The Case of the Unwanted Pregnancy

One thing is certain: this man needs some serious help. He’s Canadian, but he has become drunk on political correctness and wants to make his life fulfill a feminist fantasy. As I said, he needs some serious help. Being a male feminist, he also turns out to be a bully. He has succeeded in bullying his wife into silence. So much for respecting women.

You see, she is pregnant with their second child. He does not want a second child. It will undermine their mutually satisfying careers. He has explained this all to his pregnant wife. He believes, pathetic sod that he is, that he is just being honest with her.

So he writes to therapist Lori Gottlieb for advice. She is considerably more charitable than you or I would be, but she has to try to get through to someone who has been brainwashed on political correctness and who cannot think straight. Better yet, who cannot think at all.

Without further ado, here is the letter:

My wife and I recently discovered she's about six weeks pregnant. This is devastating news for both of us. We have a 17-month-old daughter and we planned on having only one child. The birth control we had been using failed. I tried to have a vasectomy nine months ago and my wife objected at the doctor's office without citing reasons. She said she would get an IUD instead, but she was unable to get the IUD, because doctors had to remove a fibroid first. She learned about the pregnancy at the doctor's office during a consult on removing the fibroid.

Since hearing the news, I have been honest with her about my feelings. I reminded her that we simply cannot afford a second child and we can kiss our joint career aspirations goodbye if we have another baby. She agrees with me. More important, I said our marriage will be over in the sense that we will just be co-parents rather than lovers because I will resent her, and the baby will always be a reminder of my career sacrifice and our indebtedness.

Although I’ve been clear that I don't want another baby, I’ve told her that this is ultimately her decision and I will support her in whatever she decides—even though I was denied the right and choice to do with my body as I pleased when I wanted a vasectomy. We're both Christians, and I know she will struggle with making the decision I prefer and might regret it afterward. I don't think I will share those regrets, but if she keeps the pregnancy I will likely enter into a state of lifelong depression and feel stuck in an unhappy marriage. I feel like there are only bad outcomes with either choice. What do we do?

One does not quite understand why he will be making the career sacrifice. Is he trying to say that if his wife decides to have their baby she will be spending more time at home and less time on the job? Does he mean that he fears that he cannot support his family and will feel like a failure as a man? Is his anguish merely a covering for his own inadequacy… inadequacy that he seems ready to pawn off on his wife?

Gottlieb does not mention this point, perhaps because it is so harsh that he would likely recoil in horror. But she does understand that if the wife did not want her husband to have a vasectomy, she was saying, in a very unsubtle way, that she did not want to foreclose on the chance of having another child. When he writes that they both do not want another child, he is not speaking for her. He is imposing his views on her.

The man is too obtuse to have received the message. Largely, this means that he is a bully and refuses to engage in a conversation with his wife.

So, Gottlieb opens by explaining that his appalling attitude has made it very difficult for his wife to express her feelings. After all, and not to be overly obvious, she is pregnant. He is not. The decision is rightly hers, but he has created a situation where she is being forced to choose between the baby or the marriage. This is what politically correct brainwashing has wrought.

She continues:

You’ve expressed quite clearly why you don’t want to have a second child, but I’m not sure that your wife has shared her feelings with you in the same detail. For instance, after learning that she was pregnant, you “reminded” her of the reasons you both don’t want this baby—but most people don’t need reminders about how they feel. Similarly, intellectually she “agrees” with you about the constraints a second child might put on your finances and freedom (career or otherwise), but a person can think one thing (A baby will be expensive and require sacrifice) and feel another (Yet I still want one).

As for the bullying, Gottlieb raises it gently, but still the problem is flagrant:

she might be devastated not because she feels exactly the way you do about having a second baby, but because you’ve made it clear to her that having a second baby would launch you into a “lifelong depression” and make you resent her for the rest of your lives. It’s very hard to share your true feelings when you know that your partner will resent you for having them, and that is why some of your assumptions here may not be accurate. In fact, your resentment goes back to the vasectomy. No matter what you two decide, it’s this resentment that will wreak havoc on your lives more than having or not having this baby will.

The problem is the husband’s bad attitude. It is appallingly bad, and he is an appalling human being.

You know what will be the end of your marriage, more than the baby? The double bind you’ve put your wife in. It’s your decision, honey, but either I’ll resent you for the rest of our lives, or you’ll resent me for the rest of our lives.

A little shaming, which is what Gottlieb is offering, is just what he needs.

Do They Have any Sense of Decency?

It was supposed to be a media coup to bring down a president. As it turns out, it looks more and more like media suicide. The American news media, in its frenzy to overturn the results of a fair election, has covered itself in ignominy.

And all for an incompetent fraud named Hillary Clinton.

