Why look for the bodies?

The New Neo Posted on by

In the recent thread about the called-off search for Flight MH370, commenter “Lurch” asked this question:

I really do not understand this fetish about finding a bunch of dead bodies. A dead body is an artifact. It is not the person you loved. It’s your memories that truly matter and they can never be taken from you.

It is true that a dead body is not at all the same as the living person, although I’m puzzled by the term “artifact,” which ordinarily means an object made by humans. I don’t think that’s what Lurch was trying to say; I think he/she may have been attempting to indicate that the body, no longer animated by spirit, soul, personality—in other words, by life itself—becomes a collection of molecules destined to be broken down into component parts.

So, why bother finding those bodies? Why go to such huge expense and trouble?

My answer has several parts, some general and some specific. One of the marks of being human is that we know we and our loved ones will die, and one of the ways anthropologists mark the transition to fully human beings is that humans honor their dead, and that very much includes the body that once housed the human spirit. This would be a very long post indeed if I were to list all the ways that different religions and different cultures conceptualize how to do this honoring, but they all involve having a body there in the first place, and some sort of ceremony that involves the body or what remains of it.

But even for those who are not religious, having a body offers a burial site and a place to go to when feeling grief and the need to connect with the loved one in a special place. That can even be provided when a person’s ashes are intentionally scattered on the sea, because the sea then becomes the person’s final resting place on earth. But in the case of such burial, that is a choice, of the person while he/she was alive, or of the person’s loved one’s after the person’s death, or of both. We don’t control death, but we usually can control what happens to the remains while we are alive.

And desecration of cemeteries or of dead bodies is an ancient way to show the deepest contempt and hatred. I remember how, even as a young child, I reacted with extreme horror when I read the Iliad and learned how Hector’s body was dragged by the victorious Achilles before the gates of Troy. Even now, thinking that I would illustrate this post with a painting of the famous scene, Googling it and seeing the pictures distressed me enough that I prefer to put up this far more stylized and ancient rendition:

In the explanatory material about the jar, it says it includes images of Hector’s grieving parents, as well as this: “Winged figure of Iris sent to plead for a ransom of Hector’s body.” Such things are usually important to humans on a gut level, and even as a child I intuitively sensed that.

To return to the missing airplane, there are also some facts about this specific case that may make the absence of bodies especially difficult. Most of the dead were Chinese, and traditional Chinese funeral practices are particularly complex and lengthy, and the regular visiting of the gravesite to pay respects has been a large part of those rituals. This cannot happen in the case of the victims of the missing flight.

Even more, however, in this case—in which the story of what actually happened is unknown—it’s not even so much the finding of bodies (although that’s important) but the finding of the black boxes and flight recorder that are very, very important. There is a very deep need to know where it happened, how it happened, how long it took, did they suffer much, and all those other questions that occur when people seem to vanish off the face of the earth.

Why did Obama commute Manning’s sentence?

The New Neo Posted on by

First of all, let’s get the legalism out of the way: Obama didn’t pardon Manning. The verdict stands. Obama shortened Manning’s sentence by a huge amount, commuting the original 35 years (of which Manning has served 6) to time served plus a few months.

The decision reportedly sent shock waves through the intelligence community:

The decision — which a senior defense official told CNN was made over the objections of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter — immediately touched off a controversy in the closing days of the Obama administration.

A former intelligence official described being “shocked” to learn of Obama’s decision, adding that the “entire intelligence community is deflated by this inexplicable use of executive power.” The official said the move was “deeply hypocritical given Obama’s denunciation of WikiLeaks’ role in the hacking of the (Democratic National Committee).”

Deeply hypocritical—as well as obviously hypocritical. So, why did Obama decide to do this?

Pundits on the right tend to think it was just a way of giving the right and the US the finger. I suppose so, but why did it take this particular form?

I think it may have to do with giving a shout-out to the LGBT community, particularly the “T” part, which seems to have become the most recent front in the battle against traditional America.

As the article states:

Manning, a transgender woman, was serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, an all-male Army prison in eastern Kansas, despite her request to transfer to a civilian prison.

Manning had also requested hormone treatment while in prison, and sued to get it. A hunger strike then brought on reassurances last September that the government would also be providing sex-reassignment surgery, but no timeline was set. Now it seems that the surgery won’t be happening while Manning is still in prison, and I’m not sure whether the government is still on the hook for it or whether private insurance (for example, this) will foot the bill.

Only forty-eight more hours of the Obama presidency.

By the way, I consider the decision by Obama to be an affront to the security of the United States and its intelligence community. The transgender issue is a separate one that, for me, is irrelevant here. But I don’t think it’s irrelevant to Obama; I think it was part of his motivation.

