Gianforte wins in Montana

The New Neo Posted on by

Ginaforte won, 50 to 44.

Why did he win, despite his being charged with misdemeanor assault? Some or all of the following:

(1) Two-thirds of the votes had already been cast, and so recent events had a limited ability to sway the result.

(2) Montanans think what he did is just fine.

(3) Montanans don’t like what he did, but they think it’s much less important than his politics.

(4) Montanans didn’t believe media reports of what happened, and think they were biased against Gianforte. Or they thnk he was set up.

As far as #4 goes, Gianforte certainly seems to be admitting wrongdoing. In his acceptance speech he said:

“When you make a mistake, you have to own up to it,” Gianforte told his supporters at his Election Night rally in Bozeman. “That’s the Montana way.”

Saying he was “not proud” of his behavior, he added, “I should not have responded the way I did, for that I’m sorry. I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that I’m sorry, Mr. Ben Jacobs.”

I think that will probably be the end of it, except perhaps some sort of fine for misdemeanor assault.

The news du jour: the Gianforte body slam

The New Neo Posted on by

I figure I ought to cover this story.

It’s the lead story at memeorandum and plenty of other places. The gist of it is that Montana Republican US House of Representatives candidate Greg Gianforte is reported to have body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. There were three Fox News reporters witnessing the incident (one of whom has slightly changed her story to make the assault a bit less violent), and Gianforte has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

I can’t muster up too much to say about it, though, except the obvious. No footage seems to exist (which is odd because there’s footage of just about everything these days, and several reporters were present). Footage would be very important in evaluating any alleged assault, as we’ve learned many past experiences, because eyewitness testimony is inhernetly unreliable. That said, it certainly looks as though Gianforte snapped and was way out of line.

Reporters can be and often are obnoxious and intrusive and even invasive (of space, and of boundaries). But Gianforte is a candidate. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen before you reach the boiling point.

British authorities ignored many warnings about the Manchester bomber

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote this:

In the case of Manchester terrorist Salman Abedi, there were warnings aplenty. But they were general, and amounted to mere speech of a suspicious nature, and it’s not surprising that nothing was done…

This is potentially dangerous behavior, but not actionable behavior except perhaps to call the person in for questioning or some sort of monitoring of activities. I’m not sure if even that was done in the case of Abedi, but I very much doubt it would have mattered had it been done. And there are just too many Abedis all over the Western world to monitor effectively, even if law enforcement wanted to do so and was allowed to do so.

Now we get more details on the warnings that authorities had received about Abedi prior to the bombing—and by “prior” I mean during the previous five years, when at least five warnings were called in on separate occasions from different people. That’s a lot of smoke indicating a fire:

Salman Abedi told friends that “being a suicide bomber was okay”, prompting them to call the Government’s anti-terrorism hotline…

The authorities were also aware that Abedi’s father was linked to a well-known militant Islamist group in Libya, which is proscribed in Britain. Abedi also had links to several British-based jihadis with Isil connections…

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “People in the community expressed concerns about the way this man was behaving and reported it in the right way using the right channels.

“They did not hear anything since.”

Two friends of Abedi also became so worried they separately telephoned the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago and again last year.

“They had been worried that ”˜he was supporting terrorism’ and had expressed the view that ”˜being a suicide bomber was ok’,” a source told the BBC.

Akram Ramadan, 49, part of the close-knit Libyan community in south Manchester, said Abedi had been banned from Didsbury Mosque after he had confronted the Imam who was delivering an anti-extremist sermon…

A US official also briefed that members of Abedi’s own family had contacted British police saying that he was “dangerous”, but again the information does not appear to have been acted upon.

I know there are just too many suspicious people, and reports of their suspicious behavior, for authorities to effectively “monitor” them all (whatever “monitoring” consists of in this day and age). But this is an outrage. This guy was a walking red flag, and basically nothing appears to have been done—not even questioning? At most there’s a single mention that he might have been put on a “watch list.”

