“Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?”

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the subtitle of an article in Foreign Policy. It describes traditional but still-existent customs of many Amazon tribes in Brazil that dictate killing handicapped children and even those one might define as transgendered, and a controversy in Brazil over whether a law should be passed that bans such practices (it already has passed one legislative body in that country and is being considered by the other):

The Kamayuré¡ are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins ”” whom some tribes, including the Kamayuré¡, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”

One would think the answer to the question in this post’s title, and the article’s subtitle, would be “of course”—unless it’s being answered by cultural and/or moral relativists:

The Brazilian Association of Anthropology, in an open letter published on its website, has called the bill an attempt to put indigenous peoples “in the permanent condition of defendants before a tribunal tasked with determining their degree of savagery.”

Indigenous people around the world have been increasingly assimilated during the last century or more, but the Amazon remains one of the last holdouts to the process, for rather obvious reasons connected with their environment. Even if the law were to be passed, it might be somewhat moot if Brazil doesn’t exercise all that much influence over its indigenous Amazon tribes at this point. And in fact Brazil doesn’t exercise that influence over all its tribes:

In 1973, Brazil passed the Indian Statute, which groups indigenous individuals into three categories: those who live in complete isolation, those in limited contact with the outside world, and those who are fully integrated into mainstream society. The statute states that tribes such as Kanhu’s are only subject to federal laws depending on their degree of assimilation into Brazilian life. It is thanks to this language that indigenous people do not face prosecution for child killing…

If the bill passes the Senate, it will be tacked on as an amendment to the Indian Statute and require the government agencies that oversee indigenous communities to take a series of proactive measures. One will be the creation of an up-to-date registry of certain pregnant women so that the government can keep an eye on those (such as single mothers or women carrying twins) whose newborns might be targeted for death by their tribes. Another measure will require that the public prosecutor’s office be notified immediately of reports of human rights violations committed against newborns or any other stigmatized members of indigenous communities, including the elderly. The amendment also stipulates that any citizen who learns that an indigenous person’s life or safety is at risk but does not report it to the authorities will “be penalized under the applicable laws.”

So as I see it, the real subject matter of the law is how assertive the prevailing culture in Brazil is going to be in extending its legal reach to the indigenous peoples who have not really been part of it up till now.

It goes almost without saying—although I suppose it’s necessary to say it—that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.

You may have already heard this relevant story from the days of British colonialism in India:

…[W]hen told of an actual Sati [widow-burning] about to take place, [General Sir Charles James Napier] informed those involved that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests complained to him that this was a customary religious rite, and that customs of a nation should be respected. As recounted by his brother William, he replied:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

This story pits the customs of the victors against the customs of the vanquished, in an era in which the victors had the courage of their convictions. That’s no longer as true in the west as it used to be, but there is also the following:

…[T]he Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, ratified by Brazil in 2002…stipulates that indigenous peoples “shall have the right to retain their own customs and institutions, where these are not incompatible with fundamental rights defined by the national legal system and with internationally recognised human rights.”

According to [human rights lawyer] Barreto, under international law the way forward is obvious. “Certain cultural practices here are incompatible with human rights,” she says. “They need to be thwarted. There’s no middle ground.”

There is no contradiction between recognizing that the custom originally had utility and saying that the time has come to end it, and that the latter is the right thing to do. The real question is whether Brazil has the courage of its own convictions and a commitment to universal human rights, and the will to actually back the law up in practice, if passed.

De Blasio’s war on meritocracy and the public exam schools of New York

The New Neo Posted on by

They’ve been the jewel in the crown of New York City’s public school system: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech (here’s a longer list). They provided a chance for any of New York’s students, regardless of finances or race or creed or religion, to pass the qualifying test and get a fabulous education among their peers.

But that opportunity has met the diversity police in the form of Mayor De Blasio, who has proposed an end to all that:

…[aiming] to make the student body at the top high schools more closely reflect the citywide student population, which is 70 percent black and Latino. As it stands, black and Latino students make up about 10 percent of the 15,000 enrolled at the most selective public schools.

That is a serious and longstanding concern, but a fundamental problem with the argument that the schools are not diverse is that Asian students are the single-largest group at most of the schools. They constitute 73.5 percent at Stuyvesant, 65.6 percent at Bronx Science and 61.3 percent at Brooklyn Tech. Overall, Asians of all backgrounds comprise less than 20 percent of students.

