Haidt’s latest offering

The New Neo Posted on by

This new book by Jonathan Haidt seems very promising. It’s entitled The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.

Now, I’m not sure the people coddling the American mind have such good intentions. But this is from a review of the book:

“The authors, both of whom are liberal academics — almost a tautology on today’s campuses — do a great job of showing how ‘safetyism’ is cramping young minds. Students are treated like candles, which can be extinguished by a puff of wind. The goal of a Socratic education should be to turn them into fires, which thrive on the wind. Instead, they are sheltered from anything that could cause offence. . . Their advice is sound. Their book is excellent. Liberal parents, in particular, should read it.”

I have a great deal of respect for Haidt, who’s done some great work. He is, among other things, one of the founders of Heterodox Academy, and he’s got some excellent videos on YouTube. Some of his biggest strengths are his calm and evenhanded tone, his clarity of thought, and his liberalism (or previous liberalism; he’s somewhat of a middle-of-the-roader now, as far as I can tell). The liberalism gives him some extra bona fides among liberals, an important audience to reach.

I haven’t read the new book, but I bet it’s good. Its title is of interest, too, in its echoes (deliberate, I’m almost certain) of Allan Bloom’s masterwork Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students.

Undereye concealer in 29 languages

The New Neo Posted on by

I bought a new stick of my favorite undereye circle concealer yesterday, Benefit Boi ing Hydrating Concealer. It’s pricey, but it’s one of the few that don’t emphasize all the lines and crevices by sinking into and highlighting them, and it lasts a long time.

The package had a little folded paper insert explaining how to use it. What’s to explain? You put it on under your eyes, and then you pat it in. That’s pretty much what the instructions say.

In 29 languages. I counted them. I have no idea what most of the languages are, but Benefits really wants to make sure that everyone—and I mean everyone—knows that you put undereye concealer under your eyes and pat it in.

By the way, note that second sentence in this post: “It’s pricey, but it’s one of the few that don’t emphasize all the lines and crevices …”.

I struggled with that. There’s a tension between the “one” in “one of the few” and the “few” in “one of the few.” “One” would require “doesn’t,” as in “one of the few that doesn’t emphasize.” But “few” would require “don’t,” as in “one of the few that don’t emphasize.”

So, which is it? I researched it, and the bottom line is that the verb should be plural. Which is what I had decided on my own, but it didn’t seem quite right to me. But apparently it is.

And while we’re at it, take a look at the end of paragraph 4: …”it’s one of the few that don’t emphasize all the lines and crevices …”. Note the ending. It’s a quotation that ends with three dots, and it’s also the end of the sentence. So, do you add that final period as I did, and do you do it after the close quotation mark? I say “yes.” But who knows?

These folks purport to know. But I can’t make head or tail of their answer. Can you? Help me out here.

These are the questions that give bloggers undereye circles.

I think I need to create a new category on the right sidebar: “Trump made me do it”

The New Neo Posted on by

And this article by Ted Koppel would fit quite nicely into that slot:

My journalistic colleagues and I are hurtling down a long, steep highway. There’s no longer any resistance on the brake pedal, and we realize, to our dismay, that we are unable to figure out what replaced the hand brake on this late-model vehicle…

Whether by strategy or inadvertence, President Trump has drawn much of the media into a distortion of their traditional roles. Editors and reporters insist that they are bound by the strictures of objectivity, but the very nature of the president’s character — the preening, the boasting, the torrent of careless tweets and the avalanche of lies, the seemingly reckless assaults on pillars of the establishment — provokes reactions that confirm precisely what Trump’s most avid supporters already believe: The creatures of “the swamp” belong to a secret society from which they are excluded…

What a brilliant piece of political jujitsu: Trump has turned reported evidence of his many failings into confirmation of his victimhood. Once that perception is pushed through the megaphone of conservative radio, especially by its pioneer and founding father, Rush Limbaugh, and once the message is crystallized on “Fox & Friends” in the morning and by Sean Hannity in the evening, it congeals into the Rudolph W. Giuliani observation that “truth isn’t truth.”

A partial journalistic remedy would be to lower the temperature, reduce the volume. Except, of course, that there is no story to match it. The world without Trump, even a world with reduced portions of Trump, would be a much duller place, and the industry of journalism does not thrive on dull. The paradox of the Trump presidency is that its very sleaziness has reenergized American journalism even while undermining it.

