The fire this time

The New Neo Posted on by

Many fires have been raging throughout California, and they have destroyed a large number of homes already and continue to threaten others. You can read a lot of coverage (with maps) here, if you’re interested in the details.

Some of the coverage of the fires has featured words such as “Armageddon” and “apocalyptic.”

I’ve lived in the Los Angeles area. I still have friends and relatives there, and I visit a lot. I’m familiar with several of the places where there have been recent fires and people have evacuated their homes, and I hope for the best. I’ve seen huge wildfires in different parts of California in the past, and probably will in the future. I have a friend whose luxury home burned to the ground years ago, leaving only a brick hearth and some ashes where a mansion used to be.

Los Angeles (and much of California) is a fire zone. Fires spread fast there; I’ve seen that happen, too. I’ve driven on the freeway past a very small fire that was about six feet by six feet, arrived home in two minutes flat, and turned on the TV to see a video of the entire hill in raging flames while I heard multiple helicopters overhead.

This time the Santa Ana winds have been fierce, and they’ve been responsible for spreading many of these fires especially quickly. I wonder whether arson was initially involved in any of them, as it sometimes is, but I haven’t seen a word about this. What I do see discussed is the fact that the heavier-than-usual rains earlier in the year fed the growth of a larger-than-usual amount of vegetation, and now that it’s dried out and the winds are strong there’s plenty of extra fuel to be burned. Here’s a photo of the sort of thing people driving on the freeway have been seeing; I know this area well (on 405 near the Getty):

Frightening.

An investigation run amok

The New Neo Posted on by

This should send a chill down your spine. It’s the Wisconsin Attorney General’s report on the Wisconsin John Doe investigations, which I covered earlier here.

Everything we already knew about the abuse of power that went on during these fishing expeditions was bad, but the full story is even worse. Just a few excepts (and by the way, the acronym GAB stands for the Government Accountability Board, one of those Orwellian titles):

Attorney General Brad Schimel is asking for disciplinary action against nine people following his investigation into the leaking of documents collected during a now-closed probe of Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign.

As this report describes in detail, the systemic and pervasive mishandling of John Doe evidence likely resulted in circumstances allowing the Guardian leak in the first place, and now prevents prosecutors from proving criminal liability beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, DOJ is deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponization of GAB by partisans in furtherance of political goals, which permitted the vast collection of highly personal information from dozens of Wisconsin Republicans without even taking modest steps to secure this information…

The investigation included subpoenas to state officials…and several search warrants executed on the private email accounts of state employees, state officials, and campaign workers and fundraisers associated with Wisconsin Republicans and Governor Walker. In the “Falk boxes,” three hard drives in particular contained nearly 500,000 unique emails (from Yahoo and Gmail accounts, for example) and other documents (email attachments, for example) totaling millions of pages. The hard drives included transcripts of Google Chat logs between several individuals, most of which were purely personal (and
sometimes very private) conversations. GAB placed a large portion of these emails into several folders entitled, “Opposition Research” or “Senate Opposition Research.”…

Because of the very broad nature of the search warrants, the John Doe III investigators obtained emails and chat logs from hundreds and perhaps thousands of other individuals who corresponded with the individuals listed above.

Before the widespread use of computers and email and chats it would have been impossible to collect that sort of information on that scale—difficult to collect it even on one person, much less hundreds and thousands. Now it is easy, if you have the power to do it and the will to do it. Paranoia becomes far more understandable, doesn’t it?

I doubt that the people who collected this information had the time or inclination to read all of it, but they stored it for future reference when needed. And with computers it’s relatively easy to do a search of the material at any point and find anything you want almost immediately. Then just leak it to your eagerly cooperating friends in the media and voila! Mission accomplished.

One good thing is that so-called John Doe investigations are only allowed in a few states. Wisconsin is one of them, but in 2015 Governor Walker signed a bill outlawing them for investigating political corruption. This was a direct result of the abuses that had occurred (and are detailed in the recent report). But if the John Doe investigation had succeeded in its goals, such a bill probably would never have been passed.

It’s easy to see the possible parallels with the Mueller investigation on the federal level (not to mention Lois Lerner and the IRS), and other special prosecutions that almost inevitably seem to turn into enormous fishing expeditions that cast a wide (and biased) political net.

Moore accuser Nelson: well yes, I did…

The New Neo Posted on by

…add some notes underneath that inscription in the yearbook.

That link is to a story on ABC based on a recent interview with Beverly Young Nelson, Moore’s accuser. The article is long, and the news about the additions by Nelson comes only towards the end rather than the beginning, and not in the headline. The rest of the article is about how fearful Nelson is of the possibility of Moore’s election, and reiterates the original charges. Then there’s this:

Moore has denied it’s his handwriting, and his campaign and attorney have called for her to release the yearbook so a handwriting expert can examine and evaluate it.

