Are malls dying?

The New Neo Posted on by

I think they are.

The biggest one in my neck of the woods opened around 1980. I remember how exciting it was to have a spiffy new mall within just a few minutes of my house. Now that mall is a ghost town. When I drive by at night and think of stopping by, it is so dark and forbidding that I don’t do it.

I still go to stores to buy clothes and a host of other items. I need to try on the clothes, and I like to actually see what I’m getting with many things (such as, for example, a new carry-on, which I’m presently in the process of researching and buying). But it seems I’m more and more in the minority these days.

The fox, the bunny, and the eagle

The New Neo Posted on by

If this were a fable, I’m sure there’d be a moral to the story. But I’m not sure what it would be, except that if you’re a fox, don’t mess with an eagle. But you have to admire this fox for trying.

As for the bunny—well, nature red in tooth and claw, I guess:

[Bald eagles are] also masters of something scientists call kleptoparasitism: the art of stealing food from others. In my book The Year of the Eagle, I documented bald eagles stealing food from crows, great blue herons and even other eagles.

A couple of days ago, however, I captured an especially dramatic act of thievery. I saw a bald eagle steal a rabbit from a young red fox. Even more impressive: at times, this battle played out more than 20 feet in the air.

Author Kevin Ebi is a wildlife photographer, and he got a series of fabulous photos. You can view them at the link, but here’s just one:

There’s also an amazing video that I can’t embed, but you can find it if you scroll down here.

Honoring hero terrorists

The New Neo Posted on by

How do you get more terrorists? Reward and honor them:

The terrorists honored most highly amongst Palestinian society are those who have killed the greatest number. Abd Al-Baset Udeh, killer of 30 at the Passover Seder massacre, had a soccer tournament for 14-year-olds named for him. His brother was honored with distributing the trophies. Dalal Mughrabi, terrorist bus hijacker (led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history in 1978, when she and other terrorists killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children) has had summer camps, schools, graduation ceremonies and sporting events named for her, as well as many TV documentaries honoring her. Palestinian newspapers also frequently glorify Mughrabi, as in the Al-Ayyam article which described Mughrabi as writing “the most glorious page of heroism in the history of the Palestinian struggle. [Aug. 2, 2009]. Thaer Hammad, who as a lone gunman murdered 10 Israelis in 2002, was glorified by the official PA daily as “the hero of the Intifada.”

Most people on the right are well aware of this. But I think it’s interesting to note how long this has been happening—for many many decades. And it is mind-boggling that so many people still don’t know about it, because it’s not as though the information hasn’t been out there. It just hasn’t been covered much if at all by the MSM, who want to present an alternate narrative, shall we say.

And of course, some on the left would say that terrorists are freedom fighters, and should be rewarded and honored. Long ago I wrote an article about this romance with terrorists; you can find it here. In it, I wrote:

So, who are the Romantics of today? From the foregoing discussion, it should be clear: Romanticism has found a cozy home on the Left. Romanticism (and Leftism) dictates not just sympathy for the Third World, but near-veneration of those there who combine a sense of victimhood (real or imagined) with what the poet Yeats called “passionate intensity,” which is the essence of Romanticism.

Interestingly enough, however, Facebook has recently been trying to stop the glorification of terrorists on its pages:

During 2017, Facebook took action against 200 Palestinian accounts, the statement said. The measures also included the removal of posts and photos deemed inflammatory and supportive of terrorism.

Earlier this week [February 2018], Facebook removed the Hamas-affiliated “Palestine.net” page, which had more than 180,000 likes.

And then there’s the issue of payment:

The PA’s relationship with the Israeli government is a bundle of contradictions. Israel recognizes the PA as the Palestinians’ political leadership. Israel collects taxes for it and turns revenues over to it. Security forces of Israel and the PA cooperate against some terrorists who threaten common interests. Abbas says he opposes widespread violence of the type that occurred during the First and Second Intifadas (1987”“1993 and 2000”“2005) and his security forces work with Israelis to prevent the outbreak of a new intifada.3

At the same time, however, the PA stokes hatred of Israel (and of Jews), urges anti-Israel attacks, and rewards terrorists. In other words, the PA encourages small-scale terrorism but cooperates with Israeli authorities to prevent larger-scale terrorism…

In the case of “pay for slay,” the relevant legislation is the PA’s “Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004).”

