Wednesday Potpourri

First, just as we and many others averred, the casualty figures coming out of Gaza, offered by Hamas, were seriously inflated. Now the United Nations has revised them downward, by approximately 50%.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has the story:

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza war sharply downward, reporting more than 14,500 deaths on May 6 but then 7,797 on May 8. OCHA also revised downward its figure for women fatalities from more than 9,500 deaths to 4,959 deaths. The Jerusalem Post first reported the changes on May 11.

The UN attributed its original, higher figures to the Hamas-controlled Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza, whose figures OCHA has cited continually for the past two months. The UN gave no source for the lower figures in its May 8 update, but the figures precisely match those in a May 2 report from a different Hamas-controlled organization, the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Just think, American media outlets bought the Hamas figures, without question.

Second, meanwhile in Eastern Europe, the war in Ukraine continues to rage. American politicians have decided that we need to continue our support, no matter the cost. Some have demurred, only to see themselves denounced as Putin stooges.

Anyway, you might remember famed British political strategist Dominic Cummings. He was a senior adviser to prime minister Boris Johnson. Apparently, there was a power struggle in Johnson’s mind, between Cummings and Carrie-- that is, Johnson’s wife, Carrie. Cummings lost and resigned. The Johnson prime ministership did not survive it.

Anyway, Politico Europe reports the musings of Dominic Cummings on the Ukraine.

“This is not a replay of 1940 with Zelenskyy as the Churchillian underdog,” he said.

“This whole Ukrainian corrupt mafia state has basically conned us all and we’re all going to get f**ked as a consequence. We are getting f**ked now right?”

In a follow-up tweet, Cummings later branded Zelenskyy a “potemkin” leader — but denied he’d called him a “pumpkin” as originally quoted in the interview.

In the game of international Realpolitik, our support for Ukraine has merely pushed Russia and China into an alliance. Considering that the leaders of those countries are getting together this week, Cummings’ thoughts have some pertinence.

Politico Europe explains:

He [Cummings] argued that war would only strengthen the relationship between Russia and China, saying Western nations “pushed [Russia] into an alliance with the world’s biggest manufacturing power.”

Cummings has long been critical of support for Ukraine, a stance that puts him sharply at odds with his old boss Johnson, a vocal supporter of Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s war effort.

He told the paper the West had failed to send Russian President Vladimir Putin a worthwhile signal which would deter him from invading another country.

Third, I have often warned of this outcome, but clearly those student revolutionaries who are protesting for the Palestinian people will soon find themselves jobless. Employers are likely to hold their jejune political activities against them

The National Law Journal reports on the policy at mega law firm, Sullivan and Comwell:

As pro-Palestinian protests spread across university campuses, Sullivan & Cromwell’s senior chair said Wednesday the firm will be “more vigilant” in screening potential candidates. The firm is now outlining some of its vetting processes in that effort, including reviewing resumes, social media, news reports and student group affiliations and employing third-party specialists for background checks. …

Senior firm chair Joe Shenker has maintained a strong position against hate speech and bias during the Israel/Hamas conflict, taking the lead on efforts such as a group letter signed by dozens of law firm leaders sent to law school deans that maintained an “unequivocal stance” in opposition to antisemitism. Shenker was in his Jerusalem synagogue’s bomb shelter when the Hamas-led attack on Israel began on Oct. 7.

In a statement Wednesday, Sullivan & Cromwell said it will “review resumes for participation in pro-terrorist groups and other similar activities” as well as do a “thorough review of the candidate’s online presence, school website [and] news reports” moving forward.

It will also request “lists of all campus organizations the student has been or is currently a part of and monitor activities from those groups that do no align with our ethical standards,” the firm said.

In addition, the firm said it will employ third-party specialists to do formal background checks.

Fourth, just in case you thought I was picking on Kamala Harris and Karine Jean-Pierre by occasionally highlighting their rank stupidity, another administration figure, one Jared Bernstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors ranks very high in the stupidity derby. As noted previously, the supremely unqualified Bernstein has degrees in art and social work.

This is Bernstein’s response to a question about monetary policy, via Powerline:

Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with [Modern Monetary Theory] the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.

Fifth, from Sarah Montalbano at the Independent Women’s Forum, this summation of a recent JP Morgan Chase study of what will happen if we move away from fossil fuels:

A recent report from JPMorgan Chase warns that moving away from fossil fuels will take “decades or generations,” citing inflation, high interest rates, and geopolitics. This prediction is at odds with U.S. government policies mandating a rapid and complete transition.

