Canada’s revenge: land of the red sun

The New Neo Posted on by

Canada may not want to become part of the US, but its smoke does. The Canadian wildfires have created haze in much of the northern midwest of this country as well as New England.

This is a somewhat new phenomenon in recent years; I’ve lived in New England for a long time and have only noticed the problem for maybe five or ten years. If one does research on why this is happening more often – as I have – what emerges in each article is climate change, climate change, climate change, in the form of more drought and heat.

Well, perhaps. But if so, wouldn’t there also be more wildfires in New England itself? I don’t see evidence of that.

Articles about Canadian wildfires also mention arson, and I wonder if that’s a larger part of the picture than we know. Also lightning strikes, but I don’t see why that would be increasing. There’s also forestry: less logging, more fires? It’s hard to get objective data on this – at least, in the time I tried to research the issue in order to write this piece, every single article I found appeared to have a bias of some type (for example, this one).

Meanwhile, the haze continues …

Report: change-up in Gaza policy

The New Neo Posted on by

The sourcing is a bit sketchy, so I’m not sure this news is true. But if it is, it represents quite a change:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached a decision for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip, including operations in areas where hostages are held, a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Additionally, on Tuesday morning, an Israeli official told the Post that Netanyahu will convene an extensive meeting on Gaza and a hostage deal, noting that “the prime minister is considering all available options regarding the next steps.”

The Israeli official added that US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff returned to the US to meet with the president and “a broad consensus that a deal must include all the hostages.”

I think there is zero chance that Hamas will ever make a deal for all the hostages. The hostages are worth their weight in gold a million times over. If not for the hostages, Hamas would have been destroyed much earlier in this war. The hostages are power to Hamas – power to torment Israelis and to pressure Israel immensely.

The supposed plan to occupy Gaza may be a threat designed to pressure Hamas. I certainly don’t know. But if real, it represents a change that may end up causing Hamas to murder the remaining hostages. Perhaps Netanyahu has finally decided that there is no way to get them back, so they will be sacrificed in order to achieve victory, but I actually doubt that is the strategy. What the strategy may be I don’t know, but so far Israel has had quite a few surprises up its sleeve.

As for world opinion of such an occupation, look what the world thinks of Israel even though it has taken pains – and many losses of members of its military – in order to wage the most population-sparing of any guerrilla war, and to do this in an area where the enemy would like more of its civilians killed. The world condemns Israel whatever it does, so it may as well do what’s best for Israel.

Occupation is one thing – but how long? And how many personnel would be needed? I don’t have the answers to those questions either, but I do have the questions.

NOTE: There’s also a report that Israel has a plan to redevelop the southern areas of the country attacked on 10/7, and to make them more resistant to attack:

The financial decision includes two main plans: one focused on strengthening and developing the city of Ashkelon, and the other on advancing the broader development of the western Negev region, according to a joint statement from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry.

Wherefore trolls?

The New Neo Posted on by

From commenter “Mac”:

WHY does anyone do this? I would never go to, for instance, the Daily Kos and start denouncing progressives. Why would I want to spend my time doing that? I have a left wing friend who does it, deliberately picking fights with right-wingers, and it really puzzles me. I suppose it comes down to the fact that they get some kind of pleasure from it. Seems somewhat pathological. Definitely is in my friend.

I’ll take a stab at an answer or answers.

(1) Some are paid. But I actually don’t think there are many paid trolls who come here, because I think the paid ones tend to just paste boilerplate remarks and move on. whereas most trolls here are more engaged.

(2) The internet’s a funny thing, and it seems to encourage various forms of teasing and even cruelty. I think trolls are defined more by the first: tweaking and poking at one’s opponents to get a rise out of them. Must be satisfying for certain types of people.

(3) A sense of tremendous superiority drives many trolls. They believe they are showing off how much smarter, more well-informed, and just plain all-around correct they are compared to the troglodytes who frequent the site.

(4) They have time on their hands.

(5) Very few are open to persuasion; if they were, they probably wouldn’t be perceived as trolls. They don’t come to have their minds changed, and I believe very very few come to change anyone else’s minds. But they do want to make others waste their time trying to argue and persuade.