Nelson has not done so but insists that Moore signed her yearbook, though saying she made notes underneath.

Nelson and her attorney Gloria Allred plan to hold a news conference later today [Friday].

“We’re going to present evidence that we think is important on the issue whether Roy Moore signed the yearbook,” Allred told ABC News today.

And so they did. At the news conference, which just occurred, the announcement was made that they had engaged a handwriting expert who says the signature is Moore’s:

Allred says she sought the opinion of a forensic document expert, Arthur Anthony, to analyze the signature. Allred provided reporters with the report provided by Anthony, with his assessment that the signature in the yearbook is Moore’s. Included in the sheaf of papers she presented were examples of Moore signature from when he was a deputy district attorney decades ago.

So far I haven’t seen a copy of that report. It would be important to see it and read it; for example, did Anthony say the whole inscription is authentic, or just the signature? Did he say what method he used to authenticate it?

This announcement by Allred and Nelson is the equivalent of allowing the prosecution to present all its evidence and blocking the defense from even examining the evidence, which would be necessary in order to refute it. Quite a ploy. And of course, there is zero evidence of the alleged assault except for Nelson’s description.

There’s a reason we have the procedures we do in a court of law. One of the most basic of those procedures involves allowing the defendant to examine the evidence and to present his/her own expert witnesses. You can find an expert witness to attest to practically anything, as anyone who has followed trials knows. And in a court, attorneys for the defense get to challenge the credentials of a prosecution’s expert[s] and to cross-examine him or her.

Several weeks ago Moore had asked for an opportunity to examine the yearbook and to have experts compare it to other official signatures of Moore’s in order to try to establish whether it is authentic or not. Allred and Nelson refused. Apparently in the meantime they shopped around and found at least one expert (I don’t know what his credentials are, although I assume he has them—credentials would be part of the record in a court of law, but this is no court of law) who would agree with them.

Of course, even if the signature is real (and we still have no idea whether it is or isn’t), that doesn’t tell us whether Nelson’s accusation is true. However, lately the story has become all about the inscription. Now, in addition to the Anthony report, Nelson has indicated that there was something she added to the inscription, just as her doubters had claimed—although interestingly enough she doesn’t say when she added it (at least, I haven’t seen any indication she addressed that issue). Could have been a few days before that first press conference, or it could have been earlier. She doesn’t say exactly what she added, either, but we can assume it was the printed part that many observers had noticed was in a different ink.

The likelihood is that, when Nelson and Allred finally found someone to authenticate at least part of the inscription, they had to face the fact that even that person was pointing out that there was an added part in a different ink and handwriting. Therefore, if they wanted to present that person’s report that said the inscription was by Moore, they absolutely were forced to also admit to the additions by Nelson, although they’d failed to say that before in all their talks with the press. They must have done a calculus and decided that the probative value of their expert saying part of it was real outweighed the necessary admission that some of the inscription was Nelson’s. But it seems to me that the addition tends to indicate that Nelson padded the “evidence,” which opens up the possibility of other padding of evidence by Nelson (or perhaps of a made-up story that cannot be authenticated and has not been authenticated). I also think it’s likely that, if they hadn’t been forced to admit the additions, they would never have done so.

As this NBC news story points out:

At the initial November 13 press conference where she first made the allegation, she held up her yearbook ”” which included a message that appeared to be written and signed by Moore, with the date and the name of the restaurant below ”” as corroboration of her account of her acquaintance with the then-assistant district attorney. She did not mention anything about adding notes then.

Nor did she say it in appearances since then, until today.

Previously, some people supporting Moore had also noted that the word “Moore” seemed to be in that different ink as well. Did the original inscription just say “Roy”? Was “Moore” actually written in a different ink? Does Anthony’s report address that question?

I have no idea whether the following photo is authentic—there’s a lot of bogus stuff online, and Photoshop is always a possible tool for the motivated. But for what it’s worth, this is sort of thing that’s been offered by Nelson’s doubters to show what was added in a different ink, and it includes the “Moore” part of the signature.

Moore has denied even knowing Nelson. If the inscription is actually his—something we still don’t know—then he would have been wrong about that. But since this occurred forty years ago, and if the “knowing” was confined to an acquaintance rather than the sort of attack Nelson alleges, then why on earth would he remember such a thing?

I still have no idea whether Moore is guilty or innocent. But I do know that Nelson and Allred are playing politics, that they are not allowing the accused access to the evidence he would need to defend himself, and that Nelson failed to divulge a very important fact regarding the inscription she is using to bolster her claims of sexual assault.