It guarantees “a dignified life” to anyone Israel has imprisoned “for his participation in the struggle against the occupation.” That is, it promises benefits to anyone caught for knifing, shooting, running over, or bombing people in Israel. The law lauds current and former terrorist prisoners as “a fighting sector and an integral part of the fabric of the Arab Palestinian society.”

Articles 5 and 8 apply to terrorists released from Israeli prisons. Those who served a year or more are exempted from

a. tuition fees at government schools and universities.

b. health insurance payments.

c. tuition fees for all professional training programs offered by the relevant official bodies.

Some released prisoners work as PA civil servants. For each of these, prison time served is accounted for as if it had been civil-service work: The law says the PA “shall pay his social security and pension fees”‰.”‰.”‰.”‰for the years he spent in prison.”

Articles 6 and 7 apply to terrorists still incarcerated. “Every incarcerated prisoner” is entitled to a monthly salary “linked to the cost-of-living index.” A portion thereof goes directly to the prisoner’s family…

The law guarantees a “salaried position in a State institution” to any male ex-prisoner incarcerated for 10 or more years, and any female who served five years. The positions for such prisoners are high-ranking and highly paid, ensuring not only that long-incarcerated terrorists are financially comfortable but that they dominate the PA’s various bureaucracies. The PA has organized itself not only to be for terrorists, but also of and by terrorists.

There’s much much more. But you get the idea.

A new and more effective sepsis treatment?

The New Neo Posted on by

One can hope.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I’ve written several times about sepsis. It’s a topic I really knew nothing about until I lost a loved one to it, and then I lost another. They both had other illnesses—cancer, to be exact—but it was sepsis that finished them both off long before the cancer seemed to be doing it. And sepsis can also hit—and kill—completely (seemingly) healthy people.

So it’s with no small excitement that I read about this:

Paul Marik, MD, chief of pulomonary and criitical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, reported in 2017 that he gave a mix of vitamin C, vitamin B1, and a steroid to nearly four dozen patients who had sepsis in his Norfolk intensive care unit. In the 7 months before he started using the treatment, 19 of 47 sepsis patients died. Of the 47 who got the treatment, all but four survived.

The results got a lot of attention. But it was a small study, comparing before-and-after patient outcomes. Now, researchers are gearing up to test the therapy with large-scale trials using patients selected at random, with some given the cocktail and others given a placebo.

“Dr. Marik feels very strongly that it’s worked in his patients, and he’s changed his practice because of his own experience,” says Jonathan Sevransky, MD, a critical care doctor at Emory University in Atlanta who is leading one of the studies. “If you think something works, it makes sense for a doctor to try something and to change their own practice. But if you want to change other people’s practices, the way to do that is do a randomized, controlled trial — and ideally, you’d have more than one randomized, controlled trial.”

It may fizzle out like so many initially promising treatments do. But it would be wonderful if it really improved the survival rates of patients with sepsis. I urge you to read this post of mine about sepsis and be aware of the signs, so that you can get help before things get to the point of no return.

Curious about Marik’s research—the article I just linked doesn’t say much—I found this. It’s a video that I can’t embed. He really gets into the meat of it at 8:20. If you listen, you can see that many of these patients were quite far gone into the sepsis process, with a prediction of 40% mortality. Their actual mortality was greatly reduced. However, the proof (or lack thereof) will be in the controlled trials:

Twitter sins: Roseanne Barr bites the dust

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re a blogger, you need to comment on the news du jour.

Well, maybe need is too strong a word. Maybe “are tempted” is better. I am tempted to cover Roseanne Barr’s firing because Roseanne Barr’s firing by ABC is the thing right now. And of course it touches on large themes: free speech, racism, economic boycotts and/or firings, and Twitter.