Something is not right in their minds. The question now is: do they have enough of a sense of shame to apologize? 

Let’s tally it up. From January, 2017 to March, 2019 the mainstream media devoted 2,284 minutes to Trump collusion stories.

As for social media, Axios has the numbers:

Since May 2017, 533,074 web articles have been published about Russia and Trump/Mueller, generating 245 million interactions — including likes, comments and shares — on Twitter and Facebook, according to data from social-media analytics company NewsWhip.

Mainstream media, pundits galore, the NeverTrump right all conspired, dare we say colluded, in an effort to bring down the president. Roger Kimball adds a note about the NeverTrumpers (via Maggie’s Farm):

How that announcement must have stung the NeverTrump fraternity. Here they were, huddled around Bill Kristol’s Twitter feed for the last two-plus years, praying, predicting, posturing that very soon now, any day in fact, Robert Mueller would descend into their midst, the deus ex machina through whose instrumentality they were to be delivered at long last from the nightmare of Donald Trump and his unacceptable record of robust economic growth, hundreds of constitutionally-minded judicial appointments, rising wages, historically low unemployment, a more rational and business-friendly regulatory environment, deeper ties with Israel, a revitalized military, and serious attention to our immigration crisis and the growing threat of an increasing militant China. Yes, it’s been a bad couple of years for the NeverTrumpers.

Want some more? Sean Davis writes in the Wall Street Journal this morning that the mainstream media, the one that Ted Koppel recently excoriated for turning news reporting into propaganda hit pieces, has lost some serious face. That is, it has compromised its reputation for honest journalism in the interest of mounting a coup… in the name of Hillary Clinton:

America’s blue-chip journalists botched the entire story, from its birth during the presidential campaign to its final breath Sunday—and they never stopped congratulating themselves for it. Last year the New York Times and Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize “for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.” A 2017 Time magazine cover depicted the White House getting a “makeover” to transform it into the Kremlin.

Davis continues:

All based on a theory—that the president of the United States was a Russian asset—produced by a retired foreign spy whose work was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. An unbiased observer would have taken the theory’s partisan provenance as a red flag, but most political journalists saw nothing but green lights. No unverified rumor was too salacious and no anonymous tip was too outlandish to print. From CNN to the Times and the Post, from esteemed and experienced reporters to opinion writers and bloggers, everyone wanted a share of the Trump-treason beat. What good is the 21st-century Watergate if you don’t at least make an effort to cast yourself as the fearless journalist risking it all who got that one big tip that brought down a president?

And he adds a few names to the list, names like Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, and of course, the idiot savant, Paul Krugman:

Last July, before Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Helsinki, Mr. Chait penned a nearly 8,000-word piece titled “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart—or His Handler?” Mr. Chait’s speculation—that “Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987”—was worthy of the late Lyndon LaRouche.

In a January 2019 Twitter thread, meanwhile, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asserted that “the failure to connect the dots on Trump-Russia” was one of the “big failures of 2016 campaign coverage.” He added: “There is no sin quite as offensive as challenging conventional wisdom early, and then being proved right.”

The question now remaining is comes to us from Joseph Welch, a lawyer at the Congressional hearings about Sen. Joseph McCarthy: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” To be fair about it, the Russia collusion hoax was McCarthyism redux.

Which means, do they have any sense of shame. Because, as Alan Dershowitz explained on Fox News, CNN should now be hanging its collective head in shame. The retired Harvard law professor added, on Tucker Carlson’s show last night, that while Tucker Carlson had listened to many of those, especially Adam Schiff, who were peddling the Russia collusion narrative, CNN banned Dershowitz because he refused to toe the party line. 

Among those who were right all along and who provided us with sober analysis, we count The Nation’s Stephen Cohen and The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald.

So, we await an apology, from Congressional Democrats, from media mavens, from journalists who have thrown their reputations to the wind, from stand-up comedians to the punditocracy and the NeverTrump conservatives. They went all-in on Robert Mueller and he let them down. He did not buy their conspiracy theory. He rejected their paranoid delusion about Trump being a Russian agent.

Writing in The Nation before the Barr summary of the report was released, Stephen Cohen summed up the calamities that the media hysteria has produced:

Russiagate allegations that the Kremlin has a subversive hold over President Trump, and even put him in the White House, have poisoned American political life for almost three years. Among other afflictions, it has inspired an array of media malpractices, virtually criminalized anti–Cold War thinking about Russia, and distorted the priorities of the Democratic Party. And this leaves aside the woeful impact Russiagate has had in Moscow—on its policymakers’ perception of the US as a reliable partner on mutually vital strategic issues and on Russian democrats who once looked to the American political system as one to be emulated, a loss of “illusions” I previously reported.