The report highlights the high costs of supplanting reliable, affordable fossil fuel sources with wind and solar. JPMorgan estimates that the wind and solar buildout between 2024 and 2030 will take approximately $3 trillion annually, or “0.5% of the global annual GDP.” That’s an enormous amount of cash, and leaves “governments (and ultimately taxpayers) as the major underwriters of the energy transition.”

It’s unclear what that $3 trillion annually covers, but the cost of renewable energy includes far more than manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels, which require the mining of large quantities of critical minerals. However, because the wind is not always blowing and the sun does not shine 24/7, battery storage must be built to store electricity and compensate for intermittency.

Utilities must then ensure a reliable dispatchable power source, such as a natural gas plant, is available to ramp generation up or down—which is not only a capital expenditure, but can incur wear and tear and higher fuel costs. Utilities also usually significantly overbuild wind and solar, to try to meet peak demand, adding to their cost.

Because wind and solar use ten times as much land per unit of power as natural gas or coal-fired plants, and the areas with high wind and solar resources are often far from populated areas, these sources must be interconnected to the grid and more high-voltage transmission lines will need to be constructed.

The short-term solution, according to JPMorgan’s report, is “the coal to natural gas switch,” which “could save up to 17% of global emissions compared to a 2022 baseline.” Natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than coal and emits less carbon dioxide. The U.S. electric power sector’s emissions were 32% lower in 2019 than in 2005, thanks to the electricity generation mix shifting toward natural gas.

The JPMorgan report astutely notes that “social unrest and consumer revolt,” are possibilities from the “rising energy costs,” of an “expedited transition.” No kidding. 

JPMorgan’s warning should remind us that reliability and affordability should guide U.S. energy policy. A 100% wind and solar grid does no one any good if it cannot keep the heat on in a freezing winter.

Sixth, I probably do not need to tell you that the American academic world has become a full blown idiotocracy. You need but turn on the news to hear some professorial imbecile ranting about God-only-knows what. If you ask how someone who indulges in such cretinous blather got his or her degree, not to mention a tenured faculty position, you will conclude that the system is hopelessly corrupt.

Of course, Humanities and Social Science departments are thoroughly compromised. And yet, the brain rot also extends to science, and especially to scientific publications. You might call it plagiarism, but it seems more likely to be rank incompetence, gaming the system.

Now a major academic publisher, Wiley, is being forced to delete thousands of supposedly scientific papers, on the grounds that they are fraudulent.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. 

In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn’t alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers.

Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole.

The discovery of nearly 900 fraudulent papers in 2022 at IOP Publishing, a physical sciences publisher, was a turning point for the nonprofit. “That really crystallized for us, everybody internally, everybody involved with the business,” said Kim Eggleton, head of peer review and research integrity at the publisher. “This is a real threat.”

I trust that you caught that. 11,200 papers withdrawn, because they were fakes. What does that say about American science?

Seventh, on the entertainment front, New York Mayor Eric Adams has outdone himself. He has found a solution to the migrant invasion. 

Having noted that the city is running short of lifeguards, Adams recommended that migrants be hired for these jobs. Why? Because “they’re excellent swimmers.”

Just another day in the Big Apple.

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Why Are Women So Miserable?

When the question of women’s mental health pops into your mind, you do not quickly think about Julie Burchill. If you live in Great Britain you know more about her than you wish. If you live in America you have never heard of her. And besides, so many of her references are to things British that you will quickly get lost in her otherwise excellent prose.

In any event, it must have been a slow day, because Burchill has recently written a column on the rather sad state of mental health among British females. Apparently, compared to women in the rest of Europe, British women are more miserable.

You might think that we should address the question to a psychiatrist. You might think that we should find a sociologist who can offer a more comprehensive explanation. Burchill, an essayist, novelist and playwright, seems largely unqualified to offer commentary on mental health matters.

In this case, she writes very well and has certainly suffered her own pains, so, we tell ourselves, she might have some interesting thoughts on the subject. There’s something to the notion of been-there, done-that. When it comes to emotional distress, Burchill certainly has been there and done that.

That means, she is offering peer counseling. I am sure you will be happy to receive some from her.

Her analysis owes more to sociology and social psychology than to anything else. She suggests that wWomen are miserable because it has become fashionable for women to be miserable. I am happy to confess that I did not say that. 

But there’s another reason why women might report as more miserable than before. Being jolly has for some time been seen to be the mark of a peasant; over the past couple of years perfectly OK people have flocked to be diagnosed with all kinds of neuro-diverse problems whereas once they’d have written a book, bagged a new job or generally pulled their socks up. 

Misery has been normalized. To the point where women overestimate their misery in order to feel sophisticated. Worse yet, in a world where misery has currency, people who feel happy and contented risk offending those who have not achieved that halcyon state.