Is Twitter a large theme? In the psychological sense, it is. People continually write things on Twitter that they know are risky and might come back to haunt them. But they do it anyway.

Why? It’s pretty simple. Twitter rewards the edgy and controversial, and can be accessed day or night, sleepy or wide-awake, under the influence or cold stone sober. It rewards stepping right up to a line and maybe even over that line. But some lines cannot be stepped over without serious repercussions, as Roseanne Barr discovered. One of those lines is racism.

She should have known that already. Why didn’t she? Or, why did she cross that line anyway?

She says her judgement was impaired by Ambien. And maybe it was; it’s a good enough explanation as any:

Roseanne Barr is blaming Ambien for her racist tweets and telling her fans, “I’m not a racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke.”

Sanofi, the maker of Ambien, responded with a statement full of shade: “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”

Seems like Sanofi has a better sense of humor there than Roseanne, who had tweeted: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” (“vj” was a reference to Valerie Jarrett).

Twitter is tempting for celebrities, because it’s a way to have an instant dialogue with the world and gain followers:

[Roseanne] had said on Tuesday that she was leaving Twitter, but she just can’t seem to log off.

She zig-zagged between apologizing for her foul Twitter behavior and retweeting memes that made her apology sound insincere.

ABC can fire Roseanne for any reason or no reason. Racism is certainly a reason. But why was her tweet deemed racist? After all, it seems to be standard practice to compare politicians you don’t like to apes—just ask George W. Bush, aka Chimpy McHitler. And weren’t the apes in those “Planet” movies superior to humans?

It doesn’t matter. There is no racist tradition of comparing white people to apes, and there is such a racist tradition regarding black people. Valerie Jarrett is black. And the defense that the tweet was a joke—which I certainly believe it was meant to be—is somewhat weakened by the fact that it was an unfunny joke, and also that in the current climate “I meant it as a joke” is not considered a defense to a racist remark.

One more thing—ABC was probably somewhat uncomfortable with the show to begin with. It may not have taken much for them to cancel it, despite its popularity. As for Roseanne, why did she sabotage herself? Because that’s what she did. I think it wasn’t just Ambien-head, it was Twitter madness.

Question authority—including the press

The New Neo Posted on by

The press keeps telling us they’re Speaking Truth to Power. But they forgot to consider that they are Power, and that they often don’t Speak the Truth.

So maybe the public would turn on them someday:

Hillary and the back brace

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, I’ve noticed all the talk about HIllary’s odd covered-up garb and whether she’s wearing a back brace underneath. Lately, her sartorial choices feature a lot of heavy garments and drapes and scarves, and there’s a bulge near the top that could easily be a back brace.

I wonder why she’d keep that a secret, though. If she’s wearing one, why not say so? There’s nothing shameful about wearing a back brace. Years ago, when I was in my 40s, a fairly large and rigid one was prescribed for me, but I couldn’t tolerate it and other doctors said it wouldn’t help me anyway.

I Googled the reasons a person would use a back brace and found nothing especially pernicious or frightening. So I just don’t get it.

Nor am I all that concerned with Hillary these days. But an awful lot of people still seem to be, don’t they?

Andrew C. McCarthy on the Obama adminstration’s belated concern about Russia

The New Neo Posted on by

With great clarity, Andrew C. McCarthy just keeps churning out information-packed article after article on what we now are free to call Spygate. I don’t know how he does it, But I’m certainly glad he does. If you have any friends or family you’d like to get up to speed on the subject, just tell them to read McCarthy’s archives and then to keep following all his latest efforts as they come out.

Which brings us to today’s McCarthy piece, which raises a question I’ve often wondered about since this whole Trump-colluded-with-Russia thing began:

…You want to tell me about Paul Manafort’s collaboration with Kremlin-backed Ukrainian thugs? How about George H. W. Bush trying to persuade Kiev not to break away from Moscow, after which Clinton, Bush-43, and Obama enticed Ukraine to give up its means of self-defense on the false promise that we would protect them from Russian aggression ”” a promise premised on the pie-in-the-sky theory that there would be no Russian aggression?

