Hamas sadism; plus the spread of pro-jihadi thought in US universities

The New Neo Posted on by

Words such as “sadism” to describe what Hamas – and some Gazan civilians – did on October 7 are not strong enough. No words are strong enough. If you want to read a new report on the subject, which will turn your stomach, go here.

There’s also this, which omits the worst parts:

How is it that so many people in the West either deny what has happened or excuse it or even support it? I think there are many elements that have made this possible: for example, the spread of “truth is relative” as well as the idea that people labeled “oppressed” can do no wrong, and the timeless appeal of scapegoating the Jews.

But this didn’t happen by accident; not at all. Here’s a video that describes how the educational system in this country was hijacked by the anti-Jew and pro-Hamas forces, a campaign which started many decades ago and has been funded mainly by Qatar although not solely by Qatar:

For a long time, too many people on the right ignored the rot that was going on in US universities, believing the fiction that when students there grew up and got out into the “real world” they’d shake it off. This was a possibly fatal error.

CBS fires Catherine Herridge and confiscates her files

The New Neo Posted on by

To tell you the truth, I was surprised when they hired Herridge, for the simple reason that she seemed to be an intelligent and fair reporter. Now they’re fired her as part of a cost-saving layoff – they say that’s the reason, but there’s no particular reason to believe them.

From The Hill, (which is not a right-wing site), written by Jonathan Turley:

There is trouble brewing at Black Rock, the headquarters of CBS, after the firing of Catherine Herridge, an acclaimed investigative reporter. Many of us were shocked after Herridge was included in layoffs this month, but those concerns have increased after CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources.

The position of CBS has alarmed many, including the union, as an attack on free press principles by one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations.

I have spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before. One former CBS journalist said that many employees “are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.”

That has led to concerns about the source of the pressure. He added that he had never seen a seizure of records from a departing journalist, and that the move had sent a “chilling signal” in the ranks of CBS.

One thing that caught my attention about Turley’s piece is that appeared at all at The Hill; people in the news business really do seem concerned about this, I guess. Another is the phrase “one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations.” Perhaps that’s even true, but only because many of the others are even worse. I could even argue that CBS has long been one of the worst; after all, Rathergate was perpetrated at CBS. No travesty surprises me anymore on the part of the MSM.

Perhaps the upset over CBS’s treatment of Herridge is also because her fellow workers at CBS recognized her as a person of integrity interested in pursuing truth as best she could. But it also has to do with source confidentiality.

I believe it is meant to have a chilling effect on reporters who stray from the Democrat party line.

Turley writes:

CBS is one of the world’s premier news organizations, with a legendary history that includes figures from Murrow to Walter Cronkite to Roger Mudd. That is why the hiring of Herridge was so welcomed by many of us. The network was at risk of becoming part of the journalistic herd, an echo-chamber for Democratic and liberal narratives. It had been mired in third place for ages, and it was moving in the wrong direction by alienating half of the country.

Not that Cronkite was unbiased, however (please see my posts about him). But I, likewise, welcomed the hiring of Herridge as a potential breath of fresh air at CBS.

More:

The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews.

So it is logical to suspect a Biden pressure campaign, or at the very least an understanding on the part of CBS executives that in an election year the network doesn’t want to give any support to the Trump forces by emphasizing Biden’s myriad flaws. At least, not until a replacement is found – which may not happen.

This is about the confidentiality problem:

CBS is suggesting that it will allow unnamed individuals to rifle through Herridge’s files to determine what will remain with the network and what will be returned to the reporter. That could fundamentally alter how reporters operate and how willing sources are to trust assurances that they will be protected. …

CBS could be forcing a showdown with the union, which must protect not only this journalist but all journalists seeking to maintain control and confidentiality of their files.

The union may have no choice but to go to court to force CBS to protect journalistic values, including a demand for an injunction to force the company to secure these files and bar review until a court has had a chance to consider these questions of confidential and proprietary claims to the files.

Now, that would be an interesting development.

All you WordPress whizzes out there

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe you can help me with a persistent problem I’m having setting up a website on WordPress for selling Gerard’s book. I’ve designed blogs before – obviously – but this bookselling website has a different format and I’m struggling with a glitch that I can’t seem to remove.

When I was first fiddling around with it, I apparently loaded a particular photo on the sidebar. Later on I decided I wanted neither the photo nor the sidebar, and got rid of both – that is, I thought I got rid of both. The photo is gone from the media library and the sidebar is gone from the page – except a little something remains. There’s a small black lozenge-shaped mark to the right of each post, and if you click on that mark it takes you to the original photo that I deleted. I can’t delete the photo from the media library because it’s not in the media library anymore, but obviously it’s still somewhere on the site (as is the sidebar, I suppose). But if I can’t find the source I can’t get rid of it.