The election in Alabama is due to be held in four days. This is clearly timed so that Moore has only a short period in which to respond. I detest this sort of hit job right before an election no matter which side presents it. Unless the alleged incident had just happened—and Nelson’s accusations most definitely do not fall into that category—all such last-minute well-timed allegations are inherently suspicious to me unless the evidence is completely solid and convincing. And I repeat that this holds true no matter what side is being attacked, Democrat or Republican.

Thoughts on the Forrest Gump of the FBI, Strzok

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I called former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok a “vast and beckoning mystery.” That, he remains. But today I’ll offer a few thoughts about him nevertheless, based on what we do know (or think we know). Some of this will be in the form of questions.

Finally, Congress will be getting Strzok’s texts:

The Justice Department is in the process of handing over to the House Intelligence Committee the anti-Trump text messages that got a key FBI official removed from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Fox News has learned — a move that comes as the panel weighs a possible contempt resolution…

The existence of the texts first emerged publicly over the weekend…

Nunes originally had given the agencies until “close of business” on Monday to “fully” comply with the panel’s demands. Otherwise, he threatened to move a contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

There’s a lot in there to unpack, although it’s not easy to know exactly what it signifies (this appears true of the entire Strzok story). It seems logical to believe that the reason “the existence of the texts first emerged publicly over the weekend” was the threat by Nunes. Or perhaps that’s just one of the reasons; there might be others.

The FBI moved Strzok to HR and took him off all counterintelligence work last August. No, scratch that; we don’t actually know when that happened, we just know that it was announced in August. It would help to know the answer. It would also help to know when the questionable texts were sent. And when were they first discovered by the IG? When did the FBI first learn of them?

We therefore don’t actually know the timeline or how long this was kept under wraps after they knew (or if we do know, I certainly missed the news). We do know that an IG was appointed to investigate the Clinton email investigation back in January of 2017, even before Trump was inaugurated, and this was what ultimately led to the uncovering of the partisan texts that Strzok exchanged with his paramour Page.

You may or may not remember (I didn’t) that it was the Democrats who had called for the IG in the first place (the link goes to an article from January of 2017 before Trump’s inauguration):

The announcement [of the IG appointment], which was expected, comes after criticism of the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation, particularly on how the public was notified about the controversy, which was a major issue on the 2016 campaign trail.

It will likely mean questions over the role of FBI Director James Comey in the fading days of the election, which Democrats believe helped cost them the presidency, will linger on long into the administration of Donald Trump…

Democrats were furious when Comey wrote to lawmakers less than two weeks before the election announcing the discovery of emails potentially relevant to its investigation of Clinton’s handling of classified information…

The move allowed Trump to argue that the investigation against Clinton, which he had used to cast doubt on her character and integrity throughout the campaign, was once again deserving of voters’ attention. A few days before the election, Comey wrote to lawmakers again to say that based on a review of emails, the agency had not changed its opinion that Clinton should not face criminal charges.

But Democrats say his move came too late and have said that the initial letter stalled her momentum during the final two weeks of the campaign.

At the time, Democrats hoped this IG appointment would be a way to delegitimize Trump’s election by blaming Comey. It hasn’t turned out that way, and Strzok’s anti-Trump texts were somehow uncovered in the process.

At least, that’s the story we’ve since been told. We still don’t know what is actually in the texts. And I maintain that we don’t really know why Strzok was demoted and sent to HR Siberia. After all, agents actually are allowed to make private political statements. Was the problem that he did it on an FBI phone, which is not considered private? Or are we only hearing the tip of the iceberg of what the problems with Strzok might actually have been?

The texts might have been found any time after January and the IG’s appointment. We do know that Strzok was not removed from his counter-intelligence work before the Flynn interview, because he was in on that one. But the Flynn interview occurred shortly after Trump’s inauguration. So the texts might have been found quite early on in the IGs investigation, and Strzok removed rather quickly, and the removal only announced in August. Or there could have been a time lag of unknown length, but up to about seven months, between those two events. Or they both could have occurred in August or close to it.

All we know is that Strzok’s removal was announced in mid-August, not long after FBI director Comey had been fired by Trump (in June) and interim director McCabe was replaced by present FBI director Wray (in early August). So it may have been Wray who gave the order to remove Strzok. And we certainly don’t know for sure why Wray decided to keep the reason for Strzok’s demotion under wraps, although we can strongly speculate that it was because the news would cast suspicion on the entire investigation that he had come to head.

In other words, someone was hiding this suspicious news from the public. The article I linked contains some interesting speculation. All that was known at the time was that Strzok had been demoted, but:

Asha Rangappa, a former FBI counterintelligence agent and associate dean at Yale Law School, said that she had “never heard of an agent being moved to the human resources department.”

“I have seen instances where if some issue comes up, the agent might be moved to another investigation or to the operations center, where you essentially field calls all day,” Rangappa said. “But why he would be moved to HR is just bizarre.”

