superhuman efforts are made to avoid civilian casualties, if urban warfare goes on long enough, something like that will eventually happen. This is then grist on the mill of those who want HamaSS to live to rape and murder another day.

I have wondered a number of times if a better alternative to the Gaza counter-invasion would not have been to “go after the head of the snake” in particularly Qatar, then deal with Sinwar and his fellow devil spawn later. Alas, of course, the bin sittim alaf sharmuteh who rules Qatar is playing both ends against the middle by also hosting major US bases, and therefore Uncle Sam wouldn’t stand for Israel going Seal Team Six on Qatar.

(e) Then again, there’s this:

Israel assassinated Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Iranian IRGC’s Syria-Lebanon chief. Two F-35s dispensed six missiles at a building in the diplomatic sector of Damascus. This is not just another targeted killing. It matters for a few reasons:

1) Zahedi is the replacement for Suleimani…

— Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) April 1, 2024

Israel strikes Iran in Damascus

(f) LOL: https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/01/the-unbearable-sanctimony-of-the-pro-palestine-set/ “We all know that if these tattooed trustafarians who think men can breastfeed went anywhere near Gaza their pronouns would be ‘was / were’ quicker than you could say ‘Free Palestine!’”

(g) and the best bon mot of the day comes from the Beautiful But Evil Space Mistress: in response to the “In this house, we believe in science” virtue signaling signs:

“They don’t love science, they just say that to get it into bed”

Looking around, no April Fools jokes edition [addendum: wish this were an April Fools joke]

(a) A brief taxonomy of all of Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.

(b) What happened to Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy? First of all, he had started his advocacy broadcasts “indie” before he was picked up by the government, and after his ‘suspension’ just went back to the old formula. Second, the rumor that he’d been fired at the behest of the “First Dominatrix” because he’d marched in anti-Netanyahu demonstrations appears to be BS. Third, the real reason appears to have been British diplomatic pressure after he rebuked British FM (and former PM( David Cameron as follows (quote from the comments):

The idea that Israel is “occupying” Gaza, or that it was “occupying” it even before the war after the 2005 disengagement, is fanciful and based on made up legal definitions tailor-crafted to fit this case and not apply anywhere else in the world.

Even though 100% accurate, this could be read (especially in an old-school British context) as effectively accusing Cameron of being a liar. I’m a little bit surprised that Eylon Levy — an Oxford and Cambridge alumnus, and generally an astonishingly effective communicator — walked into this trap.

But also, I hope the Israeli government comes to its senses and puts this guy and his team back on the payroll, as a ‘decent interval’ has clearly passed.

(c) Switching gears and turning to the US, Powerline wonders what made corporate America embrace the whole DEI (fauxversity, exclusion, and iniquity, a.k.a. “didn’t earn it”) agenda? That government bureaucracies — which are generally staffed by wannabe social engineers with little concern for efficiency or tangible results in the ostensible mission of an agency — do so does not surprise the Powerline writer, but corporations that need to make a profit? Many suggestions from the comments, including:

• corporations with government contracts are automatically subject to the same quota systems as the government
• ESG scores as a market-distorting metric
• the pernicious influence of the HR bureaucracies, staffed by DEI-indoctrinated wokebags who pursue ditto agenda in hiring. I would like to point to the book “Death by HR” by Jeb Kinnison. https://www.amazon.com/Death-HR-Affirmative-Cripples-Organizations-ebook/dp/B01LXF6HB2

(d) Pundit (and trial lawyer by day) Col. Kurt Schlichter[*] offers a short guide to the perplexed to those bewildered by the lawfare circus around Trump” “Some basic law stuff“. Read the whole thing, but let me give you a few bullet points:

