Haiti has fallen apart

The New Neo Posted on by

Actually, Haiti has been falling apart for a long long time. But in the last week things have reportedly gotten far worse.

The gangs are in charge:

On Sunday, the US announced that troops had evacuated Americans from the US Embassy and additional forces were brought in to secure the diplomatic compound in Port-au-Prince.

Jimmy Chérizier, leader of the notorious “G9 and Family” gang, is in command of the bulk of the gunmen stirring anarchy in the capital — and he vowed to fight until embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns.

“I am ready to make an alliance with the devil, ready to sleep in the same bed as the devil,” Chérizier told his supporters last week as his fighters destroyed police stations and other government facilities.

That’s not just sympathy for the devil, it’s alliance with the devil, and at least Chérizier is being upfront about it.

More:

It’s part of a trend of nations in our hemisphere falling into extreme states of chaos from newly empowered gangs, all of them made rich from shipping illegal migrants into the U.S. and made muscular with new manpower from major prison breaks preceding the armed takeover attacks. …

Now it’s going full blown ‘horrible’ in Haiti, which has been a major transshipment point of illegal migrants into the states (and closely aligned with Nicaragua’s game described here) and now has seen at least two major prison breaks in the runup to this disaster.

Here’s information on the prison breakouts about a week ago:

According to reports, two prisons in the capital Port-au-Prince were stormed by gangs, who helped release over 5,000 inmates from Haiti’s National Penitentiary and a second prison.

At least a dozen people died as gang members attacked the main prison.

The government has said it will do everything in its power to ensure violent criminals, such as murderers and kidnappers are found and taken back to jail.

“The police were ordered to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend all offenders,” said a statement from Finance Minister Patrick Boivert, who is currently acting prime minister.

Haiti’s prime minister Ariel Henry is currently abroad trying to gather support for a United Nations-backed security force to help end the violence in the country.

Clearly, the gangs and their criminal allies are still in control and the government is not. They also seek to depose Henry. As for UN-backed security, dream on:

No one wants to get involved in the thankless, costly, zero-results task, because how many times have the United Nations, the U.S., and other global bodies come to this country’s aid?

The shambles is as much the result of this continuous aid-building and corrupt NGO empires that come of such activity. All they do is make is worse.

But El Salvador’s Bukele has made an offer:

Bukele used strong-man methods to get rid of the gangs that were controlling and terrorizing El Salvador. Once order has broken down to this extent, gentle approaches simply don’t work. Although I doubt the UN would allow Bukele to tackle Haiti’s chaos, I think he would have the best chance of success.

The implications for the US are obvious. We are not at the point of Haiti, of course. But the influx of gang members over our porous border is extremely dangerous and worrisome.

NOTE: Terrible things are happening in Nigeria, too. But the woke don’t seem to care about black-on-black violence, whether in this country or elsewhere.

Trump’s position on Ukraine aid

The New Neo Posted on by

A discussion of the topic in today’s open thread has convinced me to write a separate post about Trump’s position on aid to Ukraine.

Hungary’s Orban – Putin’s closest ally in Europe – has started a rumor that Trump won’t support Ukraine aid:

“[Trump] will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told Hungarian state media Sunday. “Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.”

Orban may have chosen his words quite carefully, particularly this one: give. Trump is actually proposing a loan, threading the needle between the right’s substantial anti-aid-to-Ukraine and pro-aid-to-Ukraine wings. This is from four days ago:

How to resolve the impasse and help Ukraine? Of all people, former President Donald Trump has suggested a workaround — convert the cost of the weapons transfers into a loan. Trump even specified that the loan would bear no interest and would only be paid “if Ukraine ever strikes it rich.” …

This has a historical precedent. During a Caribbean cruise after his reelection in 1940, President Roosevelt conceived of a mechanism whereby the U.S. could lend or lease military equipment and ammunition to countries considered vital to the defense of the U.S. FDR likened Lend Lease to loaning a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire. By not styling the assistance as a grant to the UK, FDR assuaged concerns about “foreign aid.”