In just the decade before Trump’s 2016 campaign, as the Putin regime menaced former Soviet satellites, the Bush administration negotiated and submitted to Congress the daft U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, endorsing the export to Moscow of technology, material, equipment, and components for nuclear research and nuclear power production. Russia’s invasion of Georgia ”” including the still-ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ”” made congressional approval of this embarrassing pact politically impossible for a time. Yet it was revived soon enough in the Obama “reset” of relations with Moscow steered by then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Clinton promised an era of cooperation in counterterrorism and non-proliferation while Putin went merrily along backing nuclear-energy development and advanced military capabilities in Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism. Obama, of course, made nary a peep since he needed Moscow’s help to pull off the ludicrous Iran nuclear deal. As the Putin thug-ocracy rattled its saber, Obama ushered its entry into the World Trade Organization and pushed through the wayward “New START” treaty.

In the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney portrayed Russia as our principal geopolitical foe, Obama and Democrats mocked him. In the 2016 campaign, Trump’s Russia rhetoric was an echo ”” in Trumpian bluntness ”” of the Democrats’ position. Alas, they had nominated the candidate most ill-suited to exploit the Putin appeasement flavor of the Trump bid.

Mrs. Clinton, we’ve observed, was neck-deep in the Obama administration’s Uranium One scandal. Recall the $145 million that poured into the Clinton Foundation; the half-million-dollar pay day a Kremlin-connected bank ponied up for a short Bill Clinton speech (about five times more than Russia paid for those 2016 ads on Facebook, and more than ten times what the Kremlin’s propaganda arm, RT, paid for a 2015 speech by eventual Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn); the Clintons’ meetings in Russia with Putin and Medvedev while the U.S. government was mulling approval of Russia’s acquisition ”” through its energy giant, Rosatom ”” of one-fifth of America’s uranium stock (in addition to more copious uranium reserves in Kazakhstan); the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to bring a prosecutable felony case against Rosatom’s American affiliate (Tenam USA) while the Uranium One deal was under consideration; and the same Department’s quiet resolution of the case on a sweetheart plea years later, after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine (despite Obama’s plea for flexibility) had left Obama’s “reset” policy in shambles.

We could go on. The point, however, is that after 30 years of embracing and empowering Moscow, it is not credible ”” particularly for an administration that was among the worst offenders ”” to say, “We had to use spies and FISA surveillance against the Trump campaign due to suspicion that Trump might embrace and empower Moscow.”

There’s more, much more. Please read the whole thing.

The Economist chastises the NY Times for its Israel/Palestine coverage

The New Neo Posted on by

Only thing is—they think the Times hasn’t been hard enough on Israel.

Actually, the article in question from the Economist is about language, in particular the “weasel voice” of evasion (it’s part of a continuing “Johnson” series about words/grammar in journalism, named after Samuel Johnson).

Here’s the problem, according to the Economist:

On May 14th, as Palestinians massed at the Gaza Strip’s border, Israeli soldiers fired on them, killing around 60 people. Shortly afterwards, the New York Times tweeted: “Dozens of Palestinians have died in protests as the US prepares to open its Jerusalem embassy.” Social media went ballistic. “From old age?” was one incredulous reply. #HaveDied quickly became a hashtag campaign.

The fault was soon laid not only at the door of the Times, but at a feature of English grammar. As Glenn Greenwald, a left-wing journalist, put it, “Most Western media outlets have become quite skilled””through years of practice””at writing headlines and describing Israeli massacres using the passive tense so as to hide the culprit.” His view was retweeted over 5,000 times and echoed by other critics.