• lawfare, the weaponization of the legal system, is not a new phenomenon
• crusading “activists” (or, for that matter, overzealous tort lawyers) still run into legal professionals, and then the system sort-of works, still. (Cf. the recent 9-0 SCOTUS ruling annulling Colorado’s bizarre decision they can block a candidate from running in their state.)
• “amateurs talk facts, legal professionals talk procedure”
• “that somebody files a case generates media copy, but does not itself mean anything: most claims of th”
• “Trump doesn’t want to have these trials before the election because they are all in blue cities, and even though they have zero legal merit, he is likely to be convicted. The convictions will probably get thrown out on appeal – an appeal is what happens after a trial court decision – but that’s not going to matter for the 2024 election, where Trump will be a “convicted felon.” So, Trump wants to delay these trials until after the election.”
• “Judges generally rule on matters of law, that is, what the law is and how it applies to a certain set of facts. The jury generally decides what facts have been proven. That’s also important on appeal. Appeals usually do not challenge the findings of fact. That is, if a jury says you ran a red light, a court of appeal will probably not disturb that finding of fact. What an appeal addresses are usually questions of law. That is, did the judge apply the right legal standard? “
• “Most cases don’t go to trial. Going to trial is unbelievably exceptional. About 97% of cases settle.”
• People misread settlements out of court as “some sort of admission of guilt. It’s not. Every settlement agreement I have ever written or reviewed says something to the effect of “This is a settlement of a disputed claim and not an admission of liability.”
• If somebody is insured for legal costs, the insurance company may decide to settle against the defendant’s wishes if they conclude that this will be cheaper for them than continuing to pay for the lawyers. He proceeds to give an example of a settlement where the plaintiff effectively said the original claim was based on a misunderstanding and apologizes, but the defendant’s insurance company paid up anyway (a tiny fraction of the original claim, and less than they would have paid in legal costs to pursue the avenue in court)
• “Never, ever, trust the regime media to tell you the truth about a conservative’s legal victory.” Or anything else?

[*] what’s in a name? The German word (and its Dutch cognate) roughly means “arbitrator”

ADDENDUM: it’s come to this (via Instapundit): The London Metropolitan police tells a woman filing a complaint that carrying swastikas at a pro-HamaSS demonstration is not necessarily hate speech, depending on the context.

As Insty keeps reminding his readers, in just the space of a few years the woke left went from telling us it was our sacred duty to punch Nazis to them making excuses for actual Nazis — and, may I add, justifying the use of actual National Socialist iconography. Welcome to the Londonistan of “le khan sadique” [**] 😉

[**] French pun on his name, literally meaning “the sadist/BDSM-dominator Khan”

Marillion, “Easter”

Happy Easter to Christians from the Western communion (and any others who celebrate it today)!

This lyrical song, inspired by the events around the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, contains one of my favorite guitar solos — Steve Rothery channels his inner Steve Hackett here.

Original studio version:

And here is a live version:

Climate: The Movie; Steven Koonin on the limitations of climate models

(a) This movie is (to my slight surprise) available on YouTube, but searching there won’t bring it up. Polemical as it is, it punctures a lot of the theology of what I call the CCAGW (Church of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming)

(b) For a less polemical, but no less damning, view, check out this presentation by 0bama’s [!] former deputy Energy Secretary, Steven Koonin on “the limitations of climate change models”.

I do computer modeling (of much simpler systems than global climate) for a living, and one of the reasons I was skeptical about CCAGW from the start was: I believe that by now I recognize modeler hubris when I see it.

Andrew Roberts on the “shameful betrayal”

British historian and biographer Andrew Roberts minces no words in the Telegraph (paywalled original; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/west-shameful-betrayal-israel-hamas-chance-to-kill/ ; cached copy https://archive.fo/VI2uL )

[blockquote]

ther, I killed 10 Jews! I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands. Check your WhatsApp. Father, be proud of me!” 

Have we forgotten? Have we really forgotten so quickly the monstrous events of October 7 last year that we genuinely want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza before Hamas has been utterly destroyed as a military force and potential government there? 

As we watched the British ambassador to the UN raise her hand at the Security Council meeting this week to vote for a ceasefire, alongside the Chinese and Russians, leaving our ally the US in the cold as the only member abstaining, do we not feel embarrassed, even ashamed? I know I do. 

How proud I would have felt if we had actually had the guts to veto a resolution that is designed to prevent Israel from genuinely exercising her right to self-defence, which Britain and America were so quick to declare they believed in back in October – however, hypocritically, as it turns out. For Israel’s “right to self-defence” is utterly worthless if its forces are stopped from entering Rafah and annihilating the Hamas leadership there. 

Hamas has already stated – and in this, at least, one can’t fault the group for its honesty – that it is committed to repeating October 7-style massacres as soon as it gets another chance. […]

Hamas’s stated mission is to destroy both Israel and Jews. Preventing any such reconstitution means forcing it into a Berlin 1945 moment in Rafah. As Benny Gantz, former Israeli deputy prime minister and Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of the general staff, has pointed out: “You don’t send the fire brigade to put out 80 per cent of the fire.” 

There would be two major beneficiaries from Hamas’s destruction, and one major loser. The loser would be Iran – whose ally Hamas is, along with the almost equally vicious Houthis and Hezbollah – and it would be a significant blow for Tehran in the tinderbox region they are so keen to ignite. A beneficiary would, of course, be Israel, but the other would be the Palestinians of Gaza themselves.

[/blockquote]

Read the whole thing.

