Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Sidney Powell pleads guilty and gets 6 years probation. I’m not sure what if anything this will mean for Trump, but apparently part of her plea agreement is that she will be required to testify in future trials.

(2) Joran van der Sloot admits having killed Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, as he pleads guilty to extorting her mother. Part of the agreement is that he won’t be tried for her murder. He is already serving a sentence for the murder of another woman – but not a life sentence. Outrageous and horrifying.

(3) Another Speaker vote, but I’m not optimistic about it.

(4) This would be nice if it pans out:

Stem cell biologist Helen Blau of Stanford University School of Medicine and colleagues previously found that blocking 15-PGDH in old mice restored their withered muscles and improved their strength after a month of treatment. On the flip side, young mice lost muscle and became weaker after their levels of this enzyme were increased for a month.

Blau’s team has now found that 15-PGDH accumulates in the muscles of old mice as the connections that allow communication between muscles and nerves are lost, another consequence of aging. Treating old mice for one month with a drug that inhibits 15-PGDH restored these connections, called synapses, between muscle fibers and motor nerve cells, and boosted the animals’ strength …

(5) Another Nazi admirer heard from.

Academics and artists for Palestinian terror

The New Neo Posted on by

If the horrific situation in the Middle East can be said to have any pluses, probably the only one would be that it has underlined the destructive state of academia in the US today. I use the word “underlined” rather than “revealed” because I’m addressing the readers of this blog, and I think most have known for a long time that a dangerous rot has set in with both administrators and professors. But for much of America I suppose the correct word would be “revealed,” because I think that the extent of the problem was probably not so widely known, although the general trend might have been.

And so we have this sort of thing. The signers identify themselves as “writers” but many are in academia – often formerly prestigious universities:

You can find the document here. Many – although hardly all – of the signers seem to come under the heading of DEI hires in obscure “soft” disciplines, and quite a few seem to be able to claim several intersectionality points. Their petition is loaded with the usual leftist jargon and twisting of history, and it is quite clear they don’t believe that Israel (which they refer to as “Israel” in scare quotes, as though it’s a fiction) should be allowed to exist.

This just might be my favorite Orwellian quote from the letter (emphasis mine):

Gaza is the story of … sumud (steadfastness) and resistance: resistance that is driven by a love for one’s people, a love for one’s homeland, and a love for life and freedom.

And beyond Orwellian is the way they describe the events of October 7: “the resistance bulldozed part of the fence around Gaza and some Gazans set foot outside the boundaries of their besiegement for a moment.”

No doubt the Palestinian terrorists did this to exercise their great “love for life and freedom,” which was so much in evidence that day; I guess 18,000 work permits weren’t enough.

And that’s all that the letter-writers managed to say about the massacre of Israelis at the hands of Hamas.

And then there’s the story of the trans art/science teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago who posted some especially vile Jew-hating spewings.

And 2,000 actors, artists, and musicians expressed their enormous sympathy for the Palestinians without mentioning the October 7 attacks at all.

I remember reading somewhere long ago that, after the vicious Munich massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympics in 1972, Arafat and the Palestinians actually garnered a lot more support than before – and certainly more fame – all around the world. Since then, that support has swelled, due to a combination of immigration to Western countries from Arab and Muslim lands as well as the takeover of academia by the left. After all, it’s in school that these ideas can be most effectively spread, and the left is well aware of that.

It seems clear to me that the people making these statements – be they in academia or in the arts – are largely unafraid of any backlash. I doubt they’ve experienced anything of the sort before, and most may not even be experiencing much of it now, although some have seen some negative consequences. Living in a bubble where almost everyone agrees with them, and where they have had protected status, hasn’t led them to be afraid of voicing opinions like the ones in the letters. I believe they actually see such declarations as proof of virtue, and by signing them they are signaling that virtue. In their circles, it probably has long worked that way, so why would they expect anything different?

[NOTE: I didn’t look at all the signatures – it would take way too long. But my guess is that there are some Jewish names among them. So I’ll just briefly say that some leftist Jews – overwhelmingly ethnic Jews rather than religious ones – have reacted to the long and sorrowful history of persecution and murder of innocent Jews by siding with their enemies in a usually-doomed effort to say, “see, I’m one of the good ones, please don’t hurt me.” They become extremely valuable to their enemies in this way.]

I think that if we had to fight WWII today we would not win

The New Neo Posted on by

I believe that, were we to fight a war like WWII today, we would not be able to win. I don’t say that because we lack the weapons or the skills. I say it because I believe that we would fight with our hands voluntarily tied behind our backs. I base that on a few things.

One is the chart that can be found here. I can’t seem to copy it, so you’ll have to follow the link to see it, but it shows the results of a poll that demonstrates enormous generational differences in the answers to the question of whether Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack is fully justified. It goes from 81% agreement from those 65+ to 27% agreement from those who are 18-34 years old.