Hollywood’s cause du jour now seems to be supporting Hamas through a ceasefire

The New Neo Posted on by

The trend-setting accessory of the evening last night at the Oscars was a little pin that has been described in several different ways. I had trouble finding a closeup, but here’s the way it was described by those advocating its wearing:

Several stars including Grammy winner Billie Eilish and Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo wore red pins representing Artists4Ceasefire, five months into the Israel-Hamas war. More than 30,000 people have been killed since the war in Gaza began in October.

The pins feature an orange hand with a black heart inside, surrounded by a red circle.

“The pin symbolizes collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” the group said in a press release.

In other words, they wish unicorns to come down from the sky and make everything bad go away – including Israel, actually, because that’s what a ceasefire would accomplish by facilitating the next massacre of Israelis. There was a ceasefire supposedly in place on October 7, something of which these celebrities may be unaware (or about which they may not care). In addition, Hamas has zero intention of returning the hostages unless Israel essentially surrenders.

So, why is the heart black? Why is the hand orange – or red, depending on the photo and the description? The group promoting this doesn’t seem to be saying, but you can get a better look at the symbol at their site here – where the hand looks like a slightly more orange shade of red than the background. I don’t know who designed the pin, or why those symbols were chosen. But the red hand held up in that way has a barbaric history:

Is the pin a deliberate reference to this horrific incident, and if so do the “stars” even know? Or is the symbolism merely a coincidence?

From an op-ed in the Times of Israel:

And I wonder if the designers knew about [the Ramallah lynching]. I wonder if they knew but didn’t care. I wonder, also, if it was done on purpose… I’d like to think it wasn’t, but I wonder… I wonder if the celebrities wearing the pins knew the history of the Second Intifada which nearly brought us to our knees in Israel, or about the lynching in Ramallah and those horrible hands out the window red with human blood and if they did know about any of this, I wonder if they made the connection and just didn’t care.

It’s the old “fool or knave?” question, and you really can hardly go wrong by answering “both.” And lest you think what these Oscar celebrities do doesn’t matter, it both reflects and adds to the current fashion of supporting a terrible cause – one that desires, among other things, the destruction of Western culture and liberty. No, these people don’t make policy (the Biden administration does, and they are in solidarity with it). But these people make the anti-Israel position even more fashionable.

And then there’s the “as a Jew” remarks by someone named Jonathan Glazer:

Unless you’re a film buff, you may not have heard of Jonathan Glazer before his viral moment at this year’s annual Academy Awards ceremony. After “The Zone of Interest”—a highly-praised film about the commandant of the Auschwitz death camp that is very loosely based on a Martin Amis novel with the same title—was named the winner of the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, Glazer … read the following prepared statement:

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness in a Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza—all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

“Resist” – as though they are being persecuted and have to go undercover to bravely fight against a Nazi occupation. What this guy is really saying is “don’t hurt me, I’m a good Jew; one who has refuted my Jewishness by making no moral distinctions whatsoever.” Glazer would no doubt have been against bombing Germany during World War II.

As Jonathan Tobin writes:

The tortured syntax of [Glazer’s] comments notwithstanding, what Glazer said wasn’t merely deeply offensive. It marked a new low in Hollywood’s descent into fashionable rationalizations of hatred for Jews. It also showed us how the new woke antisemitism works, especially when its standard-bearers are Jews with little or no connection to their heritage. As such, it was the quintessential “as a Jew” moment in which persons invoke their Jewish identity to denounce other Jews. …

Those, like Glazer, whose efforts are aimed at helping contemporary practitioners of Jewish genocide survive and win—and do so “as Jews”—are a disgrace and deserve to be remembered throughout history with opprobrium along with the worst examples of those who betrayed their own people. They also illustrate the moral depravity of artists and intellectuals who have been captured by an ideology that enables a virulent form of antisemitism that masquerades as advocacy for human rights.

