The Charlie Hebdo terrorists and Western tolerance

The New Neo Posted on by

The still-at-large suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France fall into the dreaded category of native-born jihadis. The brothers Kouachi, one of whom had served time for trying to get to Iraq to fight the Americans, apparently fell off the radar screen afterwards—or at least enough off the radar screen to have successfully perpetrated the heinous attack yesterday.

Or did he? I was wondering how, considering that the assailants were masked, the brothers had been identified so quickly by police. This is the only information I’ve seen that sheds any light on that subject:

It said that the police had identified the suspects after one left his identification papers in the abandoned Citroé«n vehicle used to escape after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

To me that seems rather odd. Why would either suspect be carrying ID in the first place, under the circumstances? And why would that ID have been kept in the car? It’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility, of course. But it’s also at least remotely possible that the ID was a plant of some sort in order to deflect attention from the real perpetrators.

Islamist terrorist perpetrators in Europe rely on the tolerance of Western countries in order to operate. That tolerance takes several forms. The first is a tolerance of immigration; the Kouachis were born in France, but they are of Algerian descent, and most terrorists so far have either been immigrants or the children of immigrants. The second is, of course, religious tolerance; Islam is not the traditional religion of the West and yet Muslims are not discriminated against and are allowed to practice their religion freely. The third is freedom of speech, and that is the one that terrorists utilize when it serves their purposes but fight when it allows speech they consider offensive and/or blasphemous.

That’s the hallmark of the Muslim presence in the West: take advantage of the tolerance they need, and fight the tolerance that bothers them, relying on the goodwill of the locals to accommodate their contradictory demands. The Charlie Hebdo attack was not an act of terror perpetrated on random individuals; it specifically targeted freedom of speech and of the press, two of the pillars of Western society. Will this function as any sort of wake-up call for Europe?

It will be very interesting to see how France—and the rest of Europe—reacts. If the brothers are captured alive, will they be tried as murderers or terrorists? France has abolished the death penalty—would there be calls to reinstitute it?

The Blue Blood family dinner

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently watched a few episodes of the popular TV show “Blue Bloods” and was struck by two things: the topical nature of so many of its themes re the police and New York City, and its unusual depiction of a family that eats together every Sunday.

It’s that big family dinner that grabs many of the viewers. I like it, too. As I’ve written in this post on family dinners, I grew up in a world where getting together every evening to have dinner as a family group was a non-negotiable event. I wasn’t allowed to be absent unless I had some bona fide activity or a fever, but I wouldn’t have wanted to skip it anyway. The food was good, and although it certainly wasn’t always smooth sailing emotionally (in fact, verbal altercations and tension were pretty common), it was the only time the four of us got together and talked.

On “Blue Bloods,” the dinner (and the family) is bigger than mine was. So is the house. But the attraction to the meal is similar.

When they film the dinner sequences, the food is real and not just props. The family is portrayed as devout Catholics, and they say grace at every meal with hardly a hint of irony, which is rare on TV.

The public seems to love it. At the table there’s a lot of talking about substantive issues, but it’s the family back and forth that people seem to enjoy most. Note what Donnie Wahlberg says at the end here:

[NOTE: Wahlberg is one of my favorite actors on the show. He originally hails from South Boston, and his family has quite a story, too (see this and this).]

Terrorists kill 12 at satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo

The New Neo Posted on by

This was no lone wolf attack; three gunmen were involved. As you might imagine, they appear to have been Islamicist terrorists enraged at satire focusing on Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. The killings were organized and focused, and successfully targeted most of the publication’s cartoonists, who were at a weekly meeting of the staff.

It was not the first time the magazine had come under attack—there had been a firebombing in 2011 when the building was empty, and the editor had been under police guard for some time due to death threats. But this was not just a threat. It was a lethal attack, and the bodyguard was helpless against the force of the assault (as usual, the British papers seem to have a lot more detail than US coverage):

…[A witness] said the men ‘spoke French perfectly’ and ‘claimed they were ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’.

