Saturday Miscellany

First, we are all inclined to believe that most Palestinians are merely innocent victims of Hamas. It makes life easier and simpler.

Now, however, a Palestinian organization called Arab World for Research and Development has done a poll of the inhabitants of Gaza.

Do they or do they not endorse the October 7 massacre in Southern Israel.

The results will shock some people. A mere 75% approve of what Hamas did, the murders and the rapes. 92% have a negative opinion of the United States. Stranger still, 64% have a negative view of Iran.

As for whether the innocent people of Gaza are suffering from actions that they do not approve of, we now know the answer.

Second, Nellie Bowles brings us a compelling story of journalistic malfeasance. This time, from the BBC. Reporting on the Israeli invasion of Gaze, the BBC had suggested that Israel had targeted Palestinian physicians. 

The story was quite different:

The BBC’s presenter was very serious when she said that Israel was invading the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza and specifically targeting Palestinian doctors for slaughter: “Israel’s forces are carrying out an operation against Hamas in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital. And they are targeting people including medical teams as well as Arabic speakers.” Yes: “Once again, they are targeting Arabic speakers as well as medical staff.” That certainly sounds very bad. Almost makes me want to shout intifa—

A little while later came the uncomfortable correction. The reality is Israel sent extra doctors to help on the ground at the hospital. So easy to mistake those phrases. Here’s the BBC: “And now an apology from the BBC. We said that medical teams and Arabic speakers were being targeted; this was incorrect. We misquoted a Reuters report. We should have said: IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers. We apologize for this error.” But we don’t apologize for the effort! Well done, lads. 

Third, the Biden administration has chosen to reward Iran for the Hamas October 7 atrocities. This from Nellie Bowles at the Free Press:

Biden is working to unfreeze $10 billion in assets for Iran as a special treat for everything they’ve been doing, a little early gesture to show who the Biden administration is thankful for this year (yes, it’s you, Ayatollah Khamenei, you rascal!). From the WSJ on the relaxed sanctions: “You’d think the Biden administration would have realized by now that enriching the Iranian regime is a dangerous mistake. You’d be wrong.”

Obviously, the timing is indecent, but it shows that Iran has not miscalculated the lack of fortitude and the weak character of our president.

Fourth, the Miss Universe pageant went woke. Now it has gone broke. For some reason people did not want to turn out to see trans women in a beauty pageant. Duh?

The Daily Mail reports the story:

A Miss Universe judge said outrage over transgender contestants is what led to the pageant's bankruptcy and said the company had 'financial issues' in Thailand. 

Journalist Emily Austin, who was also a 2022 Miss Universe judge, sat down on the Fox Business Varney & Co. talk show on Thursday and expressed her thoughts on the organization's fallout. 

'I think the outrage about a trans woman coming to Miss Universe and preaching, "Bring the power back to women," couldn't be more of an oxymoron,' Austin said. 

Thai media mogul and trans-woman Anne Jakrajutatip bought the rights to Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA for $20million in 2022 from IMG Media. 

'I think her company in Thailand has its own financial issues, but socially and morally it's just wrong. And people are starting to catch onto that,' Austin said. 

Fifth, speaking of transmania, the marketing executive who tanked Bud Light beer by associating it with transactivist Dylan Mulveney, has been fired. It was about time. 

The Daily Mail has the story:

The US chief marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev is stepping down amid the company's continuing slump in sales, following Bud Light's disastrous collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney earlier in the year. 

Benoit Garbe is set to leave his role at Bud Light's parent company at the end of the year, it was announced Wednesday, 'in order to embark on a new chapter in his career.' 

Serving as the company's CMO for just over two years, his tenure was marred by an April marketing debacle where a Bud Light partnership with Mulvaney led to a boycott by the brand's customers and a significant loss in revenue. 

In third quarter returns reported Tuesday, the summer slump continued as the company suffered a 13.5 percent drop in revenue per 100 liters, a key measure for beer sales. 

Sixth, speaking of Vladimir Putin, things are not going so badly for the Russian tyrant. Now that the Ukraine war is off the front pages, things seem to have gone in Putin’s favor.  Apparently, the sanctions regime imposed by the West has not been a rousing success.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Russia policy experts Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss explain it:

As Russian President Vladimir Putin looks toward the second anniversary of his all-out assault on Ukraine, his self-confidence is hard to miss. A much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive has not achieved the breakthrough that would give Kyiv a strong hand to negotiate. Tumult in the Middle East dominates the headlines, and bipartisan support for Ukraine in the U.S. has been upended by polarization and dysfunction in Congress, not to mention the pro-Putin leanings of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.

Western officials’ promises of reinvigorating their own defense industries have collided with bureaucratic and supply-chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, sanctions and export controls have impeded Putin’s war effort far less than expected. Russian defense factories are ramping up their output, and Soviet legacy factories are outperforming Western factories when it comes to much-needed items like artillery shells.

The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful. Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.

Seventh, Colombia has a hippo problem. Back in the 1980s drug kingpin Pablo Escobar imported a bunch of hippos. The animals were so good at reproducing themselves that they began threatening everyone and everything in their way. 

So, the authorities have set out to sterilize them, via The Daily Mail:

The hippos, which spread from Escobar´s estate into nearby rivers where they flourished, have no natural predators in Colombia and have been declared an invasive species that could upset the ecosystem.

A group of hippos was brought in the 1980s to Hacienda Nápoles, Escobar´s private 7,400 acre zoo that became a tourist attraction after his death in 1993. Most of the animals live freely in rivers and reproduce without control.

Right now authorities estimate that there are 169 hippos. If no one intervenes, they estimate that a dozen years from now there will be a thousand.

And we cannot have that.

Eighth, in the race to the bottom, American schoolchildren are being dumbed down. Thanks to the teachers’ unions and our pedagogical class, American children are losing out.

Andrew McMunn reports for WVLT in Knoxville, TN:

The average Composite score on the ACT test for the class of 2023 has fallen to 19.5 out of 36, according to a report.

The decrease in scores marks a decline of 0.3 points from 2022, when the average score was 19.8, data released by ACT in October shows. ACT is the nonprofit organization that administers the college readiness exam.

The average scores in three of the four subjects featured on the test - mathematics, reading and science - were below the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. The benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students taking the test to have a high probability of success in college.

ACT said students who meet a benchmark on the test have about a 50% chance of getting a B score or better in college courses and about a 75% chance of earning a C or better in the same course or courses.

ACT CEO Janet Godwin said this is the sixth consecutive year of declines in average scores.

Godwin also said the number of seniors leaving high school without reaching the college readiness benchmarks is also rising.

“These systemic problems require sustained action and support at the policy level,” she said in a release. “This is not up to teachers and principals alone - it is a shared national priority and imperative.”

No good news here, so we will turn away.

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