On the home page, where I have photo-links to each post (a post about the book, a post with Gerard’s bio, and so forth), there are also little gray squares above each link. I believe that these are also remnants of the early sidebar photo (“placeholders”?). I want them gone, too, and nothing I’ve done so far has fixed the problem, including putting some CSS into the mix which is supposed to do something-or-other but did nothing. Also, when I try to click on these little gray squares, they don’t lead anywhere.

Hiring someone to design a site would be incredibly expensive, whether one wants a simple site (as I do) or a more complicated one. A friend has offered to help but is terribly terribly busy and so far hasn’t gotten around to it. I’m getting very close to finished with all the other minutiae involved in this endeavor, and it occurs to me that some of you readers might have an idea of what to do. Thanks in advance!

What did I ever do to deserve those “worms coming out of the body” ads?

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I noticed that I was getting disgusting ads on several ordinary websites. I mean really revolting, most of them featuring hundreds of worms coming out of parts of someone’s body such as, most often, feet. At first I thought it was a fluke. But they kept coming and coming.

I had no clue as to why. It’s not like I’d clicked on anything even remotely connected to such a thing. I finally managed to block them; I hope for good.

And doing some research, I found this:

Have you ever wonder WHY IN THE WORLD do you keep seeing those disgusting ads on websites that just make your skin crawl? Well, I do, and I’m going to tell you all about it.

Those grid-like ads composing of disgusting, repulsive images are coined by theawe.com way back in 2015 as “chumbox ads.” What is a chum box, you ask? Here’s what they wrote:

“A Chum is decomposing fish matter that elicits a purely neurological brain stem response in its target consumer: larger fish, like sharks. It signals that they should let go, deploy their nictitating membranes, and chomp down blindly on a morsel of fragrant, life-giving sustenance. Perhaps in a frenzied manner.”

I’m not going to show you these ads because we’ve all seen it. Those “hair growth” banner ads or “small balls pressed on fingers or knees” (sorry to give you those image — nightmares). But the question is, WHY? It’s rather simple, really.

First of all, it’s business. Websites that offer these ads get paid by the network. The network collects money from these so-called “Advertisers” by impressions or clicks. These “advertisers” gets money when people visit their page from chumbox ads. It’s now a whole loop. You can’t leave. Everything is connected. …

Still, the question remains, why would anyone click on these ads? Turns out, humans are weird. Going back to the chum box analogy, a lot of us are drawn to these disgusting ads because we can’t look away. We can’t figure our why it irks us, so we just keep looking. Remember, they also make money off of ad impressions — so by just you looking at it already counts.

Even worse — we click on the ads to find out what the heck is going on, only to find even more disgusting ads. …

In summary, these ads are, unfortunately, working. They are making money, paying a lot, and we all know money talks. They are disgusting and immoral to the core, but just like the war we’re waging on clickbaits, it’s not going to be an easy feat.

Did I ever click on one? I doubt it; but maybe, just maybe, at the start when I didn’t know what I was seeing and I got curious? If so, I don’t recall doing so – I’m ordinarily very careful about that sort of thing. But consider yourself warned.

Roger Pielke on the Mann trial

The New Neo Posted on by

Recommended:

Even so, in a trial that most neutral observers would surely see as favoring the arguments of the defense, Mann walked away with a resounding, comprehensive victory.7 How did that happen?

In my view, there were two absolutely pivotal moments in the trial.

One occurred when Mann was testifying and he explained that he felt that the bloggers were not just criticizing him, but they were attacking all of climate science, and he could not let that stand. As the world’s most accomplished and famous climate scientist, Mann intimated that he was simply the embodiment of all of climate science.

For the jury, this set up the notion that this trial was not really about Mann, but about attacks on all of climate science from climate deniers.

The second pivotal moment occurred when in closing arguments Mann’s lawyer asked the jury to send a message to right-wing science deniers and Trump supporters with a large punitive damage award.

I’ve written about Pielke before, in this post from 2007.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Is the Engoron verdict against Trump a violation of the 8th Amendment against the imposition of “excessive fines”? And if so, is Trump required to post the excessive fine and go through the entire state appeal process before getting to a federal court?

(2) I thought the British royal family didn’t comment on politics. Why did William make an exception?

(3) As if this all weren’t enough, now we have zombie deer, a prion disease.

(4) CAIR, which to the best of my recollection came into prominence in the US after 9/11 in the fight against so-called “Islamophobia,” is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.

(5) The Muslim threat in France.

The intricacies of Judge Engoron’s vindictive ruling on Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Judge Engoron is quite creative in discovering ways to tie Trump into knots. It’s not just the verdict and the monetary award. There’s also this (emphasis mine):

But before any other court can review Engoron’s decision, Trump will have to pay hundreds of millions out of a portfolio based mainly on residential properties, commercial buildings, and resort holdings in New York City and around the world. …

“The amount he will have to put up will be in excess of $450 million, just to appeal,” a person familiar with the case told The Post.

In civil matters, it’s customary for judges to require up to 120% of a fine to be held in escrow while the case wends its way through the court system.

“The defense can propose a different amount to be held in escrow,” the source explained. “But the ultimate decision on that is up to the judge.”