Gunmen reportedly told another witness: ‘You say to the media, it was Al Qaeda in Yemen.’

They are said to have sought out staff ‘by name’, according to a police source, adding that Charbonnier, known as Charb, a cartoonist responsible for an anti-Islam front page, was among those killed…

French journalist, Stefan De Vries, told Sky News: “There was protection at the door but they killed the police officers, they executed them and they started shooting in the offices.”

The following quote is an example of a man who’s seriously out of touch:

Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Gerard Biard escaped the massacre because he was in London.

He told France Inter: ‘I am shocked that people can have attacked a newspaper in France, a secular republic. I don’t understand it.

‘I don’t understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war.’

Does the man not understand Islamist terrorism and its goals? Where has he been all these years?

[NOTE: This article gives the background of the magazine, with illustrations:

The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris says Charlie Hebdo is part of a venerable tradition in French journalism going back to the scandal sheets that denounced Marie-Antoinette in the run-up to the French Revolution.

The tradition combines left-wing radicalism with a provocative scurrility that often borders on the obscene, he says.

Back in the 18th Century, the target was the royal family, and the rumour-mongers wrought havoc with tales – often illustrated – of sexual antics and corruption at the court at Versailles.

Nowadays there are new dragons to slay: politicians, the police, bankers and religion. Satire, rather than outright fabrication, is the weapon of choice.]

[ADDENDUM: This was how the gunman gained access to the magazine’s offices:

A young mother and cartoonist, known as ‘Coco’, who survived the massacre told how she had let the suspected Al Qaeda killers into the office.

Corrine Rey said she had returned from picking up her daughter from a nursery when she was confronted by two armed men wearing balaclavas.

‘I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care, arriving in front of the building, where two masked and armed men brutally threatened us,’ said Ms Rey.

‘They said they wanted to go up to the offices, so I tapped in the code,’ said Ms Rey, referring to the digi-code security system on the interphone.

Ms Rey and her daughter hid under a desk, from where they saw two other cartoonists being executed.]

Boehner retaliates?

The New Neo Posted on by

According to Randy Weber, R-Texas, Boehner has already begun to retaliate against those who voted against him. Weber claims he’s been removed from sponsorship of a bill, but Boehner’s office denies the allegations of targeting.

Who’s telling the truth? We don’t know. But I don’t much care, and it may not be for the reasons you think. I don’t care because I accept that politics ain’t beanbag*, and when you strike at a king you must kill him (metaphorically, that is). In other words, if try to remove a Speaker of the House and fail, you must be prepared to experience some negative consequences.

We (and I include myself among this “we”) might like it to be otherwise. It would be awfully pleasant if, after a factional war like this, the parties within the party could kiss and make up. I’ve written many times on this blog about my own wish for party unity against the more dangerous opponent, the left. But I’m not unrealistic enough to think it will happen; I understand why it won’t. The two sides of the Republican Party—let’s call them the moderates and the conservatives—are at odds both philosophically and in the practical sense. That is, they disagree in their political beliefs and they each want to seize power. Why would they not play hardball with each other, even if it sometimes seems as though the leftists are the ones who benefit most?

[NOTE: That famous “politics ain’t beanbag” quote is from an 1895 column by Finley Peter Dunne, with the words placed in the mouth of his fictional Irish-American character Mr. Dooley. The full quote is as follows::

Sure, politics ain’t bean-bag. ”˜Tis a man’s game, an’ women, childer, cripples an’ prohybitionists ”˜d do well to keep out iv it.”

Couldn’t get away with that today.]

[ADDENDUM: Amy Miller observes at Legal Insurrection, after quoting Charles Krauthammer’s “the days of hiding under Harry Reid’s desk are over”:

This is important, and it’s not a point that should be ignored by conservatives. Starting today, we’ll be holding accountable not just a newly-minted leadership, but a President who now finds himself in the minority after six comfortable years of playing pen-and-phone politics.

