Hamas makes up its casualty numbers and the world repeats them as truth

The New Neo Posted on by

This is an important article. It exposes the blatant deception inherent in those Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures issued by Hamas and printed and quoted as truth all over the Western world:

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. …

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough …

The rest of the article crunches the numbers to show that they don’t resemble naturally-occurring statistics. Please read it and pass it on.

But understanding it requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of how math works and how statistics works, and many people lack those skills. It also takes the desire to confront the reality, which is that Hamas lies and lies and lies. If a person’s view of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel is based on these lies, a mind is a difficult thing to change.

Why they are so determined to try Trump in Georgia

The New Neo Posted on by

There are four criminal cases now pending in the lawfare against Trump, an extraordinary, unprecedented, and coordinated drive to either stop him from running for president, stop him from being elected president, or stop him from serving as president if elected.

Two of the cases are in the federal court system, and even if Trump were to be convicted, if he becomes president he apparently could pardon himself. But two are in state systems where conviction would be immune to presidential pardon.

Of course, if convicted in any of these cases, a state appeals court could overturn a conviction in the state cases, and/or SCOTUS could do so if it decided to hear either case. SCOTUS also could overturn either of the federal cases, of course. But I don’t think that Democrats are so very upset by the prospect of any conviction being overturned if it happens after an election; the first order of business is to harass and distract Trump while he’s running as well as taint him with voters, and -they hope – keep him from being elected in the first place.

But if Trump doesn’t win an appeal, convictions in either New York or Georgia (the states involved in the state cases) would be subject to pardons only according to the rules of the state itself. New York has a Democrat governor unlikely to ever pardon Trump. Georgia has a Republican governor, but one who is not Trump-friendly – although that latter point is irrelevant because in Georgia the governor cannot issue pardons.

Georgia has a somewhat unusual system that goes like this:

Georgia’s RICO charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.

In Georgia, a pardon is an “order of official forgiveness” only granted to those who have completed their sentence, according to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles’ website. …

In Georgia, pardon power does not rest with the governor (aka Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican) but with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, a board within the state’s executive branch.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles is made up of five members who are appointed by the governor and then confirmed by the state Senate for a seven-year term.

“Once confirmed, members would be insulated from political pressures by the fact that no one official could remove them from office until they completed their terms,” the State Board of Pardons and Paroles’ website states.

To qualify for a pardon in Georgia, according to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles’ website, you must have completed your sentence at least five years before applying. You must not have committed any crimes in those five years or have any pending charges, among other qualifications.

The power given to courts to mount political prosecutions is enormous. All that is needed is an unscrupulous politically-motivated prosecutor – there are plenty of those – and a venue in which most of the judges are biased in a certain direction and/or the same is true of the jury pool.

Both the Georgia case and the New York hush money case are considered novel interpretations of existing law. These convoluted prosecutions are being used against a political opponent. The Georgia case is considered at least somewhat stronger than the New York case, although both are weak in the legal sense. But that doesn’t matter if the court is biased enough. In the Georgia case, there’s another element too. From last October:

Texas attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to election interference charges in Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday, one day before jury selection was scheduled to begin for her trial.

As part of the plea deal, Powell was sentenced to six years of probation for conspiring to interfere with the performance of election duties for orchestrating a Coffee County elections system breach following the 2020 presidential election. …

According to the plea agreement, Powell agreed to testify in other election interference trials about the hacking of voting machines and software that occurred in rural south Georgia shortly after the incumbent Republican president lost the state of Georgia by less than 12,000 votes to Democratic President Joe Biden. …

Powell admitted Thursday that she hired forensic computer experts to compromise voting software and other confidential voter information from the Coffee County elections office in early 2021. She also agreed that prosecutors would have proven during trial that Powell, along with several co-conspirators, plotted with Coffee County elections director Misty Hampton to illegally access election machines by tampering with electronic ballot markers, voting software and other equipment.

So Powell is poised to testify in at least some of these cases, although it appears from that article that her testimony may be limited to the hacking of voting machines; I’m unaware of any allegations that Trump was connected to any of that at all. So it’s possible that Powell’s testimony won’t hurt him. But the fact that she was at least briefly connected with his challenge of the 2020 election, and that she pleaded guilty, certainly doesn’t help him. Here’s an article discussing some of the possibilities.

Long COVID is no different than long flu …

The New Neo Posted on by

… we just don’t usually use the term “long flu,” or talk about it much.