What a brilliant piece of journalistic sophistry, Ted, to match Trump’s “brilliant piece of political jujitsu”!

And no doubt the dog ate your homework, too.

Or was it Trump’s dog that ate your homework? Oops, trick question: Trump doesn’t own a dog. McKinley was the last president prior to Trump who didn’t own a dog, but he had other pets. Trump has no pets at all.

What a monster. Next he will be causing us to forsake our own pets. Is there no evil he cannot make us do?

Spain: another known wolf

The New Neo Posted on by

A vicious terrorist attack occurred in Spain about a year ago. That one has merged in memory along with so many others that it resembles. It featured vehicles purposely targeting pedestrians in a crowded spot, an explosion in a house, and various known wolves and mystery men.

But this new article tells us much more about what happened—and what didn’t happen. And the information is even more chilling than what was known before.

The attack’s mastermind was killed in the house explosion, which from the start was suspected to have been what is ironically called a “work accident.” His name was Es Satty, and he was born in Morocco but came to Spain about twenty years ago:

He worked for just over a year as an imam in a small mosque in Vilanova, called Al Furkan.

For years, Es Satty also worked on both sides of the Moroccan-Spanish border, moving goods between the countries in a van. According to court documents, Es Satty was arrested in 2002 while trying to smuggle a person with a fake passport from the port in Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclave cities in Africa, to the Spanish mainland. He was sentenced to six months, but, in the end, served no time.

Es Satty later came under investigation for more serious crimes. His name appears throughout court documents related to a major terrorism case known as Operation Chacal…

Spanish police tapped his phone in 2005 on the suspicion that he had ties to the 2003 Casablanca bombings and other extremist groups operating in Spain. In Vilanova, he at one point shared a residence with Mrabet Fahsi and Belgacem [terrorists].

He seems to have probably become a police informant in the investigation of those earlier terrorist incidents, and was later arrested on smuggling charges and imprisoned. There is evidence that he was surveilled while in prison and/or an informant, and after he got out he was ordered deported. However:

…[A] judge in Castellón ruled in Es Satty’s favor, stating that he was integrated into life in Spain and didn’t represent “a real threat” that was “sufficiently grave for the public order and security.”

The accusation that the court dropped Es Satty’s deportation order in return for his collaboration in prison circulated widely throughout the Spanish and Catalan press after the attack. A spokesperson for the courts in Castellón said that the decision was not due to police involvement, but rather the lack thereof: Because Es Satty was never charged with a crime in Operation Chacal, the spokesperson said, the court had no idea of his past.

Seems to me he should have been deported just on the strength of his smuggling conviction, but the court thought otherwise. At any rate, there was additional information that he was simpatico to terrorists and terrorism, but that news never got to the proper authorities, and he continued on his merry way.

Much of the rest of the article is devoted to the lack of communication between various sections of the Spanish police and investigative units:

Ramón Cossío, a spokesperson for the union of the Policía Nacional, described the collaboration between Spanish and Catalan police as “not great.” He listed instances of information-sharing agreements that aren’t acted on, collaborations that never happen, and turf battles.

“It doesn’t make sense to have an antiterrorism unit in the Guardia Civil, another in the Policía Nacional, and another in the Mossos d’Esquadra,” Cossío said. “It’s backwards.”

This story is hardly unique. Over and over we see known terrorists or terrorist-friendly people who have been under surveillance off and on, and yet manage to pull off terrorist attacks and radicalize others, all without the knowledge of police. Our systems of government and law protect their rights and give them second and third chances to remain in countries despite their criminal behavior, suspicious ties, and lack of citizenship. They know this and exploit it.

I’ve been ignoring…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Kavanaugh hearings. But others have amply covered the various forms of insanity connected with the proceedings.

At Powerline, we have this, this, and this. From the latter:

It strikes me that the Democratic Party crossed a Rubicon of sorts today [Tuesday]. They abandoned all norms not just of civility–something they purported to yearn for just a few days ago!–but of sanity. They deliberately turned a Senate confirmation hearing into a farce. There was no distinction between the howling left-wing mob that infiltrated the hearing room and the Senate Democrats.