Indeed – particularly the part about masquerading as advocacy for human rights.

I watch very few movies these days, and it’s been a long time since I cared one whit about who gets an Oscar – except that I used to be interested in the fashions at the ceremony. I don’t even care about that anymore, but here’s a link to Women’s Wear Daily‘s idea of the worst-dressed.

Inquiring minds want to know: do ballet dancers ever have large busts?

The New Neo Posted on by

This post was sparked by this question from commenter “IrishOtter49”:

This is a serious question. Can women with an, er, “ample” bust be ballet dancers?

Commenter “om” replied thusly:

If you are jumping, spinning, bending at the waist, rapidly at times, in cadence with a musical accompaniment, and of course trying for grace and art, or being thrown into the air by your partner, excess mass and non-muscular tissue is probably a burden.

If for no other reason than it places extra stress on the bones, joints, etc.

It seems that this type of dance is very demanding physically and very competitive. Physical and aesthetic selection against hearty gals as well?

My answer is in line with that. Thin dancers are easier to lift, plus the shapes they make in space seem to most viewers to be more elegant and streamlined. Jumps are harder for heavy people, as well, and even turns can be harder because the center of gravity is less of a plumb line.

And imagine how much more difficult it is to carry extra weight while dancing on pointe.

Therefore, since for the most part slender women have smaller breasts – breasts are made mostly of fatty tissue, after all – it is very rare indeed for a professional ballet dancer to be well-endowed. When we see slender women with big breasts these days, it’s certainly possible they are natural – such women do exist – but it’s more likely that implants are involved. There is little reason for a ballet dancer to avail herself of implants; it’s just not an advantage at all.

However, I bring you Gloria Govrin as an example of the most well-endowed ballet dancer I can recall. She’s still alive and is in her early 80s, but in her heyday she was a soloist with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet. Most female dancers and even many male dancers tend to be on the short side, but Govrin was 5’10” while not on pointe. So she was very impressive onstage and made quite an impact. Because of her height, Balanchine tended to give her solo parts rather than pas de deux with a male partner.

Here’s an article with a photo:

Govrin, currently the artistic director of Eastern Connecticut Ballet, stands at five feet, ten inches. Though choreographer George Balanchine initially discouraged her from trying to become a professional dancer, he changed direction, and hired her for the New York City Ballet.

She became a soloist, and upended the longstanding idea of what a female ballet dancer should look like.

“For him, his dancers were inspiration and he once told me that he never saw anybody my size move the way I moved, and he was intrigued,” Govrin recently said on WNPR’s Where We Live.

“I had a different kind of career. It wasn’t the kind of career where you did the ballerina pas de deux kind of — there weren’t many tall boys in the company so it was difficult,” she said. “So what he did, was he created solos for me.”

Now, don’t get me wrong; Govrin wasn’t Jayne Mansfield or Sophia Loren. But for a ballet dancer, she was slightly more well-endowed than usual. Here she is in 1965. I’ve cued it up for her solo, which lasts about two minutes:

Congress versus TikTok

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a movement afoot in Congress to force a TikTok sale:

Lawmakers say TikTok’s owner ByteDance has links with the Chinese Communist Party – something denied by ByteDance and TikTok.

The bill makes specific reference to ByteDance – which would be forced under the terms of the bill to sell TikTok, or face removal from mobile app stores in the US.

It does not contain any provision for individual users of the app to face legal action.

“America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” said committee chairman Mike Gallagher, a Republican of Wisconsin.

The bill has bipartisan support. But TikTok “confirmed to the BBC it had sent a notification urging TikTokers to ‘call your representative now’ to urge them to vote against the measure.” Many of these TikTokers are children, who have made calls such as this one:

“I will kill you if you fucking shut down TikTok,” a teenage boy warned to a member of Congress in a voicemail reviewed by The Spectator. “I will really really fuck you up. So don’t shut down TikTok. Bye bye!”