…I’m not saying we should treat the new Congress with kid gloves, but as the new session begins, we should take time to remember how we felt during the last week of October, when we were running on no sleep while campaigning for new candidates we claimed to believe in. Democrats will be playing defense for the next two years as bill after bill lands on Obama’s desk, and it’s our job to make this as miserable a time for them as possible.

This is not the moment to waste time eating our own. It’s time to pile on the Obamas and Reids of the world who made progress next to impossible, then turned around and blamed Republicans for the terrible policies that did manage to make it into law.

We didn’t stumble upon this majority; we earned it. Let’s make the most of it.]

Why would Cuba follow through on its promises?

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t think of a single reason.

Promises, shmomises:

An air of secrecy surrounds the fate of 53 political prisoners whom Cuba agreed to free in its historic deal with the United States last month, as Washington and Havana’s refusal to publicly identify the dissidents is fueling suspicion over Cuba’s intentions…

…[O]fficials said a prisoner release was not a precondition for renewing diplomatic ties. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that not everyone on the list has been set free yet, but it was always understood that they would be released “in stages.”…

The lack of transparency is contributing to a growing sense of concern that Havana will not follow through on its promises.

If there’s “a growing sense of concern,” it’s certainly not on the part of the Obama administration, for which this quid pro quo was only for show. As in many of its “negotiations” with countries hostile to the US, the appearance of getting something in exchange for what we were giving up was only a thin veneer, because the administration was dedicated to capitulation.

But even if the Obama administration really did care about the fate of these prisoners, it has done nothing—absolutely nothing—to convince the Castros or any other government on earth to fear retaliation if they don’t follow through with the terms of any agreement they might make with the US.

This is the Obama legacy. And it goes beyond the time frame of Obama’s presidency. Prior to Obama, although there were periodic changes in the US government and its policies, the world knew it could count on a basic steadfastness, sameness, and reliability. No matter what party the US president was from, or how hardline or conciliatory, with a few exceptions (Vietnam in the 70s, for example) a certain basic commitment was there no matter what changes occurred in administrations.

No longer. Obama has left that assumption in tatters, and the world will act accordingly.

The first

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I read that Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America, had died at 90.

Which led me to wonder why virtually all the articles used that phrase, “the first Jewish Miss America.” Was there ever a second? The answer is no:

Myerson was urged by the pageant director to change her name to sound less Jewish and, unlike most Miss Americas before her, Myerson did not pose with Ford cars or model Catalina bathing suits. “Those companies didn’t want a Jewish woman representing them,” Myerson recalled in an interview.

Here’s Myerson in her heyday:

Myerson

RIP.

[NOTE: It reminds me of JFK’s being referred to as “the first Catholic president.” Actually, to this day he’s still the only Catholic president.]

Happy New Year and watch out for that mochi

The New Neo Posted on by

They may not be your idea of a culinary thrill, but mochi cakes are tres popular in Japan, especially at New Years. Made of the aptly named glutinous rice (it’s gluey), they are gluggy globs of gelatinous glup.

I happen to like mochi. I once learned how to make the stuff in a macrobiotic cooking class, and they were very good when coated with roasted sesame seeds. Plus, grinding the rice into paste by hand with a mortar and pestle, the way we did it in class, probably resulted in a net weight loss when we ate the things.

But I had no idea eating mochi could kill. Apparently every New Years there are choking deaths, mostly of the elderly, and this year was no exception:

Sticky rice cakes, or “mochi,” are an essential part of the Japanese New Year’s holiday menu. But the glutinous mochi, grilled or cooked in broth or with sweet beans, can get stuck in people’s throats, blocking breathing.

This year’s fatalities appear to have been higher than usual.

The Yomiuri newspaper reported on Friday that at least 128 people were rushed to hospitals after choking on mochi, with nine dying. ..

The department advised people to cut mochi in small pieces, chew slowly and learn first aid.