See also this and this at Legal Insurrection.

What was Harry Reid thinking when he ended the Senate filibuster for federal judge appointments?

The New Neo Posted on by

The year was 2013. Faced with a Republican minority in the Senate that was blocking many of President Obama’s federal judge appointments, Harry Reid made a bold move to end the filibuster for federal judicial nominees with the exception of the Supreme Court.

It not as though he wasn’t warned:

Senator Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor and issued a warning to the Democrats who then controlled the majority.

“I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you’ll regret this,” McConnell, then the minority leader, told them. “And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.”

Now, with the Kavanaugh hearings, Democrats are experiencing that predicted regret.

So why did the Democrats do it? After all, the old rule had held for a long time for several reasons. The first was that, at least until recent decades, each party allowed the nominees of the other party to be approved unless there was some very egregious reason to block the nominee. This ended with the famous “borking” of Bork in 1987, and near-routine blocking of nominees had slowly gotten more frequent over the years. The second was that each party knew that if the rule was changed and the nuclear option invoked, they would regret it when they lost power.

So again—why did Reid do it?

I have some theories, although I don’t profess to know for sure.

The first is that he thought he may as well because the time had come, and if he didn’t do it—and get the advantage of it while Obama was president—the Republicans would do it if and when they came into power. I’m not really sure they would have, but it’s certainly possible, and then Reid’s reasoning would make sense.

The second possibility relies on something that’s quite different, which is that Reid may have calculated that the Democrats had the presidency locked up for the foreseeable future, so it would never come back to bite the Democrats for the simple reason that it would always be a Democratic president making the nominations.

Third, it may be that Reid had so little respect for the cojones of the Republicans in the Senate that he didn’t think they would extend the rule to SCOTUS nominees, the most important judges of all. If that was his calculation, it turns out that he was wrong.

Nike ♥ Kaepernick

The New Neo Posted on by

Nike’s support of Colin Kaepernick has caused a drop in its stock prices. But Nike is all-in:

In the crowded marketplace of athletic apparel, presumably Nike’s overnight transformation from selling an apolitical product to “woke sneakers” for the SJW set is a brand strategy similar to the reason why late night TV aims hard left, Robert Tracinski of the Federalist:

“What were once cultural institutions with a broad, bipartisan audience are becoming niche players with a narrow fan base. They no longer view partisan politics as a dangerous move that will shrink their audience. Instead, they’re using partisan politics as a lure to secure the loyalty of their audience, or what is left of it.”

It’s an interesting theory. I’m not so sure it applies to Nike, though. Nike was doing rather well, and it’s a product that ought to have a broad appeal. It is (or was) inherently non-political, with no content excerpt its material goods, unlike the movies or television.

So, why did Nike do it? Googling “why did Nike do it?” just now, I get a lot of positive responses from market analysts and websites, such as for example this one that basically says Nike may take a hit in the short run, but it will pay off in the long run because history will vindicate their decision and their position.

And this article says Nike’s decision will lead to profits:

…[Nike leaders] realize that despite the heated words and presidential tweets hurled Kaepernick’s way since he first kneeled during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in August 2016, he [Kaepernick] makes people money. Lots of it. He signed his Nike contract in 2011, and he hasn’t been used by the company in two years, but he spent a three-month period in 2017 after he left the 49ers as a free agent leading the franchise in merchandise sales.

Ching ching.

No wonder Nike officials decided to let Kaepernick lead this new ad campaign despite heavy hitters such as Odell Beckham Jr., Serena Williams and LeBron James. It didn’t hurt their choice that Kaepernick joined former teammate Eric Reid (another blackballed NFL free agent for protesting during the national anthem) in getting a standing ovation this week in New York. They were introduced during the U.S. Open match between the Williams sisters.

I preferred the olden days, when companies stayed out of politics (on either side) for the most part, and patriotism was the name of the game. But those days are long gone and I don’t see them coming back.

Et tu, Sweden?

The New Neo Posted on by

Sweden is facing an election, and the right seems poised to make a better showing than usual:

Polling over the summer has put the ruling Social Democrats on as low as a 21% vote share – down 10% on its showing at Sweden’s last parliamentary election in 2014 and the party’s worst showing for more than a century.

