Do people understand war anymore?

The New Neo Posted on by

I think many many people these days do not understand what war is. The terrible nature of war itself has combined with modern “smart” weapons and humanitarian impulses to dampen the resolve of many people in Western nations, even against the most vicious and destructive of enemies.

The two world wars of the 20th century caused an enormous amount of suffering and carnage and were fought for the most part by and in developed Western nations. Those wars were characterized by imprecise bombing that killed many civilians, and then the use of two atomic weapons to end the war. Then, by the time of the Gulf War, technology had advanced to the point where we began to be able to bomb more precisely, and that ability has only increased since then to the point of being able to destroy a single building without damaging adjacent ones.

So people – especially young people – have become accustomed to the idea that a war can be waged by only killing the bad guys, and even as few of them as possible. Such a thing, however, is not possible.

The situation has the unintended effect of allowing terrorists to win wars by their tactic of putting civilians in harms’ way. The Palestinians’ entire war strategy rests on this, and most of the West cooperates. Thus, the unrealistic expectations held by so many modern Westerners about war end up enabling evil to flourish.

Commenter “Shadow” writes:

I’m reminded of this piece by Daniel Greenfield that I read over a decade ago and never forgot. https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2012/11/war-is-answer.html

Israel kicked the can down the road for too long. Its fear of killing civilians emboldened terrorists to use human shields, and prolonged the conflict because it could never get enough of the bad guys. It should have been over years ago. Now people on both sides are suffering today. You cannot fight a war kindly. You perhaps cannot even fight a war morally in any normal sense of the world – even the Allies did terrible things. War demands the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good. There is no way around it.

“The plan for perpetual peace is really a plan for perpetual war.”

“The humanitarian impulse makes the anti-humanitarian impulse inevitable. The more precisely we try to kill terrorists, the more ingeniously the terrorists blend into the civilian population and employ human shields. The more we try not to kill civilians, the more civilians we are forced to kill. That is the equal and opposite reaction of the humanitarian formula.”

If Israel had heeded this warning years ago, the UN would have been angry, of course, but Israel wouldn’t be in the position it’s in now.

And academia and the internet spread the stupidity around. Widespread historical ignorance does its part, too.

Why oh why did the clock readout on my phone have to turn pink?

The New Neo Posted on by

My phone recently updated, and to my surprise the time readout on my lock screen turned bright pink. Barbie pink.

In the last phone update before that, the numbers had turned thick and clumsy, whereas before they had been elegantly thin and yet still readable. I didn’t like the change, but it didn’t bother me unduly. But now they were thick and pink, a sort of ghastly pink that only a 4-year-old could love.

I finally found a way to change it back, but it took quite a while and some searching to figure it out.

So, why do programmers do this to us? It seems, as best I can reconstruct what happened, that the new “improved” idea was to take a color from the photo on each person’s lockscreen and use that color for the clock numbers for that person as well. And it turns out that there’s a fair amount – although not an overwhelming amount – of pink on the photo I use, which is of my grandchildren.

Changes such as this may seem small, and they are small. But they are often jarring and unwanted. At least there was an option to turn it back to a neutral color.

Chris Rufo on the plagiarism accusations against black female professors

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “AesopFan” helpfully offered this tweet from Christopher Rufo, relevant to this post from yesterday concerning whether black female professors are disproportionately involved in plagiarism:

I was wondering whether there had been an attempt to study this systematically, and that answers the question: sporadically but not in comprehensive research.

As commenter “OBloodyHell” adds, however, that if such research is ever done, then:

1 — if it turns out that it is a racially-founded problem, it will be suppressed.
2 — if it turns out that it is happening across the board, well, then it will be suppressed because… face it, it’ll be mostly liberals doing it.
3 — what won’t be found is and evidence that anyone is being oppressed. But that will not be the merdia spin no matter what happens.

(I assume that “merdia” is a purposeful misspelling, so I didn’t correct it.)

I will add that, if #1 or #2 turn out to be the case, and these results are reported, the plagiarism will be minimized in importance (as happened with Claudine Gay) or even considered an outdated concern of an oppressive culture devised by evil white males. This would be in line with similar attacks on “meritocracy.”