[ADDENDUM: I had never read Manning’s Wiki entry before, but it’s quite a document, particularly the part about Manning’s military service. Reading about Manning’s troubled past and trouble within the military, one wonders how a person with that resume ever received a sensitive job of any kind, or was allowed to stay in the military in the first place:

Manning began basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, on October 2, 2007. She wrote that she soon realized she was neither physically nor mentally prepared for it. Six weeks after enlisting, she was sent to the discharge unit. She was allegedly being bullied, and in the opinion of another soldier, was having a breakdown. The soldier told The Guardian: “The kid was barely five foot … He was a runt, so pick on him. He’s crazy, pick on him. He’s a faggot, pick on him. The guy took it from every side. He couldn’t please anyone.” Nicks writes that Manning, who was used to being bullied, fought back””if the drill sergeants screamed at her, she would scream at them””to the point where they started calling her “General Manning”.

The decision to discharge her was revoked [reason?], and she started basic training again in January 2008. After graduating in April, she moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in order to attend Advanced Individual Training (AIT) for Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 35F, intelligence analyst, receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information). According to Nicks, this security clearance, combined with the digitization of classified information and the government’s policy of sharing it widely, gave Manning access to an unprecedented amount of material.

Please read the whole thing.

Was Manning promoted despite his/her obvious unfitness for the military because Manning’s superiors were afraid of being accused of being anti-gay? Manning openly identified as gay rather than transgender at the time, and so it’s a possibility.]

Russian prostitutes are the best in the world

The New Neo Posted on by

Don’t blame me; I didn’t say it.

Putin said it, in the course of a statement that is quite comprehensive in its scope:

…[Trump] is a person who for many years has organized a beauty pageant, socialized with the most beautiful women in the world. It is hard to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of a low social class, although they are the best in the world. But finally, you know, what I want to say, prostitution is a serious, ugly, social phenomenon, young women do this connected to the fact that they cannot survive any other way and that is a problem of society but people who order false information and spread this information against the elected President, who fabricate it and use it in a political fight, they are worse than prostitutes.

But back to that “best in the world” claim. Now, it’s nice to see a leader with pride in his country, but my question is: how does Putin know? Does he have advisors who did a study and presented him with the findings? And wouldn’t a person have to have sampled prostitutes from all the other countries in the world to know which nation has the best?

This is the sort of thing that happens to me when I read the news. My mind wanders. It questions. It mulls.

And while we’re mulling, do all prostitutes choose the life because “they cannot survive any other way”? I haven’t done much reading on prostitution in recent years, but I’m pretty sure I’ve studied and read about it in the past and there are a host of reasons people become prostitutes, especially high-priced call girls of the type that one might imagine an imaginary prostitute-using Trump would hire. Some, for example, just are attracted to the high life and the amazing amount of money they can earn if they are beautiful and sexy enough. Some are drug addicts and are supporting their habits. At the lower ends of the profession, you find various types of desperation and need, and some very sad stories.

As for calling those who spread false information to fight their opponents “worse than prostitutes”—well, there is indeed an awful lot of badness and forms of badness in the world. Plenty to go around.

Michael Moore really nailed it, pre-election

The New Neo Posted on by

Until the other day I hadn’t read this Michael Moore prediction that Trump would win, made back in July of 2016 when it wasn’t exactly what most people were saying. I’d heard he’d made the prediction, but till now I hadn’t read what he’d actually written.

And boy, I really have to give the guy props for the fact that he was spot on about the fact that Trump would win and how it would happen (as was our very own commenter “Cornhead,” I might add, although their attitudes towards a Trump victory diverged significantly, to say the least).

Here’s Moore last July:

…Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes ”“ Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states ”“ but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned…

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

You gotta hand it to him. Moore is originally from Flint, Michigan, he knows that area very well, and he was absolutely correct about what happened there in November.

That doesn’t mean he’s correct on much else. But you know what? I’d listen to him in the future when he talks about opinions in the Rust Belt.

The search for MH370 is officially over

The New Neo Posted on by

The search has ended with no resolution:

The Joint Agency Coordination Center in Australia, which helped lead the $160 million hunt for the Boeing 777 in remote waters west of Australia, said the search had officially been suspended after crews finished their fruitless sweep of the 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) search zone.

“Despite every effort using the best science available, cutting-edge technology, as well as modeling and advice from highly skilled professionals who are the best in their field, unfortunately, the search has not been able to locate the aircraft,” the agency said in a statement, which was a joint communique between the transport ministers of Malaysia, Australia and China.