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 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? It seems as though most of them came from the Muslim community in Britain, which would stand to reason would be the main and most valuable source of such complaints. In particular, if the story about Abedi’s being banned from the Didsbury mosque for protesting an anti-extremist sermon is true, that would be the reddest flag of them all.

Are authorities not allowed to do anything at all until someone has acted? Or do they do nothing out of fear of being accused of Islamophobia if they do something? Or are they simply overwhelmed by the numbers, because there are thousands and thousands of people with records just as suspicious as Abedi’s? And if Abedi had not been a citizen, would the reports about him have been treated more seriously, and if so in what manner?

As always, the question is what is the proper remedy for this situation. Non-citizens with terrorist sympathies could be deported (at least theoretically; I doubt we or Britain actually do very much of it), but citizens cannot. What’s more, with a hotline you have the problem of bogus grudge complaints phoned in with the goal of getting someone deported or in trouble, so authorities must authenticate the charges, which can be difficult.

Clearly, the problem is already more than authorities can handle or are willing to handle.

One commenter at this blog has suggested that Islamic terrorists should be treated less as criminals and more as enemies in a war. The problem is that citizens do have certain rights, and suspending them in the case of jihadi terrorist sympathizer citizens who have not yet committed any crimes leads to a dangerous situation where we could have a two-tier justice system.

I’m all for increasing the penalties for terrorist acts or plans for terrorist acts. But terrorist-sympathizing thoughts or words are a different matter. And if we use a warfare analogy, we could end up with domestic internment camps as in WWII. There is no way that is going to happen now.

Which brings us back to my question: what is the remedy? Is there one? One remedy would be to red flag people such as Abedi more readily, and institute more sting operations (including computer surveillence). But that would almost certainly involve the allocation of more resources towards the anti-terrorism activities of law enforcement, as well as the will to do it (which we seem to lack). Another remedy would be quicker deportation of non-citizens who are determined to be jihadi terrorist sympathizers or activists. It seems to me that every non-citizen is here as a guest of this country, and if the guests abuse that privilege they need to be shown the door.

[NOTE: If you can bear it, here are the names and photos of the Manchester victims and something about the life of each. It makes for heartbreaking reading.]

Seeing through walls

The New Neo Posted on by

To tell you the truth, I assumed they could already do this sort of thing:

Routers scatter and bounce their signal off objects, illuminating our homes and offices like invisible light bulbs.

Now, German scientists have found a way to exploit this property to take holograms, or 3D photographs, of objects inside of a room – from outside of the room.

“It can basically scan a room with someone’s Wi-Fi transmission,” Philipp Holl, a 23-year-old undergraduate physics student at the Technical University of Munich, told Business Insider.

I can’t say I had thought it through to the extent that I had figured out how it could be done (wi-fi). But I was just assuming they already had very sophisticated devices to spy on people—and in fact for years they’ve already had a slightly different and less sweeping way of doing it, as the article points out. Obviously this type of technology can be used for better or for worse.

The technology is supposedly primitive as yet, but no doubt it will be improved. The images it creates at the moment remind me of the sonogram of my son when I was pregnant way way back when the practice was rather new. I saw just a crude outline of a shape. Nowadays, fetal sonograms are almost like portraits.

Correction on yesterday’s post “A modern slave”

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote a post titled “A modern slave” about an article in the Atlantic. I had two articles on the subject open on my browser at the same time; not only were on the same subject, but they looked a bit alike, and unfortunately I linked to the wrong article.

So I wanted to correct that and say that this is the article I meant to link, and everything in that previous post refers to this article and not the other.

The text of the previous post is as follows (now with the correct link):

This a fascinating and deeply touching portrait of a situation that defies easy answers.

Was Lola, the woman described in the article, a “slave”? Let’s not worry about semantics. She was an abused servant whose life was hard, but who had an almost Zen-like philosophy and a great ability to create and give love. Though long, the article is well worth reading.

Michelle Obama in Italy: fashion for ex-First Ladies

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few people have mentioned the stories fawning over Michelle Obama’s one shoulder blouse in Italy.

