Updates on the new blog theme

The New Neo Posted on by

No, the new theme for the blog is nowhere near ready. But in response to all your comments on the previous thread on this topic, I wanted to announce that:

(1) I can’t stand nested comments either. They make a thread hard to follow, because it becomes difficult and confusing to track which are new comments and which are old. They also tend to make the discussion develop into a series of sidechats rather than a group roundtable. So, no nested comments are planned here.

(2) I’m strongly considering a drop-down menu for things like the blogroll and/or the archives.

(3) I don’t think I’ll have little photos as a regular feature. Nor will I have teasers with a “click here to continue” as a regular rule. Of course, I’ll still have photos when I think they’re appropriate, and every now and then for a very long post I’ll do what I’ve long done at times in that situation, which is to have a click-to-read-more button. But it won’t be the regular default format for posts.

At least, that’s the way I’m thinking at the moment. Any other suggestions?

Meanwhile, there’s the Obamacare repeal effort

The New Neo Posted on by

The report is that there’s encouraging news on that front:

“Now I say promising, but I don’t know what it looks like legislatively ”¦ the key word is promising,” Graham said. “There better be [a vote this month], because this is not like fine wine, it does not get better with age.”

Ditto Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who has been outspoken about his concerns on the direction the party has taken, but now says he is feeling increasingly comfortable and “very encouraged” by Republicans’ plans…

At the party lunch, McConnell told his colleagues that “failure is not an option” and that the Senate has “to lead,” senators said…

“There’s a general agreement that we cannot still let a failed program stay in place,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “The key here is we have so many other things that we have to do. We’ve got tax issues to work, we’ve got infrastructure. We’ve got to continue to move forward.”

Lately the legislature has been so quiet I almost forgot they were there. Some people would consider that a feature, not a bug.

It’s hard to know what sort of bill they’re actually going to pass, if any. But it doesn’t sound like they’re considering an especially conservative solution, although it’s almost certainly more conservative than Obamacare was.

Trump to nominate Christopher Wray as head of FBI

The New Neo Posted on by

After all the Comey turmoil and brouhaha (which is not over yet), this would seem to be a fairly non-controversial pick:

President Trump on Wednesday said he intends to nominate former assistant attorney general Christopher Wray to be the next FBI director.

Wray, currently a litigation partner at King & Spalding, would replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over when James Comey was fired by Trump in May…

Wray was nominated as assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s criminal division in 2003 and served in that role until 2005. After he left the Justice Department, Wray returned to private practice, focusing on “white collar and internal investigations,” according to his DOJ biography.

Ah, but since nothing Trump does is considered non-controversial or conventional, is it possible this could go smoothly?

[NOTE: I haven’t read this article by Jonathan Chait, but the headline amuses me: “Trump Can Commit All the High Crimes He Wants. Republicans Aren’t Going to Impeach Him” because it is a mirror image of what the right (including me) was saying about Obama during his presidency.]

ISIS Terrorist attack—in Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a rare event in Iran. The terrorists seem to be ISIS, in a Sunni-Shi’ite struggle:

Islamic State said five of its fighters carried out the twin attacks using assault rifles, grenades, and suicide vests.

“The caliphate will not miss a chance to spill their blood,” it said, referring to Iran’s majority Shi’ite Muslim population.

A video released by its news agency Amaq included an audio track of a man saying in Arabic: “Oh God, thank you. [Gunshots]. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing.”

Attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities though two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.

Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi’ite-led republic.

Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

It seems to me that both groups—the leaders of Iran and ISIS—believes that Islam should conquer the world either by force, demographics, or persuasion, or some combination of the three. But each believes that it should be the head of that Islam-dominated world.

Note that word “caliphate.” Speaking of which, Richard Landes has written an article on how the western media helps the Caliphate, a process he calls “own-goal journalism.” [Hat tip: commenter Barry Meislin.]

Trump tweets again

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve said before that I’ve given up on covering every little thing Trump does.