Rangappa did not want to speculate on what may have happened in Strzok’s case, but said there were many factors ”” ranging from small administrative violations to more significant incidents ”” that could raise questions about an agent’s ability to stay on a case.

Rangappa not only picked up on how unusual this move was, but she made an educated guess that was even more impressive at the time (and one I haven’t found anyone else was making back then):

Rangappa noted that the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) opened an investigation in January into the FBI’s handling of the email probe, including former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to announce a new inquiry into her email server 11 days before the election. It is not clear whether Strzok, who supervised elements of the email probe, was caught up in the OIG investigation.

Well, now we’ve been told that he was caught up in that investigation.

But back to Nunes, who’s been pursuing Strzok with dogged Javertian/Porfiryan persistence for a long time:

In early October, Nunes personally asked Rosenstein ”“ who has overseen the Trump-Russia probe since the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions ”“ to make Strzok available to the committee for questioning, sources said.

When a month had elapsed, House investigators ”“ having issued three subpoenas for various witnesses and documents ”“ formally recommended to Nunes that the DOJ and FBI be held in contempt of Congress. Nunes continued pressing the DOJ, including a conversation with Rosenstein as recently as last Wednesday.

Responding to the revelations about Strzok’s texts, Nunes said Saturday he was directing his staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and Wray.

Suddenly, things changed:

Early Saturday afternoon, after Strzok’s texts were cited in published reports by The New York Times and The Washington Post ”“ and Fox News had followed up with inquiries about the department’s refusal to make Strzok available to House investigators ”“ the Justice Department contacted the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan to establish a date for Strzok’s appearance before House Intelligence Committee staff, along with two other witnesses long sought by the Nunes team.

Was that done in response to Nunes’ threat of a contempt citation? If so, why? Other officials have weathered such citations. And was there even enough time after the Nunes threat to prepare the Times and WaPo stories? Or did the papers know ahead of time what was going to be happening with Nunes? At any rate, the timing does not seem coincidental.

Nunes said:

…that after the Strzok texts were revealed [by the MSM], the DOJ expressed a “sudden willingness to comply with some of the Committee’s long-standing demands” but added: “This attempted 11th-hour accommodation is neither credible nor believable, and in fact is yet another example of the DOJ’s disingenuousness and obstruction.”

Reading about Strzok makes some people think of Forrest Gump. But it makes me think of T. S. Eliot’s poem “Macavity.” A few stanzas:

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!…

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair –
But it’s useless to investigate – Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It must have been Macavity!’ – but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known,
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime.

[NOTE: Andrew C. McCarthy strikes a cautionary note. I agree that Strzok may not actually be a Macavity; he may be more of a MacGuffin.]

Diabetes 2: you call this “news”?

The New Neo Posted on by

A new study indicates that—at least in white Brits—losing a significant amount of weight can put Type 2 (used to be known as “adult onset” although it’s not completely limited to adults) diabetes into remission:

A clinical trial involving almost 300 people in the UK found an intensive weight management program put type 2 diabetes into remission for 86 percent of patients who lost 15 kilograms (33 lbs) or more.

“These findings are very exciting,” says diabetes researcher Roy Taylor from Newcastle University.

“They could revolutionise the way type 2 diabetes is treated.”

This is extremely puzzling to me. I thought weight loss had been the gold standard for years—for decades—in treating this type of diabetes (type 1 is different, both in its mechanism and in the demographics of its victims). Of course, some people get Type 2 diabetes without being overweight, but for the most part its sufferers are overweight and weight loss usually helps either somewhat or dramatically.

I’ve known this for many decades, probably at least since the 1970s. My father was diabetic, and he died in the 70s, and I remember it all rather well. So what gives?

It’s long been known that weight loss helps Type 2 diabetes, but it’s also long been known that weight loss is hard to achieve and much harder to maintain. This study is fairly new and the followup will be interesting for that reason.

[NOTE: If this thread is anything like previous ones that deal with the subject of weight loss, the Taubes and low-carb folk will come onto the thread saying how that’s the solution for everyone. It’s not, and I’ve written on the subject many times. Please do a search on the blog for “Taubes” if you want to get my opinion on that, but here’s one example.]

Al Franken leaves the Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s difficult to escape the sense that Al Franken is resigning under pressure from the Democratic Party due to their hopes that they can occupy the sexual assault high ground vis a vis Roy Moore, and also expunge the ghosts of Ted Kennedy and Gary Stubbs (for those with long memories, which most people don’t have), not to mention Bill Clinton.

Here’s a video and transcript of Franken’s speech. It’s not something I plan to watch, but on reading it I see that he says he’s not guilty and is a champion of women’s rights, finds an opportunity to say Trump is guilty of bragging on tape “about his [Trump’s] history of sexual assault,” and thanks a lot of people. He also adds something with which I happen to agree: “…that the Ethics Committee was the right venue for these allegations [against Franken] to be heard, and investigated, and evaluated on their merits.”