Here’s the blouse, in case you somehow missed this item of great and burning import:

That wasn’t all. There was also this, in the same vein:

First, let me re-establish my position on Michelle Obama and fashion, a topic I’ve written about before. Yes, much of the praise of Michelle is over-the-top, but so is much of the criticism. I’ve always found her to be an attractive woman with a good if imperfect figure, who’s a bit challenging to dress. Her pluses are her height and her upper body, particularly her fit-but-still-feminine arms (of which I think she’s justly proud). Sometimes she dresses beautifully in a way that accents her assets and minimizes her flaws (the latter are mainly on the bottom half of her figure). Sometimes her choices are unfortunate, to my way of thinking.

But for eight years she’s had to dress under constant scrutiny from both sides. That scrutiny will never go away. I’m not going to weep for her—it all came with enormous perks and great power, and she sought it and probably enjoys it very much. But still, I would wager she generally dressed a lot more conservatively than she wanted to a great deal of the time she was First Lady.

Now she gets to relax somewhat and be herself—or at least some public-but-private-citizen version of herself. And she probably wants to be trendier now and show off those shoulders.

But IMHO both blouses are very unflattering on her. They are difficult to wear styles, and best left to the young and waiflike. Michelle Obama is neither. I couldn’t pull off those blouses very well, either. Her ripped jeans, likewise. She looks like she’s trying to be a teen. One of her daughters would look great in those outfits, but not Michelle.

I am a bit like Michelle in that I can’t pull off ruffly fashions very well at all. I don’t know why, because I’m not masculine-looking, but I have a look that seems to require cleaner lines. And if there’s a print, it needs to be graphic. If flowers are in the print, they need to be large and dramatic. No little flowered numbers for me—they make me look like I’m in a housedress. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.

A modern slave

The New Neo Posted on by

[CORRECTION: This post contains a link to the wrong article. Please see this for the correction.]

This is a fascinating and deeply touching portrait of a situation that defies easy answers.

Was Lola, the woman described in the article, a “slave”? Let’s not worry about semantics. She was an abused servant whose life was hard, but who had an almost Zen-like philosophy and a great ability to create and give love. Though long, the article is well worth reading.

In Manchester, terrorism was a family affair

The New Neo Posted on by

At least, that’s the way it looks at the moment:

The Telegraph understands Hashem Abedi, 20, the brother of suspected attacker Salman Abedi, was arrested last night in the capital Tripoli by counterterrorism forces on suspicion of links to the Islamic State group.

Three armed vehicles arrived to take away their father, Ramadan Abedi, an administrative manager of the Central Security Force in Tripoli, late Wednesday afternoon.

A third brother, Ismail, has also been arrested after police raids in the UK. The family are believed to live between Manchester, where the children were born and grew up, and Libya.

That highlights one of many dilemmas authorities face in dealing with citizens and/or legal immigrants whose origins lie in any of the countries heavily involved in Islamic jihadi activities. Libya was one of the countries on the list in Trump’s EO, and had also been put on a list by the Obama administration, but the Abedi family were from there and probably had relatives and friends there, so travel to that country would be hard to flag as meaningful in terms of terrorist activities or training. From Libya it’s possible to travel to other countries with terrorist activities as well, although I would imagine that such travel would probably appear on a person’s passport (I’m not certain of that, though).

But then we also have the question of what the remedy might be. What’s the remedy, in a Western state with protections—particularly for citizens—from arrests or other restrictions when no crimes have been committed? During World War II there were internment camps for people of Japanese origin, many of them citizens (including children), but that approach would most definitely not fly today.

In the case of Manchester terrorist Salman Abedi, there were warnings aplenty. But they were general, and amounted to mere speech of a suspicious nature, and it’s not surprising that nothing was done:

…detectives probe a “network” linked to the Manchester suicide bomber as more details are beginning to emerge about Salman.