Contrary to many expectations, even if the Mueller report, said to be impending, finds, as did a Senate committee recently, “no direct evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Russiagate allegations are unlikely to dissipate in the near future and certainly not before the 2020 presidential election. There are several reasons this is so, foremost among them the following:

§ The story of a “Kremlin puppet” in the White House is so fabulous and unprecedented it is certain to become a tenacious political legend, as have others in American history despite the absence of any supporting evidence.

§ The careers of many previously semi-obscure Democratic members of Congress have been greatly enhanced—if that is the right word—by their aggressive promotion of Russiagate. (Think, for example, of the ubiquitous media coverage and cable-television appearances awarded to Representatives Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Maxine Walters, and to Senators Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal.) If Mueller fails to report “collusion” of real political substance, these and other Russiagate zealots, as well as their supporters in the media, will need to reinterpret run-of-the-mill (and bipartisan) financial corruption and mundane “contacts with Russia” as somehow treasonous.

Hats off to those who have provided throughout objective analysis and intelligent commentary.

The last word goes to Glenn Greenwald for his rant on Tucker Carlson's show last night.

The Trigger Warning Hoax

With all due deference to your oh-so-delicate thin-skinned sensibility we have been told that we must preface every potentially traumatizing utterance or even image with what is called a trigger warning.

The concept arose from the depths of American academic stupidity. It attempted to raise consciousness of the psychological damaged suffered by American college students. It pretended to offer a cure. The cure: trigger warnings. It is one small step before our psycho overlords tell us that triggering words and images must be forbidden.

In the era of hurt feelings, trigger warnings were supposed to protect you against pending psycho calamity. They were supposed to be therapeutic, because, forewarned is forearmed, or some such.

Now, the New York Times reports on academic studies of the effect of trigger warnings. The results of the study: trigger warnings make no difference whatever in your reaction to potentially traumatic stimuli. The author of the story, Niraj Chokshi has done an excellent job. I am happy to bring his story to your attention.

The Times story opens:

For years, trigger warnings have been the subject of impassioned academic debate: Do they protect people from distress or encourage fragility?

The warnings, which alert individuals to disturbing material, have been talked about, used and promoted on college campuses and elsewhere for more than a decade, but little was known about how well they work. Now, a pair of recent studies suggest that they may have little effect at all.

“Although people were distressed by the negative materials we showed them, they were no more or less distressed if they’d seen a trigger warning first,” said Mevagh Sanson of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, the lead author of one of the studies, published this month in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Consider the first statement. Do trigger warnings serve to protect those of us who have unusually thin skin or do they encourage us all to define ourselves as fragile. What good is a trigger warning if you have not suffered enough traumas to be sensitive to triggers? And if you have not, are you presumably lying to us or lying to yourself?

The good news, or the bad news, depending on your trigger sensitivity, is that these warnings do not work. They serve no useful purpose. Telling someone that he is about to watch a simulated homicide will not have any effect on how he reacts… even if in a past life he saw just such a homicide.

One more therapeutic nostrum discredited.

The bad news is that someone somewhere is going to take this research and say that, since trigger warnings do not work, we must ban all potentially traumatizing images. We must purge the airways and public discourse— or, whatever is left of it— of anything that might plausibly be expected to hurt someone’s feelings. Once you head off down that road, you never stop. 

The study does not explain that if we ban all such words and images the result will be that those who have suffered traumas will become increasingly sensitive to them. They will have been deprived of an opportunity to process the traumas, to face their fears and to learn how to become desensitized. A brief reminder: when someone is phobic about, say, spiders, the correct treatment does not remove all images of spiders, or even the word spider, from his force field. It involves gradual desensitization by exposure to images of spiders and even to real spiders. 

As for the experiments, the Times describes them clearly:

In a series of experiments, Dr. Sanson and her colleagues presented hundreds of students and others recruited online with short stories or video clips, all of which featured negative themes, like child abuse, murder, a car accident or physical abuse. Some participants were presented with trigger warnings and some were not. Some also reported having experienced past trauma, like domestic abuse or witnessing a very bad accident.

In each case, the researchers asked participants about their mood before and after reading the passages or watching the clips. They also measured the distressing effects of the material in several other ways, including how it interfered with the participants’ ability to read and understand a subsequent neutral passage.

What the authors found was that trigger warnings had little effect on participants’ mood, how negatively they rated the material or their ability to later read the neutral passage.

As for the debate, trigger warnings send the message that the trauma survivor, as they are now called, is incapable of dealing with the trauma. This contrasts starkly with what should be the therapeutic goal—to help people to overcome their traumas. 