It’s wearying, and it doesn’t really affect the big picture. Then again, each incident does have some small effect, perhaps cumulative. And some of the incidents are depressing.

Such as, for example, the Trump news du jour. I’ll leave it to others to deconstruct the details—and there are plenty of articles at that link I just gave, if you care to follow it closely. But suffice to say that Trump has tweeted something about the so-called “travel ban” (currently being considered by SCOTUS for a ruling) that is designed to make his base happy, outrage and delight the opposition (“delight” because they think it will hurt his cause), and confuse and exhaust just about everyone else.

I fully expecteded the Trump presidency to be replete with incidents like this. It has been. What their ultimate effect will be I do not know. His defenders will say he’s a wily fox playing 10-dimensional chess again. His detractors will say he’s nuts, power-mad, and destructive.

This is how it works when a terrorist brings a hammer to a gun fight

The New Neo Posted on by

The French police are armed, unlike the Brits:

French Municipal officers are armed each Municipal Police agency has different weapons meaning some Municipal Police may have revolvers while others have more modern handguns. Municipal Police also have rifles and shotguns as well for patrol needs.

So when a hammer-wielding terrorist shouting “This is for Syria” swung—and connected—with a French police officer at Notre Dame, he encountered firepower:

There were scenes of panic when two gunshots rang out at Notre-Dame, among the most visited landmarks of Paris, itself the most visited capital in the world, as hundreds of tourists were amassed outside its front entrance at around 4.30pm.

Seconds earlier, the unnamed attacker had swung his hammer at a police officer guarding the top tourist site, landing a blow. But before he could do any more damage, his colleague opened fire, hitting the assailant in the legs.

Journalist David Metreau, who said his office overlooks the square, tweeted that there were two “blasts” that sounded like shots, and posted a photo of a body lying seemingly inert on the ground.

Perhaps the terrorist was geographically confused, and thought he was in London.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, Paris has been patrolled by gun-toting officers (police or otherwise) for quite some time. Here’s a photo I took during my trip to Paris in the fall of 2006:

At the time I took that Paris photo, there was nothing special going on of which I was aware—no recent attacks, no particular threats. Just an ordinary day at the Louvre, if memory serves me.]

The Bret Weinstein interview

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s long, but it’s good. Please try to ignore the things you disagree with (the guy is a “progressive,” after all) and listen closely to his descriptions of what happened at Evergreen and why.

I’m not an auditory learner and ordinarily have very little patience for long interviews, but I made it through the first hour of that one.

Why do men run faster than women?

The New Neo Posted on by

My first reaction is: for a ton of reasons. And even before reading this article on the subject, I thought of three reasons in particular. The first is greater lung capacity. The second is stride length, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. The third is hip configuration: wide hips make for worse runners.

You can see that latter point illustrated by the physiques of elite women runners. (I’ve written before about the athletic hip shape for women, here and here).

But if you read the article on why men excel in running, you’ll see that although hip shape and lung capacity are definitely part of the reason, there’s plenty more.

In fact, men excel in most sports. That makes perfect sense to me, and doesn’t bother me in the least. Why should it?

Even ballet—a physical and artistic endeavor in which women are generally considered the stars—acknowledges the differences between the physical skills of men and women. One of the earliest posts on this blog was about the difference:

In addition to the sheer physical thrill and the artistic satisfaction involved, partnering takes the woman back in time to an era when feminine was feminine. Now of course we have feminism, which is something else entirely.

You might say that ballet is feminist, in a way, because it gives a prominent””perhaps even a more-than-equal””role to women. You might say it’s retro, in a way, in that the role it gives tends to revolve around traditional ideas of beauty, grace, and supposed fragility masking strength.

But men and women are different, and ballet not only doesn’t ignore that difference, it celebrates it. Partnering in ballet usually involves emphasizing the difference, and as the French say (French, after all, is the language of ballet), “Vive la différence!”

Men have much greater upper-body strength, and in ballet they’re the ones who lift the women. They also have greater leg strength, which means they jump higher. Women are more flexible; their extensions (the left lifts) are higher. The line the female and male bodies create are different, even though both follow the same canons of ballet posing and movement: females more sinuous and slightly curved, males straighter and more angular. Ballet uses those differences to great advantage.