Those of you who follow the news on this blog or any other blog that isn’t part of the left will probably be aware of how ludicrous and offensive this is—and by “this,” I mean the Economist article and the contentions of Greenwald. Now, I have no quarrel with the idea that “have died” is a euphemism and “were killed by Israeli soldiers” would be a better construction to use—I’m all in favor of straight talk. But if we’re into straight talk and actual, unvarnished news rather than propaganda, the Economist critique is a piece of garbage (how’s that for straight talk?)

The truth? They weren’t “protests” and these weren’t just random “Palestinians.” And we have no idea how many of them were killed by Israeli soldiers because the only people reporting an actual number were health officials in Gaza, who have a lousy track record for truth.

Read this article for some background to why the Economist’s piece is so outrageous:

…HAMAS displays a remarkable deftness in defining the March of Return as a peaceful demonstration while surreptitiously waging insurgent warfare. Violating the Geneva Conventions, HAMAS have planted its operatives, armed with explosives and weapons, among the so-called peaceful demonstrators. They have also sent little girls to the frontlines, directly into harm’s way.

By getting the world media, including much of the Israeli media, to define (and thus to perceive) the March as a peaceful demonstration, while using it to wage insurgent warfare, HAMAS have scored a major victory in 4GW [Fourth Generation Warfare]. Anything the IDF does to protect the border or even the lives of its own troops will make the IDF look like they’re using excessive force, never mind the fact that the limited force they’ve applied so far has, in all likelihood, kept the “demonstration” from becoming even bloodier.

Pretending to hold “peaceful” demonstrations and deftly tricking the world media into defining the March (marching is a martial metaphor) as a peaceful demonstration by unarmed civilians, HAMAS have created a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t moral predicament in which anything Israel does short of withdrawing from the area will undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli state. By making its defense forces appear “immoral,” HAMAS make Israel itself appear illegitimate.

The article from the Economist about the weasel voice is actually an entire weasel article. But to the vast majority of its readers nothing is amiss, because it conforms to the MSM narrative that they’ve consumed over and over again. It’s really quite a seamless whole.

The case of Tommy Robinson: free speech in the UK

The New Neo Posted on by

Read about it here, as well as here.

From the latter:

On Friday, British free-speech activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson was acting as a responsible citizen journalist — reporting live on camera from outside a Leeds courtroom where several Muslims were being tried for child rape — when he was set upon by several police officers. In the space of the next few hours, a judge tried, convicted, and sentenced him to 13 months in jail — and also issued a gag order, demanding a total news blackout on the case in the British news media. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was immediately taken to Hull Prison.

From the former:

On Friday, he was standing outside a courthouse where several Muslims were on trial for sex-related crimes, “reporting” on the trial via Facebook live, when he was arrested for breaching the peace…I think what happened is that the judge imposed a 13-month prison term that had been suspended, arising out of a similar incident…

British laws protecting free speech are very different from here; I’ve written about that topic before. In this country the protection is far more robust. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there is no country in the world that protects free speech to the extent that the US does. So what is puzzling to Americans about the Robinson story may not be as puzzling to Brits. However, it’s should be just as frightening, and just as chilling.

It depends what the meaning of “happening now” is

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s see if we can get this straight: it’s okay for people on the left to post old photos of things that happened during the Obama administration and claim they’re current and insinuate that they’re new and particular to the Trump administration, and then get all outraged, ignoring when the photos were taken.

And by the way, what’s so outrageous (“like something out of a horror movie”) about a transport bus with infant safety seats in it? If illegal aliens arrive here with infants and those infants need transporting—the buses are used to take kids and parents on field trips, and to medical and court appointments—what’s the beef? I suppose the left would rather the kids not have the proper safety seats?

The propaganda machine grinds on.

Memorial Day: If you’re reading this…

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This“:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked harder and harder as the song went on.

I say “the heartstrings were jerked,” which sounds as though I’m being critical and the song is manipulative. Well, it’s manipulative in the sense that it means to affect the listener emotionally, and it means to sell songs. But I see nothing wrong with that, if the emotion is sincere and deep. Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the young men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.