Archive for 2020
July 23, 2020
What he said wasn’t irresponsible. It wasn’t even wrong.
CHINA’S MONSTROUS ABUSE OF UIGHUR WOMEN: “For that matter, where is the outcry now? China’s treatment of the Uighurs is reminiscent of the kind of abuse fictionalized in The Handmaid’s Tale, yet even the AP report is replete with Western euphemisms, such as involuntary ‘birth control’ and ‘population control.’ Get into the details and what the Egyptians did to the Israelites almost seems tame by comparison. Men and women of conscience in the West have a duty to call this out for what it is — evil.”
Related: Roger Kimball: Trump has been right about China for years.
BUT THE PRESS IS UNMOVED: Desecration of Catholic Churches Across U.S. Leaves Congregations Shaken: More than half a dozen incidents in recent weeks include arson, decapitation of statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
I was told this was about Confederate generals.
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Hulu Working On Hillary Clinton Alt-History Series. “Based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s 2020 fiction novel ‘Rodham,’ the drama series would imagine a world where Hillary Rodham decides against marrying Bill Clinton and instead chooses to forge her own unique path to higher office.”
The first rule of good alt-history is that it has to exist within the realm of plausibility, and Hillary having a political career minus Bill fails that test.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Which American Pro Sports League Will Suffer Most From Being Woke? “Just as with movies or television shows, once one political side is endorsed at least half of the audience is offended. In entertainment, the split is probably around 50/50. In sports, however, that may be even more weighted to one side, and its not the side that’s getting all of the political love from the leagues. The politics that the pro sports leagues are cheering on right now may be alienating more than half of their audiences, especially in the NFL.”
RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Fauci’s infectious disease agency broke federal spending law and rules, audits show.
RICHARD SAMUELSON: Cancel the New York Times. “New York State, New York City, and the New York Times ought not to glorify James, Duke of York, notorious slave trader that he was. Do woke New York Times reporters really want to work at an institution named for such a man? Isn’t it a trigger just to walk into a building bearing that name? Apparently, New York City is finally going to remove the tiles in the Times Square subway station that may or may not represent a Confederate Flag. Surely it’s time the paper itself followed suit.”
Plus: “What might replace ‘New York?’ One option for New York City would be to adopt the city’s nickname, ‘Gotham.’ As Gotham is an old English term for the village of idiots (the English used to tell humorous stories about ‘the wise men of Gotham’) there’s a certain logic to that.”
NILE RIVER WATER WAR: Ethiopia and Egypt square off over water rights.
Human survival, individual and societal, requires water. Just ask Egyptians. At least 7,000 years of life on the Nile has proven the adage “Egypt is the Nile” to be true. From Aswan north to Alexandria, the green band bordering the great river is home to 90% of Egypt’s population.
Twenty-first-century Egypt still confronts pharaoh-era East African geographic and climactic facts. Egypt gets 80% to 90% of its annual water needs from the Nile.
Egypt and Ethiopia have been confronting each other for well over a decade, as Ethiopia built the GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The GERD now dams “the Blue Nile River near the Sudan border. This month, Ethiopia began filling the dam’s reservoir, which could ultimately hold 75 billion cubic meters of water.”
The column discusses the water conflict and a framework for resolving it. (bumped)
PAKISTANI HONEY TRAPS FOR INDIAN ARMY SOLDIERS: A sordid tale of a “classic espionage technique that has adapted to the Internet Age.”
Sample:
The Pakistanis have been very creative in their use of honey-traps. This was demonstrated in early 2018 when a female Pakistani agent called an Indian army staff officer serving in the headquarters of a unit stationed in northern India. The Pakistan spy said she was from the Army Wives Welfare Association but was informed that the officer she wanted was away from the office. Her call was transferred to a 25-year-old corporal. The Pakistani agent found the corporal suitable for entrapment and during their brief phone call persuaded him to contact her via her Internet accounts on WhatsApp and Instagram to continue their conversation. That was how the Pakistani agent “developed” the corporal as a provider of information on Indian army troop movements.
