Wednesday Potpourri

First, the cerebrally challenged Alexander Vindman, of Trump impeachment fame, said this:

What did Trump do during his four years to end the Russia-Ukraine war? Nothing. Trump is full of shit.

To which someone who calls himself Comfortably Smug responded on Twitter:

Well you see, Russia didn't invade Ukraine until after Trump left, you absolute moron Dems are in total disarray

Second, our vaunted military cannot build a pier in Southern Gaza. And it cannot stop the Houthis from terrorizing shipping in the Red Sea.

But, it is all-in with diversity training.

The New York Post reports on a study conducted by Center for American Institutions at Arizona State University.

Herewith, some words from the executive summary:

“The massive DEI bureaucracy, its training and its pseudo-scientific assessments are at best distractions that absorb valuable time and resources,” the executive summary states. “At worst they communicate the opposite of the military ethos: e.g. that individual demographic differences come before team and mission.”

Third, in the meantime American corporations have been touting the virtues of diversity and inclusion because a consulting firm, McKinsey told them to do so. 

It turns out that the correlation was incorrect. The Wall Street Journal reports:

When management consulting firm McKinsey declared in 2015 that it had found a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity, it was a breakthrough. The research was used by investors, lobbyists and regulators to push for more women and minority groups on boards, and to justify investing in companies that appointed them.

Of course, the companies have been trying it out. They have discovered that it doesn't work:

Since 2015, the approach has been tested in the fire of the marketplace and failed. Academics have tried to repeat McKinsey’s findings and failed, concluding that there is in fact no link between profitability and executive diversity. And the methodology of McKinsey’s early studies, which helped create the widespread belief that diversity is good for profits, is being questioned.

Fourth, speaking of diversity hires, the ultimate version is the Chairman of the European Commission, one Ursula von der Leyen.

It turns out, she is something of a plagiarist and a fraud. This comes from George Georgiou, at Naked Capitalism:

Questions about VDL’s lack of probity first surfaced in 2015 when she was accused of plagiarising her doctoral dissertation. She was eventually cleared of the accusations but as the BBC reported on 9 March 2016, the president of the Hannover Medical School, Christopher Baum, conceded that “Ms von der Leyen’s thesis did contain plagiarised material”, but he added “there had been no intent to deceive”. Her first lucky escape.

VDL’s lack of probity continued while she served as Germany’s Minister of Defence between 2013 and 2019. During her tenure at the ministry, she became embroiled in a scandal regarding payments of €250 million to consultants related to arms contracts. Germany’s Federal Audit Office found that, of the €250 million declared for consultancy fees, only €5.1 million had been spent. Furthermore, one of the consultants was McKinsey & Company, where VDL’s son was an associate, thus raising a possible conflict of interest. It also emerged that messages related to the contracts had been deleted from two of VDL’s mobile phones. Although she was eventually cleared of corruption allegations, questions over her probity during that period remain to this day.

Of course, there’s more to this story, but that should suffice.

Fifth, we have followed this story from the onset, but now everyone seems to understand that shutting down schools during the pandemic was extremely damaging for young children. 

The New York Times reports:

The pandemic’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers are now school-age, and the impact on them is becoming increasingly clear: Many are showing signs of being academically and developmentally behind.

Interviews with more than two dozen teachers, pediatricians and early childhood experts depicted a generation less likely to have age-appropriate skills — to be able to hold a pencil, communicate their needs, identify shapes and letters, manage their emotions or solve problems with peers.

A variety of scientific evidence has also found that the pandemic seems to have affected some young children’s early development. Boys were more affected than girls, studies have found.

“I definitely think children born then have had developmental challenges compared to prior years,” said Dr. Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, whose research is on kindergarten readiness. “We asked them to wear masks, not see adults, not play with kids. We really severed those interactions, and you don’t get that time back for kids.”

The pandemic’s effect on older children — who were sent home during school closures, and lost significant ground in math and reading — has been well documented. But the impact on the youngest children is in some ways surprising: They were not in formal school when the pandemic began, and at an age when children spend a lot of time at home anyway.

The early years, though, are most critical for brain development. Researchers said several aspects of the pandemic affected young children — parental stress, less exposure to people, lower preschool attendance, more time on screens and less time playing.

Yet because their brains are developing so rapidly, they are also well positioned to catch up, experts said.

The youngest children represent “a pandemic tsunami” headed for the American education system, said Joel Ryan, who works with a network of Head Start and state preschool centers in Washington State, where he has seen an increase in speech delays and behavioral problems.

Naturally, minority children were the most damaged. This should not come as news.

As for recovering the loss, the psycho professionals interviewed by the Times suggest that it can be done. And yet, one suspects that they have a stake in optimism.

Sixth, meanwhile on the West Bank…. You will recall that those who have been trying to save Hamas by hobbling the Israeli military have proposed an alliance with the Palestinian Authority, the group that does not rule Gaza, but that does rule the West Bank.

