READER FAVORITE: The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2023
December 11, 2023
RIP: I see from Mike Williamson that David Drake has passed. I knew his health was failing, but I’m still sad and surprised.
If you haven’t read any of his books, you should. He did great work in everything from sword-and-sorcery to military hard SF. (Bumped).
I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM EARLY 1945 FOR $500, ALEX: Germany, Growing Desperate.
Well before the events in Gaza, Germany was nervous over migration. Today, 24 million of Germany’s roughly 80 million people—almost 30%—are of “migrant background,” and 2.7 million migrants settled in the country in 2022 alone. The demographic transformation of the West that began slowly with European decolonization and American civil rights has accelerated over the past decade and a half. Two events stand out: First, the 2011 Anglo-Franco-American invasion of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, carried out over the strong objection of then-German chancellor Angela Merkel. Barack Obama’s NATO “victory,” which culminated in the killing of Gaddafi and three of his sons, has proved almost as damaging to the West as George W. Bush’s Iraq defeat. It delivered the Tripolitan coast to smuggling mafias and thus opened the prospect of residence in Europe to the entire African continent, which is projected to add a billion people before mid-century.
A second key event was the huge migration of refugees from the Syrian war in 2015. Merkel welcomed the migrants in the name of a German Willkommenskultur, or “culture of welcome.” By this she seemed to mean a less focused version of the postwar tolerance for others that Habeck would lay out in his early November speech about Israel. Of course, if Germany really does have the responsibilities that Habeck and Merkel describe, then its immigration policy has been reckless. The perverse effect of Merkel’s invitation was to summon others from throughout the Muslim world who had nothing to do with the Syrian wars—Pakistanis, Afghanis, Iranians. Their arrival would radicalize and divide Europe. Poland and Italy elected anti-immigrant governments. Hungary and Denmark tightened their laws on migration. Merkel opted to lead the liberal bloc in Europe, calling on the European Union to require that other countries house their “fair share” of the migrants she had welcomed.
A majority complied at the time. But over the years, all have tightened their migration policies. In early November, France’s national assembly passed an immigration law proposed by its president, Emmanuel Macron. The law is meant to address the main problem with immigration enforcement in Europe—the category of migrants who in France are called OQTFs. To explain: Angry voters have compelled governments across Europe to tighten laws on labor migration. But governments supposedly cannot tighten laws on political asylum, because those are regulated by the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees. This means that virtually every economic migrant picked up in a smuggler boat off the Italian coast (or in one of the rescue boats sent by progressive foundations to ply the waters nearby) claims to be a victim of political persecution seeking asylum. This gives newcomers the right to a lengthy sojourn in Europe while awaiting an asylum hearing. Nowadays most such claims are rejected, but it is expensive and bureaucratically difficult to ship the applicants back to where they came from. The denied applicant is simply dismissed with a written notice that he is required to leave French territory (obligé de quitter le territoire français, or OQTF). He almost never does. Macron’s bill would, among other things, end this charade by restoring the criminal offense of illegally staying in the country, a measure that 82% of French citizens back.
The Macron bill is not particularly robust. It contains a giant loophole inserted at the behest of corporations—permitting the hiring of undocumented migrants for “occupations under pressure.” This may wind up undoing everything the bill achieves, much as the anti-discrimination provisions in the U.S. immigration reform of 1986 ended up promoting rather than controlling migration.
What is clear is the direction Europe wishes to go. Today Denmark, where financial support for asylum seekers is negligible and where it takes an average of 19 years for a migrant to become a citizen, gets about 2,000 asylum applications in an average year. Germany is expected to get 400,000 by the end of 2023. Denmark is the country on which virtually all European governments have announced they wish to pattern their policies. Germany is the country whose example other countries most wish to avoid.
Merkel took a wrecking ball to the liberal values of postwar Germany, but hey, she made Time magazine’s “Woman of the Year” in 2015. I hope the tradeoff was worth it, both for her and Europe’s future, or the lack thereof. Or as Jim Geraghty tweeted in 2015:
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Food banks struggle as more people face food insecurity. “Food inflation is only running about 3% now, but rent inflation is over 7%. And for low income or working families, rent can account for about 50% or more of their income. So, as those costs are continuing to go up, the money just isn’t going as far, and food tends to be a flexible expense.”
WHEN YOU LIE DOWN WITH DOGS…: Antisemitic Mob Shows Up for Biden Fundraiser, Vandalizes Jewish Neighborhood.
STATES SHOULD MANDATE STANDARDIZED TESTING FOR COLLEGE APPLICANTS. Colleges are already trying to dodge the ban on racial preferences; an objective measure of some kind, even if it’s not used for admission decisions, is the only way to know if they’re defying the law.
YOU DON’T SAY: Claudine Gay is a DEI hire lacking intellectual credentials, critics argue.
Then there are the plagiarism charges.
UPDATE: Carol Swain has thoughts.
Plus:
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Rahm Emanuel
— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 11, 2023
COLD WAR II: China Will Have 1,000 Nuclear Warheads by 2030.
According to a new Department of Defense (DoD) report on the military power of China, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) nuclear arsenal grew from 200 to over 500 warheads in just the past four years and will hit 1,000 and by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035. The 150 percent growth since 2020 is thus in the books and unprecedented.