Why is Michigan such a big deal to Biden?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “MrsX” asks:

What good will Michigan do Biden if many other swing states swing against him? Has the general sentiment in the US moved so decisively against Israel that Biden will gain more votes from supporting Hamas than he’ll lose from abandoning Israel?

Polls vary markedly on the question. For example, we have this from a Gallup poll conducted from March 1-20. The question asked was “Do you approve or disapprove of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza?” The results were 55% disapproval and 36% approval.

But that’s a way to ask the question that doesn’t probe into what the disapproval is about – for example, it could be because Israel is being too timid and careful rather than too violent. I actually don’t think that’s what most people would say, but it would be nice to know, and the pollsters don’t appear to have asked what would be an obvious question.

Or, many people – including me – aren’t happy about wars, but that includes any war, and though they’re unhappy that Israel has to kill people, they’re even more unhappy with Hamas and realize that Israel’s counter-attack is a grim necessity.

Contrast that poll with this one taken by Pew in late February, slightly before the Gallup poll but rather close in time:

Months into the Israel-Hamas war, roughly six-in-ten Americans (58%) say Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid. But how Israel is carrying out its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack receives a more mixed evaluation. About four-in-ten U.S. adults (38%) say Israel’s conduct of the war has been acceptable, and 34% say it has been unacceptable. The remaining 26% are unsure. …

When asked about Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel, far fewer Americans (22%) describe them as valid. And just 5% of U.S. adults say the way Hamas carried out its Oct. 7 attack on Israel was acceptable, while 66% describe it as completely unacceptable.

However, I have little doubt that the constant drumbeat of anti-Israel propaganda in the MSM has reduced support for Israel; the country is presented as vengeful and out to get civilians and children, plus guilty of “disproportionately” killing based on Hamas figures (which are often not identified as such). Hear that often enough and it penetrates, as Hamas and the MSM know.

But back to Michigan. In that state, there are three times as many Muslims as Jews (see this and this for comparative statistics). So that’s a rather obvious metric explaining Biden’s stance, because Michigan is a swing state and many Muslims there – numerous enough to make a difference – have pledged to not vote for him if he isn’t harder on Israel.

But what of other swing states? I think there’s also a calculation by the Biden administration and other Democrats that they can count on Trump-hatred to temper the tendency of voters in other swing states to swing away from Biden because of his treatment of Israel. Or they believe that Biden’s pro-Israel rhetoric at the beginning of the war, when more people were paying attention, will be the prevailing perception of voters. They believe that only some Jewish Democrats are likely to abandon Biden because of his bad treatment of Israel, and they are a small group in terms of the voting population.

By the way, that Gallup poll didn’t reveal a lot of voter love for Biden, whatever it may have said about approval of the Gazan war: “just 21% of independents and 16% of Republicans approve of his performance on the issue.”

NOTE: At a future date, I plan to write a post scrunching the numbers of Jewish voters in swing state versus Muslim voters.

Are black women disproportionately involved in plagiarism in academia, or there a “witch hunt” against them?

The New Neo Posted on by

One side speaks:

“Witch hunt” is an interesting term. It harks back to the Salem witch trials – and similar proceedings that were far more widespread in Europe than in the US – that were prosecuted for hundreds of years starting in the 1400s:

In the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America. Between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed. The witch-hunts were particularly severe in parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630, during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion. Among the lower classes, accusations of witchcraft were usually made by neighbors, and women made formal accusations as much as men did. Magical healers or ‘cunning folk’ were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft, but seem to have made up a minority of the accused. Roughly 80% of those convicted were women, most of them over the age of 40. In some regions, convicted witches were burnt at the stake.

There is no dearth of theories (including feminist ones) to explain what was going on and why, and who were the targets and why. There is little doubt that most of the people convicted of witchcraft were not even attempting to practice witchcraft, although there are theories (highly disputed) that at least a small number may have been part of some sort of pagan witchcraft cult.