I can’t stand Al Franken as senator (although I happened to like some of his comedy bits on SNL many a long year ago). I can’t stand his politics and a lot else about him. Looking at the accusations, if I had to bet, I’d say most of them are true, or at least enough of them are true to establish him as a slyly opportunistic sexual scumbag of a minor sort.

Note that characterization: minor sort. I believe in proportionality, and even if all the allegations against Franken are true they don’t rise to a very high (or very low) level. If they are true, the proper remedy is a hearing and possibly censure (or expulsion, if that’s the decision), IMHO, and then if the people of Minnesota don’t want to re-elect him (or he doesn’t want to run again) when his term is up, that’s their decision. I’m uncomfortable with forcing people out because of allegations without any sort of due process at all—and I do believe in having at least some sort of official forum in which the allegations are heard and evaluated.

My opinion is probably a deeply unpopular one. But I’m consistent—I apply it to politicians I like and ones I don’t like. I apply it to people who aren’t politicians. I don’t like trial by mob and/or trial by MSM. I just don’t like it.

That doesn’t mean I have any sympathy for sexual abuse of any kind. I believe in coming down with vigor on those who are guilty of serious abuses. But I believe—as I already said—in proportionality. I’ve worked in the field of sexual abuse. I’ve seen serious allegations. I’ve seen false allegations. I’m very protective of the rights of the victim and the rights of the accused. If this brings me to an unpopular stance, so be it.

It’s also clear to me what’s happening here in terms of party. The Democrats are planning to use this as ammunition against Moore. And not just Moore—Trump, and others. They want to occupy the sexual high ground in order to weaponize the idea of allegations being the same as truth, and establish the idea of their own defense of (and belief in the veracity of) women as opposed to the GOP’s failure to defend and believe in women. If it requires sacrificing one of their own they’ll do it.

But in this case the sacrifice is limited to Franken himself, because the Democrats run no risk of losing his seat right now. Franken’s replacement will be appointed by Minnesota’s Democratic governor, and it will be a Democrat, of that you can be sure. Meanwhile, a Roy Moore loss in Alabama would put a Democrat in a Senate seat that was a sure thing for Republicans before the sexual allegations against Moore surfaced. So for the Democrats Franken/Moore is a possible win/win situation.

[NOTE: Richard Fernandez refers to it as a purge. I think he’s correct.]

Trump’s speech on Jerusalem

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I had said earlier today that I’d be writing a post about Strzok and one about Trump and Jerusalem. That turned out to be a case of biting off much more than I can chew at the moment. This is the Jerusalem one. The Strzok post will have to wait till tomorrow.]

Trump had made it a campaign promise, and today he took a first step towards fulfilling that promise in his speech. Here is a fairly long excerpt containing what I think are the most important portions:

When I came into office, I promised to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking.

We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. All challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act urging the federal government to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city, and so importantly, is Israel’s capital. This act passed congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. And was reaffirmed by unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law’s waiver, refusing to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city. Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in.

After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

…I’ve judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process. And to work towards a lasting agreement.

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this is a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States under President Truman recognized the state of Israel.

Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.

Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries…

Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have by the a country where Jews, Muslims and Christians and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

Jerusalem is today and must remain a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the stations of the cross, and where Muslims worship at Al Aqsa Mosque. However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

But today we finally acknowledge the obvious. That Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.

That is why consistent with the Jerusalem embassy act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers and planners so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear. This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement.

We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.

To those on the right who have followed decade after decade of the same old solutions and accommodations and hopes for peace, and seen it all come to naught, a different approach that recognizes the simple reality of the situation sounds like a refreshing change from the accommodation and appeasement and continually dashed hopes that have characterized the approach to the “peace process” so far. But like all change, it involves risk, and that risk is all the left can se.

Lots of condemnation came from the expected quarters:

Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has drawn an angry and despairing response from global and regional leaders ”“ who warned it would destroy the peace process, strengthen extremists and weaken the standing of the US in the world.

For example:

Earlier on Wednesday Pope Francis had issued a heartfelt plea to Trump to respect the status quo of the city, and to conform with UN resolutions. The pope told thousands of people at his general audience: “I cannot keep quiet about my deep worry about the situation that has been created in the last few days.”…

A spokesman for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, said the US was “plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight”.

The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlé¼t é‡avuÅŸoÄŸlu, said he had told the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, that Washington was making a grave mistake, and the whole world was against the decision…

Lebanon said Trump’s decision had put back the peace process by decades, and that it threatened regional and perhaps global stability. Qatar’s foreign minister described it as a death sentence for all who seek peace. Jordan said Trump had violated “international legitimacy”.