And Theresa May is in cloud cuckoo land

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m referring to this absurd statement of May’s:

We could never have predicted the tragic turn which events would take. We could never have imagined the appalling depravity which led a cowardly and callous killer to target innocent men, women, and children, in the way that we saw in Manchester two weeks ago. Nor could we have envisaged the brutal attack that was carried out on the streets of London Saturday evening.

I tried to find the context in which May said this, because sometimes taking a quote out of context distorts its meaning. Unfortunately, I could only find the excerpt (you can see a video of it at the link). In and of itself, it is more than absurd—it is deluded, bizarre, troubling.

Ever since 9/11 it has not been difficult to “predict” or “imagine” or “envisage” something of the sort, and worse. In fact, we don’t have to really use our imaginations or any sharp powers of prediction. It is obvious that such things will happen because they have happened many, many, many times before, both in the West and elsewhere. Even the particular methods and tools of the London Bridge attack—vehicles on a bridge, knives in public places—are highly familiar, as are the backgrounds of the killers.

All, all, completely and utterly predictable by even a simpleton or a young child. May is neither, but if she has so much trouble with the concept she should not be head of state.

I try to “imagine” some benign explanation for the May quote. Perhaps she also had added something like: Twenty or thirty years ago, we could never have imagined… I doubt that’s what she said, though, and even then, we should have imagined. But many decades ago, it at least would be understandable if we didn’t imagine it. Now? No excuse whatsoever.

Perhaps the problem is a form of ethnocentrism, a tendency to look at other cultures based on what’s customary in one’s own culture. The mind reels and the mind boggles at this behavior, yes, but it can’t reel and boggle so much that we deny reality. That’s a fatal error—and a puzzling one, considering the evidence before us.

The London Bridge terrorists are identified. Guess what?

The New Neo Posted on by

Known wolves, of course.

There is nothing—I repeat, nothing—in the description of these men so far that would surprise anyone who’s been reading the news for the past decade or so. Known to the police? Check. Not considered enough of a threat, despite many warnings and reports of their extreme radicalization? Check.

Either the police are overwhelmed by thousands and thousands of such people, or they are making a conscious effort to ignore the threat (I say there’s probably some of both). I’ve written on the topic before, so there’s no need to go into it again; see this for a lengthy discussion that I posted after the Manchester bombing. I repeat this particular thought:

Why do these hotlines even exist? Is it to reassure people that they are helping authorities to do something about it when in fact nothing is done? In other words, to give a false sense of security?

And what happens to those on such a “watch list”? If Abedi [the Manchester terrorist] was on one, it apparently was one that was all “watch” and no action, because he was allowed to regularly travel back and forth to Libya despite it, and it is suspected he traveled from there to terrorist hot-spot Syria as well.

I wonder””did authorities even compile a file on Abedi linking all these reports, or was each call-in treated as disconnected from the others?

Similarly, there were plenty of call-ins on the supposed ringleader of the London Bridge plot, Khuram Butt (also known as “Abu”), and these warnings seem to have been ignored to an even greater extent than occurred with Abedi [emphasis mine]:

[One of] the [London Bridge] terror suspect[s] was also known by the name Abu Zeitoun, meaning ‘father of olive’ in Arabic.

The former friend [of Abu’s] claimed he contacted police after becoming concerned over comments he made about other attacks.

The friend told the BBC’s Asian network that the terrorist, who was known as Abu or Abs, had been radicalised watching vidoes of the infamous American hate preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril [on YouTube].

He said: “We spoke about a particular attack that happened and like most radicals he had a justification for anything and everything and that day I realised that I needed to contact the authorities.”…

“I phoned the anti-terror hotline. I spoke to the gentleman. I told him about our conversation and why I think he was radicalised.”

But he said he was not arrested and was allowed to keep his passport.

“I did my bit, I know a lot of other people did their bit, but the authorities did not do their bit,” he said.