(6) I used to get more trolls who just came to sprinkle nasty expletives and move on. Perhaps the spam filter is more efficient at filtering them out, because it’s less common now.

The NY Post heads west

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting:

The nation’s most popular tabloid will launch The California Post early next year — delivering its brand of fearless, common-sense journalism and legendary headlines at a critical juncture for the Golden State.

“Los Angeles and California surely need a daily dose of The Post as an antidote to the jaundiced, jaded journalism that has sadly proliferated,” said Robert Thomson, CEO of The Post’s parent company, News Corp.

“We are at a pivotal moment for the city and the state, and there is no doubt that The Post will play a crucial role in engaging and enlightening readers, who are starved of serious reporting and puckish wit.”

I don’t know that there’s any conservative paper in LA, and the NY Post’s irreverent style – part tabloid, part serious journalism, often with a dose of humor – may suit the area quite well.

Now do San Francisco.

Governor Abbott has plans for the escaped Texas Democrat representatives

The New Neo Posted on by

From Abbott:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement warning Democrats who fled the state to deny a quorum for his redistricting push that they have until precisely 3 p.m. Monday to return to their House duties or face removal from office.

Abbott, in his statement, cites a 2021 Attorney General opinion (KP-0382) that could let him petition a court to declare their seats vacant. On top of that, he’s dangling the sword of felony charges, alleging their fundraising to cover $500-a-day fines might violate bribery laws.

One of the most repellent Democrat reactions to the redistricting plans of the Texas GOP is the old “now we’re going to have to take the gloves off!” response. In other words, Democrats ignore their own long long history of blatant gerrymandering and act like their hands have been clean in that regard, which is laughable. But it probably convinces those unfamiliar with history and facts, which these days is a very large group:

The proposed congressional map [in Texas] would be nowhere near as bad a gerrymander as the one in Illinois, where these clowns ran off to. So it’s very rich to see Pritzker [of Illinois] playing a role in this. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has also tried to put himself at the forefront of this fight, but again, this map would still give Democrats a higher number of seats compared to the state’s voter splits than California’s ridiculous map, which gives Republicans only nine seats. What’s happening is hypocrisy on steroids, with Democrats demanding the GOP live by a double standard whereby blue states can rig their maps to the max while holding a veto over the states in red maps.

Hamas proudly releases sadistic video of starving hostages

The New Neo Posted on by

The operative word is “proudly.”

During World War II, the Nazis figured much of the world would disapprove of their sadistic torture and cold-blooded murder of Jews and others, so they took pains to hide it. In contrast, Hamas celebrates their own torture and murder of Jews and broadcasts it, believing the world will approve and admire, and that those in the West who don’t like it will cower and beg and ultimately capitulate. And they know that Western “leaders” like Starmer and Macron and Carney will hasten to give them what they say they want – a wonderful torture/terrorist state of their own.

How we have progressed.

So two new hostages videos not only feature hostages who look like inmates of concentration camps when the Allies liberated them and were able to document their suffering, but they involve one of the hostages digging his own grave-to-be, another Nazi-esque torture game. These Holocaust references are almost certainly deliberate; Hamas delights in riffing on these old themes, including the blood libel against Jews. It’s Hamas’ stock in trade.

And speaking of blood libel, the recent hoax “starvation” photos of Gazan infants were bought hook line and sinker by the MSM in the West, including the US and our own Gray Lady the New York Times. That recent PR campaign by Hamas purposely set up the starvation image theme with the message that Israel starves Gazan babies – although of course any actual starvation there (which doesn’t seem to be happening) would be the fault of Hamas itself for cruelly starting the war and refusing to surrender the hostages.

The Germans went hungry towards the end of World War II, but I don’t recall the Allies weeping over that and feeding them until they had surrended. Until then, they were the enemy, they were guilty, and their hunger was their own fault. Israel is the only nation on earth expected to feed those who would destroy it.

All the MSM articles I’ve seen on the new hostage videos make the explicit connection with the Gaza “famine” that’s been pushed for the whole war but which has picked up steam recently; for example, see this:

“We ask that Witkoff see this video. And we make an urgent plea to President Trump: Bring our son home,” the [hostage’s] family said.