Engoron’s ruling slapped a 9% interest charge on top of Trump’s fine, which will accrue daily until it’s paid.

Has there ever been a civil case with an award of such magnitude against an individual, brought by the government in which there were no damages of any sort? Apparently not. Also, of course, this case is an act of political vengeance.

More (emphasis mine):

And Trump will have to collect the money fast: he has just 30 days to come up with the cash, or to find a surety company to guarantee it for him – using some of his properties as collateral.

No bank that does business in New York is permitted to lend to the former president, under the terms of Engoron’s ruling.

“By imposing an astronomical award, Engoron made it difficult to even appeal his decision,” Turley said, calling it “one of the most insidious aspects of the ruling.”

“This award should shock the conscience of any objective jurist,” he said.

Indeed it should – and that’s why Turley, not a Trump supporter, expresses his own shock. He is pretty close to objective on this matter. But objective jurists are very hard to find these days.

This aspect of Engoron’s ruling is like Catch-22: you must do the impossible before you even get to appeal, and one of the things you want to appeal is the fact that the judge has made it nearly impossible to appeal. I wonder whether there is any procedural way around this. Could Trump somehow fast-track the case to SCOTUS, and would they accept it?

It’s a mad mad mad mad world: US is the lone vote in the UN Security Council against a ceasefire in the Israel/Palestine war

The New Neo Posted on by

My title is a riff on this 1963 movie. The film was a comedy, but what we’re seeing in the world these days isn’t funny. It’s a pathetic inversion in which we have a country with a history such as Algeria’s asking that Israel stop fighting the entities that invaded its borders, and murdered and tortured its civilian citizens when there already was a ceasefire in effect.

And to top it all off, the US was the only country voting against that resolution although the Security Council is made up of powers such as France and the UK, the latter of which at least abstained and therefore was only semi-cowardly and semi-destructive of Israel’s right to defend itself. Other Security Council permanent members (I should probably put “security” in scare quotes) are China and Russia; ’nuff said about that. The way the council is structured is that there are also ten non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, and at the moment those members consist of Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland. An interesting cast of characters, all of whom voted for the ceasefire.

More Orwellian inversion:

Before the vote, Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, said: “This resolution stands for truth and humanity standing against the advocates for murder and hatred.”

But don’t think that the US was really standing up for Israel; such things are relative:

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States understands the council’s desire for urgent action but believes the resolution would “negatively impact” sensitive negotiations on a hostage deal and pause in fighting for at least six weeks. If that happens, “we can take the time to build a more enduring peace,” she said.

The proposed U.S. resolution, Thomas-Greenfield said, “would do what this text does not — pressure Hamas to take the hostage deal that is on the table and help secure a pause that allows humanitarian assistance to reach Palestinian civilians in desperate need.”

The US is asking for a temporary ceasefire in order to help obtain the release of the hostages. I assume that Thomas-Greenfield and her mentors in the Biden administration know this is unrealistic. Or perhaps they are in some sort of hazy pipe dream. Hamas has been adamant in stating that it has tons of demands before the hostages are released, and those demands include Israel’s surrender and Hamas staying in power and being rewarded. The Biden administration is continuing to try to walk a tightrope that offends neither of its flanks, Israel-haters and Israel-supporters.

The US resolution also strongly supports another pipe dream, the 2-state solution.

The rest of the nations have a range of motives for voting for the Algerian resolution or not opposing it. Among them are being overtly on the side of Hamas and wanting Israel’s destruction, just wishing Israel would go away and shut up, being secretly at least sort of pro-Israel but wanting to placate its own large Muslim population (that would be the UK, for example).

None of these votes on resolutions are anything but theater at the moment because the UN has no way to compel Israel to obey. Netanyahu has made it clear that the Israelis are uninterested in suicide and that the UN can go pound sand. But the UN has long been trying to isolate Israel among the nations of the world, and that campaign is well advanced.

The UN, of course, has anything but clean hands in this business. Not only did it participate in the original partition that established the nation of Israel – something I think was a good thing, but which I’m pretty sure the UN as an institution and most of its member nations regret – but it has been instrumental in fomenting the vicious hatred of the current population of Palestine towards Israel and Jews, through the tender ministrations of UNRWA and its murder-inciting propaganda.

The resolution rests on several fictions. The first is that such a vote matters. The second is that Hamas would abide by a ceasefire if one were implemented. But the third and most important is the idea of the suffering Palestinians as being separate from Hamas. But Hamas is not a rogue group; it is in charge of the government of Gaza and was elected by the people of Gaza, who strongly support it. The people of Gaza also strongly support the massacre of October 7. What’s more, the only reason they are at risk is that Hamas wishes them to be, by placing Hamas’ military in civilian and even humanitarian venues such as hospitals.

All of this is ignored by the UN and so many of its member countries, even those Western ones that should know better – because it is inconvenient (and depressing, actually) to think how dire the situation is and how difficult it would be to fix it. Better to pretend, and blame Israel.