Feeling sad is quite normal; sadness is often a fleeting feeling, occurring perhaps on realising how rubbish our Eurovision entry is, or when our favourite skirt doesn’t zip all the way up to the top – often we shake it off when the sun comes out. But by pathologising everything short of perfect happiness, we’re in danger of misrepresenting ourselves as being more miserable than we actually are. It’s got to the stage where it’s almost like being sad makes you a sensitive person, and being happy makes you a shallow one. ‘I didn’t know my being happy would piss so many people off,’ Anne Hathaway’s character tells her friend in the new film The Idea Of You. ‘People hate happy women,’ her friend replies. It’s easier to mope along with the crowd rather than draw envious attention to oneself by shamelessly enjoying life.

Imagine that-- shamelessly enjoying life. Not having problems to complain about. 

As it happens, Burchill is on to something here. When women get together with other women, too often the conversation becomes an exercise in interminable whining and complaining. If you do have anything to whine and complain about, everyone will consider you to be lying or holding back.

Thanks to therapy, misery has been confused with truth.

Burchill is identifying one of the insalubrious side-effects of therapy culture. People develop a bad habit of filling every conversation with heartfelt and soul deadening plaints.

And then there is this. Apparently, modern women are so overworked that they have become allergic to leisure. It’s part of being all things to all people. Or better, they refuse to say that they are enjoying their leisure, lest they provoke the opprobrium of their overworked friends.

Because there’s only one thing worse than being too busy – and that’s not being busy enough. As AI cuts a swathe through jobs, it’s become a badge of honour for busy bees like me to complain that we’re ‘snowed under’ and ‘up to our eyes’ – whereas what we’re really saying is ‘get a load of me. No machine can do what I do. I’m special!’

As for the Burchill solution, take it for what it is worth. She recommends that women take some time off to enjoy themselves, to go out with their girlfriends, in circumstances where they are not even tempted to complain.

She rejects the notion that women should spend their leisure hours pampering themselves, having spa treatments and trying to look good for men.

If women want to be a bit happier, I’ve got a suggestion. When you manage to grab some me time, make sure you make it about you. Don’t, as the head-patters suggest, waste it on ‘pampering’ or ‘wellness’; you’ll only end up feeling resentful that even your alleged leisure time was spent being pummelled and plucked so that men – who generally just wash and go – might find you less revolting. Take a tip from men; don’t ‘grab a coffee’ with a similarly castrated ‘girlfriend’, instead go out to watch something you love (if you find sport a bore, go and see a band you were mad about as a youngster – they’re always on nostalgia tours), eat pizza till it hurts, get drunk with a raucous chorus line of mates. Trust me, fellow daughters of Albion, you’ll cheer up in no time.

In short, break up your normal routines and go out and have some raw, unadulterated fun. 

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Shame or Guilt

I confess that I read Roger Kimball’s essay on shame and disgust with considerable self-interest. After all, I have written books about shame, so I believe that I have made at least a small contribution to the discussion of the subject.

If one were to read my books, Saving Face and The Last Psychoanalyst, along with Ruth Benedict’s excellent work, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, one would garner a fairly clear idea about the workings of shame within culture. 

And one would not confuse shame and guilt, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum seems chronically to do. I am going to take Kimball at his word on his summation of Nussbaum’s muddled thinking on the topic. At the least, he persuaded me to ignore her book.

For the record, RuthBenedict introduced the distinction between shame and guilt cultures more than four score years ago. She posited that some cultures attempt to produce social cohesion by prescribing customary good behavior, while others do so by punishing actions that constitute bad behavior. 

By my definition, shame involves not doing what you are supposed to do; guilt involves doing something that you are not supposed to do. 

Presumably when you feel ashamed of your behavior you correct it. When you feel guilt or have guilt imposed on you by a court, society extracts a price for your dereliction and often removes you from social commerce.

Bad manners produce shame. Under normal circumstances you mitigate the shame by improving your manners. 

Breaking laws, violating prohibitions and taboos, produce guilt. More importantly, if you are a miscreant, society assumes that you do not have a well-enough developed moral sense to self-correct. It puts you on trial and forces you to pay a price. It also removes you from society for a time.

Dare I underscore that using the wrong fork at a dinner party does not involve breaking any laws. It is not a punishable offense. It represents a failure to observe common customs, thus to fit in with the group.

Similarly, in a larger sense, failures can also produce shame. This might mean losing a war or leading your company into bankruptcy. Again, these are not criminal offenses, but they require a full public expression of shame, coupled with a withdrawal from social contact, a retirement from one's position. 