So many things about COVID resemble other contagious illnesses, including common ones such as the flu. Some of these resemblances involve the possibility of serious consequences such as heart problems from the disease – or from the vaccine; see this for one of many posts where I discuss the issue. In that post I wrote:

From the start of the COVID phenomenon I’ve been reporting on things and crunching the numbers, and one thing I’ve noticed (both in the official releases and in the people who don’t trust them) is a great deal of failure to acknowledge the fact that all diseases and all vaccines can cause rare and troublesome reactions. That’s part of the risks of life, disease, and vaccination. …

… [I]t’s illustrative of something I noticed early on, which is that all phenomena relating to COVID have been treated as somehow uniquely awful. And yet the evidence is that they are not uniquely awful. The distrust engendered by the lies and exaggerations told by the CDC and government around COVID has resulted in a backlash that in my opinion is also an exaggeration, although an understandable one.

Which brings us to long COVID. From the start it has struck me that this phenomenon seems no different from what happens in certain cases with many other viruses. Once or twice in my life I’ve experienced a flu with symptoms that seem to drag on for many months, for example. In addition, I had a friend who was felled by H1N1 years ago, and it took well over a year before she felt completely better.

Therefore this news comes as no surprise:

Long COVID appears to manifest as a post-viral syndrome indistinguishable from seasonal influenza and other respiratory illnesses, with no evidence of increased moderate-to-severe functional limitations a year after infection, according to new research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April). …

The findings add to previous research by the same authors and published in BMJ Public Health, which found no difference in ongoing symptoms and functional impairment when COVID-19 was compared with influenza 12 weeks post-infection.

As I said, unsurprising.

Open thread 3/16/24

The New Neo Posted on by

I find this amusing; this woman names her clothing! I also liked it because it reminded me of something I haven’t thought of since I was about seven years old: crinolines. They were great.

RIP Major Uri Moyal, Israeli killed in terrorist knife attack

The New Neo Posted on by

A career Israeli military man of 51, Major Uri Moyal, has died of wounds sustained in a terrorist stabbing in Israel.

I don’t usually watch videos of killings, but I watched this one, which occurred in a coffee shop. I call your attention to it because it shows the speed of such attacks, as well as the speed of Moyal’s response. Mortally wounded, he managed to stand up and shoot the perpetrator, killing him, making further attacks by this particular person impossible. In the video you can find at the link, Moyal is the guy initially in the upper right side of the picture near the counter, somewhat blurred but dressed in dark green.

This show another angle as well.

The terrorist is dressed all in black, and initially enters the shop with a casual posture. His move towards Moyal is lightning fast. The perp was raised in Gaza but he married an Israeli citizen and so he had Israeli citizenship, but being raised in Gaza almost certainly exposed him to poisonous anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli pedagogy there while growing up.

You can also see that another man tried to intervene and take the knife from the terrorist, but runs clear when he sees that Moyal has a gun and is preparing to kill the assailant. You can see Moyal positioning his gun to shoot and the terrorist also sees it and starts to lunge again at Moyal, who gets off the shot before the terrorist can reach him, even though the distance is very short.

Moyal then left the building and collapsed off-camera. He was taken to the hospital but died there. RIP.

More news on the Georgia Trump case and Fani Willis

The New Neo Posted on by

As expected, Nathan Wade has resigned from the case. That should satisfy the decision laid down by Judge McAfee I reported on earlier today.

According to Alan Dershowitz (hat tip: commenter “Karmi”):

Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz blasted as “utterly dishonest” a judge’s “weaselly” ruling Friday to let Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis proceed with her election interference prosecution of Donald Trump and his allies.

In a brutal takedown of the 23-page ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, a Dershowitz asked, “Who are you going to believe, this judge or your lying eyes?” …

“We all know there was an actual conflict of interest here,” he added. “[McAfee] just doesn’t have the guts to say it. And I predicted he wouldn’t have the guts to say it. He has to live in Fulton County.”

Dershowitz conceded the judge “may have said some things that are very critical of her, but still, he should have removed [her] … from the case.”

He also lamented how the ruling “undercuts our legal system tremendously.”

“He should have ruled, honestly, yes, there’s a conflict. Yes, she committed perjury. Yes there was a conspiracy. Yes, she received financial benefit for this. That’s the truth and the truth matters,” Dershowitz said. …

“If anybody believes that she actually paid back every penny in cash, I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn,” he said. “There are people in prison, there are people in death row, based on evidence less strong than this.”