Their extraordinary presence in the top schools belies de Blasio’s claim that the schools are exclusionary because many Asian students belong to poor, immigrant families where English is not spoken in the home.

That’s An Inconvenient Truth that must not be allowed to stand:

De Blasio’s plan would be phased in over three years and do away with the single entrance test, instead offering admission to the top 7 percent of graduates from all middle schools. That would make up 90 to 95 percent of admissions, with the remainder coming from a lottery.

If this plan is implemented, either the failure rate will go up or the curriculum will be dumbed down, or both. I wrote “if this plan is implemented,” but it sounds as though it will not be implemented, at least not at present:

The only silver lining is that eliminating the test for some of the schools requires state legislation, and there is little chance of that happening now. Gov. Cuomo, thankfully, doesn’t appear interested, so opponents, including Asian parents’ groups, have an opportunity to organize and stop the quota travesty in its tracks.

So for now this particular bad idea may be stopped in its tracks. But the left never rests, and are highly unlikely to give up on this idea. It reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s famous challenge to a leftist political opponent (in her case, it was about economics), in which she pointed out that he was more interested in lowering the upper group than raising the lower group:

More Obama lies during the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama really, really, really wanted that deal, and he was more than willing to lie to Congress to further it:

The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access ”” albeit briefly ”” to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so…

Shortly after the nuclear deal was sealed in July 2015, then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified that even with the sanctions relief, Iran “will continue to be denied access to the world’s largest financial and commercial market.” A month later, one of Lew’s top deputies, Adam Szubin, testified that despite the nuclear deal “Iran will be denied access to the world’s most important market and unable to deal in the world’s most important currency.”

But US banks refused to go along:

The report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations revealed that under President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department issued a license in February 2016, never previously disclosed, that would have allowed Iran to convert $5.7 billion it held at a bank in Oman from Omani rials into euros by exchanging them first into U.S. dollars. If the Omani bank had allowed the exchange without such a license, it would have violated sanctions that bar Iran from transactions that touch the U.S. financial system.

The effort was unsuccessful because American banks ”” themselves afraid of running afoul of U.S. sanctions ”” declined to participate. The Obama administration approached two U.S. banks to facilitate the conversion, the report said, but both refused, citing the reputational risk of doing business with or for Iran.

Here’s the excuse:

Former Obama administration officials declined to comment for the record.

However, they said the decision to grant the license had been made in line with the spirt of the deal, which included allowing Iran to regain access to foreign reserves that had been off-limits because of the sanctions. They said public comments made by the Obama administration at the time were intended to dispel incorrect reports about nonexistent proposals that would have gone much farther by letting Iran actually buy or sell things in dollars.

In other words, “we only lied a little bitty bit.”

And this news is unlikely to perturb any Democrat, or to surprise any Republican. What wasn’t Obama willing to do to secure the Iran deal?

Actually, I figured they already…

The New Neo Posted on by

…had a database like this:

…[T]he United States government, traditionally one of the bastions of press freedom, is about to compile a list of professional journalists and “top media influencers,” which would seem to include bloggers and podcasters, and monitor what they’re putting out to the public.

McConnell cancels most of August recess

The New Neo Posted on by

I was hoping that would happen, and it will (at least, that’s the announced plan at the moment).

Mitch McConnell is canceling all but a week of the Senate’s traditional August recess, hoping to keep vulnerable Democrats off the campaign trail and confirm as many of President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees as possible.

The Senate majority leader said Tuesday that the Senate will only take a break for the first week of August because of “historic obstruction” by Senate Democrats and will stay in session the rest of the month. McConnell was under enormous pressure from his own caucus as well as the president to cancel as much of the recess as possible, but the majority leader also saw an opportunity to unite Republicans and annoy incumbent Democrats.

Republicans in Congress had the opportunity to accomplish a lot more than they’ve managed to do since they took office at the beginning of 2017. Part of this is the natural tendency of Congress, part of it is that scare-quoted “historic obstruction” by Democrats, and part is the classic foot-dragging for which the GOP is known.

If the predicted and then not-so-predicted Congressional blue wave does occur in November, at least the judiciary will have been tilted somewhat to the right as compared with the Obama years. Judicial appointments tend to have a long life.