Besides, opponents of trigger warnings suggest that they coddle students. Who would have guessed such a thing:

Opponents of the idea say that trigger warnings coddle students and allow them to avoid discomforting perspectives. Proponents disagree, arguing that they can help those with a history of trauma avoid potentially disturbing material without banning it outright or brace themselves for it.

One problem is simple. A trauma victim might recollect a trauma because he is exposed to, someone who has the same hair color or the same tee shirt as the person who traumatized him. Since triggers can be highly individualized, the chances for covering all of them are nil.

But triggers can come in many forms, including those that may not be predictable, Dr. Wright of the American Psychological Association said. In some cases, a smell or sensation can trigger a traumatic experience even while a depiction of a similar episode won’t.

“Sometimes it’s not even the actual trauma act itself,” she said. “Triggers can be really personalized.”

It gets worse. Emphasizing trigger warnings tells trauma survivors that their trauma defines their lives. Admittedly, this is a standard psycho therapeutic theory, but we should by now have gotten over it:

… researchers at Harvard University recruited a few hundred online participants to read potentially disturbing literary passages, with some receiving a trigger warning and some not.

What they found was that those who received the warnings and strongly believed that words can cause harm reported greater anxiety after reading the distressing passage. The findings also indicated, albeit weakly, that trigger warnings boosted a stigma around trauma: People who saw the warnings were more likely to perceive themselves and others as particularly vulnerable to traumatic events.

The authors also argued that trigger warnings could be counterproductive, encouraging those who have faced trauma to avoid further exposure to it — an effective treatment — and promoting the idea that their trauma is central to who they are.

“If I’m constantly being reminded about how material in my everyday environment relates to my trauma, we may be reinforcing the centrality of that traumatic event to that person’s narrative, driving symptoms up as a result,” said Benjamin Bellet, the lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student at Harvard.

Trigger warnings make us more sensitive to potentially traumatizing experiences. They make it more likely that we will have an anxiety response. And, as noted above, the mania about trigger warnings tells people not to face their fears, but to run screaming into the night.

The Fake Apologies of Rep. Ilhan Omar

Speaking of dumb and dishonest, leading contenders for the award are the Democratic politicians who have been pretending that Rep. Ilhan Omar has apologized for her anti-Semitic statements.

Singularly lacking in character, Omar has happily offered fake apologies, the better to allow the Democratic Congressional leadership to pretend not to be the epicenter of American anti-Semitism. As of now, the Democrats refused to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and have kept Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.

Anyway, her newfound enhanced public profile in hand, Rep. Omar has been raising money for organizations that promote or condone or countenance Islamist terrorism.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

Omar recently spoke in Florida at a private event hosted by Islamic Relief, a charity organization long said to have deep ties to groups that advocate terrorism against Israel. Over the weekend, she will appear at another private event in California that is hosted by CAIR-CA PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR a group that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive terror-funding incident.

Omar's appearance at these closed-door forums is raising eyebrows in the pro-Israel world due to her repeated and unapologetic public use of anti-Semitic stereotypes accusing Jewish people of controlling foreign policy and politics. With Omar's popularity skyrocketing on the anti-Israel left, it appears her rhetoric is translating into fundraising prowess.

If the best you can do is raise an eyebrow you are morally deficient. It does not take too much education to recognize a fake apology for what it is: a lie.

What do we know about Islamic Relief:

Islamic Relief has come under congressional investigation for what lawmakers have described as its efforts to provide assistance to terrorist group such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The charity has been banned by some countries as a result of these ties.

In 2017, Congress sought to ban taxpayer funds from reaching the charity due to these terror links.

Gosh, no problem there.

And then there is CAIR. Yesterday Omar attended a meet and greet at a California branch of CAIR, a Hamas front:

On Sunday, Omar will hold another meet and greet in Irvine, Calif., for CAIR-CA PAC. Those wishing to hear Omar speak are being asked to donate anywhere from $50 to $250 dollars, according to a flyer for the event….

CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group known for its anti-Israel positions, was named by the U.S. government as part of a large network of groups known to be supporting Hamas.

CAIR has been cited by the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, for using its network of supporters to promote an "anti-Israel agenda."

"CAIR’s anti-Israel agenda dates back to its founding by leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a Hamas affiliated anti-Semitic propaganda organization," according to the ADL. "While CAIR has denounced specific acts of terrorism in the U.S. and abroad, for many years it refused to unequivocally condemn Palestinian terror organizations and Hezbollah by name, which the U.S. and international community have condemned and isolated."

As I said, no problem there, either.

The only problem is the sanctimonious dupes in the Democratic Party who continue to insist that Omar has apologized for her anti-Semitism.