“When we talk about about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries you associate them with social democracy,” Patrik Öhberg, an expert on Swedish politics from the University of Gothenburg.

“But it seems like this era is going to end now. We have become more a country like everyone else. It’s a bastion of social democracy now maybe going to rubble. Something big is going on here.”

The main beneficiary of the centre-left’s slump has so far been the far right Sweden Democrats, who some surveys have predicted will pick up 28.5% of the vote, more than double its performance four years ago before the peak of Europe’s refugee crisis.

Why this is happening is no mystery. The article quotes a Swedish social scientist as saying, “people do not feel at home culturally, they doubt that we are on the right track.” Now, why might that be?:

It is a legacy of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015 when Sweden received a record-breaking 163,000 asylum applicants.

People were told by their government that any objection they had was racist (the following is a quote from a Swedish political scientist):

For such a long time [government officials] said: ‘This [immigration] is not an issue, you’re racist, we should not talk about it, it’s a win-win.

And then reality bit, in the form of crime:

“There are problems with burning cars, shootings and so on in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo,” said Professor Gustavsson [a political scientist].

“But you shouldn’t exaggerate it because in an international context it’s not so dramatic. But it is in a Swedish context because we have not had this kind of thing before.

“To some extent [there is a link between violent crime and immigration] of course. It’s something to do with the fact it’s difficult to integrate all the newcomers but it’s extremely exaggerated because we’ve integrated a lot of refugees from the Balkan wars in the 1990s and up to a couple of years ago the consensus was we were very successful at it.

Note the mealy-mouthed equivocation, and the conflation of one immigrant group (from the Balkans) with another (from the Middle East). Both may have been predominantly Muslim, but previous refugees were European, well-educated, and Bosnian for the most part, from the former Yugoslavia. A very different group from the recent arrivals.

If you speak to actual Swedes who are contemplating casting their votes for that far-right party, however, you get this sort of thing:

“We don’t recognize our country as it is today,” said Bengt Borg, 66. His wife, 64, says she no longer feels safe walking alone at night due to reports of rapes by immigrants. Both plan to join a growing number of Swedes voting for a nationalist and anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, in Sunday’s general election.

The article I just quoted as says that the Sweden Democrats “have their roots in a neo-Nazi movement.” What does that mean, exactly? The article doesn’t elaborate, but here’s what Wiki has to say on the subject:

The party[founded in 1988] has its roots in Swedish fascism and was primarily a white nationalist movement through the early-1990s, when it first began distancing itself from its past; The SD’s logo from the 1990s until 2006 was a version of the torch used by the UK National Front. Today, the Sweden Democrats officially reject both Fascism and Nazism.[

More here. It’s hard to say, but as best I can tell the party really does have neo-Nazi roots, at least in terms of the history of certain people originally affiliated with it, but has repudiated those roots. There is also some troubling evidence of anti-Semitism among some of the party’s local candidates.

At any rate, as with my recent post on the coming Brazilian election, one could certainly say:

“Elites” are fond of telling people what they can and cannot do, but elites are for the most part protected against the disturbing phenomena they have created in a way that the regular populace is not. So why wouldn’t a Trumplike figure [and/or populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant party] have mass appeal? And why would people heed the warnings of their “betters,” who have not seen fit to offer them any other way to deal with myriad problems except to suck it up, and grin and bear it?

It is quite obvious that whatever it was that led to Trump’s appeal in this country, there are similar (although of course not exactly the same) influences leading to the rise of similar (although of course not exactly the same) politicians in different countries. And the powers-that-be in those countries seem similarly surprised at the entire phenomenon.

Sweden—that tolerant, peaceful, welfare state—is not immune, particularly if it has invited in a group with a higher proportion of less tolerant and less peaceful people who are interested in becoming wards of the welfare state the Swedes have constructed.

The Swedish Democrats are probably not going to win the election, and other parties have so far refused to form a coalition government with them, so the results of the election will probably be that other parties will join together against them. If you want to try to make sense of the possible coalitions in Sweden that might emerge from the election, see this. Reading it may make you very happy we basically have a 2-party system in this country.

Happy Labor Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.

July Fourth is summer’s early peak, with the promise of long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the end of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of the beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?

And it goes even more quickly these days. But let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about the start of school anymore—except, perhaps, for the teachers among you.