Diversity air controllers?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s recently been publicized that under the Obama administration some very strange and disturbing policies were put in place governing the hiring of air controller trainee candidates:

…Tucker Carlson revealed the Obama administration modified the FAA’s candidate selection process to value workplace diversity over competency, experience and skills…

According to Carlson, due to changes implemented during the Obama administration, air traffic controller candidates are now required to complete a “biographical questionnaire” before even being considered for a job with the FAA.

If they don’t pass, they aren’t considered for a position ”” no matter how much experience they have or how qualified they are.

Fox News obtained a copy of the questionnaire and how it is scored. According to Carlson, candidates whose worst subject in high school was science and candidates who are unemployed receive the most points possible on the test. In contrast, licensed pilots and those with extensive air traffic control knowledge aren’t highly scored.

This seems insane on the face of it, because there are other and much better ways to implement diversity if diversity is the goal—unless the “diversity” you’re seeking is to get candidates who will flunk out of the program or fail to show up (see this forum for some detailed discussion of that).

Actually, not all of that quote with which this post began is factually correct. It took me a while to get more updated information, but apparently Congress passed an act in 2016 that at least partially corrected some of the problems described above. This court case (still lumbering through the court system) provides a fairly thorough description of the situation prior to the Obama changes, during the changes, and after the 2016 law (the partial correction) was passed:

Prior to 2014, as part of their hiring program, the FAA considered candidates who completed Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) programs at approved CTI Institutions. To be eligible for employment as a trainee controller, graduates of these programs were then required to pass an air traffic aptitude test, known as the Air Traffic Control Selection and Training (AT-SAT) exam. Once the candidates graduated from an approved CTI Institution and passed the AT-SAT, they were entered into a “direct hire pool of applicants, were placed on a Qualified Applicant Register List, and were given hiring preference for Air Traffic Control Specialist” (ATCS) positions.

In 2013, the FAA decided to modify its hiring process and notified candidates that it was “planning to open a general public announcement in FY 2014 to add more depth and diversity to [its] controller hiring sources.” As part of this new hiring strategy, the FAA required all applicants, including CTI graduates, to apply through this vacancy announcement. A revised testing process was also implemented, under which candidates were required to complete a biographical questionnaire (BQ). If the candidate passed the BQ, he would then be eligible to take the cognitive portion of the AT-SAT and be referred for a selection decision. ….

…[O]n July 15, 2016, “Congress passed the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016, which, inter alia, addressed the hiring of ATCS positions by the FAA.” The Act provides that the “FAA should give preferential treatment for ATCS positions to qualified individuals maintaining 52 consecutive weeks of civilian or military air traffic control experience.” The remaining ATCS positions are then hired equally out of two pools. The first pool is made up of: CTI graduates who have received recommendations from their institution, honorably discharged veterans, eligible veterans with aviation experience, and preference eligible veterans. The second pool is made of up “off-the street” (OTS) applicants. The Act “prevents the FAA from using the [BQ] on applicants from the first pool,” but “does not prevent the FAA from using the [BQ] on OTS hires.” Further, the Act permits any applicant who was previously disqualified as a result of the BQ to reapply for an ATCS position.

So there are now two pools for trainees, after the first group of experienced people (given preference) is hired. One is the more traditional route of taking the proper courses and then applying without having to answer any cockamamie BQ questions that reward lack of employment and stupidity at science. The second pool requires no training and rewards those rather glaring deficits.

I repeat that if the goal is diversity, that’s still a strange way to go about it (that last pool and the BQ, that is), and one just about guaranteed to have a high fail rate (although it’s hard to obtain any statistics on that, there’s a discussion of the fail rate here). Surely it’s possible to get a fair number of minority candidates that go by the first route, and in fact I saw a discussion on Tucker Carlson last night (a program I watched because I knew this topic would be addressed) that indicated that when the standards were first changed, quite a few of those who lost out were actually minority candidates who were either military veterans or had gone to a CTI program, done well, and were in line for trainee positions and then were dumped in favor of the “off the street” candidates.