However, plagiarism and related academic deceptions are real. And they are usually quite provable, and not by such ancient rituals as trial by water. And there is little question that there has been a recent spate of solid accusations of plagiarism against a number of black female academics:

Right-wing activists have levied new plagiarism accusations on a monthly basis. In Dec., conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo and Christopher Brunet reported on accusations against former Harvard University President Claudine Gay. Then, in Jan., the conservative Washington Free Beacon covered a complaint filed against Sherri A. Charleston, Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. In Feb., anonymous bad actors accused Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene of plagiarism. And finally in March, Rufo reported on allegations against Harvard assistant professor of Sociology Christina J. Cross.

Conservatives have emphasized that all four of the accused are Black women.

“Let’s not ignore the pattern,” Rufo wrote on X. “This is the fourth black female CRT/DEI scholar to be accused of plagiarism at Harvard.”

Others have pounced on these allegations, arguing that they provide evidence these women were diversity hires in the first place. U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) took to X and argued that Gay “got her job not through merit, but because she checked a box.”

Republicans pounce!

More:

Clearly, the right has an agenda: crafting a narrative that Black academics, particularly women and those who study race, disproportionately plagiarize.

The author goes on to mention a bunch of white academics who have been accused of plagiarism. I have little doubt that white people in academia also commit plagiarism and I doubt anyone is suggesting otherwise. Several issues come to mind, however. The first is how common plagiarism is in academia as a whole. Is the entire enterprise riddled with it, or is it rare? With recent advances in plagiarism-detecting software, it wouldn’t be all that hard to find out not just the numbers of accusations of plagiarism (which could be skewed in various ways), but the actual incidence of plagiarism. Is anyone doing that sort of research?

Also at issue are the racial/sexual demographics of the problem: are women disproportionately involved (in comparison to their percentages in academia)? Are black people disproportionately involved? Is any other race group disproportionately involved? Are professors in certain fields disproportionately involved? Are professors at a certain level of achievement disproportionately involved? Are professors hired during certain years disproportionately involved?

All of these are interesting questions and I don’t know whether anyone is researching the answers. The Crimson article I cited at the beginning of this post makes a similar suggestion (after the author has blasted the right, of course) and I agree with her suggestion.

Meanwhile, in regard to the latest person accused of plagiarism, economist Lisa D. Cook, we have this:

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.

Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.

The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise.

Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials.

In the case of Cook, it seems plagiarism is just a part of it. And she’s not just any old professor, she’s been a star for quite some time in terms of appointments to prestigious positions in the world of economics.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Was there anyone previously unaware of the leftist bias of NPR? If so, that person might want to read this exposé by a 25-year veteran of NPR.

(2) Biden hasn’t given up trying to purchase the votes of the young through unconstitutional means. What a guy:

Joe Biden just announced that he is pushing even further on ‘forgiving’ student loan debt to the tune of billions. When talking about the issue, Biden even acknowledges that the U.S. Supreme Court told him that he didn’t have the power to do this but that he is doing it anyway.

It’s past time to call this what it is. Joe Biden is trying to buy the votes of college students with our tax dollars.

The media is going along gleefully.

How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?

(3) Sheila Jackson Lee, astronomer extraordinaire:

… [S]ometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gasses.

And that’s why the question is why or how could we as humans could live on the moon. Are the gasses such that we could do that?

Lee tried to excuse herself by saying she meant the sun was made of gasses, not the moon. But there’s no way that her statement can be interpreted as referring to the sun.

(4) Did you know that Joe Biden is the perfectly moderate candidate and the Democrat Party is the perfectly moderate party? Yes, indeed:

The other problem with the No Labels operation is that there already is a moderate, bipartisanship-minded political faction in the United States. It is called the Democratic Party. For better or for worse, that party continues to be the home of nearly all of the remaining “institutionalists” in U.S. politics, and party leadership has repeatedly, over the past decade, passed up opportunities to engage in retaliatory procedural maneuvering in response to GOP constitutional hardball, preferring instead to stand up for a long-vanished consensus politics that has virtually no support on the other side of the aisle.

President Joe Biden not only leads that institutionalist party, but he is also its most vocal and successful backer of bipartisanship as a governing and political philosophy. During the 2020 campaign, he touted his record of reaching across the aisle when he was a senator, and as president he has signed an impressive array of bills with bipartisan support …

… Biden and Democrats have also repeatedly resisted tit-for-tat partisan escalation.