New Zealand: A Nation of Sheep

On the off chance that you did not know it, the nation of New Zealand contains more sheep than human beings. If you did not know it already, you would have suspected as much when you saw the New Zealand Prime Minister react to a terrorist attack on a mosque by donning a hijab and projecting weakness and cowardice.

One Masha Gessen, in The New Yorker, declared that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had set a new global standard for how to react to terrorism. The solution, Gessen explained, was not war, was not fighting, was not justice, but was… you guessed it… empathy. And refusing to name the terrorist or vowing the least retaliation.

As you probably know, Ardern is the mother of a baby. She was pregnant when the New Zealand sheep population went to the polls to elect her. As we should know by now, research had demonstrated that a pregnant woman’s brain rewires itself in order to enhance its capacity for… you guessed it… empathy. Because when you are bringing up an infant, one that cannot articulate needs, you do best to have an enhanced capacity for empathy. It makes perfect sense.

In truth, Ardern, who was widely praised for bringing her baby to the United Nations meeting last fall, is not bringing  up her baby. She has offloaded the responsibility to her husband, a man whose brain, the research shows, did not rewire itself during her pregnancy. Of course, no one blinks as this derogation of maternal responsibility, but ought we not at least to ask what happens to these babies who are deprived of maternal care?

But, we will not ask the question, because New Zealand has just shown us how not to respond to terrorism. For her part Gessen thrills to the prospect that Ardern did not put forth any warrior rhetoric. And what exactly were you expecting from a young mother anyway? Ardern's perspective comes straight out of the nursery.

She writes:

Ardern has resisted war rhetoric. Since the modern era of terrorism began, on September 11, 2001, world leaders have responded to terror by promising vengeance and waged war, rhetorically and militarily. George W. Bush set the tone, with a statement on the morning of the World Trade Center attacks: “Make no mistake. The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.” He elaborated in a televised address later that day. “Today, our fellow-citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack,” he said. He named the emotions evoked by the chaos in lower Manhattan: “disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.” He pledged war. “A great people has been moved to defend a great nation,” he said. “Our military is powerful, and it’s prepared. . . . America and our friends and allies . . . stand together to win the war against terrorism. . . . America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time.”

Unfortunately, this is a hopeless muddle. Gessen seems incapable of distinguishing between a mass murder committed by a lone wolf madman and an attack orchestrated by an international terrorist organization. If an organized conspiracy attacks you, keeping silent is the last thing you want to do.

If she herself had been capable of thinking, Gessen would have drawn distinctions between, say, al Qaeda, the ISIS killers in Paris, the Palestinian terrorists and the Anders Breivik. Let’s see, when  Palestinian terrorist murders an Israeli citizen, do you really think that the best reaction is weakness?

The Ardern approach, lauded by Gessen, involves ignoring the perpetrator. In truth, this is not overly new. It was adopted by the weak and cowardly Obama administration. Whether with the Boston marathon bombing, the Ft. Hood massacre, the San Bernardino killing or the Orlando killings, the Obama administration had no time for the murderers. It preferred to tell people not to fall prey to Islamophobia. You see, its enemy was not Islamist terrorism, but thought crimes. Did that reduce the number of terrorist attacks?

Ardern, on the other hand, immediately showed that she had no time for the perpetrator of the mosque shootings. “Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand; they may even be refugees here,” she said. “They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home. They are us. The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not. They have no place in New Zealand. There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence.”

So, Ardern stood up for Muslim refugees. She has no awareness of what is happening in Europe, in the crime sprees and the rape culture and the No-Go zones that are infesting that continent… all the result of unlimited migration.

Gessen, in her muddled way, seems to believe that the best approach, when your nation is under attack—because many of the terrorist incidents she exposes are attacks on a nation—is the ostrich policy. You put your head in the sand and pretend it did not happen.

These phrases are remarkable for what they do not contain: a promise to find the perpetrator and bring him to justice; any attempt to degrade him; any recognition of his desire to be seen, recognized, and fought. The opposite of terror is not courage, victory, or even justice, and it is certainly not “war on terror.” The opposite of terror is disregard for the terrorist.

And, let’s not forget, Ardern was also widely praised for donning a hijab, an instrument of female oppression, in order to show sympathy and empathy for her nation’s Muslim community. Why not normalize female oppression in the name of girl power?

The Gateway Pundit has some choice words about the hijab (via Maggie’s Farm):

That same day New Zealand women are being encouraged to wear the Islamic head covering on Friday in sympathy with Muslims in the wake of the mass shooting at two Christchurch mosques last Friday that killed 50 and wounded dozens.

The campaign was dubbed #HeadScarfForHarmony and encouraged non-Muslim women to wear hijabs.

This is how the female leaders and females in the media show their solidarity with Muslims in New Zealand — bowing to Sharia law and submitting.