Alan Dershowitz on visiting the sites of HamaSS barbarism; “Titania McGrath”s satirical woke is outdone by the real thing; forgotten French-Russian proxy war in Africa

(a) A cri de coeur from Alan Dershowitz, at the time that “Abu Hunter” Biden clearly got his marching orders from Beijing and is selling Israel down the river, in the hope of tying the US in another forever proxy war so Xi can have his wicked way in Taiwan and the Philippines:

(b) Andrew Doyle, creator of the satirical uber-woke persona “Titania McGrath”, sees his over-the-top satire being outdone by the real, humorless wokescolds.

(c) Simultaneously with Ukraine, Israel-HamaSS, and the like, there is another proxy war going on that has completely escaped attention, and goes a long way to explaining why onetime Putin-near-appeaser Macron took a 180-degree turn. (Say what you want about Macron le con, but he’s more capable of learning from mistakes than most.) The video is rather unsympathetic to France, but it’s the first discussion of the issue I’ve seen. This is definitely a story to follow.

Why do both smart and dumb people believe weird things? Another tack

On one of my YouTube feeds, I stumbled across this pretty thought-provoking video.

It starts with the received (and de mi culo) wisdom that supposedly the smarter people are, the more liberal, and the dumber/less well educated, the more conservative.

This article, however, cites a different set of studies, that purport to show that the IQ distribution of liberals and conservatives is essentially the same —- but the capacity for dogmaticism in either direction goes up with IQ.

In a nutshell: high intelligence (particularly high verbal/“debating” intelligence) allows a person who is already wedded to a certain dogma to rationalize away counter arguments and facts that fly in its face. Academia (particularly humanities and social sciences) especially reward those skills. A skilled debater can defend notions that clearly defy common sense —- and the more outlandish, the better for social signaling — that would be abandoned by a person of lesser verbal intelligence (or of equal intelligence, but working in a field that demands and rewards tangible results — like engineering or medicine).

Conversely, I would argue, to be able to sustain arguments for contrarian viewpoints in the face of massive social pressure to adhere to certain dogma requires not only certain personality qualities, but unusual rhetorical skills.

Is teaching people about fallacies and cognitive biases the answer? The videographer is skeptical: mostly, people use these selectively to bolster their own case and debunk that of the opponent — and once again, people with high verbal IQs excel at this game, on both sides of the ideological fence.

So where is the answer then? As I’ve believed all my life (and practiced to the best of my ability at work): not with Aristotle, but with Francis Bacon — who of course was not the first empirical scientist, but who was the first to lay out a coherent vision of an empirical approach to science.

One Richard Feynman quote (from his famous 1974 Caltech commencement address, “Cargo Cult Science”) that I tell all graduate students to hang above their desks is: “The first rule for a scientist is that you must not fool yourself —- and you are the easiest person to fool.” That remains as true as it ever was. As Feynman elaborated: once you have achieved intellectual honesty with yourself, the next step — being conventionally honest with others — is an easy one.

Dune aficionados may remember the Bene Gesserit saying: “knowledge is a barrier that prevents learning”. A droll statement perhaps, but read “received wisdom” or “outdated information” for “knowledge” and it isn’t so droll. (Remember Reagan: “The problem isn’t that they are ignorant, but that they ‘know’ so much that isn’t so.”) I remember one young network engineer being criticized by his veteran colleagues for not knowing the minutiae of technologies that were already on the way out then — but who then learned all the new and emerging tech without any preconceptions.

And then there is the blogmistress’s sensei, the late lamented Robert A. Heinlein.

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

And:

Once you can sincerely say, ‘I don’t know’, then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

Purim jokes

Some Purim jokes courtesy of Adat Jeshurun congregation

Purim sameach!

Looking around, March 22

(a) It looks like the US is now trying to force a cease-fire in Gaza, all the way up to sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution (which also calls for releasing the hostages).

All this does is guarantee another of the “forever-war”s that the Beltway establishment is said to love. Iforgot who it was who compared “Abu Hunter” Biden’s actions with insisting that a cancer surgeon not remove all of the tumor.

ADDENDUM: Or am I overthinking all this and is it simply: “What Xi wants, Xi gets”?

[Xi-Biden Meeting Commemorative Statue, Worcester, MA — a.k.a. “Burnside Fountain”]

(b) A completely different story from Powerline: no, people are not imagining Bidenflation. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research — with former Harvard President and Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as the lead author — has the following moneygraf:

If we make an effort to reconstruct the CPI of Okun’s era—which would have had inflation peak last year around 18%, we are able to explain 70% of the gap in consumer sentiment we saw last year.