This week, Capitol Hill was inundated with a series of unusual callers — children, some as young as six years old. They had been enlisted by TikTok to forcibly push back against a bill that’s on track to sail through the House next week which forces the divestiture of a series of companies owned by foreign adversaries, like China in the case of the globally popular video app. TikTok is regularly accused of everything from feeding eating disorder content to girls to spying on journalists to extensively tracking user data — at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party, no less.

The aforementioned assassination threat was far from an isolated incident.

By the way, in addition to “feeding eating disordes” and the like, TikTok is heavily implicated in spreading anti-Semitism among youth around the world. And TikTok is highly habit-forming [emphasis mine]:

“The truth is that they are being flooded with content that gives them an extremely distorted view of themselves, their bodies, their mental health, and how they compare to other people,” he added.

Ahmed said his organisation’s research suggested that changing a user’s name from “Sarah” to “Sarah Lose Weight” on TikTok could result in its algorithm serving 12 times more self-harm content.

“The algorithm recognises vulnerability and, instead of seeing it as something it should be careful around, it sees it as a potential point of addiction – of helping to maximise time on the platform for that child by serving them up content that might trigger some of the pre-existing concerns.”

Ahmed said that the centre’s research, which was based on 13-year-old users in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, suggested that, within about two-and-a-half minutes of setting up a TikTok account, young people could be pushed self-harm content – and eating disorder content within eight.

A more recent investigation, he said, suggested a 14-year-old boy on the platform was likely to be pushed content from the virulently misogynist Andrew Tate in less than three minutes of setting up an account.

That article is from about a year ago. Now the same push is including anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content as well.

Will there be a presidential debate?

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe:

President Biden confirmed Friday that he may refuse to debate former President Donald Trump ahead of their anticipated election rematch.

“It depends on his behavior,” the 81-year-old Biden told reporters as he left the White House for a campaign trip to Philadelphia.

Trump, 77, said Wednesday that Biden must agree to debate him — amid suspicion that the incumbent would skip the traditional forums to deny the presumptive Republican nominee relatively unfettered TV air time.

“It is important, for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate Issues that are so vital to America, and the American People,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”

It depends on his behavior feeds into the idea that Trump is some sort of out-of-control child, fuming and ranting – unlike the calm, cool, mature Biden. Those of us on the right who study Biden are scratching our heads that anyone can perceive the current president that way, but there are indeed many who do.

Democrats in general would probably rather not see a head-to-head debate for fear it would make Biden look bad. But I’m not at all sure that would be the result of a debate; it wasn’t that way in 2020, although it might have been. Biden’s handlers are more than able to give him enough preparation (including perhaps even knowing the questions in advance) and medication that his old fighting instincts will kick in as they did in 2020. Plus, he can lie in a debate and the MSM won’t call him out on it, so that’s a huge advantage.

People have perceived that Biden is extremely cognitively challenged. But every time he’s able to look at least somewhat with it and can string a bunch of coherent sentences together (even if wrong, even if angry, even if lying), he challenges that perception and allows some people who might otherwise not vote for him to relax and reassure themselves he’s okay after all.

So I’m not really sure if a debate is to Trump’s advantage, because the bar is so low for Biden and so high for Trump. But if I had to guess, I’d say there won’t be any debate – and Biden will blame it on Trump’s “behavior.”

Biden has a way with words

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ll just put this up here without comment. The comments practically write themselves:

It’s the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Flight MH370

The New Neo Posted on by

Ten years. We know more than we did then, but the basic mystery remains.

To refresh your memory, if it needs refreshing:

MH370 set off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for China’s capital city on March 8, 2014. Thirty-nine minutes after taking off, the aircraft vanished from air traffic control radar displays.

The pilot sent a normal sounding radio call as the plane left Malaysian airspace, but he never checked in with Vietnamese air traffic controllers upon entering that country’s airspace as he should have done.