Yes, indeed, bowing to Sharia law and submitting. Because no one can really avoid the message that Ardern was sending: saying nothing and adopting the hijab signified submission to Islam.

Many Muslim women saw it that way and were horrified:

Muslim women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other nations under Sharia law are oppressed and are forced to wear the Islamic head cover.

One Iranian woman who’s fighting against Iran’s dictatorship was furious over the #HeadScarfForHarmony campaign and expressed her anger over it in a tweet.

I am an Iranian woman who fights for my basic rights under the Islamic regime tyranny and you are all partners of this atrocious crime.
still, We are the ones who pay the price for all the stupidity of this world.#headscarfforharmony

Another tweeted this:

Many of us lost everything, some even their lives & freedom bc of hijab! U wear it 1 day like it's just some piece of cloth & think its empowering when u re only normalizing rape culture & oppression of millions of women all over the globe! #headscarfforharmony #freefromhijab

So, the New Zealand prime minister has given aid and comfort to Muslim misogynists. And she has shown, with her pathetically weak response to the tragedy why nations are loath to put women in positions of power.

The Era of the Private Automobile Is About to Be Over

Once you think about it, it seems almost inevitable. No, the age of the automobile is not about to end, but the age of the private ownership of automobiles is passing away … at this very moment. You might ask how this will impact the auto industry, for instance. We do not have the answer, but we should, as Kara Swisher writes, pay close attention to secular trends.

I will die before I buy another car.

I don’t say that because I am particularly old or sick, but because I am at the front end of one of the next major secular trends in tech. Owning a car will soon be like owning a horse — a quaint hobby, an interesting rarity and a cool thing to take out for a spin on the weekend.

Before you object, let me be clear: I will drive in cars until I die. But the concept of actually purchasing, maintaining, insuring and garaging an automobile in the next few decades?

Finished.

Of course, it all depends on where you live. If you live in large city and have a car you should probably be examined. If you live in a rural area, an area where you cannot just dial up an Uber, you might need to keep that truck.

Here is how it happens:

You start using car-sharing services, you don’t use your car as often, you realize as these services proliferate that you actually don’t need to own a car at all.

It’s obviously an easier decision if you live near a major metropolitan area, like I do, where the alternatives — cars and then car pools and then bikes and now scooters — are myriad. (Why, by the way, this is a revolution led by private companies instead of public transportation is an important topic for another day.) In other countries, often with denser populations, there are even more ideas bubbling up, from auto-rickshaws and motorbike taxis to new bus services.

But, in any area where car sharing companies function, why do you need a car? And this is before we arrive at autonomous, robot-driven vehicles.

Note that the advances in ride sharing have been produced by private enterprise, not by public entities. I trust that you do not find that surprising. In New York, government cannot make the subways function. You did not expect them to innovate, did you?

Swisher continues:

Car-sharing continues to increase (Uber and Lyft are set to go public this year), new innovations emerge all the time (Scooters! Vertical-take-off-and-landing vehicles!) and all manner of autonomous technologies are inevitable (Elon Musk, whatever you think of him or the prospects of Tesla, is 100 percent directionally correct). Private car ownership declined globally last year, and it is a trend that I believe is going to accelerate faster than people think.

We all think that maybe it will happen and that maybe it will happen eventually. But, Swisher suggests, it will probably happen much quicker than we imagine:

Consider how swiftly people moved from physical maps to map apps, from snail mail to email, from prime time TV to watching on demand. What had been long-held practices were quickly replaced by digital tools that made things easier, more convenient and simply better. Some of the shifts have been slower to develop, but then accelerated quickly, like what is now occurring in retail with online shopping and quick delivery pioneered by Amazon.

Simply put, everything that can be digitized will be digitized.

It’s probably a big deal. It’s probably going to come to us, sooner than we expect. The era of the private automobile is about to be over.

The Israeli Rapprochement with Gulf Arabs

We have, to our credit, been following closely the rapprochement between Israel and her Arab neighbors. These nations are forming new alliances, not only to counter Iranian influence but to modernize politically and economically.

Some of it has been made public. Much of it remains behind the scenes. The issue of what to do about Palestinian terrorism remains a trip wire, though the Gulf Arab states seem to see little advantage to compromising their own reputations by aligning themselves with a band of maniacal and self-destructive terrorists. On the other side, the Arab states must show a public support for their Palestinian brethren, because what used to be called the Arab Street seems still to feel an affinity  for that lost cause.

Ian Black has written a long and detailed and comprehensive account of the new alliances for The Guardian. As he notes, the advent of the Trump administration has accelerated the process of rapprochement.