Yes, but those people aren’t trying to prosecute Donald Trump.

The truth should matter. It doesn’t appear that it does, however. Dershowitz believes “the ruling could be appealed on two issues: that the evidence is overwhelming that there was an actual conflict of interest, and that there shouldn’t have to be an actual conflict of interest.”

One thing that Dershowitz doesn’t mention is something I discovered just a little while ago by looking up McAfee’s Wiki page, which says this [emphasis mine]:

McAfee was an assistant district attorney in the Barrow County, Georgia, Piedmont Judicial Circuit. He joined the office of the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, in April 2015, initially working on the early stages of criminal cases. He later was promoted to working as a prosecutor in the complex trial division, which was then headed by prosecutor Fani Willis, who was later elected as Fulton County district attorney. McAfee was eventually promoted to senior assistant district attorney in the major case division, where he prosecuted felony cases including armed robbery and murder.

So McAfee worked under Willis for quite some time; it’s not clear exactly how long or how close they were.

McAfee was appointed to his present position by Governor Kemp, who recently signed the following law (hat tip: commenter “Banned Lizard”):

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

“This legislation will help us ensure rogue and incompetent prosecutors are held accountable if they refuse to uphold the law,” Kemp said before signing the bill, flanked by Republican legislative leaders. “As we know all too well, crime has been on the rise across the country, and is especially prevalent in cities where prosecutors are giving criminals a free pass or failing to put them behind bars due to lack of professional conduct.” …

The measure is likely to face renewed legal challenges.

The Georgia Senate is also investigating Willis. It’s not at all clear whether any of these efforts can or will stop her, nor is the time frame obvious.

I believe I am correct in stating that, if Trump were to be convicted in the Georgia trial, Kemp could pardon him because it is a state prosecution rather than a federal one [CORRECTION: Georgia’s governor doesn’t have that power. It would be up to the Parole Board, and the way it works is that a person has to serve the sentence first]. I also believe I am correct in thinking it unlikely that Kemp – a Republican but not a Trump fan – would do so.

[ADDENDUM: More here.]

Brits are limiting puberty blockers in trans treatment

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a step in the right direction, at least:

Children will no longer routinely be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.

The decision comes after a review found there was “not enough evidence” they are safe or effective.

Puberty blockers, which pause the physical changes of puberty, will now only be available as part of research.

They will still be available, just not “routinely” from the NHS. I don’t know what percentage of treatment comes at the hands of the NHS – I assume it’s a pretty hefty percentage – but “individual clinicians can still apply to have the drugs funded for patients on a case-by-case basis.” And the 100 minors who are now taking puberty blockers can continue to take them.

Such directives are somewhat simpler in Britain because their health care is more centralized. That centralization isn’t usually a good thing, but it helps in this case.

And not only is there “not enough evidence” that puberty blockers are “safe or effective,” there’s plenty of evidence that they are harmful, including harm to psychosexual development.

Fani Willis stays on the case

The New Neo Posted on by

The judge has ruled that if her paramour Nathan Wade steps down, everything will be A-ok and she can keep up the legal pursuit of the Great Orange Whale:

[Judge] McAfee did not find a conflict of interest or anything fishy about money, except Willis and Wade could not prove they definitely split the costs. Therefore, no proof about the money gives off the appearance of impropriety.

“The appearance standard recognizes that even when no actual conflict exists, a perceived conflict in the reasonable eyes of the public threatens confidence in the legal system itself,” McAfee wrote. “When this danger goes uncorrected, it undermines the legitimacy and moral force of our already weakest branch of government.”

That’s sort of amusing, actually, in a deeply cynical and despairing sort of way. There is very little “confidence in the legal system” left, and this ruling doesn’t shore it up. Multiple dangers are “going uncorrected,” including the appliation of novel and twisted theories of law to try to ruin a political opponent such as Trump and/or his supporters and aides. There is little “legitimacy and moral force” left, and the idea of “moral force” in connection with Willis and Wade is ludicrous.

And are courts the “weakest branch of government?” If they ever were, they certainly aren’t anymore. The requirements to remove a rogue judge are very high, in most states and in the federal system. Judges (often unelected and appointed for life) regularly invalidate the acts of legislatures composed of elected representatives of the people, or executives who are also elected. In fact, with the blessing and support of the Democrats, little old prosecutor Fani Willis is trying to keep their opponent Trump from winning the presidency, and is doing it through the mechanism of that “weak” branch: the courts.