A Muslim community worker has said that members of the public called the police anti-terrorism hotline warning about the Manchester suicide bomber’s extreme and violent views several years ago.

It is also understood that Abedi was in Manchester earlier this year when he told people of the value of dying for a cause and made hardline statements about suicide operations and the conflict in Libya.

The community worker ”“ who did not want to be identified ”“ said two people who knew Salman Abedi at college made separate calls to the police.

They had been worried that “he was supporting terrorism” and had expressed the view that “being a suicide bomber was OK.”

This is potentially dangerous behavior, but not actionable behavior except perhaps to call the person in for questioning or some sort of monitoring of activities. I’m not sure if even that was done in the case of Abedi, but I very much doubt it would have mattered had it been done. And there are just too many Abedis all over the Western world to monitor effectively, even if law enforcement wanted to do so and was allowed to do so.

Now, however—now that 22 innocent people, many of them children and teens, are dead—now there is more police action on the Abedi front.

Our justice system and the protection it gives to the ordinary citizen from unwarranted and excessive police action is one of our prides, but it also hampers us in dealing with the threat that terrorism represents. It is a constant tension that will not go away, and I don’t see any solution, much less an easy solution.

[NOTE: And for those of you who say “ban immigration from places like Libya,” let me add that, whatever the pluses or minuses of that idea (and whether or not it would ever be implemented), it wouldn’t touch the many many people like Abedi, who was born in England and is a citizen.]

About Sirhan Sirhan’s religion

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed mention of Robert Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan in the comments section yesterday, to wit:

[Calling terrorists “evil losers”] is the single strongest blow against Evil Losing Islamic terrorists since Sirhan Sirhan murdered RFK.

And commenter Bill wrote in response, “I’ve looked at this sentence twenty different ways and I still don’t know what it means. Especially the RFK part.”

I don’t quite know what the sentence means, either, except perhaps that its author was trying to date the assassination of RFK as one of the first acts of Islamic terrorism on our shores. We can quibble over whether an assassination qualifies as terrorism (usually people place it in a separate category, but I think that’s a bit picayune). But one thing I most definitely want to clear up is the misconception that Sirhan Sirhan was a Moslem. He was not.

In March of 2011 I wrote this post about Sirhan because he had been denied parole for the 14th time. I reproduce a portion of the post here.

When I heard the news of the parole denial, my first thought was, “Why is this man still alive?” After all, he assassinated a presidential candidate in full view of a crowd of people.

The answer is that, although he was sentenced to death in his trial, the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, before his execution had taken place. The way that sort of thing works is that, even though he was sentenced when executions were allowed, the ruling was retroactive. And even though executions were re-instituted in California in the late 70s, his re-sentencing to life in prison (with possibility of parole) during that small window of opportunity stands.

It is a common misconception that, because Sirhan was a Palestinian angry at RFK because of what he considered his pro-Israel stance, the assassin must have been a Muslim. He was not; he was a Palestinian Christian whose parents had left the area and brought him to this country when he was twelve.

Another thing I wondered when I researched this post is why Sirhan was tried under the state criminal system in California. I knew the crime was committed there, but I thought surely this would have been a federal crime as well (one of its results, by the way, is that presidential candidates are now afforded Secret Service protection). It turns out that it was not a federal crime at the time, and another result of Sirhan’s act is that the killing of a presidential candidate is now a federal crime, due to a law Congress passed after RFK’s death in 1971. This sadly extended an earlier law passed by Congress in 1965, in reaction to the shooting of his brother JFK:

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, it was not a federal crime to kill a U.S. president. Had alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald been tried, the trial would have taken place in a Texas state court. In 1965, Congress passed a law, 18 U.S.C. 1751, making it a federal crime to kill, kidnap, or assault the President or the Vice President.

That’s one extension of the power of the federal government with which I have no quarrel.

And what do George Plimpton, Rosey Grier, and Pete Hamill have in common? They, among others, wrestled Sirhan to the ground after the assassination.

