Saturday Miscellany

First, is the tide turning? Columbia University called the police to remove pro-Hamas, anti-Israeli demonstrators who had camped out on the college green.

The New York Post editorialized:

We’re glad to see [Columbia President] Shafik stand up that vow; clearly, Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.

Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves, sending a clear message that they’re fine even when they feature rabid antisemitism.

Students need to see administrators stand up and make it clear that antisemites don’t get a free pass to violate school policies just because they’re on the left.

And yet, the next day they were all back, accompanied by no other than an anti-Semite named Norman Finkelstein.

Describing the October 7 massacre, Finkelstein said this:

… it warmed every fiber of my soul.

Now we know where his soul is going to be spending eternity.

Second, slightly more than two dozen Googlers occupied executive offices to protest Israel’s defensive actions in Gaza. The company decided that enough was enough. It fired the protesters.

Perhaps the tide is turning.

Third, over at Hobart William Smith College, faculty member Jodi Dean celebrated the October 7 Hamas atrocities. The college suspended her for the rest of the semester.

Lisa Schiffren has the story at The College Fix. She quotes Dean’s remarks:

The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating. 

Who could not feel energized seeing oppressed people bulldozing the fences enclosing them, taking to the skies in escape, and flying freely through the air?

Now she has been disciplined. Again, perhaps the tide is turning.

Fourth, the next time you hear about all of the innocent civilians who have been killed in Gaza, keep in mind that most of them support Hamas. Many of them assisted Hamas in their October 7 attack.

Alan Dershowitz explains:

Among the so-called innocent "civilians" who Hamas claims have been killed by Israel, there are thousands of guilty and complicit civilians without whose assistance Hamas could not have succeeded in their barbarisms….

All in all, the number of absolutely innocent Gazans — babies, children and adults who are not complicit in Hamas crimes — is a fraction of those claimed by Israel's enemies, including so-called human rights groups.

Fifth, meanwhile in New York City, we are seeing more and more empty storefronts. This is what happens when organized retail theft becomes the order of the day. And it is what happens when weak prosecutors do not enforce the laws.

The New York Post editorialized:

Vacant storefronts are both a sign and a cause of economic distress — and they’ve nearly doubled in the city since the pandemic.

Per the city Department of Finance, more than 11% of Big Apple storefronts now sit empty, discouraging nearby commerce and attracting disorder.

“They are creating havoc because there is homeless, garbage, and the business next door hurts,” City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose Upper West Side district has been hit hard by the vacancies, told The Post.

But her fellow progressives seem pretty clueless about their own responsibility here.

It’s hard to keep a retail shop running when city and state lawmakers micromanage what you have to pay workers and how you can schedule shifts, and even mandate benefits.

Not to mention the high taxes they impose and the get-out-of-jail-free cards they issue to even chronic shoplifters.

Sixth, this description of diversity politics feels rather harsh, and it would be harsh, unless, of course, it is true. From the Twitter account of SleepForever 33:

Facts, there's an epidemic of DEI hires in every almost every business sector who are unqualified for their positions. Even worse, we've also created thousands of fake positions with substantial salaries for these people who contribute nothing to society.

Seventh, Canada has seen an increase in the number of assisted suicides. Apparently, Canadian psychiatrists have decided that it is cheaper to allow patients who are depressed to kill themselves, than to treat them.

Not to be outdone UCLA medical school is now promoting self-immolation as an act of revolutionary suicide.

From the Washington Free Beacon:

UCLA medical school’s psychiatry department hosted a talk earlier this month that glorified self-immolation as a form of "revolutionary suicide," raising concerns from prominent doctors and deepening a public relations crisis that has embroiled the elite medical school.

The talk, "Depathologizing Resistance," was delivered on April 2 by two psychiatry residents at UCLA, Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa, under the auspices of the department’s diversity office and UCLA’s Health Ethics Center, according to slides and emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The talk reflects the erosion of what was until recently a bedrock medical norm: from the American Psychiatric Association to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, all professional mental health bodies warn against glorifying self-harm, lest it inspire others to harm themselves.

That norm has weakened with the rise of activist doctors and their capture of medical organizations. Pediatricians got a vivid taste of the brave new world in 2022 when Morissa Ladinsky, in an address at the American Academy of Pediatrics’s annual conference, praised a transgender teenager, Leelah Alcorn, for "boldly … ending her life" and leaving a suicide note that "went viral, literally around the world."

At UCLA, Izar and Moustafa, who are practicing psychiatrists, argued that self-immolation is a reasonable response to geopolitical events and that the taboo against it serves "the interests of power." By "perpetuating the stigma of self-immolation," they said, psychiatrists "discredit" resistance to "power structures" like "colonization," "homophobia," and "white supremacy," framing legitimate acts of protest as signs of psychiatric dysfunction.

Nothing quite so reasonable as self-immolation. And this from the medical school of a major American university.

As I write this post, I remark sadly that a man immolated himself in downtown Manhattan. His name was Max Azzarello and he called himself an investigative researcher. He was from Florida.  I suspect that he did not attend the meeting at the UCLA Psychiatry department.

Surely, he needed psychiatric care, but apparently did not receive it.

At the least, we know that he hated both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Is that a consolation?

Eighth, the University of Southern California canceled their student graduation speaker, apparently because she was an outspoken Israel hater.

As for the backstory, Nellie Bowles reports it in the Free Press:

USC canceled their outspoken, anti-Israel graduation speaker, saying it was “necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students.” The speaker, the student valedictorian, believes that Israel should be abolished, and that there should be only one majority-Muslim Palestine. This, of course, means the death of Jews and whatnot. But USC didn’t cancel the speech because the content was going to be hateful. They canceled it for “safety” reason, which is how people now wiggle out of many hot situations. 

As with most things, this one is complex. As a friend of Free Press put it: “A faculty committee picked this student out of a group of 100 precisely so that she could turn USC’s graduation ceremony into a Nuremberg rally. And we’re supposed to be ashamed that a grown-up figured out what was happening and shut it down? The two most famous USC students are OJ and Aunt Becky’s daughter. And that’s okay!”

Ninth, every time Joe Biden opens his mouth he sticks his foot in it, but not in the cannibalistic way. So, Biden recently announced to the world that his uncle Finnegan had been shot down in the Pacific during World War II, and had been eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.

It made for a compelling story, especially if you are on a diet.

Anyway, a serious academic in Papua New Guinea took some exception to the story. The Daily Mail explains:

Outraged Papua New Guinea academics have slammed President Joe Biden for his 'unacceptable' suggestion that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in the country after his plane was shot down during World War II.

Biden implied on two occasions Wednesday that his maternal uncle 2nd Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan had met a grisly end at the hands of cannibals after his plane was shot down by the enemy over New Guinea in 1944. 

But the White House and official defense records confirmed that Finnegan died when the military plane he was in experienced engine failure and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, not over land.

Michael Kabuni, a political science lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea, told The Guardian cannibalism was previously practiced by some communities in very specific contexts and that locals 'wouldn't just eat any white men that fell from the sky'.

Other analysts branded Biden's claims as 'unsubstantiated and poorly judged', especially during a time in which the US has been trying to strengthen its ties with Papua New Guinea. 

Tenth, married special needs teacher Jessica Sawicki was caught in flagrante delicto with a seventeen-year old. Now, she has been released from jail in order to take care of her two children, aged five and two.

Are you outraged by the injustice of it all?

It used to be called courtly love. Now it’s a felony.

Eleventh, on the transmania front, some good news from France.

BillboardChris reports:

Yet again, I have to share good news. It just won’t stop! The Senate in France has proposed a ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries on minors. 

Gender-affirming care — the euphemism for childhood sex changes carried out by deranged cultists who have infiltrated our medical system — is dying all around the world. What a beautiful sight.

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