Here’s wishing you all a Happy Labor Day! Barbecues, picnics, parades, beach, just hanging out in your yard, whatever you desire. And for the historically-minded among you, some information the origins of the holiday.

The McCain funeral

The New Neo Posted on by

First let me just say that I didn’t watch it, nor have I watched clips of the proceedings.

I didn’t watch the funeral because listening to speech after speech is of no interest to me and I rarely do it unless the occasion is ultra-important. I also am quite familiar with the basics of the life of John McCain, having written about him many, many, many times.

But apparently this funeral turned into an anti-Trump rally. A bipartisan anti-Trump rally, I might add.

Well, McCain himself was a big fan of bipartisanship, so I suppose it’s fitting. And McCain and his family had a bona fide reason to hate President Trump:

“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

The remarks, which came after days of back-and-forth between McCain and Trump, were met with scattered boos.

Characteristically, Trump later denied the implications of what he had said:

At a press availability following his remarks, Trump denied saying that McCain isn’t a war hero and said, “If somebody’s a prisoner, I consider them a war hero.”

He also continued his attacks on the Arizona senator, saying, “I think John McCain’s done very little for the veterans. I’m very disappointed in John McCain.”

I’ve already written my own opinion on McCain’s heroism (short version: I would call him a hero). But I can certainly understand why the McCains would detest Trump.

Nor is it a mystery why the Bushes would feel likewise. I described the animus and its origins here.

So none of this should be a surprise, and although it wasn’t a given that it would take the form of speeches at McCain’s funeral, it certainly is in line with the history.

The exclusion of Sarah Palin is a bit more puzzling, although the article I just linked to says that the request that Palin stay away came from McCain’s widow. My only theory about the treatment of Palin—who reportedly has never said an unkind word of McCain—is that Palin’s style was too close to Trump’s for comfort. Perhaps ex post facto she was considered a sort of forerunner, a portent of Trumpy things to come, and thus became persona non grata.

And why on earth would I care how the MSM covers the occasion? They loved McCain when it was politically expedient to do so, and they hated him when that was politically expedient, so for those reasons (and so many more) they can hardly be considered a fair and objective way to look at the proceedings.

And then there’s one of the final reasons that many on the right feel a great deal of anger at McCain, his July 2017 vote against so-called “skinny repeal” of Obamacare:

…[McCain] stunned his party when the final vote was at hand early Friday when he voted “no” and killed the legislation.

In the process, the maverick dealt what looks like the death blow to the Republican Party’s seven-year quest to get rid of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health law.

Along with McCain, GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in the dramatic 51-49 vote rejecting the bill despite intense pressure from the White House…

Before voting, McCain would not say how he would vote, but told reporters to “wait for the show” as he arrived in the Senate chamber.

Note that last paragraph. It was not just the vote itself that rankled—although that was bad enough, considering how long and hard the GOP had campaigned for the repeal (whether you think they were serious or not), and the fact that McCain himself had campaigned in 2016 on a promise to repeal Obamacare [written in September of 2017):

McCain did run [in 2016], as Trump is drumming, on a strong repeal-and-replace platform. In fact, it was the principal distinction he drew with his Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick. He would vote to repeal Obamacare. She would not.

McCain did not say that he would vote to repeal Obamacare, provided Democrats agreed. If he had, his Republican primary with Kelli Ward might have turned out differently.

McCain now says that Democrats made a mistake in passing Obamacare on a partisan basis, and that Republicans shouldn’t undo it on a similarly partisan basis. But that’s the equivalent of a Brezhnev doctrine on domestic policy. Democrats can enact legislation on a partisan basis. But Republicans can undo it only if Democrats agree.

McCain is undoubtedly correct that bipartisan policy changes are more enduring. But when one side acts unilaterally, it shouldn’t get a veto when the other side attempts to undo it.

More importantly, there is no bipartisan agreement possible to repeal and replace Obamacare, as McCain vowed to do. That’s because there is no Democrat willing to agree to the first step, repeal.

It was not just the complete impracticability of McCain’s stand, its divorce from political reality, that rankled, although that was the major thing (I wrote about it here). It was also the seeming hypocrisy of his campaign promises vs. his later actions, as well as the theatricality of failing to reveal his vote in advance and telling reporters to “wait for the show.”