Another fact I had completely forgotten—if I ever even knew it in the first place—is that five other people were injured in the shooting, although they all lived. They were “Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy’s campaign aides; and a teenager, Irwin Stroll, a Kennedy volunteer.”

The beauteous Melania and Ivanka’s Middle Eastern fashions

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, this is a frivolous post. I need a pleasant escape for a little while from the heaviness of the news. Maybe you do, too.

And the world cares about these things, as measured by the buzz about the way Melania and Ivanka Trump dressed on their visit to the Saudis and then in Israel.

Here they are in Saudi Arabia, just two outfits of many:

And here they are in Israel:

The Saudi outfits show respect for Saudi tradition, because there is no need for Westerners to wear head scarves—only to dress somewhat modestly, and Melania and Ivanka also add “elegantly.” In Israel, Ivanka is dressed Orthodox-style, but that’s because she is an Orthodox Jew (or some approximation of Orthodoxy; I’m not sure how strict), and she will be going to the Western Wall in that outfit.

Orthodox can be elegant, as I learned years ago in Brooklyn at a store run by Orthodox Jews and often frequented by Orthodox Jewish women, whose chic wigs and long silk dresses surprised me with their sophisticated style. Here Ivanka looks very retro, as well (1930s, perhaps?). Both she and Melania show themselves to be the models they both once were (Melania had much more of a career than Ivanka, of course). These two aren’t just incredibly attractive women who know how to wear clothes; they’re both in the fashion industry now or in the past, and very successful at it.

Both Melania and Ivanka are tall and slender, with excellent carriage. I doubt we’ll again have such a physically stunning distaff side of the First Family.

And I may as well remark on an odd thing I noticed: both remind me of animals. And that’s not meant to be anything but a compliment. For example, Melania reminds me of a lioness:

And Ivanka of a female gazelle:

And if you look at this uncropped version of the photo of Melania and Ivanka in Israel, you can see why I say I wouldn’t want to be photographed standing next to them:

Terrorism and language: Trump and the evil losers

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night commenter “Sergey” made the observation that Trump is “the most underestimated politician I heard about…He thinks outside the box, not even thinks, but grasps and sees what nobody else can grasp and see.”

I don’t know how cerebral Trump’s behavior is or how instinctual. But Sergey has a point, because Trump—not an articulate man in the usual sense—now and then demonstrates an uncanny ability to put his finger on something in an unexpected and savvy way.

I thought of that when I read of Trump’s response to the terrorist attack in Manchester, when he said of the perpetrator and his fellow terrorists:

They were evil losers.

I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that was a great name. I will call them losers from now on. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers, just remember that.

Trump made a point that I don’t think I’ve seen made by any other head of state, and I think it shows psychological astuteness. I refer to his observation that the terrorists would like to be considered monsters by the West, and so he won’t give them that satisfaction.

Monsters, after all, are larger than life, more powerful, scarier. If one major goal of a terrorist is to strike fear (and it is), calling terrorists “monsters” lets them know that that mission has been accomplished. “Evil losers” as a substitute is a very interesting construction, because it combines the strongly moral negative (“evil”) with a word that conveys weakness (“losers”). The second word, “losers,” also conveys contempt rather than fear. And contempt is not what they’re looking for.

“Evil losers” isn’t quite an oxymoron, but it’s a phrase using two words that most people wouldn’t think of putting together. It’s not an elegant phrase; no Churchill, he. It’s a bit awkward, which is very Trumpian. But I think it’s psychologically shrewd.

I’m not pretending it will change much of anything. But it sets a tone that makes sense to me.

Thoughts on the Manchester terrorist attack

The New Neo Posted on by

The Manchester attack at the Ariana Grande concert last night deliberately targeted very young people. It’s an example of what I have previously called the “Pied Piper Impluse”:

Terrorists seem to operate under the Pied Piper Impulse of “get them where it hurts” in order to maximize both their leverage and the fear and grief their acts engender.

I have read several reports from people who had been to the concert, alleging that their backpacks weren’t searched. If true, that would indicate that security was lax. This turns out, however, to have been irrelevant, because the perpetrator was not at the concert.