And then of course there is the woke agenda of so much of today’s military.

Another reason I doubt we could fight WWII today is that our young people no longer believe in evil – unless it’s the evil of those who would oppose abortion, or misgender someone, or have the gall to be white and not apologize in the required manner for their privilege. That is, they cannot recognize true evil when they see it, because the principles that have been drilled into them are as follows:

(1) Privileged people are guilty and the oppressed – as defined by the left – are always innocent no matter what they do.

(2) One cannot and should not judge a culture – except the culture of the West.

(3) History itself doesn’t need to be learned; just leftist ideas and principles.

(4) Well-meaning elite people can fix anything without bloodshed.

(5) All killing is bad unless it’s done by the underprivileged, in which case it’s a shame but understandable. Or maybe not even a shame.

(6) War never solves anything (see this). They don’t understand that some wars are for survival against an enemy bent on your subjugation or obliteration, and that those wars sometimes are – very very unfortunately – total wars. In total wars innocent people die, but something is indeed solved.

NOTE: Please also see this relevant piece.

Anne Frank: are people good at heart?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. I think it’s always timely, and certainly is timely now. I came across a reference to Anne’s famous statement recently in an essay on the Hamas attack of October 7, and once again the person who wrote the essay simplified and misunderstood what I see as Anne’s message.]

I’m currently reading Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: the book, the life, the afterlife. It’s about the process by which Anne Frank wrote and then rewrote her diary, with an eye to its ultimate publication, and how her father edited her two versions into a third, the one the world ended up knowing. Then Broadway and Hollywood got into the act, as well as writers such as Philip Roth, until the diary and its message had morphed quite a bit from the original (or, more properly, originals).

Most of us have read Anne Frank’s diary – or at least parts of it, in some form or other – and even those of us who did not, are probably familiar with at least a few of its quotes, the most famous of which is probably Anne’s observation: “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

It’s instructive to look at the quote once again, embedded in its original context. When we do, we find it to be far more complex and dark than it appears when as a single famous sentence standing alone, just as Anne Frank’s achievements as a writer and thinker are far more complex than the simplifications popular culture have worked on her diary. Remember as you read the following that she was only fifteen years old when she wrote it [emphasis mine]:

Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn’t realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually, until, after a long time, we think we’ve found a solution, but the solution doesn’t seem able to resist the facts which reduce it to nothing again. That’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually turning into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Anne Frank seems to take the long view. Hers is a consciously willed optimism that takes into account some of the greatest horrors the world has ever known, and includes her own untimely death, which she correctly foresees. Whether the peace and tranquility she ultimately envisions are temporary or permanent, and whether they are of this earth or beyond it, her message has nothing of the innocence or simplicity of a trusting child, although it has often been portrayed that way.

More on lethal journalism: Palestinian lies and MSM amplification of those lies

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an excellent article about the rot in journalism exposed by the “reporting” on the Gaza hospital [emphasis mine]:

The media’s disastrous failure on the Gaza hospital bombing story is one of the most vivid and instructive examples of the structural and inherent problems plaguing contemporary journalism. It mirrors many other fiascos of the past decade.

That sentence I highlighted is the most important point: this is not a one-off. This is commonplace, and has been not just for the past decade, but for many decades. It’s not just stories about Israel and Palestine, of course; it also happens with any story the left thinks will hurt the right. I could name many, but one that comes to mind and which is emblematic of the genre was Rathergate. Remember the expression “too good to fact-check?”

More:

It is clear at this point that journalism schools are producing closed-minded, credulous ideologues who will believe anything that comports with their worldview. It’s either that, or we have a bunch of closed-minded ideologues who are willing accomplices in spreading propaganda. Functionally speaking, it doesn’t really matter. In either case, their sympathies lie with Hamas.

You will almost certainly recognize the old “fools or knaves?” question. I say: both.

More:

[The NY Times] has spent decades spreading similar disinformation. The paper’s editorial board and its op-ed pages are teeming with Hamas apologists — as are its news pages.

Even as Hamas’s propaganda was being exposed, the Times moved forward with the story without any genuine substantiation. Since the newspaper had done absolutely no work in verifying these serious claims, it was left without facts or art. So editors simply put a picture of a bombed-out building (not the hospital) on its front page, strongly insinuating that Israel was responsible for the tragedy (that wasn’t.)

How can that be seen as anything but malicious?

I think “malicious” is too mild a word for it.

More:

Of course, any person who’s spent more than ten minutes on the Israeli-Palestinian situation — to say nothing of those who are paid to cover the conflict — knows full well that both Hamas and the PLO are constantly lying about alleged Israeli atrocities and casualties.