And no, “Palestinians” are not only on board with continued HamaSS misrule (which might at least conceivably be different if a viable alternative existed), but seven-tenths approve of the Oct. 7 attacks. Forgive me if I have trouble mustering much sympathy for their predicament now. What’s more: even dyed-in-the-wool lefties in Israel expressed similar sentiments in private conversation.

(c) Texas national guard overrun by “migrants” near El Paso. The US is suffering from political Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome.

(d) Rampant shoplifting is not just a US problem anymore. An article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday discussed how UK supermarkets are phasing out self-checkouts, as it’s way too easy to “forget” to scan something, and a whopping 41% of respondents in an anonymous opinion poll admitted doing so. Common is to check out a few trivial items while sneaking out smaller but more expensive ones.

In the Tel-Aviv “suburb” where we live (which is populated several times more densely than the downtowns of most US cities), I generally shop at a supermarket on our block. It has self-checkout machines which I invariably use, and I haven’t seen anybody abuse things — but that is likely do to the fact that all the self-checkouts are in a smallish area which is continuously being overwatched by an attendant. Even so, the system randomly picks customers for inspection by the said attendant — I have been picked several times, and the attendant just rescans everything I have in my bag to make sure it all matches.

Meanwhile, in the southern US town where I’m currently on work assignment, we shop at two supermarkets of the same chain, one in a fairly well-off neighborhood, another in a funkier one. Guess which one has only human cashiers?

ADDENDUM: must-hear interview by Bari Weiss of Ḥaviv Rettig Gur: “The Gathering Storm”. HRG, generally a very astute (and unusually articulate in English) analyst of Israeli society and of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has a unique perspective on the conflict: not as “Arabs vs. Israel” or “Jews vs. Muslims”, but Israel as a proxy in the struggle between two different responses to the clash between Islam and modernity: expansionist religious fundamentalism vs. moderate reformism.

Shabbat shalom and Purim sameach

Remember what Amalek did to you by the way, when you came forth out of Egypt; how he met you by the way, and struck at your rear, all who were feeble behind you, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear G-d. Therefore it shall be, when the L-rd your G-d has given you rest from all your enemies around, in the land which the L-rd your Go- gives you for an inheritance to possess, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget it.Deut. 25:17-19

J. S. Bach Birthday post: Rick Beato on “The Bach Effect”

Today, Johann Sebastian Bach would likely have been 339 years old.[*] Here is a short video tribute by Rick Beato, featuring Pat Metheny, Steve Morse (late of Deep Purple), and others. “Compared to Bach, we all suck” (Pat Metheny)

Happy 1st day of spring, and happy J. S. Bach Day!

[*] We don’t know for sure whether JSB was born on March 20, 21, or 22. We do know he was baptized March 23, 1685 (O.S.), and that the custom at the time in that part of German lands was to baptize two days after birth. This picture was taken at the Bach Museum in Eisenach:

“4. To Mr. Johann Ambrosius Bach, “Hausmann” [=leader of the town council musicians, in context], a son. Godfathers: Sebastian Nagel, householder, and Johann Georg Kochen, forestry official of the principality. Given name: Johann Sebastian”

So you want to learn Arabic — which one?

A number of people I know have recently asked me about learning Arabic, in an attempt to broaden their knowledge of Arab and/or Islamic culture.

The immediate next question would be “which Arabic”? Prof. Mordechai Kedar, whom I’ve often featured on these pages, gives a detailed answer in this video in Hebrew. (He himself teaches Arabic at Bar-Ilan University.) Let me unpack the video for you in English:

(a) There is a formal, literary language called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) which is the same throughout the Arabic language realm, with minor variations in pronunciation (he gives the example of how the third letter of the Arabic alphabet/abjad is pronounced “g” as in English “goal” in Egypt, and “j” as in John everywhere else — cf. Gamal vs. Jamal). MSA is the language of books, the written press, the news media, most political discourse, and much of the entertainment media: if your goal is to be able to read and understand any of these, MSA is what you need to learn.

(b) And then there are the local vernaculars, which can differ drastically between countries, and even between regions within a country. Essentially nobody speaks MSA in daily conversation, but speaks the local dialect instead.

As he put it colorfully, somebody from Morocco who is at the suk (market) in Bagdad and who speaks Moroccan Arabic won’t be able to buy a tomato there. (But if you switch to MSA, the market seller will at least understand you; an educated speaker will be able to answer you in MSA.)