Is there a single person on earth who is surprised that the terrorist has a name that indicates a Mideastern/Arabic/Muslim origin, and that he was apparently a known wolf?:

British authorities identified Salman Abedi, 22, as the suicide bomber in the attack at the Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people and injured dozens more…

Abedi was known to British authorities prior to Monday night’s attack, CBS News reported.

As soon as I read that the bomb did not go off during the concert, but detonated as the crowd was leaving, it occurred to me that the terrorist may have circumvented security by targeting the exits/entrances to the venue. This is always a possibility, because security can only begin at a certain geographic point. Sure enough, that was the case here:

The bomber, a man who police say arrived alone, was not inside the arena when he detonated his explosives. He arrived on the local rail system and approached one of the main exits as the audience made their way out.

Kids and teenagers were everywhere, meeting parents and making their way out of the building.

There are thousands of potential Salman Abedis in all the countries of the West, and although some are being “monitored” others are not, and at any rate the monitoring is obviously not good enough or effective enough to stop all of the ones who are subject to it.

I fear that too many Western nations have taken the Kerry attitude, despite their words of sorrow at events such as last night’s. As John Hinderaker writes:

The usual expressions of condolence and anger are being made, but while no doubt sincere, they feel rote. We have seen this story unfold too many times. The question is what we are going to do about it.

There are hundreds if not thousands of known terrorist sympathizers in the U.K., but in any of the liberal democracies, nothing can be done about them until they actually detonate a bomb, or carry out another sort of attack, or come perilously close to doing so. The only other way to address the problem is through immigration policy, but it is probably too late for that in a number of the Western European countries, including Great Britain. It isn’t too late here, but as we have seen with President Trump’s almost de minimis travel order, the establishment won’t permit any serious reconsideration of immigration policy.

So it seems that the West is committed to John Kerry’s view of Islamic terrorism: viewing it as a “nuisance” that we just have to put up with.

The Manchester attack reminds me of the sort of thing that used to happen almost on a daily basis in Israel. Then after the Israelis built the much-maligned wall, the number and death toll shrunk down enormously, and the modus operandi changed as well. But if my suspicion that Abedi was born in Britain—or, at least, has been there for a long long time—is correct, then the true parallel with Israel is to its Arab population, which is large. Israel, a country known for its brilliant security, doesn’t seem to have solved that problem of the internal terrorist any more than Europe or the US has, because there are still a number of terrorist attacks emanating from the Arab population of that country, and there are many Arab sympathizers with those attacks who live in Israel as well. However, large explosive attacks such as the one in Manchester last night—which used to be commonplace in Israel before the wall—have been mostly replaced (at least to the best of my knowledge) with smaller-scale but still deadly knife attacks. I’m not sure why that is, and I’m not sure it’s all that significant, but it does seem to have at least reduced the number of victims per attack.

To the victims in Manchester and their families, my heartfelt condolences for their terrible, terrible loss. RIP.

[ADDENDUM: And here is some further detail on Abedi—and indeed, he was born in Britain:

Born in Manchester in 1994, the second youngest of four children his parents were Libyan refugees who came to the UK to escape the Gaddafi regime.

His parents were both born in Libya but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester where they have lived for at least ten years.

They had three sons in total and a daughter, who is now 18-years-old.

Abedi grew up in the Whalley Range area, just yards from the local girl’s high school, which hit the headlines in 2015 when twins and grade A pupils, Zahra and Salma Halane, who were both aspiring medical students, left their homes and moved to Isil controlled Syria.

There were unconfirmed reports in Manchester that the whole family apart from the two elder sons recently returned to Libya.

None of this—none—is a surprise. We have yet to learn whether anyone in the family was under surveillance or investigation, or how the ball was dropped, but my guess is that there just wasn’t anything to distinguish Abedi or his family from thousands and thousands of others like him/then. Even a return trip to Libya could have easily been explained if they have relatives there to visit.]