These things did seem characteristic of McCain, at least some part of McCain, although somewhat exaggerated. But I have one caveat to offer when thinking about this episode, and that’s the fact that McCain had already been diagnosed with a glioblastoma and had undergone a three to four hour brain surgery about two weeks prior to the vote. Though widely reported to not be suffering from any cognitive decline, this is part of what led to his diagnosis:

He also told his doctor he had, at times, felt foggy and not as sharp as he typically is. In addition, he reported having intermittent double vision. These symptoms and doctor intuition prompted a CT scan.

A brain tumor can affect a person in global and obvious ways or in subtle ones. Perhaps McCain’s tendency towards what, for want of a better word, we’ll call maverickyness was accentuated by brain changes accompanying both his illness and his surgery. So personally, I think that all the decisions he made post-brain-tumor should have an asterisk next to them.

RIP, John McCain.

[NOTE: On a somewhat different topic: remember the brouhaha about McCain’s advanced age when he ran in 2008? I predicted at the time that it was highly likely he’d live past the two terms he might have served as president, and that turned out to have been correct. The actuarial tables said he’d live to about 83 or 84, and although he didn’t make that, he died just four days short of his 82nd birthday. What’s more, his mother—who was very elderly but spry during the 2008 campaign—is still alive at the age of 106 and looking beautiful.]

Neo in Rome

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I’m not in Italy any more. But I have a few things I still want to write about my recent trip there.

First and foremost: Rome, oh Rome, why so few street signs? I had a GPS that supposedly was telling me where to walk to get to my destinations, but it was almost useless because it relied on street signs that were nowhere to be seen. Maybe one in fifty streets were marked, usually with difficult-to-read plaques on the side of corner buildings.

Rome is a major metropolis of the world. What’s up with the lack of street signs?

I only had two days in Rome. I’d been there before, in the 1960s, but obviously it’s changed a great deal, although it’s called The Eternal City. One thing that’s missing now is the traffic, banned from a large area of the city except for taxis, police cars, buses, and some residents. It makes for a somewhat eerie sensation, augmented by the many uniformed officers seeded all around the tourist attractions and some of the rest of the city, holding what to my untutored eye looked like Uzis.

So the famous Rome traffic, which I remember as a loud and chaotic cacophony, is more or less gone. I suppose that’s a plus, but it adds to the perception (already heightened in August, when many of the residents wisely leave for cooler climes, unlike yours truly) that Rome has been entirely taken over by visitors.

Most of those visitors, I might add, seem to be Americans, by the sound of their speech.

In the two days I had at my disposal I did the regular tourist things. First day was the Colosseum and Forum. Second day the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s. These were organized skip-the-lines tours, because everything now otherwise involves tickets and enormous lines, something I do not remember from the 60s.

Each tour was exhausting, involving those aforementioned staircases that were often without banisters, and featured risers of unusual heights (at the Colosseum, for example, at one point we climbed a series of four flights of extremely high steps). But it certainly was well worth doing. I particularly liked the more ancient elements, and at the end of the tour I just strolled around the Forum for a long long time.

There’s really no other city like Rome.

I took this selfie in the Colosseum, especially for the blog. I don’t usually wear hats, but this one came in very very handy both in the enervating sun and the pouring rain. By the way, we ran into a torrential storm while at the Colosseum and got soaked to the skin, although we also dried out in about 15 minutes when the baking sun emerged again:

Long overdue: cutting funding for UNRWA

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a good move:

The Trump administration announced Friday it is cutting nearly $300 million in planned funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, and that it would no longer fund the agency after decades of support. Instead, it said it would seek other channels by which to aid the Palestinians.

The administration castigated the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for failed practices, and indicated that it rejected the criteria by which UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees, whereby the UN agency confers refugee status not only on original refugees but on their millions of descendants…

… something not granted by the UN to refugees from any other places…

The US will now work together with other international groups to find a better model to assist the Palestinians, the statement said…

“Israel supports the move because UNWRA is one of the main problems perpetuating the conflict,” Hadashot news quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office as saying on Friday evening.

The article goes on to say that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany are going to take up the slack to support UNRWA financially. What are they supporting? A group that advocates and trains children in this sort of thing [hat tip: Legal Insurrection]: