Wednesday Potpourri

First, fresh from his encounter with a Congressional fire alarm, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a leading Congressional anti-Semite thrilled to his meeting with famed Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein.

You may recall that Finkelstein once called Zionists-- “Nazis in black hats and beards.” Now, the October 7 massacre thrilled him to the roots of his marrow.

At the time Finkelstein wrote:

I, for one, will never begrudge — on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul — the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled….

In case you were wondering what anti-Semitism looks like, consider a man whose soul is warmed by scenes of murder, rape and mutilation of Jews. Obviously, Finkelstein is unfit for human company. He has succeeded in rendering himself worthless.

Second, the New Neo blog has a few words about Hamas hostages:

I think the phrase that makes more sense is “Let them go!” – addressed to Hamas and the Gazans*. Of course, Hamas has no more intention of letting them go than Pharaoh had of letting the Jews who were slaves in Egypt go, as in the song “Let My People Go.” It took ten escalating plagues for that to happen, and it’s not surprising it took that much to get him to relent. Perhaps you believe that’s a historical fact, or perhaps you believe it’s a legend or a story, but whichever it is it tells something true about evil and power.

I suppose if the message is to be “Bring them home!,” the words should be addressed to the world: the UN, nations, supposed “humanitarian” organizations, and the international community as a whole. If the world was united in stating the obvious fact that the kidnappings are evil and Hamas must release them or face attack or severe sanctions, globally – perhaps that would be enough pressure. But in reality that is very far from happening and Hamas knows it, and knows that the world is actually far more united against Israel.

Third, the Biden administration keeps droning on about the two state solution. Even Tom Friedman, notable mouthpiece for the administration, is persuaded that it is the only solution.

Unfortunately, Hamas does not agree. Consider the following:

Khaled Mashal — a key figure helping to run the terror organization from Qatar — claimed in a videotaped interview with Kuwaiti podcaster Amar Taki last week that Gazans and Israelis cannot co-exist, a sentiment he said was made all too clear after Oct. 7.

“I would like to say two things about the two-state solution. First, we have nothing to do with the two-state solution,” the 67-year-old terrorist said in a translation provided by MEMRI TV. “We reject this notion, because it means you would get a promise for a [Palestinian] state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity.

Fourth, for your edification, fellow Substacker Dex Quire offers a cogent analysis of the situation in Israel and Gaza.

Fifth, Sports Illustrated magazine is apparently shutting down. The Babylon Bee has the best commentary:

"I just don't know where things went south," said Jack Weber. 

"Did we not get woke enough? Should we have featured trans models even earlier? Was the heavy women we put on the cover not heavy enough? What was it? Maybe we should've given more consideration to plastering the Pride flag on our cover back in June. I was certain we signaled the appropriate amount of virtue for every possible cause and movement out there. It just makes no sense."

Sixth, Daniel Greenfield’s Twitter offers this commentary on our woke administration:

Once upon a time, NASA wanted to go to the stars, but now it wants to make sure that men can go where no man has gone before… the ladies’ room.

Seventh, among those who take exception to the hoopla surrounding the World Economic Forum at Davos is Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh. Rather than fly to the Swiss mountains to pontificate with the world’s intelligentsia, Ganesh flew to Dubai. To his mind, the future looks more like Dubai than like Davos. It’s more about sea lanes, about ships passing through the Red Sea, and about mineral deposits than it is about big ideas.

It’s a thought worth considering:

A land­locked town in a land­locked nation is a damn fool place to host the World Eco­nomic Forum. As the Houthis are giv­ing us occa­sion to remem­ber, the forum of world eco­nom­ics is the sea. The set­ting of Davos encour­ages a very turn-of-the-mil­len­nium obses­sion with ideas, “trends” and tech over geo­graphic facts. You wouldn’t know from the abstrac­tion of the dis­course there how much of mod­ern life still hinges on the safe pas­sage of tan­gible objects across water (or on the dis­tri­bu­tion of min­eral depos­its). It is easier in Dubai to see what makes the world go round because of, not des­pite, its de-intel­lec­tu­al­isa­tion of things.

Eighth, a man caused a ruckus by making his Tinder date split the bill. The story appeared on TikTok, where the man was widely criticized.

The New York Post reported:

His point of view was that women aren’t acting like women anymore – so why should men have to embrace the traditional gender roles assigned to them? The girls he’s dated don’t want to take care of kids, cook for their husbands and aren’t “nurturing.” Therefore, he shouldn’t be expected to act like it’s the 1950s.

“Women are only feminists until it comes to certain things that they don’t want to do,” he said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Everybody’s a feminist until it’s time to split the bill.”

Ninth,  Harriet Marsden tells us something that we already knew in The Week UK. Argentina is the therapy capital of the world .

But the answer is Argentina. According to 2016 data from the World Health Organization, it had 222 psychologists per 100,000 people; the US had 30. But the high supply of psychologists, especially in the cosmopolitan capital of Buenos Aires, can barely cope with demand, said Drew Ambrose, presenter of "Mindset", Al Jazeera's video series on mental health. 

One might reasonably ask how that has been working out for Argentina:

Over the past 100 years, Argentina went from being seen as a paragon of stability and success to brutal military dictatorship, experiencing violent coups and, at the turn of the century, economic collapse. Although reported rates of anxiety, depression and psychological illnesses have risen sharply all over the world since the Covid-19 pandemic, Buenos Aires endured the world's longest continuous lockdown – of 234 days, in 2020. 

This does not seem like a good advertisement for the value of therapy. 

Strangely, Marsden does not recognize that Argentinians elected Milei because economic stagnation and runaway inflation had again come to infest the nation:

In the past two years alone, the country has endured intense political instability and an inflation rate that hit 211% at the end of 2023, largely thanks to the shock election of far-right President Javier Milei last autumn.

Just as certain people cling to their guns and religion, Argentinians cling to Freudian psychoanalysis. Obviously, they have not read my thoughts carefully enough:

 

Buenos Aires is also the only city where psychoanalysis, popularised by Sigmund Freud, remains the most popular form of therapy. The practice, which explores the unconscious mind via dreams and childhood memories, took the world by storm in the 1960s, but is now "viewed as somewhat obsolete" elsewhere in the world, said CNN. But more holistic, physical forms of group therapy are growing in popularity in the city.

Tenth, the news comes to us from China. If you are inclined to accept anything coming out of China, you will be happy to learn that researchers have discovered that eating dark chocolate reduces your blood pressure.

Bob Yirka reports in Medical Xpress:

A team of cardiologists at Shaoxing People's Hospital, working with a colleague from Zhuji People's Hospital, both in China, has found an association between consumption of dark chocolate and reductions in the risk of essential hypertension.

One does not know what effect it has on non-essential hypertension.

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