About two minutes after the last radio correspondence, MH370’s transponder — a standard piece of equipment on all commercial aircraft that routinely relays a plane’s position to air traffic control authorities — turned off, making the jet invisible to civilian radar systems.

Military radar and satellites showed that MH370 then turned around to travel over the Andaman Sea back toward Malaysia, flying for hours before it vanished, possibly when it ran out of fuel.

Malaysia’s prime minister said 17 days after the plane disappeared that, based on the satellite data, his government had concluded that the plane crashed down in a remote corner of the Indian Ocean, and that there were no survivors.

There were 239 souls on board, mostly Chinese nationals. Remains of the plane have washed up over the years but no remains of people. The leading theory – to which I subscribe – is that this was purposeful sabotage by the pilot.

A new search is being contemplated:

Texas-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity, which tried previously to find the plane, has proposed launching a new search, and Malaysia’s transport ministry said it would consider the proposal.

The families and friends of the passengers have suffered a great deal, not just from the loss of their loved ones but from the long period of uncertainty. It is a terrible situation. The announcement of a possible new search was welcomed by the group:

“I’m on top of the world,” said Jacquita Gomes, whose flight attendant husband was on the plane. She said she is thankful that she may now have a chance for full closure and say a final goodbye.

“We have been on a roller coaster for the last 10 years. … If it is not found, I hope that it will continue with another search,” she said.

Family members of passengers from Malaysia, Australia, China and India paid tribute to their loved ones during the event, lighting a candle on stage to remember them.“

No matter if it is 10 years, 20 years or more, as long as we are still alive…we will not cease to press for the truth. We believe the truth will eventually come to light,” said Bai Zhong, from China, whose wife was on the plane.

I hope they find out more.

NOTE: This article explores some of the theories about the plane’s disappearance.

Anti-Semitism thrives on lies filling in the gaps created by ignorance

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Douglas Murray:

“Maybe if we come up with a perfect argument,” he said. “Maybe if we inform people about the history, and broadly speaking, you’re talking about trying to educate or inform people who are not educated or informed.”

Most anti-Israel people aren’t informed about the Peel Commission or the Balfour Declaration, according to Murray. “You’re talking about people who have never heard of any of these things,” he said.

The Peel Commission and Balfour Declaration are esoteric knowledge compared to what most people are ignorant about. I’ve previously told the story of a well-educated person I talked to around 2005, a woman a few years older than I am, who did not know that immediately after the state of Israel was created, the Arab world declared war on it and Israel won that war. She knew literally nothing about how Israel was created, and yet she bought every bit of Palestinian propaganda. In her case, she was a follower and admirer of Edward Said. In the case of many other people I know, ignorance is also usually involved, although they’re not all quite as ignorant as she was.

It’s also significant that when I discovered how little that acquaintance of mine knew, I offered to send her a link or two on the subject. She readily acquiesced. But I never heard back from her and I doubt she read what I sent, even though it wasn’t long. People are usually quite dug in in their beliefs.

Murray also says:

Asked why there is so much antisemitism in Europe, Murray replied that many are “working out to have some kind of guilt complex, which ends up attacking the victim.”

“It is a desire so deep down, they probably could never identify it even after years of therapy—to blame the Jews and accuse them of the same thing done to the Jews,” Murray said.

Much more at the link.

This idea of lies and propaganda filling in the gaps created by ignorance is something I’ve pondered many, many times. In the twenty years since I had that conversation with that acquaintance of mine, the education system and the left have made sure that the young people coming up are even more ignorant than before, and the MSM helps to fill their heads with leftist-approved lies. Anti-semitism is only one aspect of this, because the ignorance affects an enormous number of topics and creates an enormous amount of opportunity for the left.

[ADDENDUM: Well, this group of Jew-haters seems to be aware of Balfour, at least – they slashed his portrait at the University of Cambridge.]