And this part is exactly parallel to what happened with Abedi, who was banned from Didsbury Mosque for a similar reason:

…it also emerged that [Abu] was thrown out of his local mosque two years ago after clashing with the Imam about politics.

One more thing about Abu—he was featured in an alarming documentary about extreme jihadis living in Britain. If that isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is.

So far it seems that two of the terrorists were British citizens and one was not, but Butt-“Abu” was actually born in Pakistan. Was he a naturalized citizen? When did he come to Britain? Under what circumstances?

Even now, why do only one in ten London police officers carry guns?

The New Neo Posted on by

To me this is surprising, considering the enemy the Brits now face:

…[M]ore than 90 percent of the capital’s police officers carry out their daily duties without a gun. Most rely on other tools to keep their city safe: canisters of mace, handcuffs, batons and occasionally stun-guns.

This is no accident…

Giving everyday police officers guns sends the wrong message to communities, so this thinking goes, and can actually cause more problems than it solves.

British police apparently have a philosophy of engagement that comes from a lengthy tradition of not carrying guns. They do have specially trained gun-wielding police units which are called to the scene if needed, which seems to me to involve an almost inevitable delay. And every time they fire a gun and injure or kill someone, the incident is investigated to the hilt:

Some police have complained that officers are reluctant to sign up for firearms training because they fear being dragged through years of lengthy investigations in the unlikely event they have to use their weapon.

“Officers have seen what happens to their colleagues who have had to use lethal force to protect the public,” outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told reporters last month. “Increasingly, they seem to be portrayed as suspects, based, I can only assume, on an underlying belief that they must have acted in a criminal fashion if someone has died.”

It appears that British police have reason to fear that they will be considered guilty till proven innocent. Fortunately for them (and the terrorists), the British citizenry also has a very low incidence of gun ownership, and so the police can often get away with not having firearms themselves and not get blown away by armed criminals.

There also seems to be a philosophy, even among police, that a certain amount of terrorism is acceptable, and that this is a fair trade-off to make for the sake of having a kinder, gentler police force, at least according to the following quotes:

While British officials have long since accepted that [a terrorist] attack is “highly likely,” they believe that intelligence-gathering and stronger links with the community ”” rather than gun-toting cops ”” will do more to keep the city safer.

“In a free and democratic society, there is going to be a balance between democracy, freedom and openness, and a police state ”” and none of us want to live in a police state,” said Brian Dillon, former head of the Met’s firearms command who now runs the counterterrorism consultancy Rubicon Resilience.

“Therefore at some point some attacks are regrettably going to hit home, that’s inevitable,” he added. “Not everything can be stopped.”

It’s an odd definition of “police state” that equates it with police officers having guns. To me, out-of-control surveillance and intelligence-gathering runs a greater risk of turning a place into a “police state,” but I guess the Brits don’t see it that way.

So, how many terrorist attacks are acceptable to the British? There have been two major ones in just the last two weeks, and one a few months ago. I think the British attitude towards this represents a pipe dream, a dangerous case of wishful thinking and a failure to come to turns with the reality of the world they now face.

In the London Bridge attack on Saturday, it took the police eight minutes after the first call to come to the scene and kill the terrorists. Some people have suggested that’s a very short time, but it seems to me it’s a relatively long time in a big city like London that has many police. In fact, there were apparently police on the scene much earlier than that, but they were hamstrung by their lack of lethal firepower. For example:

A British Transport Police officer who was seriously injured in the terror attack at London Bridge has been hailed for his “outstanding” bravery.

Armed only with just a baton, the unnamed officer tackled the attackers and suffered injuries to his head, face and leg.

“Although he is seriously unwell, he was able to recount how he faced the attackers armed only with his baton, outside London Bridge station,” Crowther said in a statement.

“It became clear that he showed enormous courage in the face of danger, as did many others who were at the scene and rushed to help.”

So British authorities think it’s a good idea to bring a baton to a knife fight? This seems like madness to me. Why should this officer be in the position of defending himself and the crowd with such an inadequate weapon?