Earlier this week, a UN-backed food security agency warned that “the worst case scenario of famine” is unfolding in Gaza, its starkest alert yet as Israel faces growing international pressure to allow more food into the territory.

Gaza’s health ministry said Saturday that seven people had died from malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, bringing the total death toll from starvation since the conflict began in 2023 to 169.

In addition, at least 39 people were killed and more than 800 injured in the same period while waiting for aid in different parts of the territory, the ministry added.

It’s like quoting Goebbels about the Nazis’ suffering.

Because of Hamas’ refusal to make a reasonable deal, neither Israel nor Trump can bring hostages home without strengthening Hamas immeasurably and Hamas knows it. Only Hamas can bring them home. That’s a harsh truth that was apparent right from the start, and that’s the power that Hamas knew it would get by taking hostages and is actually the reason Hamas took them.

The starvation theme had been cleverly set up by Hamas, and the minute I heard there were new hostage videos that showed starving hostages I knew that the goal was to tie the two together: “You starve our babies, so of course the hostages are starving because we just don’t have the food to feed them and it’s your fault!” And indeed, that was the explicit message and not just the implicit one, as the leftist Guardian parrots [my emphasis]:

On Saturday, Hamas released a second video of hostage Evyatar David. In it, David is skeletally thin and is shown digging a hole, which, he says in the video, is for his own grave.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza have led to severe shortages of food and other essentials, stoking international demands for a ceasefire. UN-backed food security experts said this week that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is now playing out in Gaza.

Hamas has included this issue in their hostage videos, warning that the hostages are going hungry alongside their captors and that time is running out for a ceasefire.

“UN-backed food security experts,” say it, therefore it must be true.

Hamas also claims to want a state of its own, and the video thereby mocks and teases their cooperative puppets Starmer and Macron and Carney for wanting to give them one. “This is who we are; this is what you are rewarding.” Recently a Hamas official said this:

In his own words, senior Hamas terrorist Ghazi Hamad admits: “The recognition of a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of October 7.”

This abhorrent reward for terrorism and sadism towards innocents should surprise no one; it was the Munich Olympics massacre more than 50 years ago that put the Palestinian cause on the map.

The other goal of Hamas’ new video is to continue to psychologically torture Israelis and especially the hostage families, and to get them to blame and pressure Israel, as so often happens. Mission accomplished.

And then we have Macron’s grotesque equivalency:

Speaking to an assembled crowd, Macron said, “I pushed everyone to say, ‘First release the hostages, and a ceasefire,’ and therefore we must push.” When asked if that included Palestinian hostages as well, Macron replied, “Yes, all of them. All of them. On both sides.”

Apparently, according to the morally and intellectually bankrupt Macron and so many others, the terrorists in Israeli prisons are “Palestinian hostages.”

Fashionable memory

The New Neo Posted on by

From commenter “Ruth,” on the Saturday Night Fever Open Thread today:

Ten seconds of that video and I’m back to 1977, sitting in a packed theater beside my sweetheart. I have on my brand new Christmas boots – black, high heels. My black and cream plaid midi-skirt and cream cowl neck sweater. It’s cold outside but pretty sure my coat’s in the car. I wanted to look thin and cute for my date. Nineteen-year-old girls would rather be cold than wear a coat. We’ve been married now for 42 years…..

Is this kind of recall a woman-thing? Genetic??

I share that kind of recall. For whatever reason, I remember what I wore on many many occasions, both good and bad. I keenly recall what I wore when I first met my husband-to-be. It was a nifty white-and-navy print A-line dress with a front zipper, and it was from Marimekko. Late 60s. I even remember how I wore my hair that day.

One of the things that strikes me, reading Ruth’s reminiscence and thinking of my own, is how spiffy and dressed-up we ordinarily were, even in the 60s. Sometimes we wore hippie garb, but often we donned trendy and sharp-looking clothes, especially segueing into the 70s. Photos confirm it, too.

Yes, I think it’s a woman thing. Men’s fashions tend to vary much less, but that’s not the only reason. I also think it may be a genetic thing – my grandmother had the same snapshot-type memory for what she and everyone else in the room wore.

“Luigism” is a growing plague

The New Neo Posted on by

The nihilism and evil expressed by those who celebrated Luigi Mangione’s murder of United Health executive Brian Thompson has been chilling. A rock was overturned and some very disturbing things came crawling out.