I have written before of my fondness for Chinese sesame doughnuts filled with bean paste, describing an epic San Francisco quest for them here. In case you’ve never eaten them, here’s a description of these unusual nuggets:

Think of it as a jelly doughnut without jelly, made of sweetened glutinous rice flour, a sticky pully substance that is somewhat gelatinous and yet resistant to the teeth. Inside is a nice dollop of sweetened bean paste, and the whole goopy mess (I say that with affection) is fried in oil till it absorbs enough to be oozing with the stuff.

Mochi is similar, minus the oil and often minus the bean filling too.

I can well imagine that most of you can read these descriptions and not get what the fuss is all about. I’ve been teased about my own predilection for the things. But don’t knock them till you’ve tried them—although I’d suggest going with the small bites.

The homemade kind is best. The internet being the wondrous font of information that it is, I refer you to this recipe for making mochi by hand. You can see what I mean about the work involved, but it’s sort of fun, a bit like kneading bread only with utensils.

Al-Sisi and an Islamic Reformation

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Roger Simon and Ace.]

Diogenes was the father of Cynicism (that’s with a capital “C”). He had a lot of colorful eccentricities:

He inured himself to the weather by living in a clay wine jar belonging to the temple of Cybele. He destroyed the single wooden bowl he possessed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. He then exclaimed,” Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!” It was contrary to Athenian customs to eat within the marketplace, and still he would eat, for, as he explained when rebuked, it was during the time he was in the marketplace that he felt hungry.

But Diogenes was most famous for his search for an honest man:

He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, “I am just looking for an honest man.” Diogenes looked for a human being but reputedly found nothing but rascals and scoundrels.

Ever since 9/11 a lot of people have been similarly searching for the moderate Muslim. Unlike Diogenes’ elusive honest man, moderate Muslims exist (actually, honest men exist too, but I like the tale). The problem is that once moderate Muslims speak up publicly they tend to have a dangerous and rather short life, especially if they are people of any influence.

Which brings us to Egyptian President al-Sisi, who recently delivered a speech that marks him as a very moderate Muslim indeed, and as a ruler whose days may be numbered. Here are some excerpts:

Speaking to an audience of religious scholars celebrating the birth of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, he called on the religious establishment to lead the fight for moderation in the Muslim world. “You imams (prayer leaders) are responsible before Allah. The entire world””I say it again, the entire world””is waiting for your next move because this umma (a word that can refer either to the Egyptian nation or the entire Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost””and it is being lost by our own hands.”

He was speaking in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, widely regarded as the leading world center for Islamic learning.

“The corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You must step outside yourselves and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”…

“We have to think hard about what we are facing,” he said. “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible.”

These are not just empty words, either. Al-Sisi was originally appointed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi to the post of commander of the army, but proceeded to oust Morsi and then to outlaw the Brotherhood itself (and you thought Justice Roberts was betraying the people who nominated him!) and to be elected president in his own right.

This speech of al-Sisi’s seems extraordinary in its boldness and reasonableness. Can al-Sisi provide a voice for the heretofore silent—we have no idea whether they are a majority or small minority—of Muslims who might agree with him? Let’s hope he lives long enough for us to find out. His predecessor prior to Morsi, Mubarak, was a dictator, but part of the reason was that heavy-handed tactics are required to deal with the Brotherhood in Egypt (please read this post of mine for an in-depth discussion of the history of the Brotherhood in Egypt). The fight against the Brotherhood was also waged by Nassar and Sadat:

…Nasser himself was more Draconian, establishing concentration camps for the Brotherhood and torturing them, although only killing a few. Sadat and Mubarak made the Brotherhood illegal, but their imprisonment waxed and waned periodically depending on circumstances, and few if any were killed. However, it was Muslim fundamentalists (although not Brotherhood members) who assassinated Sadat…

It seems that al-Sisi is going even further than his predecessors, who kept the fight to the Brotherhood. Al-Sisi appears to be speaking more globally and generally about Islam itself and the course it should take in the 21st Century. I wish him luck. He’ll need it.