Much more of that sort of thing at the link.

(5) Amnesty International covers itself with shame [WARNING: horrific content coming up]:

One more thing about the hostages

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t find definitive word on this, but I thought I’d mention it anyway: I don’t believe that any hostage who was a member of the military at the time he or she was taken on October 7 has been released by Hamas in any of the hostage/prisoner exchanges. I believe that, from the very start, Hamas put them in a different category than the civilian women and the children kidnapped from the NOVA festival and the kibbutzim. If you look at this list of the released hostages, you’ll see it consists entirely of women, those 18 and under, and foreign nationals such as Thais.

As far as the civilian men go, I think Hamas released only those under 18 who were from the kibbutzim. The older male kibbutzniks are either dead or still hostages, except for two elderly men who were rescued by the IDF.

As far as I know, the rest of the hostages were in the military, except for the Bibas family, who were residents of Nir Oz when kidnapped. Hamas says the Bibas family members were killed by an Israeli airstrike, which is what Hamas says about every dead hostage. The statement has no meaning. We don’t know whether they are actually dead or alive and we don’t know whether Hamas even knows, but my guess is that they are dead.

The point of this post, however, is to point out something I don’t see the press explaining, which is that the remaining hostages (except for the Bibas family) are in two major categories: military members and civilian men over 18. I believe (but cannot prove) that these two groups – especially the military – were singled out by Hamas for harsher treatment from the start. “Harsher treatment” can mean many things, including death. But Hamas was always going to keep these groups back and use them to bargain for the entire prize: the release of all Palestinian prisoners (numbering in thousands) held in Israel, the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and the continuation of Hamas’ own powerful death grip on Gaza.

Biden does what we knew he’d do and calls for Israel to “just call for a ceasefire”

The New Neo Posted on by

Biden’s re-election is more important to Biden (and the Democrats) than anything else, to wit:

A day after Hamas indicated that it may have murdered most of the remaining hostages abducted on October 7, President Joe Biden is telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “just call for a ceasefire” — unliterally and without linking it to the release of the captive Israelis.

“What I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, total access to all food and medicine going into the country,” Biden said in an interview with he Spanish-language TV channel Univision.

Biden also criticized Netanyahu for going ahead with the military operation against Hamas’s remaining terrorist fighting force in Gaza. “I think what he’s doing is a mistake,” he told Univision. “I don’t agree with his approach.”

That last quote should be reassuring to all Israel-supporters, because Biden has been so consistently wrong on every aspect of foreign policy – not just in his presidency but in his long career as senator – that if he disagrees with what Netanyahu is doing, it’s almost certainly a sign that Netanyahu is on the right path.

Here is what Bibi has to say:

We will complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions, including in Rafah. No force in the world will stop us.

Israel’s very existence depends on it.

By the way, what does Biden (or his speechwriters) mean when he says the Israelis should just call for a ceasefire? Does he think Hamas would abide by it? Does he even know that a ceasefire was in place on October 7 when Hamas committed its massacre of Israelis?

And furthermore, why are the people of Gaza – the vast majority of whom supported that massacre and continue to do so, as well as wishing to see the destruction of Israel – so deserving of this sort of treatment in the middle of a war they started (with widespread warcrimes)?

Also:

A report claims Israeli officials are blaming the pullback of troops from Khan Younis and the surge in humanitarian aid reaching the Strip for the expected failure of hostage-truce talks in Cairo, saying Hamas won’t compromise after getting so much for free.

According to the Ynet news site, officials in Jerusalem think both moves “really hurt negotiations.”

“We gave up our strong bargaining chips for nothing,” and now Hamas’s position is even tougher to crack, Ynet quotes “Israeli sources” saying. “Hamas is digging in with its demands for an end to a war and a troop withdrawal, and is determined to play tricks with the mediators.”

For what its worth, my opinion is that Hamas was going to hold out anyway, until it got everything it wanted: all prisoners freed, a permanent ceasefire, and a guarantee of staying in power.

I hope that Biden’s repulsive behavior hurts his chances of re-election rather than helping him in November. His behavior certainly hurts everyone else – except Hamas and its allies.