Some civilians seem unaware of the extreme unlikelihood of the police in London being armed:

“As [the terrorists] left [a pub] I was going “Oi, oi, cowards!” Vowles said. “I was just trying to get their attention by throwing things at them … I thought if I throw bottles or chairs they can come after me. If I can get them to come to the main road then the police can stop them, they can obviously shoot them.”

They could obviously shoot them—if they were armed with guns, that is. Otherwise, it’s not so obvious.

And if you read this account from eyewitnesses, some describe the amount of time the attackers were rampaging as having been ten minutes or more. That’s a long time, and there were a lot of injured people; the terrorists had time to go into many restaurants and pubs. What’s more [emphasis mine]:

A chef from Fish restaurant said: “I saw two men with big knives downstairs outside Roast. They were stabbing people. The police were running away, they were normal officers, they were running away.

“Normal officers”—that is, essentially unarmed officers.

There is a plan to increase the number of police officers at stations, including armed officers:

British Transport police said travellers may notice an increased police presence following the attack.

In a statement, the force said: “Members of the public should expect to see extra police officers patrolling stations in London and the south-east following the attacks. You may also see some of our armed police officers at stations.”

I would certainly hope so.

During Saturday night’s attack, the police killed the three perpetrators. But this action by police was actually highly unusual in Britain, so much so that the police feel the need to explain why they did it:

Armed officers responding to the London Bridge terror attack fired an “unprecedented” number of rounds at the three attackers because they were wearing what appeared to be suicide belts, police said.

Eight officers fired 50 shots at three attackers to ensure they were neutralized, said Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner for specialist operations in the Metropolitan Police Service. Rowley is Britain’s most senior counterterrorism office.

The suicide belts were later determined to be fake…

“The situation these officers were confronted with was critical, a matter of life and death. Three armed men, wearing what appeared to be suicide belts, had already attacked and killed members of the public and had to be stopped immediately,” he said.

But “immediately” isn’t going to be so immediate if police aren’t usually armed with guns. And I wonder: if the terrorists had not been wearing fake explosive belts, would the police who killed them have had more trouble justifying their own lethal actions, under British law?

Not only does Britain have extremely strict gun control for private citizens, but it’s only in Northern Ireland that police are regularly armed:

In 2012, the BBC reported that just five percent of officers in England and Wales were authorized to carry firearms. Former Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick told the BBC that the officers want to appear “approachable” to the public.

This relic of 19th Century philosophy has survived to the 21st Century. Why the exception for Northern Ireland? You’ll have no trouble whatsoever guessing: their experience with IRA terrorism.

Some more history:

The issue of routine arming in Great Britain was raised after the 1952 Derek Bentley case, in which a Constable was shot dead and a Sergeant severely wounded, and again after the 1966 Massacre of Braybrook Street, in which three London officers were killed. As a result, around 17% of officers in London became authorised to carry firearms. After the deaths of a number of members of the public in the 1980s fired upon by police, control was considerably tightened, many officers had their firearm authorisation revoked, and training for the remainder was greatly improved. As of 2005, around 7% of officers in London are trained in the use of firearms. Firearms are also only issued to an officer under strict guidelines

And now, as noted earlier in this post, the percentage of armed police in London is up again but only to 10%. Part of the reason the number is still so small is quite obviously the fear of accidental killing of innocent civilians. These days the armed police are brought to the scene in an Armed Response Vehicle. Originally, the weapons were kept locked and needed special orders to be distributed to the officers, but more recently, the officers have finally been allowed to wear their weapons.

However, the rank and file police officer is very very much against carrying a gun him/herself:

Surveys by the Police Federation of England and Wales have continued to show police officers’ considerable resistance to routine arming. In the Federation’s most recent (2006) Officer/Arming survey, 82% of respondents were against the routine arming of police…

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why:

As with all use of force in England and Wales, the onus is on the individual officer to justify their actions in court.

To me as an American, the entire situation seems to be a form of extreme denial.