[NOTE: No doubt there are additional complicated geopolitical considerations behind al-Sisi’s speech, including the rise of Iran as a nuclear power as well as the terrorist actions of groups such as ISIS.]

So, will Boehner be tossed?

The New Neo Posted on by

Boehner has been an underwhelming and frustrating Speaker of the House. As his challenger Louie Gohmert states, Boehner has broken a number of promises, including one that may have been in the nature of a final straw for Gohmert and others: he gave in to CRomnibus.

I don’t like Boehner as Speaker. I’m not sure anyone does. He seems a strange combination of dull and eccentric and shifty, and definitely does not inspire trust. Of course, the skills of a good Speaker are not necessarily the skills that go to make a person likeable. A Speaker has to be a crafty conniver, negotiator, strategist, power player, and it does no good to pretend otherwise. But it helps when a Speaker also inspires the belief—as Boehner does not—that he/she is committed to principles that are espoused by his/her own party’s rank and file rather than being at war with them.

I have no idea whether the bid to dethrone Boehner will succeed. Early reports were that it didn’t have a chance. But lately the news has been a bit more favorable to the anti-Boehner forces. If I had to make a prediction, I’d say Boehner will retain his position. But if he doesn’t, I would hope his challenger has not only the requisite conservative credentials but all the other attributes that a Speaker needs.

Thalassemia minor: ain’t heredity grand?

The New Neo Posted on by

Years ago when I was in college, I took a class where I learned about sickle cell anemia and sickle cell trait, as well as thalassemia major and minor.

They seemed awesome examples of the way heredity works: inherited defects of red blood cells in which, if two genes for the flaw are inherited, the person is very ill (fatally so before modern medicine), but inheriting only one gene for the trait confers the benefit of increased resistance to malaria. That was very important in the many areas around the world where the disease was endemic, because people with the single-gene traits had a leg up for survival. Thus the mutations for sickle cell and thalassemia persisted and even flourished, despite the fact that the double-gene diseases were invariably fatal.

What’s this got to do with anything? When I was in my 30s, a doctor noticed some mild abnormalities in my blood results, and after some specialized testing he told me that I had thalassemia minor, which is the trait rather than the disease. Blood tests show a mild anemia-like pattern, and under the microscope some red blood cells are seen to be oddly shaped and smaller than usual.

Then a couple of years ago, my son surprised me by saying he’d had some weird blood tests results, too, but that he had told the doctor that his mother had thalassemia minor and asked whether this could be the same thing. Yes, indeed, said the doctor; his blood test results fit that pattern exactly.

And so they did. When I looked back at my old blood tests and compared them to my son’s new ones, their slightly-off figures were nearly identical—slightly off in the same direction and to exactly the same degree.

Then I got curious. I had never really thought about it much before, but of course if I had the trait one of my parents almost certainly had had it, too (unless I had a very rare spontaneous mutation). My father’s blood tests are lost in the mists of time, since he died over thirty years ago. But my mother—98 when I started thinking about the question—still had tons of previous blood test reports in her files. And sure enough, when I got hold of her numbers, they were virtually the same as those of my son and me—although no doctor had ever noticed the abnormalities or mentioned a possible thalassemia minor diagnosis to her.

It doesn’t matter much, unless a person marries another person with the gene and runs the risk of having children with the disease rather than just the trait. The single-gene trait doesn’t really affect people, although some claim it makes them a little tired because their hemoglobin isn’t what it should be. Actually, the body tends to compensate for the smaller size and strange shape of the red blood cells by increasing their number slightly, which is what all three of us in my family seem to have done. But there’s something about the figures and their almost exact correspondence to each other across all three generations that made me stop in wonderment at the beauty of both heredity and of science itself, which can study, understand (at least to some extent), and document such a thing.

NOTE: Here’s where malaria still exists today, although its distribution used to be much wider:

malariaWorld

Malaria in the US in the 1880s:

malariaUS
And here’s the distribution of thalassemia:

The distribution of thalessemia:

thalassemias