“Accordingly, the underwater search for MH370 has been suspended…

There is the possibility that a private donor could offer to bankroll a new search, or that Malaysia will kick in fresh funds. But no one has stepped up yet, raising the bleak possibility that the world’s greatest aviation mystery may never be solved. For the families of the 239 people on the doomed aircraft, that’s a particularly bitter prospect given the recent acknowledgment by officials that they had been looking for the plane in the wrong place all along…

in July, 2015, came the first proof that the plane was indeed in the Indian Ocean: A wing flap from the aircraft was found on Reunion Island, east of Madagascar. Since then, more than 20 objects either confirmed or believed to be from the plane have washed ashore on beaches throughout the Indian Ocean. But while the debris proved the plane went down in the Indian Ocean, the location of the main underwater wreckage ”” and its crucial black box data recorders ”” remains stubbornly elusive.

What a sad state of affairs. My heart goes out to the families of the lost. Remember when the plane’s disappearance was just about the only thing anyone was talking about? At least—and it’s a small comfort, but it’s something—a few pieces of wreckage have been found over the years. Let’s hope the families don’t have too long to wait for more information. Nothing will even begin to bring back their loved ones, of course, but more knowledge would help.

Polls, the press, and Trump…continued

The New Neo Posted on by

The steady drip-drip-drip of the “Trump is so unpopular” message goes on.

I’ve already dealt with the issue at length recently, so I’ll not go into it in depth again right now.

However, I’ll add that—unlike Donald Trump—I don’t think most of the polls are “rigged.” But I certainly think that all polls have become more deeply and broadly flawed in recent years because proper sampling has become more difficult and response rates also aren’t what they used to be.

In addition, there is no question in my mind that polls can and will be spun by the press and pundits to say just about anything they want. Right now their goal is to deeply undermine the Trump presidency in any way possible, and polls are another means to that end, one the MSM plans to exploit to full advantage.

Yes indeed, Trump has historic unfavorables, but you know what? He did as a candidate, too. One could just as easily write alternate headlines that say Trump’s unfavorables have uniformly lowered and his favorables risen since the days of the campaign, and that this has happened despite the relentless Trump-dissing by the media, plus his own intermittently intemperate tweeting.

Or one could say that—according to the same poll that is reporting Trump’s continuing low approval ratings—the country is nevertheless evenly split (48-48) on whether people think he will be a good president.

Considering where Trump started out, that’s pretty astounding.

As for me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we’ll see. So far, Trump has exceeded my expectations, which were extremely low. But the reality of a Trump presidency will only emerge as his campaign of words becomes an administration of actions. And actions have consequences in the real world, consequences that don’t necessarily align with spin on either side.

Britain blocks Obama/Kerry plans to further harm Israel during Obama’s last presidential days

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall that, as noted here, after the pre-Christmas anti-Israel UN resolution a Paris conference was planned (with Kerry in attendance), and then a January 17 UN resolution to further the condemnation of Israel.

Well, notice that today is January 17. But there almost certainly won’t be any more UN resolutions on Israel during the Obama administration. And the reason has nothing to do with any decision by Obama or Kerry to back off.

What it has to do with is the Brexit vote, the outcome of which resulted in the resignation of Britain’s PM Cameron and the coming to power of the new PM, Theresa May. May’s government voted for the December UN resolution, but yesterday Britain blocked the planned further undermining of Israel by the waning Obama administration and the other countries at the Paris meeting.

The British statement affirmed its commitment to the two-state solution, adding:

…[W]e have particular reservations about an international conference intended to advance peace between the parties that does not involve them ”“ indeed which is taking place against the wishes of the Israelis ”“ and which is taking place just days before the transition to a new American President when the US will be the ultimate guarantor of any agreement. There are risks therefore that this conference hardens positions at a time when we need to be encouraging the conditions for peace.

That’s why we have attended in an observer status and have not signed up to the communique.

That statement makes it quite clear that May doesn’t think that lame-duck Obama/Kerry have much (if you’ll excuse the term) legitimacy in their attempts at kicking Israel on their way out, and that May is anticipating dealing with President Donald Trump. Too bad May couldn’t find a bit more courage to do what was right during the Security Council vote back in December.

[NOTE: More here.]

In Europe, slight clue begins to dawn…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but is bravely shaken off.

The global elite are meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos this week for their annual shindig but, as Donald Trump waits to be inaugurated as US President, the world’s power-brokers are struggling to come up with answers to the rise of ‘populism’…

Moises Naim, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: ‘There is a consensus that something huge is going on, global and in many respects unprecedented. But we don’t know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it.’…

Last year the consensus at Davos was that Trump had no chance of being nominated, let alone elected.