It is assumed that the person who fails at a task will self-isolate, to remove himself from society for a time. Thus, the matter is normally not referred to the judiciary.

In a shame culture social cohesion is produced when people follow the same customs and observe the same manners. In a guilt culture, social cohesion is supposedly produced when those who break the law, who violate the person or the property of another member of society, are removed from society, forcibly. 

From here things become more complicated. If you fail to use proper manners, you feel shame. If your behavior is bad enough, you might be ostracized from polite society. One remarks in passing that these rules apply equally to everyone. For those, like Martha Nussbaum, who are agonizing over discrimination, we emphasize that, as a rule, in rule-bound cultures, everyone who follows the rules is respected, regardless.

Obviously, someone who is uninvited from dinner parties because of bad manners will eventually have a way to return to society. He will need to practice good manners and to do so consistently. In order to erase the impression that he is an ill-mannered lout, he will need to behave like someone who belongs, who follows the same rules and who respects the sensibilities of all those assembled.

But, if he commits a crime and is removed from society involuntarily, how can he make his way back? In one sense, we say that he pays his debt to society by spending time in prison. 

That does not oblige him to behave well; it lets him know the price of misbehaving. More than a few chronic criminals are simply willing to take the risk. But, since his incarceration, which also involves removing him from social commerce, was involuntary, we cannot know that he has reformed. Incarceration does not involve developing any new prosocial behaviors. It does not involve not committing crimes, but still, if you are in jail, that does not really count.

As for that other burning question, whether or not shame deters people from committing crimes, the truth seems to lie, not in using guilt and sin to deter by putting a price on dereliction, but in encouraging positive pro-social behaviors. 

Thus, people who are convicted of crimes, who experience imposed guilt, are also stigmatized. Apparently, this offends Martha Nussbaum, but still, as Kimball points out, if a serial sexual predator moves into the apartment complex next to yours, you might very well want to know. And you have a right to know.

Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. The issue is not the way we treat reformed criminals. The issue is that we, as law abiding members of society, need to be warned about someone who has broken the law once and who is therefore more likely to do it again. 

Nussbaum is worried about the delicate sensibility of your everyday miscreant. Customs surrounding shame and guilt involve the need to produce a coherent and moral society. 

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Who are the Real Anti-Semites?

The constant drumbeat of anti-Israeli propaganda from the American left has produced a desired result. As the Washington Post reports, a poll taken by The Economist shows that, by 54% to 14% Democrats believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

So, as leftist anti-Semitism engulfs American campuses-- places where any conservative voices are not even allowed, the New York Times has run two articles blaming it all on-- you guessed it-- Republicans and Donald Trump.

So, Republicans have stood up for Israel. The Republican Speaker of the House went to Columbia University to meet with and to show solidarity with Jewish students. The Trump administration gave us the Abraham Accords and a decidedly pro-Israel foreign policy while the Biden administration has sucked up to the Palestianian cause and Gaza.

The New York Times weighs the evidence and declares that campus anti-Semitism was caused by Republicans and Donald Trump, because they have criticized globalism and even with George Soros.

So, the Times has fully embraced being a propaganda rag. It takes considerable chutzpah to describe Soros merely as a “holocaust survivor.”

The truth is that the young Soros, roughly age 12, was placed under the special protection of a Gestapo officer. What he had to do to receive such consideration, we do not know. Nor do we believe that a 12 year old should have been prosecuted for having collaborated with the Third Reich. 

So, Soros, who has never much shown himself to be Jewish, was saved by the Gestapo. How this impacted his developing mind, we do not know. But, the notion that criticizing Soros represents anti-Semitism is not merely ignorant. It is deranged.

Jonathan Tobin offers a reality check in the Jewish News Syndicate:

Soros is Jewish but has always eschewed any expression of Jewish identity or support for Jewish causes or Israel. If conservatives focus on his influence, it is because it is so pervasive since his foundation has given away more money than any other such group in the world. By itself, his campaign to elect soft-on-crime prosecutors in cities throughout the United States has done as much damage to this country as that of any contemporary individual. And though the Times seeks to downplay it, his foundation has also been a major source of funding for groups that are helping to organize the pro-Hamas and antisemitic protests, as well as those in Israel that work to support terrorists and their apologists.

Tobin makes clear a point that others have made, namely, that leftist ideologies, especially in the universities and the media, have taught college students to hate Jews:

… the principal engines of antisemitism in 2024 America are left-wing ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality, which grant a permission slip to Jew-hatred. The pervasive influence of these toxic ideas in American education has helped to indoctrinate largely ignorant students to parrot what earlier generations might have easily understood to be Soviet-era Marxist propaganda about Zionism being racism and Israel being an “apartheid state” against which all “resistance”—even the orgy of rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that Palestinians carried on Oct. 7—can be justified.