Seems insane. Here’s further documentation on how the dumping worked (here it’s called a “purge”):

Prior to the 2013 purge, the FAA collaborated with universities and colleges to create accredited degree programs in Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) schools. The FAA gave a hiring preference those who obtained CTI program degrees, references from CTI administrators, and “well qualified” rankings on the challenging Air Traffic Selection and Training exam (AT-SAT)””a validated, proctored, eight-hour, computer-based test. In December of 2013, the FAA began its new hiring process and told approximately 3,500 trained and qualified graduates of CTI programs””who were on the FAA’s referral list and ready for immediate hire””that their AT-SAT scores were no longer valid and that they must reapply for employment. The new application process””open to anyone””required applicants to pass a nonsensical “Biographical Questionnaire (BQ),” which was instituted to select minority candidates. Despite obtaining a perfect score on the AT-SAT exam, lead plaintiff Andrew Brigida was told he failed the BQ and was therefore no longer eligible for employment as an ATC.

“The FAA jeopardized passenger’s lives to advance a political agenda,” said William Perry Pendley, president of Mountain States Legal Foundation.

If you go to the FAA’s site on diversity and inclusion, you can see how dedicated the institution is to these principles [emphasis mine]:

Diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond. Our inclusive culture is defined by our values and we continuously seek employees from all backgrounds with distinctive ideas, perspectives, insights and talents. As our NextGen technology and systems continue to evolve to meet the aviation challenges of tomorrow, so must our workforce.

Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such.

I’m all for diversity as long as safety and competence are not sacrificed. But here’s my question for the FAA: is diversity so integral to your mission, so very critical, almost entirely for political reasons? Because you merely state how critical diversity is for safety, but fail to give us a clue why that would be so. It seems to me that the two things—diversity and safety—are very separate issues. But that’s not the way the website reads.

What about those tariffs?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t really have a knowledgeable point of view on what Trump’s tariffs are likely to actually do. Not my strong suit. But I pass along this evaluation that seems equally devoid of Trump-shilling and anti-Trump hysteria:

“The impact of tariffs on $50 billion here and there, on its own, is relatively limited,” said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank AG. “The real danger continues to be the uncertainty about what’s next.”

The damage could get serious if trade tensions sap business confidence, causing executives to put off capital spending and other investment decisions, he said…

U.S. corporate chiefs said the president’s trade policies risk raising costs and dragging down growth, a Business Roundtable survey showed Tuesday. Ninety-five percent of chief executive officers who responded said reduced exports from foreign retaliation was a “moderate” or “serious” risk, the poll found.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that a trade war could undermine the strongest global upswing in seven years…

For now, Trump’s trade assault hasn’t severely dented confidence among American businesses, according to the Fed’s beige book, which polls firms across the U.S. While some respondents “noted some concern about the uncertainty of international trade policy,” outlooks for near-term growth remain “generally upbeat,” the May beige book reported.

Some economists are stopping short of using the term “trade war.” Analysts at ING Bank NV are calling the current situation a “cold” trade conflict with a muted economic impact.

Much more at the link.

In case you missed it—here’s the wedding cake and Cupid

The New Neo Posted on by

I posted the much-requested photo of my wedding cake and ornament in an addendum to the previous post. But in case you missed it, here it is:

And here’s a closeup of the ornament:

To get the detail in the photo I had to light it in a way that ended up making it look more green than it really is. It’s actually more of a bronze color, like in the wedding cake photo. That Cupid has been in my family since the 1880s, when it was used for my grand-grandparents’ wedding.

My wedding was a modest one, as you can see from the size of the cake. It only had to feed 35 people who had already stuffed themselves with dinner. Weddings tend to be a lot more elaborate and over-the-top these days, but mine was in my parents’ house and it was just the way I wanted it.

Feckless c***s and feckless flowers

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE: Scroll down for photo.]

I’ve stayed away from the Samantha Bee brouhaha so far because it just plain wearies me.

I come from a time when the c-word was simply not acceptable in public life, and that was that. It wasn’t something people were fired for using or defended for using. The issue simply did not arise because the word was verboten and as far as I can recall that was respected by all public figures.

Was it the strength of the social contract? Fear of ostracism? Self-respect? Whatever it was that kept people more or less in check, that thing has broken down quite dramatically. And now we have Samantha Bee and so many others who seemingly have removed all the barriers to offensive pubic speech—except, of course, for racism, which is punished harshly if there’s even a whiff of it.