But then the global elite also never dreamed Britain would vote to leave the European Union.

I don’t fault them for those predictions; they were the predictions of most people. But a failure to figure out why it happened—what the causes are—is preposterous. And the article contains quite a few examples of the rationalizations of some of the atendees.

The fault, dear “global elites,” is not in your stars,
But in yourselves, that you are underlings.

Or that you are becoming underlings.

Angela Merkel will not be at the meeting. She’s facing a tough election.

Nose Lifters

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the rise of the childish nose. When I was a kid, that was the sort of nose that was called “pug”—which was not a compliment, although a pug nose was often thought of as cute.

The French have a word for it, too, a more elegant one: retroussé. And Kate Middleton exemplifies a rather restrained example of the genre—one that happens to suit her face and is natural for her, but that usually looks strained when imposed on another face by the plastic surgeon’s hands.

At least, that’s my opinion. I like a more dignified nose, although I admit that some people have noses that are unfortunate enough to cry out for some assistance. Ask Cyrano.

Now I read that there’s a product called a “Nose Lifter” that provides a temporary road to the tiny little turned-up childish nose of everyone’s (apparently) dreams:

This Japanese-based beauty product claims to give instant nose job results without any incisions or injections. The product is essentially a tiny splint made of soft PVC plastic that’s inserted into the nose to prop up the nostrils and tip of the nose for a more defined look. Surprisingly, the results are extremely noticeable””in a good way.

While the idea of a nonsurgical nose job seems tempting, Beverly Hills, CA, facial plastic surgeon, Kimberly J. Lee, MD, says the device could be potentially dangerous if misused. “It is likely uncomfortable to wear, as most people are not used to having something in their noses and it is likely to create some obstructive effect to the nasal airflow,” she explains.

It also may raise the risk of dangerous infection.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? But hey, look what the nose looks like in the “after” photo:

I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. The woman on the right has her nifty Nose Lifter in place, and what is the effect? A certain childishness that isn’t apparent in the first photo.

But that’s all I see. The first nose looks real, the second fake. But I guess everything has to be lifted these days.

Trump and the press; Obama and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

During Obama’s 2008 campaign and for the entire near-decade that’s passed since them, the press has almost-uniformly adored him and been his willing handmaiden and booster.

With Donald Trump, it’s a bit more complicated. And that’s putting it mildly.

At first the MSM found him to be a joke. Then, when they realized he was catching on despite their efforts, they boosted him because (a) he was good for business—their business; and (b) they thought he’d be by far the weakest opponent for Hillary Clinton, who they didn’t love as they had Obama but who they still wanted to win the presidency.

Then Trump won the GOP nomination. That made the press’s task more complicated. They still wanted to milk his outrageousness for the ratings boost it gave them, but they still very much wanted him to lose the election and they covered him in such a way that they thought their coverage would add to the near-certainty that he would lose.

Then Trump won the election. That was completely unacceptable.

So now it’s an all-out war. Every utterance of his—and he still makes some outrageous ones, although fewer than while campaigning—is twisted and turned by the MSM for maximum negative effect. Democratic politicians, spokespeople, pundits, Hollywood stars, and a host of others have joined in the chorus, and they didn’t even need much encouragement to do so.

The latest brouhaha is over reports that Trump is threatening to kick reporters out of the White House and leave them standing forlornly in the rain:

In the 1890s, journalists covering the president were forced to stand vigil outside the White House fence, querying visitors for scraps of information and appealing for audiences with presidential aides.

Today’s reporters are concerned that President-elect Donald J. Trump could send them back into the past.

The White House press corps was stunned on Sunday by reports of a proposal by the Trump administration to eject reporters from their home in the West Wing ”” a move that, if carried out, would uproot decades of established protocol whereby journalists are allowed to work in the White House close to senior officials.

The outcry has been tremendous, as though Trump is about to stifle freedom of the press. That’s how the report has filtered down to many people who have read the coverage, particularly the headlines and the first few paragraphs only. Easy, then, to miss or to discount the next paragraph:

Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, appeared to backpedal on the idea after it was reported by Esquire magazine, saying that only the location of the press briefing room was being discussed and that the administration was merely considering a larger area to accommodate the hundreds of journalists seeking to cover Mr. Trump.

After that brief foray into stating what the Trump camp has actually said on the matter, we have this:

But for jittery Washington reporters, it was yet another salvo from an administration that has shown an unusual willingness to berate and belittle the news media, at the behest of a president-elect who has floated the idea of rolling back libel protections and, in a volcanic appearance last week, refused to take questions from CNN after it ran a story he did not like.