For example, as reported here and elsewhere:

In mid-February 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, flew to Warsaw for a highly unusual conference. Under the auspices of the US vice-president, Mike Pence, he met the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and two other Gulf states that have no diplomatic relations with Israel. The main item on the agenda was containing Iran….

The meeting publicly showcased the remarkable fact that Israel, as Netanyahu was so keen to advertise, is winning acceptance of a sort from the wealthiest countries in the Arab world – even as the prospects for resolving the longstanding Palestinian issue are at an all-time low. This unprecedented rapprochement has been driven mainly by a shared animosity towards Iran, and by the disruptive new policies of Donald Trump.

Clearly, the Netanyahu diplomatic offense has yielded some positive results. Aside from Black’s snarky comment about Trump, the fact is that things are moving forward:

Evidence is mounting of increasingly close ties between Israel and five of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – none of which have formal relations with the Jewish state. Trump highlighted this accelerating change on his first foreign trip as president – to the Saudi capital Riyadh – by flying on directly afterwards to Tel Aviv. Hopes for Saudi help with his much-hyped “deal of the century” to end the Israel-Palestine conflict have faded since then. Yet Netanyahu is seeking to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia. And there has even been speculation about a public meeting between him and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi crown prince who was widely blamed for the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October. That would be a sensational – and highly controversial – moment, which is why Saudis are signalling frantically that it is not going to happen. Still, the meeting with Netanyahu in Warsaw went far beyond anything that has taken place before. The abnormal is becoming normal.

In his usually bumbling way, President Obama facilitated the alliance. Israel and the Arab countries joined together by their strong disapproval of Obama policies.

The original impetus for these developing relationships between Israel and the Gulf states was a mutual distaste for Barack Obama. In the early years of the Arab spring, he infuriated the Saudis and the UAE, and alarmed Israel, by abandoning Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, and then voiced support for the popular uprising in Syria and called for Bashar al-Assad to resign. In 2015, when the US-led nuclear agreement was signed with Iran, it was vehemently opposed by Israel and most Gulf states. That September, Russia’s military intervention in Syria marked the beginning of the end of the crisis for Assad. Tehran’s steadfast support for its ally in Damascus, and its backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon – Iran’s “axis of resistance” – was regarded with identical disgust in Jerusalem, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

And also:

“The Obama administration was hated by Saudi Arabia and Israel because it shunned them both,” a senior Saudi told me. A veteran Israeli official made the same argument: “There was a sense that we were looking at an American ’s administration that wasn’t as committed to America’s traditional friends. We had to make common cause because there was a sense of being left to fend for ourselves. Unwittingly, Obama contributed very significantly to the buildup of relations between us and the UAE and the Saudis.”

Naturally, both Israel and Saudi Arabia were happy that the Trump administration abandoned the Obama administration sellout to Iran:

The priority for the Saudis and their allies is resisting Iran, which in the past few years has consolidated its position in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, where it backs the Houthi rebels. MBS notoriously described Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, as a “new Hitler”. Netanyahu compared Obama’s nuclear deal to the Munich agreement of 1938 – and after Trump abandoned it last summer, Netanyahu signalled Israel’s readiness to join an “international coalition” against Tehran. “We were raised to see Israel as an enemy that occupied Arab countries,” argues an Emirati analyst. “The reality now is that the Israelis are there whether you like it or not. We have common interests with them – and it’s about Iran, about interests, not emotions.”

It’s about interests, not emotions. We recall that it was not too long ago that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman traveled to China… and said not a word about the roundup and re-education of China’s Muslim population. Besides, if you wanted to do business, would you choose the economic powerhouse Israel or the permanent basket case of Palestine:

There is also a pragmatic recognition in Gulf capitals of the benefits of security, technological and economic links with an unassailably powerful Israel – not only for their own sake, but also because of the US approval that brings. Israel sees ties with the Gulf as an important way of demonstrating its own influence in Washington. “It is doubtful whether the scope of (US) aid to Arab countries could have been sustained without the support of Aipac (the main pro-Israel lobby group) and Jewish organisations,” suggests Eran Lerman, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council.

The pro-Iranian Obamaphile left is alarmed by the new rapprochement. They believe that the Palestinian issue is most salient… because they want nothing more than to capitulate to terrorism. Evidently, the Israeli diplomatic offensive has been undermining Arab support for the Palestinian cause. And the meek and cowardly left cannot deal with that:

Netanyahu’s many Israeli critics – angry over the corruption charges he is facing as next month’s elections approach – have complained that he is exaggerating both the Iranian threat and the significance of his Gulf diplomacy, while completely ignoring the existential crisis in Israel’s own backyard – its ongoing failure to make peace with the Palestinians.