Broadly, these dialects come in five groups:

1. Maghreb: from Libya westward to Morocco.
2. Nile Valley: Egypt and Sudan
3. Arabian peninsula: Saudi Arabia. Jordan (including the “Palestinians” living there), the Emirates (other than Kuwait),…
4. Iraqi
5. Syrian, which also includes Lebanon and the Arabic spoken by Israeli and “Palestinian” Arabs.

So if you want to mingle and socialize in these countries (or, from another point of view, eavesdrop on conversations there), you need to pick a vernacular to learn.

Speaking from his own background (he had a career in military intelligence before his second career in academia), he points out that new IDF recruits to the Military Intelligence branch are put through a 4-month intensive course — the first five weeks focusing only on MSA, the rest on a specific vernacular. (That it can be done in 4 months at all reflects that Hebrew and Arabic are both South Semitic languages.) “If the MSA part were useless, believe me, the course wouldn’t even spend five minutes on it. But no, it’s where you learn the basis on which all the vernaculars are built.”

Postscript: the technical term for the state where there is a large distance between the literary and the vernacular version of a language is diglossia. Classic examples in Indo-European languages were Latin and Greek: the Latin some of us learned in school was the literary language, while the “vulgar” Latin spoken by the vulgus (=common people) became the ancestor of all Romance languages. The Greek taught in school was again literary, while koine (common Greek) was the spoken vernacular, in which the Christian New Testament was written, and which (via Demotic Greek) evolved into the modern language. Arabic is the most prominent example among the Semitic languages.

The nefarious role of China in the Israel-HamaSS conflict; fronts of a global proxy war

I remember when some Israelis, from disgraced former PM Ehud All-Merde Olmert to some of my colleague, were convinced China was going to be both the wave of the future and Israel’s great friend. (To be crystal clear, I am not talking about the Chinese people, with which there are some undeniable cultural affinities.)

Well, the scales ought to be falling off everybody’s eyes by now. Item the first (from MEMRI):

Chinese Foreign Ministry Official To Hamas Leader Isma’il Haniya: Hamas Is Part Of The Palestinian National Fabric; China Will Maintain Its Ties With It [Did Chairman Winnie the Flu consult with an imam on what the Koran has to say about the “love” of underage turtles?]

Item the second: Joint Iran-China-Russia Naval Military Exercise ‘Maritime Security Belt 2024’ In Indian Ocean 

The more I see of this conflict, the more it reminds me of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Ostensibly, that was a religious war between Catholics and Protestants, but it quickly acquired the character of a proxy war (arguably the bloodiest proxy war in history) — where Catholic France was willing to support the Protestants in order to stop a rival Catholic empire (the Austrian Habsburgs) from becoming too powerful.

Likewise, I do not believe for one second that the CCP has any sympathy for political Islam, not when they are waging a ruthless de-Islamization campaign among the Uyghurs in their own backyard. Nor do I think old-school judeophobia is at work — that’s never beent much of a “thing” in China [or in East Asian cultures more broadly]. China [with its allies of convenience Iran and Russia] is simply pursuing its geopolitical chess game — with as end goal supplanting the declining USA as global hegemon.

Item the third: “masgramondou” on supporting the rights of self-defense of Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine — and what ties the three of these together.

And speaking of Ukraine: The Telegraph on the real reason France’s Macron turned from Ukraine dove to Ukraine hawk.

Meanwhile, the US holpooiermedialapdog media (and its gullible ninnies abroad) plumb ever greater depths of presstitution in their attempts to run interference for 0bama’s senile doddering marionette.

St. Patrick’s Day music video: Rory Gallagher live at WDR Rockpalast (1977)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day for those of Irish heritage!

When people ask about Irish music that isn’t “Riverdance” or Irish folk music more broadly, the first thing that will come to mind for many is U2. And while they definitely had the song writing talent and the charismatic singer, I don’t think anyone would ever mistake any member of U2 for a great virtuoso on their instrument.

But Irish rock didn’t start with U2. Back in my high school days, a classmate turned me on to Thin Lizzy, whose melodic hard rock stylings

I was introduced by a classmate to Thin Lizzy, whose half-Irish, half-black frontman, singer-bassist Phil Lynott, and a succession of guitar virtuosi (Gary Moore the best known among them) created some classics that are still heard regularly on rock radio. (Heck, even Metallica covered “Whiskey In The Jar”.)

And then there was the memorable moment when some interviewer asked Jimi Hendrix what it was like to be the best guitarist in the world, and he answered “dunno, ask Rory Gallagher”. Eric Clapton, Rush’s Alex Lifeson, and Queen’s Brian May have all cited him as influences.

Blues rock isn’t one of my favorite genres, but boy, what a musician. Here is an hour-long live set from a German TV channel (WDR=West German Broadcast).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day and enjoy!