At first it seemed as though the main reason might have been Mangione’s supposed good looks, and certainly that had something to do with it. But the phenomenon has much deeper roots, and those are the reason another murder of an executive is now being celebrated online by the same people (or bots?) who lauded Mangione and cruelly mocked Thompson:

Wesley LePatner was a senior managing director at Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager. She was CEO of the firm’s Real Estate Income Trust—a $53 billion portfolio. She was also a mother of two, a philanthropist, and an engaged member of New York’s Jewish community. On Monday, she was shot and killed in the lobby of her midtown Manhattan workplace, one of four victims of Shane Tamura’s murder spree.

There’s some evidence that her killer was targeting the National Football League, which shares an office building with Blackstone. But within hours, it was clear that his motive was irrelevant to the hordes now celebrating LePatner’s execution online. Across Reddit, Facebook, X, and other social media platforms, users—many anonymous, and some displaying transgender or Palestinian flag emojis—seized on the executive’s death as symbolic retribution. Her position at the investment firm became a license for cruelty. Commenters mocked her success, dismissed her philanthropy as sinister, and portrayed her employer as an unmitigated force for evil. The message was unmistakable: her death was something to relish.

Most of these people (and again, I’m not at all sure they are all actual people) appear to be capitalist-hating leftists angry that they’re not getting a big enough cut of the pie. And, in the case of LePatner’s murder, that perennial favorite of so many vicious people worldwide – Jew-hating – is thrown into the mix. So no doubt some are also old-fashioned anti-Semites on the right, although I believe the vast majority are on the left.

From the link:

This grotesque display is part of a broader trend of class rage and Internet nihilism that justifies violence by turning innocent victims into scapegoats for moral fury. The permission structure for such ghoulishness is now fully operational. What were once the disturbing mutterings of the fringe are now public, performative, and proudly cruel.

A political movement is testing its power. Call it Luigism.

I’ve written several posts on the “Luigism” phenomenon, although I didn’t call it that. Here’s one, and here’s another that’s not about Luigism but is about what’s behind it. Praise of this latest murder doesn’t depend on anything about the shooter, unlike Luigism. It seems to have morphed into pure victim-hatred, a vile and ominous sign.

Goodbye Khalidi – don’t let the door hit you on the way out

The New Neo Posted on by

Rashid Khalidi is quitting Columbia:

These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June. …

You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel.

Utter BS – these groups do not say any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. Many Jews who are not the least bit anti-Semitic criticize Israel constantly, for example. But using a double standard to judge Israel is indeed anti-Semitic. Spreading lies about the history of the region in order to demonize Israel is indeed anti-Semitic.

It’s no accident that Columbia – which has, through professors such as Khalidi, been spreading such lies about Israel for decades – is now a hotbed of anti-Semitism. And of course Khalidi uses this “any criticism of Israel is falsely called anti-Semitism” accusation to defend himself. That doesn’t make it true.

I have little doubt he’ll either get a cushy position elsewhere if he wishes to un-retire, or will go on the lucrative lecture circuit to further spread his message.

Medical update for today

The New Neo Posted on by

Regarding my ex-husband’s treatment in the rehab hospital – I didn’t mean to give the impression that my ex wasn’t walking at all. He has PT every day where he walks with a walker, practices getting up and down, does strengthening exercises of the arms – that sort of thing. But it’s only during the PT and OT (occupational therapy) sessions, which typically total between one to one and a half hours in a day.

So it’s not that he’s not doing anything; it’s just that they’re not working towards having him try walking without a walker, even under very strict supervision.

The facility itself seems like the best one in this area, which doesn’t mean it’s great. But I don’t think any other place would be doing much better, although it’s impossible to know. In addition, he has many medical problems I haven’t described here that need stabilizing, and he really can’t go home right now for that reason plus the fact that his apartment needs to be made safer for him. I hope to get that latter feat accomplished by the end of the week.

As far as the wheelchair tether goes, I got permission yesterday to take him – in the wheelchair – outside, wheel him around, and that sort of thing. So that’s an improvement.

He’s still miserable and can’t wait to get out of there. But at the moment, he needs to stay there.