As expected. And of course Hamas has called for a “day of rage” in response. But aren’t all days “days of rage” for Hamas?

Europe’s reaction was a bit muted compared to what I would have expected:

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was the first western leader to reject the announcement, saying the final status of Jerusalem had to be settled by negotiation. He called for calm and for restraint from violence.

The British prime minister, Theresa May, said the UK opposed Trump’s decision on Jerusalem and called it “unhelpful in terms of the prospects for peace in the region”.

“We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement,” she said. “The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it.

“Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.”

Trump was certainly aware of what the reactions would be. I’m not sure whether there’s any nation on earth that approved of the move except Israel. But when I did a search, I found this from Canada:

The Liberal government has so far avoided overt criticism of the U.S. decision, despite strong reactions from other U.S. allies and from around the globe.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland issued a careful statement Wednesday afternoon that did not specifically mention Trump’s announcement.

”˜”˜Canada is a steadfast ally and friend of Israel and friend to the Palestinian people. Canada’s longstanding position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute,” Freeland’s statement said.

”˜”˜We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel. We call for calm and continue to support the building of conditions necessary for the parties to find a solution.’’

India, a country which has grown closer to Israel in recent years, stated a position very similar to Canada’s.

I have observed over the years that most of the verbal responses to this sort of thing are empty words. Some of it is face-saving and not necessarily sincere (for example, in a country such as Saudi Arabia). What matters is action, and I have quite a bit of doubt that there will be much action as a result (and that includes my doubt that our embassy will be moved to Jerusalem with much speed).

This is a declaration of intent by Trump. It’s partly a declaration of intent about Jerusalem itself, and partly a demonstration of the fact that he’s different and it will not be business-as-usual in the area and elsewhere. It is also a signal that he is willing to call something what it actually is and not play delicate games with words.

It used to be that all American administrations, whether Democrat or Republican, had pretty much the same policy regarding Israel. All were dedicated to the peace process, a set of premises and negotiations that offered hope for a resolution in the troubled area known as Palestine and Israel. But by the time the year 2000 rolled around, realists had to reluctantly admit that the process as it had been pursued so far was moribund, and had become a useless (and perhaps even dangerous) lie.

But many people still clung to the old (failed) ideas. Some of them have become even more convinced that all Israel needs to do is to make greater and greater concessions and peace will come. There are also those who believe Israel is such a dreadful nation that they hope for its downfall.

During his time in office, Obama was clearly very much against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister then and now. Obama tried to undermine him and was harder on Israel than previous presidents. With Trump in office, the pendulum has been swinging in the other direction (a bit ironic, considering all the cries about Trump being anti-Semitic). But one of the potentially problematic things that has become obvious is that, if our foreign policy changes so much with each president (whether the topic be Israel or anything else), the world can no longer count on America to be a stable rock in a sea of flux.

Towards the end of Trump’s speech, he said this:

It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midsts. It is time for all civilized nations and people to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate, not violence. And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

Way past time, I’d say. But I wouldn’t put a whole lot of money on it. Actually, I wouldn’t put a penny on it.

[ADDENDUM: The Czechs seem to have come on board, at least to a certain extent (West Jerusalem). And to my surprise, I just learned that Russia had taken the same position on West Jerusalem back in April.]

Planning a Strzok post in a couple of hours

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve got to go do some errands now. But in the meantime I’ve been mulling over the vast and beckoning mystery that is Peter Strzok, and plan to write something later today. I’d also like to tackle the Trump announcement on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, if I have time.

Till then I thought I’d put this open thread up so you can talk about those things (or whatever else you want), and to call your attention to this post on the first subject and this one on the second.

“Everybody knew”

The New Neo Posted on by

We keep hearing stories about sexual harassers who “everybody” in certain groups “knew about all along,” for years and years, and yet no one did anything about the situation.

A lot of people then condemn members of those institutions for their silence. So far they’ve tended to be liberal institutions that conservatives dislike, such as Hollywood and newsrooms. There’s also Congress, which everyone (liberal and conservative) seems to dislike, but I’ve heard fewer “everybody knew” claims about that.

But when you do read or hear that “everybody knew” about some sexual harasser or other, I don’t think that’s what’s literally meant. I think what is really meant is this: “Everybody (or at least a lot of people) heard stories, everyone heard gossip, everybody heard rumors, everybody suspected.” But only those who had themselves been victims of this perpetrator knew, although many thought they knew.

You may think it’s a nitpicky and lawyerly (unless the lawyer is Gloria Allred) distinction. Perhaps it is. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s important to point out that hearing a rumor is not the same thing as “knowing.”