That’s where I beg to differ. I think a great many people who have spent at least 15 minutes on the topic – sometimes more – do not know or will not admit that to themselves because they feel such an admission would be racist. Forget that “Palestinians” are not a race. Forget that if people habitually lie it is not bigoted to state that fact.

The Palestinians and the MSM know that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. That’s why lies are so valuable for their cause. The MSM could stop making things worse, but chooses not to do so.

Open thread 10/19/23

The New Neo Posted on by

I went for a leaf-peeping drive yesterday with out-of-towners. It was cloudy, and a lot of the leaves had prematurely dropped because of too much rain. So I didn’t take a single photo. But here’s an old one, not of New England but of a trip to the Hudson River Highlands:

The consciousness of infants

The New Neo Posted on by

Of interest:

There is evidence that some form of conscious experience is present by birth, and perhaps even in late pregnancy, an international team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin and colleagues in Australia, Germany and the USA has found. …

To provide a new perspective on when consciousness first emerges, the team built upon recent advances in consciousness science. In adults, some markers from brain imaging have been found to reliably differentiate consciousness from its absence, and are increasingly applied in science and medicine. This is the first time that a review of these markers in infants has been used to assess their consciousness.

Co-author of the study, Lorina Naci, Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, who leads Trinity’s ‘Consciousness and Cognition Group, explained: “Our findings suggest that newborns can integrate sensory and developing cognitive responses into coherent conscious experiences to understand the actions of others and plan their own responses.”

I’m not the least surprised. My son was born at around 5:30 in the morning. That afternoon, he was awake and swaddled and I was holding him in my arms. I’d had very little experience taking care of babies prior to that. He looked me right in the eye and I was stunned at the awareness I perceived there. It was really an encounter with a person, a fairly strong-willed one who seemed to be saying, “I expect you to do right by me.”

Lethal journalism: the Gaza hospital strike by Israel that wasn’t

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I just published a post on Richard Landes’ work on the lies of Palestinian propaganda and how they are propagated by the Western press. One of the phrases he uses – and one I believe he coined – is “lethal journalism.” And in the following story we have a good example of that.]

First we heard – from our own MSM – that the Israelis had blown up a Gaza hospital and 500 people were dead. It was such tempting news – it so perfectly fit the “Israel bad” narrative – that much of our renowned and illustrious MSM ran with it, with a little caveat “Palestinians claim.” And this, even though they are well aware of the history of blatant lies disseminated by Palestinians about that sort of thing. It’s been going on as long as the conflict has gone on. So there’s no excuse for our media except wishful thinking. They’d love to balance the score after the obviously horrific Palestinian terror attack on October 7th.

Next we learn it was probably a rocket fired by the Palestinians. That’s what the evidence shows. Then it was “maybe not 500 killed.”

And now we learn there is some evidence it didn’t even hit the hospital – just the parking lot and some cars. I haven’t had a chance to fully check that out, and I don’t see many outlets reporting it, but it may indeed be the case that there are few casualties.

Nevertheless, the incident as originally reported will be believed by the Arab world as well as all the Jew-hating leftists in the US. There have already been riots, and the American embassy in Lebanon has been swarmed and a fire set by the rioters.

Nice going, lethal journalists. You must be so proud.

See this as well as this for the story.

What is the Biden administration’s plan for Israel?

The New Neo Posted on by

I sincerely hope Glick is wrong, because this is absolutely horrifying and enraging:

Ever since Obama became president his Iran policy has seemed vile and destructive to America, Israel, and the entire Middle East. Then when Biden took office, he almost immediately reversed as much of Trump’s protective policies as he could and followed in Obama’s footsteps. He gave money to terrorists and terrorist supporters, and enabled Iran. Now, if Glick is correct, he is trying to destroy Israel’s ability to defend itself.

Richard Landes on the propaganda war waged by the Palestinians

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written many times about Richard Landes. He is a friend I met through blogging, but he also happens to be one of the greatest experts – perhaps the greatest expert – on the long history of successful Palestinian propaganda and Big Lies. He coined the phrase “Pallywood” and was responsible for the initial exposé of the duplicity of the al Durah video hyped by France 2 and the entire Arab world, used to garner support for the bloody Second Intifada. Landes has written a recent book on the subject of Palestinian propaganda that I have been planning to review, and although I haven’t finished it yet I’ll link it here: Can the Whole World Be Wrong?

Richard Landes lives in Israel now, and ever since the Hamas attack he’s been very active on Twitter (X). I suggest you click on that link and take a look at what he’s been writing. Here’s a sample (the first is in reference to the Gazans’ attempts to blame the hospital attack on Israel):

Much more can be found on Landes’ Twitter page. You can also read plenty on his blog.

NOTE: This is a good piece in Commentary about the hospital bombing and the abominable MSM press coverage of it, entitled: “How the NYT—and Others—Do Hamas’s Dirty Work.”