As for the future, the key driving factor is the 300–360 new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos that were built over the past few years. The silos are able to hold either the DF-31 or the DF-41 ICBM—capable of carrying three to ten warheads, respectively.
The additional major factor is the four new strategic nuclear-armed submarines (SSBN) projected to be fully operational by 2030, each with 20 missiles and three to six warheads per missile. The US Pacific Command says the submarines already in the Chinese fleet are currently being fitted with multiple warheads.
Previously: Don’t Look Now, But There’s a Nuclear Nightmare A-Brewing.
DANIELLE ALLEN: We’ve lost the talent for mutual respect on campus. Here’s how we get it back. “Last week Congress put squarely on the table the question of whether the health of our democracy requires renovation of our colleges and universities. I believe the answer to that question is ‘Yes.'”
Me too.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: UPenn’s Magill Shouldn’t Be the Only Domino to Fall. “A few deposed university presidents aren’t going to change the toxic culture that got all the kids goosestepping, but public awareness can be a powerful thing. When the public starts withholding precious funding, the power grows.”
BUT WOMEN’S GROUPS HAVE BEEN LARGELY SILENT: Blinken Says Hamas Sexual Violence Unlike Anything He Had Ever Seen.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
[A]ntisemitic and anti-Israel protests on campuses — and the university presidents’ lawyerly responses at last week’s hearing — were akin to… the ‘Zoom moment’ during the pandemic when some parents first listened closely to what their children were learning in school and concluded it was ‘subpar in quality and radical in content.’ ‘One of those things we’ve struggled with, those of us who want to reform higher education, is convincing people that there’s a problem… Historically, they look around and say, “Huh, this seems fine.” Everything they’re seeing right now is that things are not fine.
If only someone had warned them.
UGH: Hamas conned Israel into complacency by passing intel on Islamic Jihad.
According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Hamas provided unspecified information about Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed terror group in the Strip second in power only to Hamas.
The move was intended to build an image that Hamas wanted to avoid a conflict with Israel and instead was interested in some collaboration, the official said.
In May, when a several-day flare-up of violence broke out in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Islamic Jihad, Hamas pointedly remained on the sidelines, with many seeing the decision as a sign of either the group’s maturity or its weakness.
In the weeks since the October 7 assault, reports have built a picture of an Israeli intelligence establishment so deeply invested in the notion that Hamas was not looking for a fight that information and warnings of a possible attack, including Hamas battle plans that found their way into Israeli hands, were dismissed.
Senior Israeli officials have admitted that they were wrong in the assessment of Hamas’s mindset as well as Israel’s ability to thwart the group via technological means.
Hamas played a long game — and Israel forgot that Hamas’ only game is to murder Jews.
DON SURBER: FAFO War update: Americans finally back Israel in wiping out terrorism from the river to the sea. ““It should be obvious by now that so many of the creeps who purport to weep for Palestine don’t really care about Palestinians, dead or alive, or about Israelis, or about the historical and moral intricacies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What they want is an excuse to indulge in something deeper, more libidinal, ancient, and indeed erotic — hating Jews.”
And hatred of the West.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: White House Report Card: Biden ‘clown car’ crashes to 37% approval.
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EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US Embassy in Baghdad Attacked With Mortars as Forces Targeted Across Region.
INCENTIVIZING BAD BEHAVIOR: Portland will consider race, gender to ‘support’ disruptive students.
Do “restorative practices” work? Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute talks with Harvard’s Jal Mehta about the gap between theory and practice.
“The idea here is that when an offense has been committed, students and an adult will come together to talk about the issue,” says Mehta. “Using a structured protocol, the offender will generally get to hear about what sort of harm they caused and offer some amends, and then the community gets to decide together how to move forward.” The problem is that it’s hard to implement.
The intentions may be good, says Hess, but the results are disappointing. He thinks restorative justice is “willfully naive” and ignores human behavior. “Wired to test boundaries,” children “benefit from norms, expectations, and predictability even more than grown-ups do,” he argues.
Plus: “Portland (OR) schools will design ‘support plans’ for disruptive students that consider trauma, race, gender identity/presentation and sexual orientation, reports Alec Schemmel.”
If Portland wanted to generate tensions between white kids/not-white kids or straight kids/not-straight kids — who were probably mostly getting along to begin with — what would they be doing differently?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS …: Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon did some digging in USASpending.gov and found more than half a million tax dollars going to MENAACTION, a Virginia-based non-profit that specializes in training Jordanian journalists in recognizing “disinformation,” especially when it allegedly concerns Israel.
“It’s a topic that MENAACTION’s founders know all about. Cofounder Chris Aboukhaled pushed Hamas’s claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The rocket that struck the hospital was actually fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in Gaza.
“MENAACTION’s other cofounder, Mohammed Abu Dalhoum, who also suggested that Israel was behind the bombing, claimed Israel’s military response to Hamas ‘isn’t self-defense’ and accused Israel of ‘genocide.’ Experts agree that Israel’s targeted retaliatory strikes against Hamas do not constitute genocide,” Ross reports.
Surprised? Well, actually we should not be, considering that the rabidly anti-Semitic Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was appointed by Biden to his administration’s “national strategy to counter anti-Semitic.” Maybe CAIR is just there to help the other council members recognize anti-Semitism when they see it.