Judge McAfee ruled that either Willis and her entire office can step aside, or Wade can leave the case. I have little doubt the latter will be what occurs, and the case will go on as before.

Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones have harmed children growing up with them

The New Neo Posted on by

Haidt makes an excellent case that smartphones have harmed a generation and are working to harm the next one:

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound, but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

I believe another element in the acceleration of these problems were the lockdowns, and I would wager that the leftist indoctrination in many schools has had a role as role. But I have little doubt that phones are a very significant driver of the angst.

What is the remedy? The first step would be for parents to step up and delay the introduction of smart cell phones for their children, and should only allow them to have old-fashioned stupid cell phones that are limited to making phone calls. However, how many parents will actually do that? And there is also the reality that unless most parents refuse to get smart cell phones for their kids, some children will borrow the smartphones of others. In addition, people of any age can buy cell phones if they have the money; should the sale of smart cell phones, like cigarettes or liquor, be banned for those under eighteen?

Haidt’s article is long, but I highly recommend reading it. The discussion isn’t limited to smartphones and their affects, either; Haidt goes into many other aspects of modern child-rearing. Towards the end, he suggests some possible remedies, including this one that I think would be a good thing to try to implement:

Even without the help of organizations, parents could break their families out of collective-action traps if they coordinated with the parents of their children’s friends. Together they could create common smartphone rules and organize unsupervised play sessions or encourage hangouts at a home, park, or shopping mall.

I’m glad I raised my own child in a pre-smartphone and more traditional age, but as a grandparent, I’m especially concerned about all of this.

Will Judge Cannon dismiss the Trump documents case?

The New Neo Posted on by

I very much doubt it. But I hope I’m wrong and Julie Kelly is right:

Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel to get rid of Netnyahu …

The New Neo Posted on by

… is a continuation of the Obama administration’s demonization of Netanyahu. In that sense, it should come as no surprise. Not only is it a political move to placate the Democrats’ anti-Israel anti-Jew pro-Hamas wing, but dislike of Netanyahu has been a staple of Democrat thought even among those Democrats who basically support Israel. Think of it this way: Netanyahu equals Trump in their eyes – if not exactly, then approximately.

Schumer certainly wasn’t acting on his own. He is merely the mouthpiece for a long-held Democrat policy. But let’s examine what he actually said:

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed – radically – since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” says Schumer.

It is, of course, the Democrats who have lost their way and who are clinging to “a governing vision that is stuck in the past” – that is, the fiction of a 2-state solution with a Palestinian leadership that merely wants its own small state rather than to utterly destroy the Jewish one as well as kill all Jews and (with other radical jihadis) take over Western Europe as well.

Next:

Netanyahu has “lost his way, putting himself in coalition with far-right extremists like [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich and [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben-Gvir.”

“Extremist Palestinians and extremist Israelis seek the same goal: from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, they aim to push the other from the land,” Schumer adds.

Here Schumer is equating “extremist Palestinians” with “extremist Israelis” when the two are very very different. First of all, there are the numbers. Gaza’s government is run by murderous terrorists who are in charge, and the West Bank is only nominally better. These jihadis have the support of the vast majority of the Palestinian population. They speak openly and proudly of murdering Jews as one of their goals, and for decades have perpetrated widespread and repeated murder and mayhem in Israel, limited only by Israeli defenses. On October 7, those Israeli defenses failed, and the result was a horrific barbarous murder and torture spree that killed 1200 in cold blood (violating a ceasefire, by the way), up close and personal. These acts were defended and applauded by the Palestinian people in figures that are above 70% of the population. And the goal is to do it again and again, and obliterate the single Jewish state in the entire world. Arab countries have no Jews in them, so most of the Middle East is already free of Jews and controlled by Arabs, but the Palestinians – who are essentially indistinguishable from their Egyptian and Jordanian neighbors – refuse to be absorbed into that greater Arab/Muslim world. No Arab or Muslim nation wants the Palestinians because of their destructive and jihadi ways, and their history of destabilizing (or attempting to destabilize) countries that took them in.