Is gossip actionable? Are unverified stories? What do you do about either? They’re certainly important enough that you ought to be very careful around that person, and very observant. It is especially important to not allow yourself to be placed in a compromising or vulnerable position with that person, and probably even to warn others (that’s how it comes to be that “everybody” in a group “knows”). But what action is necessary? Do you fire someone, if you’re not their boss? Do you go to HR and repeat gossip? Do you tweet gossip? Do you go to the person and confront him (or her, as the case may be)?

I don’t think any of those things are necessarily appropriate, although sometimes they might be. What is appropriate—if you don’t really “know” from your own experience? What can a person do who just hears stories?

The one exception I can think of is for journalists. They could have done more about what they knew or what they just heard as gossip. They could have done, for example, what Ronan Farrow finally did with Weinstein—pursue the suspicions and stories they had heard and try to document them, and then write about it if the stories seem to pan out. But they didn’t do that.

By the way, I see some of the words of that Leonard Cohen song (which are well worth looking at) as ironic. He seems to me to be saying a lot of things (as Cohen often does), but one of them is that we don’t always really “know” what the vast majority of people think they know. Take this verse, for example:

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows…

Blog down, blog up, and spam

The New Neo Posted on by

About a year ago I discussed the number of spam comments I get here that are caught by the spam filter. It had been formidable for a long time, and then it had suddenly improved dramatically and the amount of spam coming here was markedly reduced:

I used to get tons and tons of spam that was caught by the spam filter…So every day I’d clear the spam filter, which usually had caught many thousands of spam comments””ordinarily between 2,000 and 10,000 spam comments a day. But then, just a little while ago…suddenly the flow of spam comments nearly stopped. Since then I’ve been getting maybe 100 spam a day caught in the filter. And it’s not that other spam is getting through, either; very little spam seems to be coming to the blog in the first place.

Well, that happy state of affairs lasted less than a year. A couple of months ago it started creeping up. At first it was just a few hundred more. But a few days ago—boom! I’m back in about the 5,000 range.

What happened? I think it’s one of those virus- or bacteria-type things where sometimes the tools we have to fight them off are in the ascendance, and then the foe (bacteria, virus, spam) figures out a way to break through the defenses and flood the host again.

In the case of spam, as long as the filter is operative it doesn’t really matter. It just means that when I clear the spam it takes a bit longer for it to happen, and I have to do it a lot more often. But it’s curious.

And yesterday my blog was down. You may have noticed. This happens now and then, but luckily it’s not often and when it does happen it tends to be just momentary (knock wood). Usually the problem is with the host—they’re doing maintenance or their servers got overloaded or some such thing. Yesterday there was no problem with the host. It was apparently the blog, but I don’t know the cause.

What I think is called the “back end” of the blog is a busy place. Wars go on all the time, and I get notice of some of these “attacks.” Bots and/or people try to break in for various purposes, and they come from all over the world. There are various tools the blog has for fighting them off (note I’m being purposely vague, but my vagueness also stems from my own relative tech-unsavvy). I have no idea what was going on yesterday, but so far the good guys won. I’ll try to keep it that way.

You may also remember that a while back I said I was working on a redesign of the blog. Nothing too dramatic, but something that will make it more viewable and allow it to load better on cellphones. What happened? Well, the person who used to do that sort of thing for me is no longer on the case, and I’ve been trying to do it myself (with a tiny bit of help). I’ve been so busy I haven’t gotten around to it yet, and I guess it’s not my top priority. But I still intend to do it.

That’s probably enough inside baseball for today.

[ADDENDUM: When I first published this post I had just cleaned out my spam filter. In the twenty-nine minutes since then, my filter caught 223 spam comments. I just deleted them. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. That would be a rate of 10,704 spam comments a day.]

I Hate Men

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I don’t hate men. I’m talking about the song from “Kiss Me Kate” by Cole Porter, sung by the actress playing Kate (the Shrew) and Lilli (the actress) in the musical-within-a-musical version of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.”

Porter was a clever lyricist and he knew how to make the song an amalgam of wit, charm, and rage—just enough rage to make it spunky and just enough tongue-in-cheek charm to make it funny.

The song’s stage originator was Patricia Morison (I wrote about her here and included a video of Morison still alive and kicking at 100).

Here, she’s singing this except on some TV special or other. Morison is a perfect blend of sultry and charming, angry and graceful, all at the same time. And boy, does she pound on that table with conviction!

When I first watched that, something about Morison fascinated me, and I realized afterwards that it was because of the way she moved and stood—that’s what gave her performance its combination of gravitas and sexiness. It reminded me of something—but what?

Suddenly it hit me: modern dance pioneer Martha Graham. Morison is performing some moves reminiscent of a kinder, gentler version of a Graham contraction, which takes place mostly in the torso. And sure enough, when I looked it up, I discovered this: “[Morison] also studied dance under Martha Graham.” Bingo!