We recall Netanyahu’s trip to Oman last October:

Netanyahu’s meeting with the Saudis and Emiratis in Warsaw was not the first dramatic public glimpse of this changing Middle Eastern reality. Last October, the Israeli prime minister held talks in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with its ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The following day, his Likud party colleague, the culture and sports minister Miri Regev, was visiting Abu Dhabi in the UAE, while at the same time Israeli athletes were competing in Doha in nearby Qatar.

News of Netanyahu’s Muscat trip included video footage of his talks in the ornate Bait al-Baraka palace. The prime minister, in a blue suit and tie, was seen exchanging pleasantries with the sultan, in a turban and traditional white dishdasha robe. The Israeli leader’s wife, Sara, was there with other members of his delegation, including an impassive middle-aged man called Yossi Cohen, head of the Mossad intelligence service.

One notes that ties between Israel and the Emirates are more open and more constructive. Clearly, the leaders of the Emirates would not be doing any of this without tacit approval from Riyadh:

During Regev’s stay in Abu Dhabi, where Israel’s top judo team was participating in a tournament, she wept on camera as Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem (the Hebrew words are about yearning for Zion) was played. Later she toured the opulent Sheikh Zayed mosque, commemorating the UAE’s founder, a loyal supporter of the Palestinian cause. These two Israeli ministerial visits to Gulf capitals gave a powerful boost to the impression of dramatic changes in the region’s alliances….

The links are most visible with the UAE, where Israel, uniquely, has an official diplomatic presence at the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi – though both countries emphasise that they do not have bilateral relations. Avi Gabbay, leader of the opposition Labor party, held talks there last December. Netanyahu is thought to have met Emirati leaders in Cyprus in 2015 to discuss how to tackle Iran. But secret contacts between the two countries were routine from the mid-1990s – some of which were recorded in the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. The Emiratis “believe in Israel’s role because of their perception of Israel’s close relationship with the US, but also due to their sense that they can count on Israel against Iran,” an Israeli diplomat noted in 2009, adding that in general Gulf Arabs “believe Israel can work magic”.

Again, the question involves self-interest. Gulf Arab nations have a great deal to gain by an alliance with Israel, especially in the matter of trade, commerce and defense technology. They can only lose by associating themselves too openly with the Palestinian cause:

One former UAE diplomat told me that the threat from Iran today had a unifying effect comparable to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which led to a previously unacceptable US military presence in Saudi Arabia. “If it wasn’t for the Palestinian issue,” the ex-diplomat said, “this relationship with Israel would be very public, and it would be very welcome, because we need their military equipment and technology.”

Jamal al-Suwaidi, the founder of the government-backed Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, put it more bluntly: “The Palestinian cause is no longer at the forefront of Arabs’ interests, as it used to be for long decades; it has sharply lost priority in light of the challenges, threats and problems that face countries of the region.” Similarly, he added, the question of Israel was not comparable to the “threats posed … by Iran, Hezbollah and terrorist groups”.

How are business and commercial ties going? Rather well, as it happens:

Israeli trade with the Gulf states is currently estimated to be worth $1bn a year, though no official statistics are available on either side. The potential, however, is vast – in technology, especially cybersecurity, irrigation, medical supplies and the diamond industry, among others, it could be up to $25bn annually, according to a detailed new study.

Israeli businessmen using foreign passports fly regularly to the UAE, usually on commercial flights via Amman. “There is a huge amount going on,” says the Israeli representative of a multinational company who travels to Arab states with an EU passport.

For example:

AGT International, owned by Israeli Mati Kochavi, provided electronic fences and surveillance equipment worth $800m to protect UAE borders and oilfields. Emirati officials described this as a non-political decision motivated by national security interests. In 2014 Haaretz made headlines when it first spotted a mysterious weekly private flight from Tel Aviv, via Amman, to Dubai. Nowadays direct flights between the Gulf and Israel, though still unexplained publicly, are frequently reported on social media. Israeli businesses operate in the UAE via companies registered in Europe. Bills of lading are produced from an intermediary country, often Jordan or Cyprus.

Evidently, Black did not approve of Trump’s open embrace of Israel. And yet, the reaction of Riyadh was quite different:

Trump’s inflammatory decision in December 2017 to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaching a long-standing international consensus, initially met with a muted response in Riyadh. The president’s “ultimate deal” to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict was discussed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner with MBS. Subsequent leaks pointed to a key role for the Saudis in pressuring the Palestinians. And when the crown prince made a three-week trip to the US last spring, he transmitted even louder signals about his intentions toward Israel, telling the Atlanticthat the Palestinians should accept Trump’s plan or “shut up and stop complaining” about an issue that was no longer a priority compared to confronting Iran. MBS also explicitly acknowledged Jewish claims to Israel, declaring: “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.” Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza burned pictures of the Saudi royals.