Forget about the press’s “unusual willingness to berate and belittle” Trump.

And—for anyone with a memory for events during the not-so-long-ago Obama administration—forget about Obama’s power plays on the press and in particular Fox News (see this), when Fox (practically alone among news outlets) ran stories he did not like. But his threats to the press began long before that, when during his 2008 Obama’s lawyer did this:

Straight out of the Democratic handbook Harry Reid used to threaten ABC’s broadcast license for showing the “Path to 9/11,” here’s Obama lawyer Robert Bauer warning station managers not to air the NRA’s new anti-Obama “Hunter” ad if they want to stay in the FCC’s good graces.

In the spring of 2010 I wrote an entire post on the subject of Obama’s power plays towards a press that still adored him. The title of the post was “Obama: the press’s abusive lover.” It’s a lengthy post with quite a few examples, and points out that “even the administration’s favorite reporters have been frozen out when they don’t toe the line.”

And remember, all of that was against a very friendly press.

[NOTE: Here’s a more fact-based report of what actually happened vis a vis this issue of where the Trump White House might put the press corps.]

On Martin Luther King Day

The New Neo Posted on by

{NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]

I have some trouble with the hagiography of Martin Luther King. Yes, he was a great man who did a great thing for which he should be duly honored. He was an inspirational figure in the non-violent civil rights movement in this country, as well as a remarkable speaker, and a very brave man.

It was King’s strong personal qualities of leadership, and what George H.W. Bush might rightly call “the vision thing,” that enabled King to bring together so many people to peacefully demonstrate in furtherance of a lofty and necessary goal—that of ending discrimination against blacks in this country.

As for the more problematic aspects of his life—well, I think they can be summed up by saying that King was a flawed human being. In other words, a human being. Perhaps MLK himself would be the first to agree; he was a preacher, after all, and he knew a lot about human sin and error. It’s pretty much certain he was a philanderer as well as a plagiarist, and in later life he seemed to veer ever more leftward (some think that’s a feature, not a bug).

Does that diminish his achievement? I don’t think so. I’ve always been more interested in real human beings who accomplish great things despite their own weaknesses than I am in a pretended (and mostly unachievable) perfection.

[NOTE: One thing that’s long amazed me is that King was so young when he was assassinated. At the time I perceived him as an older man in his 50s, but he was actually a mere 39 years old. If he were alive today, he would only have just turned 88 yesterday.]

Donald O’Connor, dancing up a storm

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve never been a big Donald O’Connor fan, but it’s about time I remedied that failing. This video (from the 1953 movie “Call Me Madam”) goes a long way towards converting me. It features Donald, supposedly drunk, making impossible moves with the easiest, most casual, most unstudied-seeming flair and grace, defiant of the laws of physics and the possibility of breaking his bones as things go crash! around him.

And what’s with his shoes and the balloons? Did he, a la Lotte Lenya in “From Russia With Love,” have a knife hidden in the front of each shoe?

Watch:

As I watched that, I thought “vaudeville.” And sure enough, O’Connor was the child of vaudeville performers and got his start in the business. He also had a history of alcoholism in real life, but sobered up in 1978.

O’Connor’s Wiki entry says vaudeville. But this obituary for O’Connor is far more specific, and states that although vaudeville played a part, so did the circus:

Donald David Dixon Ronald O’Connor was born on August 28 1925 in Chicago, the youngest of seven in a family of acrobats. His father, who died when Donald was nine months old, was a circus strongman and one of the best-known “leapers” in the business: his star turn involved jumping over four elephants. Donald’s mother was a bareback rider and high-wire star who, her son claimed, was back on the tightrope two days after his birth.

Donald made his first public appearance when he was three days old. At 13 months he was drawing a salary for his part in the family act – playing a beach ball as his brothers threw him around the stage. He spent the whole of his childhood touring America with his family.

His elder brothers taught him their act, which involved ice-skating, sharp shooting and acrobatics. “My mother worried about me because I was the baby,” he recalled, “she always wanted me to stay at the bottom of the pyramid so that I wouldn’t fall.”…

Touring the vaudeville circuit, he met Judy Garland, who became a lifelong friend; but, he said, “Judy and kids like Mickey Rooney were being ‘groomed’ for success, while I was just a vaudevillian. I didn’t audition, I only did one act and if they liked it they hired me.”

By the mid-1930s, vaudeville was all but dead and Donald, now 12, began to look for a new career.

At twelve. A new career. I guess he found one.