Indian military intelligence was, by then, well aware of how these Pakistani “honey traps” worked and knew what signs to look for. Soon the Indian counterintelligence operatives were monitoring the corporals’ activities and did so for over five months before making an arrest. None of the information the corporal passed on was of high value so Indian intelligence was apparently hoping to gather more information on this female Pakistani agent and what kinds of tradecraft (techniques) the Pakistanis were currently using.
Yes, virtual sex and violence.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Children of a lesser pod.
As New York City schools grapple with how to handle a virus that has an under 1 percent infection rate in children, parenting boards frequented by the educated, monied-but-not-so-monied-as-to-send-their-kids-to-private-school set, are forming ‘pods’. A ‘pod’ will be a small group of children, usually no more than five, who will meet at each other’s homes in lieu of traditional schooling in September. You, and four other families in your same tax bracket, will hire a teacher to educate the five children in the pod. Parenting boards are overwhelmed with requests for these tutors. The families will agree to only interact with each other: an absurd and impossible promise that will surely be broken.
We’re in a time where there is a ‘right’ opinion on everything, and every other opinion is stupid and likely racist. The right opinion right now is that it would be just crazy to open schools in New York City in the fall. This is despite the fact that every other country is opening schools and New York’s governor is on a prolonged victory tour on late night television for his celebrated handling of the COVID crisis…which resulted in the death of 32,000 New Yorkers.
If you’re a parent who is pushing to open schools, well, you don’t care about the lives of teachers. Those sending their kids to private schools which plan to open must love their kids less than the podders. Pods have become the only acceptable way to educate your children this fall.
The idea that moving a group of children from house to house, and bringing in a commuting educator who is theoretically isolating herself from others in the name of teaching the group, is somehow seen as safer than just sending the kids to a traditional classroom, is a testament to how much science and reason have ceased to matter.
Read the whole thing.
Earlier:
A VOLCANO WITH AN INSTANT MINEFIELD ON THE SIDE: A 25th Infantry Division UH-60 Black Hawk conducts Volcano minefield system training at Makua Range, Hawaii. The dispenser system gives soldiers a scatterable mine capability that can be mounted on a helicopter or land vehicle. The system can rapidly lay up to 960 anti-tank (AT) mines. Anti-personnel mines can be mixed with the AT mines. In the photo the M139 Volcano Mine Dispenser is mounted on the sides of the aircraft. The helicopter is approaching the target area. The Army placed the Volcano in “storage” in 2001 but brought the system back in 2017.
SO THEY ARE CAPABLE OF EMBARRASSMENT AFTER ALL: NBA Will Shutter Chinese Training Center. “League operated center in same city as Muslim concentration camps.”
DEMENTIA ISN’T PRETTY: Video: In latest gaffe, Biden references “voter registration physicians.”
UPDATE: Predictably, the WaPo is running interference for Slow Joe: Trump Needs to Stop Making Fun of Joe Biden’s Mental Lapses.
CANCELLING MARGARET SANGER: Remove statues of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood founder tied to eugenics and racism. “How a woman who advocated for the selective breeding of her fellow citizens came to be memorialized with those who built a country is hard to understand.”
RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): D.C. mayor exempts many city and federal government workers from strict new mask order. Government workers are the elite, and you should be flattered to receive their germs.
IMPOSSIBLE. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THIS WOULDN’T WORK: This Indian slum contained a possible COVID-19 disaster with hydroxychloroquine. “Indian doctors used hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for prophylaxis (preventive) treatment — the same drug the American media have politicized.”
Plus:
The ICMR guidelines recommend prophylactic use of HCQ for the following categories:
“all asymptomatic healthcare workers involved in containment and treatment of COVID19 and asymptomatic healthcare workers working in non-COVID hospitals/non-COVID areas of COVID hospitals/blocks”;
“symptomatic frontline workers, such as surveillance workers deployed in containment zones and paramilitary/police personnel involved in COVID-19 related activities”; and
“symptomatic household contacts of laboratory confirmed cases.”
In other words, HCQ is for anyone with the slightest chance of contracting COVID-19.
I was told that even opening a bottle and sniffing the contents would probably kill you.
YEAH, TO BEIJING’S OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT THEFT RING: Forced closure of Houston consulate could cause lasting damage, observers say.
SHOPOP: A friend messages: “By the way, watching all the people lecturing other folks about race forced me to invent a term: ‘shouty white people of privilege.'”