As for the chances that the Palestinian Authority will be a partner for peace, you cannot be serious. In fact, the notion is so unserious that the New York Times reports on terrorist infiltration into the West Bank. And it reports that the PA has ceded authority to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Tommy Friedman should read the New York Times:

I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, shattered alleyways. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they have switched allegiances from the relatively moderate Fatah faction, which dominates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to more radical groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

More weapons and explosives are being manufactured in the West Bank, according to both the fighters themselves and Israeli military officials. They say the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank, is losing ground to the more radical Palestinian factions, who are actively fighting Israel and gaining more support from Iran in the form of cash and weapons smuggled into the territory.

Fatah recognizes Israel’s right to exist and cooperates with its army. But some of the militants affiliated to Fatah, part of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades crucial to the second intifada of the early 2000s, have never respected the Palestinian Authority and its compromises with Israel and the occupation. Some have, like Mr. Jaber, simply declared their new allegiance to the more hard-line Islamist factions.

As I said, taking the Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace is a fool’s errand.

Seventh, as for the American insistence on Israeli restraint, the result of this restraint, enforced by refusing to send certain weapons, is the resurgence of Hamas.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Palestinian militants fired one of the largest barrages toward Israel in months on Monday while Israeli forces reengaged with Hamas fighters in a Gaza City neighborhood they had previously invaded, signs the conflict risks becoming a protracted war of attrition as militants regroup and rearm.  

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, said it fired rockets at southern Israel. The Israeli military said the attack was largely intercepted, caused no damage and consisted of 20 projectiles that came from the area of Khan Younis. Israel carried out a monthslong operation there against militant groups that ended in early April. 

The barrage reinforced the challenge for Israel as it seeks to pursue a counterinsurgency campaign against militants who retain rocket and mortar firing capabilities almost nine months into the Israeli campaign to destroy them. 

“We are nearing the end of the stage of the destruction of Hamas’s terror army and will have to target its remnants going forward,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Monday, in a sign that Israel is preparing to move to a new phase in the fighting.

Eighth, follow the money, isn’t that the correct phrase. Now The College Fix reports on the contributions made to American universities by Arab countries. Surely, this has an influence on university policy.

About one in four foreign dollars donated to American universities in the past four decades have come from Arabic countries, many of whom are hostile to Israel.

A total of $13 billion have come from Arabic countries, out of about $55 billion total.

The latest report from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise “documents the substantial sums contributed by donors from Arab states and the resulting pressure on universities to avoid teaching or research that might offend them.”

A Department of Education February 2024 report “lists 24 donations worth $11,618,000, all from ‘Palestinian territories,’” according to the group. However, the United States does not official recognize a separate Palestinian state.

“It also flags transparency issues and the potential influence of Arab governments on U.S. universities,” the report states.

Mitchell Bard, the report’s author and AICE’s executive director, provided further commentary to The College Fix via email.

“Funding can be an incentive/disincentive to take a particular position. E.g., Qatar would want positive research about its government and be upset over research on Al Jazeera, radical Islam, or corruption in its World Cup bid,” Bard (pictured) told The Fix. “Faculty may teach skewed versions of history, downplaying for example terrorism.”

He said, “universities should be required to report what foreign funds are specifically used for and their sources and this information should be published by [the Department of Education].”

“Departments should be policed so they do not take political positions,” Bard told The Fix. The ‘academic’ needs to be put back into academic freedom,” he said.

His group does not want to “vilify Arab funding sources,” according to the report. Rather, it wants to see “transparency measures to safeguard academic integrity, foster a health exchange of ideas,” and “ensure” funding is not being used to “sway” research, curriculum, and “faculty recruitment.”

The top four recipients of Arab donations since 1981 are all prestigious research universities – Cornell University, Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, and Carnegie Mellon University, top the list.

Ninth, the most shocking part of this diagnosis is that the mainstream media does not seem very interested. A retired neurologist wrote to The Free Press to offer-- anonymously-- his diagnosis of our president:

Neurologists frequently make diagnoses by observation. In fact, most movement disorder diagnoses are made by direct observation or description by patients and families. Mr. Biden has Parkinsonism, an umbrella term that refers to neurologic conditions that cause slowed movements, rigidity, and tremors. By observation, he has a masked face, reduced blinking, stiff and slow gait, hunched posture, low volume voice, imbalance, freezing, mild cognitive disturbance, and difficulty turning. I have seen one video of tremor. All these diagnose Parkinsonism. 

He would need further investigation by experts to determine which specific disease within the broad term he has, such as idiopathic Parkinson’s disease or another specific disease.

While there is no cure for the many conditions comprising Parkinsonism, there are effective treatments for many of the symptoms. By failing to get a diagnosis, the president is denying himself such treatments, and so worsens his own situation.

Meanwhile, I have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. Please contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

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