Before I watched that Morison video the only version I’d seen of “I Hate Men” was Kathryn Grayson in the 1953 movie. You may notice that the Grayson version is light and airy, and sports some cleaned-up lyrics for those delicate 50s sensibilities (“maiden” for “virgin,” for example, and “deigned to marry” for “had to marry”):

The original “Kiss Me Kate” production with the classy Morison was in the 1940s. The movie version and Grayson reflected the lightness and sexual restraint of the 1950s. Fast forward to recent versions, and what do you get?

Coarse, charmless, harsh, yelling, mugging. To me they seem repellent, and they make me sad. These women really do seem to hate men (not the song’s original intent or tone), and what’s more I don’t see why the audience should like the singers, either.

Same shtick here. This woman has the requisite looks, but spoils the picture with the same broad and heavy touch:

Notice also the body language of those last two—heavy-footed, slumpy, awkward. Contrast that with Morison, who got the force across while managing to keep the charm.

I wanted to find a video that showed the torso contractions of Graham technique that I think are key to what Morison’s doing in her clip. But I was surprised to discover I couldn’t find any video that quite illustrated what I wanted. This is the closest I could come:

And I’ll throw this last one in, too, although it has nothing to do with lightness and nothing to do with “Kiss Me Kate.” It’s a video of one of the most frightening dances I’ve ever seen, by a character who certainly Hates Men (she’s a woman scorned, after all). The dance shows a Medea-esque figure whipping herself up to a psychopathic rage in order to murder. I’ve never seen anything quite like this level of sheer destructive craziness in a dance. How the dancer manages to convey this I’m not sure, but torso contractions are part of it:

Peter Strzok: one-man band

The New Neo Posted on by

The twistings and turning of what we could call the case against Donald Trump are not easy to follow. But what has been revealed so far is a tangled web of interrelated actions on the part of investigators that indicate bias at the very least and arouse deep suspicion of more than that.

The story so far is one that would take a very lengthy post to explain, and I’m somewhat pressed for time today and won’t be writing that post now. Perhaps in the next few days. For now I’ll just point out one of the most startling things revealed lately: the way the name of Peter Strzok keeps cropping up, over and over.

The Strzok story as we first knew it began with a mysterious firing:

In August, ABC News reported that Strzok was removed from the investigation. The news came one week after agents executed a search warrant on the Virginia home of Trump’s now-indicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

The reason he was taken off the probe was unknown at the time, as he was well-respected in the industry as a law enforcement officer working counterintelligence cases. He was deemed to be one of the top investigators in the probe. ABC News reported that Strzok was taken off the Russia investigation and was sent to work in the F.B.I.’s human resource office, deemed a demotion within the agency.

A little over one month after Strzok’s departure, ABC News reported that F.B.I. lawyer Lisa Page also left the special Russia investigation…

While the departure of the two officials was well reported, they weren’t ever linked until now [“now” being the last few days].

The linkage turned out to be that the two were having an affair, and in their text messages they had exchanged anti-Trump statements. So they were relieved of their Trump-investigatory duties back in August, although we just learned that explanation very recently.

That news would have been enough by itself to taint the investigations at least somewhat, although I must say that there are probably many more people involved in these investigations who have political biases against Trump (and some for him, for that matter) and aren’t careless enough to have expressed them in text messages, or at least not in text messages that have been caught up (and therefore revealed) in the web of another investigation, as the texts between Strzok and Page were—a DOJ inspector general had connected them through an investigation of the FBI investigation of the 2016 elections.

So, it was a DOJ investigation of an FBI investigation (are you still with me?) that led to the uncovering of the Strzok/Page texts about Trump.

And now a group of other facts about Strzok’s involvement have been coming out. This guy was everywhere, a regular one-man band.

It turns out that it was Strzok who had interviewed Mike Flynn and thus set up
the basis for the charge that Flynn lied to the FBI, which is the substance of the plea deal Flynn recently made.

It turns out that we have yet to see a transcript of the interview. Does one exist?

It turns out that Strzok was the number 2 person heading up the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he was one of several agents who interviewed Hillary Clinton in a three-hour session.

It turns out that Strzok changed and softened Comey’s original description of Hillary’s email set-up from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”

It turns out that “there are reports” that “there was ‘documentary evidence’ that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the [Trump] dossier.”

It turns out the Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton were interviewed by Strzok during the email investigation, are known to have lied in those interviews, and were never charged with lying to the FBI.

There could even be more, but that’s plenty already. All this should rouse suspicion even in the minds of anti-Trump Democrats, although it probably won’t. It certainly rouses suspicion in me. The Strzok story also is interesting in terms of how the FBI works. Apparently the same higher-ups work on a host of interrelated cases, so that if bias exists in some of those people (and I have no doubt it often does, not just with Strzok) then that bias will have maximum effect.