And he is correct to call it a secular religion:

And it is only through belief in the orthodoxies of this new secular religion can one conclude that Israel—the democratic nation that was attacked—is a genocidal “white” oppressor (even though the majority of Israeli Jews are people of color since they trace their origins to the Middle East or North Africa) and that the real genocidal terrorists of Hamas and their Palestinian supporters are victims deserving of sympathy and support.

While he writes opinion pieces and does not report the facts, Tommy Friedman, the Biden-administration apologist, has insisted that the problem in Israel and Gaza is Benjamin Netanyahu. That is to say, at a time when Israel is engaged in a war for its survival, Tommy Friedman considers that it is good to join the propaganda wars by offering up a heaping pile of blame for the Israeli prime minister.

In his latest column Friedman writes this:

…. the move has enabled Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect attention from the fact that the most dangerous leader threatening Israel today is not Biden but Bibi.

Israeli decision-making in the current war has been granted to a war cabinet. All members of said cabinet support the way the war is being conducted. With any luck they did not consult with Tommy Friedman about how best to conduct a war.

Strangely, Friedman declares that Biden is the most pro-Israeli president in American history. The charge is absurd on its face:

… the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history, the man who rushed to save Israel from Hamas on Oct. 7 and from Iran on April 13. 

Of course, Biden might have rushed to Israel because he felt guilty for what happened.

Friedman forgets that were it not for Biden fecklessness and his projection of foreign policy weakness, the events of October 7 most likely would not have happened. Again, Donald Trump gave us the Abraham Accords and Joe Biden gave us October 7. Which one is a better friend of Israel?

And yet, as I have occasionally noted, the thrust of the Friedman argument is to absolve Joe Biden of the consequences of his foreign policy. No more and certainly no less.

And Friedman could have read his own newspaper where Peter Baker wrote this:

Biden privately threatened to rethink his support for the war in a private call with Netanyahu in February, two months before doing so publicly, but the White House didn't put it into the readout of the call to try to avoid a public blowup. 

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Besides, the Biden administration has been trying to micromanage the war from the onset. When Israel wanted to flood the Hamas tunnels, the Biden administration told them to restrain themselves.

According to Friedman, the problem is that Netanyahu does not have a Palestinian partner for peace. This is as stupid as the rest of his column since those who chant-- from the river to the sea-- are not calling for a partnership with Israel. They are promoting the annihilation of Israel, down to the last Jew.

The Palestinian Authority has no interest in allying itself with Israel. It is allied with Hamas, supported by the vast majority of people in Gaza.

In truth, the Biden administration interference in Israeli military affairs has taught Hamas that they need but hold out, that they need not surrender.

Besides, Friedman ignores the fact that the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has notably uttered numerous anti-Semitic statements.

Thanks to the New York Times and the Biden administration, indulging in constant trash talk about Israel, that nation is not winning the propaganda war.

On 24 August 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that the Holocaust was not caused by antisemitism, but that Hitler ‘fought’ the Jews because they dealt with ‘usury, money and so on’.

Abbas has made similar antisemitic remarks in the past. In a May 2023 speech at the UN, he likened Israelis to Nazis, saying that they ‘lie like Goebbels’. In August 2022, he accused Israel of having committed ‘50 holocausts’ against the Palestinians[3] and in 2018, he claimed that the Holocaust was caused by the ‘social role’ of Jews as money lenders. 

Unfortunately, such hatred continues to be taught through Palestinian schoolbooks, which are ultimately financed by the EU[4].

And then there is this sidelight. Consider the case of one Maher Bitar. He works for the Biden administration, as special counsel and as director of intelligence and defense programs at the National Security Council.

Who is he? Consider this:

Of course, he was already appointed by the Obama administration, where he managed the "Israeli-Palestinian case".

Before that, as a student, he was the president of the #Islamist extremist and #antisemitic organisation SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) at Georgetown University in #USA.

#SJP is the most violent student organisation in the United States against #Jews today. 

Members of this organisation blew up dozens of events Israelis brought to U.S. campuses over the past decade. In many cases also physical attacks that ended in police investigations.

This is also the organisation leading many of the protests going on now against #Israel on campuses.

And another interesting fact. In 2007 Maher was working at #UNRWA. 

So, the Biden administration, following the Obama administration, hired and empowered a raving anti-Semite. Ifyou are asking yourself who is in charge, this offers a glimmer of a response.

As for the looming question, how do you negotiate with evil. The answer is, you do not. You destroy it.

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