I’m not suggesting we go back to the days when comedian Lenny Bruce was tried for obscenity. But really, it would be nice to have a little more decorum, although I realize it’s a vain hope at this point.

So, why am I writing this post, if I’m weary of the topic? The word Samantha Bee used that actually interests me much more than the c-word is “feckless,” which was the adjective that Bee used to modify it.

Seems to me that I’d gone most of my life without hearing that word, but in the last decade or so it’s come to the fore. To the best of my recollection, “feckless” became a favorite criticism of Obama during his presidency. And in fact, when I Google “Obama + feckless,” I get a lot of hits.

What does “feckless” mean?: “weak, ineffective,” or “worthless, irresponsible.”

It seems to me to be a pretty weak and ineffective word, as well as a relatively obscure one. How many people could define it properly without looking it up? Not very many, I’d guess.

And if Ivanka Trump is feckless, I’m not sure what she is supposed to be so effective at, according to Ms. Bee. Ivanka seems pretty darn effective to me at her major life concerns at the moment: being a good mother and wife, supporting her father politically, running her clothing business, and looking mighty fine. She manages to juggle all of that rather well, whether you approve of her politics or not.

That dictionary site that defines “feckless” also offers some examples of its use in a sentence. The following one fascinates me. It’s from a May 18, 2018 Vogue article about wedding cakes (which I suppose vaguely and distantly—fecklessly—ties into one of my earlier posts from today):

Sprays of periwinkle hydrangeas burst in feckless disarray from clutches of kiwi-green leaves, a leafy halo for the diaphanous peach rose.

I can’t even picture that, it seems so complex. And what is “feckless” (or not feckless) about flowers on a cake? Going to the Vogue article and reading the original fails to illuminate what on earth the author is talking about. But it sparked some pleasant reminiscence about my own very beautiful wedding cake, which I don’t have a photo of right now but which featured an ornament from my great-grandparents’ wedding—a small bronze Cupid with wings, holding a tiny four-leaf clover and tiny wedding band—mounted on a delicious cake decorated with a cascade of frosting-violets that weren’t the least bit feckless.

ADDENDUM:

Here is the much-requested photo of my wedding cake:

And here’s a closeup of the ornament:

To get the detail in the photo I had to light it in a way that ended up making it look more green than it really is. It’s actually more of a bronze color, like in the wedding cake photo.

Fleeing San Francisco

The New Neo Posted on by

They seem to take yearly polls on the question, and the last few years the numbers wanting to leave San Francisco have gone up, up, up:

A poll released Sunday by a local advocacy group showed that 46 percent of Bay Area residents surveyed said they want to move out of the area within the next few years. That number is up from 34 percent in 2016 and 40 percent last year in the same poll.

The reason is cost of living, particularly housing. Oh, there are other reasons, too—for example, the homeless problem has grown, with tent cities in many places and unsanitary conditions. But (if they’re telling the truth) only 14% of respondents cite that as the most important problem. Cost of housing was cited by a whopping 42%. To get some perspective on that, “Bay Area median home prices hit $850,000 in April.”

I’ve been going to San Francisco just about every year since 1970, to visit relatives and friends there. It used to be an absolutely fabulous place to be. The vibe was fun, the restaurants amazing, and the air and views incomparable. The vibe is no longer so fun, and the restaurants not really better than in any large city in the US (partly that the other cities have caught up, and partly that the caliber of restaurants in San Francisco has dropped a notch, IMHO).

The air and the views are still wonderful, but who can afford to live there? Only a small percentage of people with very high-paying jobs, or those who have owned real estate from before the time it became unaffordable and are able to sell it now for a pretty penny.

California is said to be losing people at a rapid rate. According to a different poll, one that involved the entire state:

A statewide poll conducted by UC Berkeley last year showed 56 percent of voters have considered moving due to the housing crisis ”” and 1 in 4 of those residents said they’d leave the state.

I know some of those people. And they haven’t even left their hearts there.

Think about it: you can sell your fairly modest house in the area for a cool million, move somewhere else and live like a king, with less traffic and fewer tent cities. I’m sure it’s very appealing to a lot of current San Francisco residents. And yet I believe the Bay Area will always attract (and even hold) a lot of people, particularly the young.