In Israel, there are indeed some people on the right who would like to drive the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and have them settle elsewhere. Such people do not control the government. However, it is an understandable position, considering the fact that the vast majority of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank support the destruction of Israel and the murder of the Jews. Who would want such neighbors, neighbors whom Jordan and Egypt despise as well? In addition, there are two million Arab citizens of Israel who aren’t going anywhere.

So what is it that Smotrich – one of those who were criticized by Schumer – has been saying [quotes from back in January, for example]?:

… Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday reiterated his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision.

The leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party claimed in a statement that “more than 70 percent of the Israeli public today supports” encouraging emigration as “a humanitarian solution,” but did not provide a source for this statistic.

A resettlement policy is necessary, he said, because “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism, where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel and with a desire to slaughter and rape and murder Jews wherever they are.”

The other man criticized by Schumer in his speech, Ben-Gvir, agrees. Note that they don’t seem to be advocating any sort of change for the Arab Israelis; just those in Gaza and the West Bank. He is also saying it would be voluntary and “encouraged” rather than forced or accomplished by violence. I think it’s an understandable wish, considering the murderous impulses of the vast majority of the Palestinians residing in those places. And it certainly would be nice if they all picked up and left voluntarily and were accepted elsewhere. I believe the reality, however, is that this would never happen. They will never leave voluntarily, and no one else wants them. Plus, Netanyahu isn’t in accord with either of the two.

Schumer also said this:

If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down, and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.

What chutzpah. Talk about election interference! But that’s the legacy of Obama, as well. But what also is strange about that statement is its time-travel aspects: Schumer first talks about something that might happen after the war “begins to wind down” – which probably will take quite a few months, by my estimation – and then says that if that happens, the administration will use its leverage “to change the present course.” It doesn’t make sense on the face of it, except for its threat aspect – which is what it is.

Even the more “moderate” Israeli politicians weren’t keen on Schumer’s statements, nor of course were Netanyahu and his party:

[National Unity party chairman Minister Benny Gantz said that] “… Israel is a strong democracy, and only its citizens will determine its leadership and future. Any external intervention in the matter is incorrect and unacceptable.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud strongly condemned Schumer’s speech, saying, “Israel is not a banana republic but an independent and proud democracy that elected Prime Minister Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu leads a determined policy that is supported by a huge majority of the people.”

“Contrary to Schumer’s remarks, the Israeli public supports a complete victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictate to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. We expect Senator Schumer to respect the elected government of Israel and not undermine it. This is always true, ll the more so in times of war,” the Likud stated.

Earlier, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that “Regardless of our political positions, we strongly oppose external political interference in Israel’s internal affairs. We are an independent nation, not a banana republic. The danger of terrorism is on the way to the West and it would be good if they would help Israel in its justified war. In the long run, they are defending themselves as well.”

Meanwhile, Biden prepares to give Iran ten billion dollars:

The Biden administration on Wednesday reapproved a sanctions waiver that unlocks upwards of $10 billion in frozen funds for the Iranian government, according to a copy of the notice submitted to Congress late Wednesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The sanctions waiver—which has drawn fierce GOP opposition on Capitol Hill—allows Iraq to transfer electricity payments to Iran via third-party countries. The sanctions waiver was last approved by the Biden administration in November and set to expire this month, putting the White House in a tight position as a mounting chorus of GOP lawmakers express concern about sanctions being bypassed. The authority granted in the latest waivers allows Iraq to convert dinars into Euros and transfer payments into Iranian banks accounts in Oman.

What a wonderful idea.

More:

While the State Department maintains the funds can only be accessed by Iran to pay for humanitarian supplies, like food and medicine, critics of the sanctions waiver argue that money is fungible, and that the waiver frees up cash for Iran to spend on its global terrorism operations. …

“Under these waivers, no money has been permitted to enter Iran,” the [State Department] official maintained. “Any notion to the contrary is false and misleading. These funds, which are held abroad in third countries, can only be used for transactions for the purchase of food, agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices, and other non-sanctionable transactions. The money goes straight to the trusted vendor or financial institution in another country. The money never touches Iran.” …

Iran, the [Republican] lawmakers argued, “has a history of lying about humanitarian transactions. There is no reason to think that they will not try to skirt these restrictions again. Additionally, money is fungible, and the waiver and subsequent transfer will free up billions in funds that Iran can now spend on its terrorist proxies, nuclear activities, and military.”

I don’t think even the State Department is so stupid as to think this doesn’t free up money for Iran to use on its favorite pastime: jihadi operations in Israel and elsewhere.