Archive for the ‘middle east’ Category

The #Unexpectedly Chronicles Democratic Socialists Support Hamas’ Oct 7th Attacks and then wonder where the (Liberal Jewish) Money Went?

Posted: January 23, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, politics, Uncategorized
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Both Glenn Reynolds:

COMMUNISTS ALWAYS RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: AOC-affiliated Democratic Socialists of America in ‘financial crisis.’ “The seven-figure deficit comes after the DSA, which leads anti-Israel protests across the country, did not publicly condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.”

And Stacy McCain:

What? You’re telling me that socialists are not good at managing finances and budgets? I’m shocked — shocked! — by this revelation:

“Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are facing an internal bloodbath as they beg staff members to volunteer to lose their jobs amid a funding crisis.“

Note the decline in revenues for the Democrat Socialists of America. Stacy’s link notes interesting quotes from the piece:

The DSA said they “should be thriving,” but they instead are seeing a “decline in revenue, membership, and overall excitement.”
“We’re living in a moment when revived labor struggles and the fight for a free Palestine are galvanizing so many Americans,” the organization said, adding it’s “treading water” and things will continue to be tough.

They seem to not grasp the connection between a sudden decline in revenue and their support for the October 7th attacks and the connected campaign of intimidation of Jews on expensive college campus’ nationwide. ln one respect it’s reasonable that they believed this when you consider recent history:

They pledged allyship to other groups in their tent, not to Judaism or Israel. This was evident in 2019 when daily attacks began on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Activist synagogues in places like Park Slope, which would have been at the forefront of marches had any other group come under attack, spent years staying silent about it. The attackers, often caught on video, were frequently other minorities, not MAGA hat-wearing white people as they would have hoped, so it was awkward to raise a fuss. Progressive politics was the code they followed, and Judaism was an identity umbrella like all the others in their movement. “As a Jew …” they would begin their lectures. As a Jew, they were rarely interested in Judaism.

After all if daily attacks on Jews in Brooklyn didn’t chase away the funds from “reform” or “conservative” Jews why should support for Oct 7th make a difference when it’s time for the Jewish parents of those kids to write a check? After all wasn’t leftism their true religion?

For many liberal Jews, it was hard to ignore that it wasn’t the boogeyman white supremacists that they had been warned about their entire lives. No, it was their professors, their co-workers at the nonprofit, friends of their college-aged kids calling for an end to Israel and celebrating the murder of Jews. And these hateful marches were not happening in rural Alabama, in the places they were taught to fear, but mainly in the bluest of blue cities.

The political bedfellows they had slept beside were sharply opposed to Israel doing anything but simply accepting the attacks of Oct. 7.

By Oct. 8, their “allies” had already taken to the streets, some in grotesque glee over the slaughter of Jews in their homes, others tearing down posters of kidnapped children, to say Israel should just sit down and take it.

In fact their difficulty in accepting the reality of who their actual friends are is perfectly encapsulated in this tweet:

Realty hasn’t hit the monied liberal community hard enough for them to support Donald Trump, the man who actually moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem after presidents had promised to for decades and never did, the man who pushed the Abraham accords. That, for now at least, is a bridge too far as it risks a final split from the media left.

It does seem however that reality has hit them hard enough that they’ve apparently decided not to fund the people who want to see them dead.

It’s a start.

Who Are You Going to Believe Our Narrative on Gaza Or Your Own Eyes

Posted: January 20, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Sir Humphrey Appleby: A minute is a note for the record and a statement of action, if any, on what was agreed upon. Now what happened at the meeting in question?

Bernard Wooley: Well the book was discussed and the Solicitor General advised there were no legal grounds for suppressing it.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: And did the Primer Minister accept what the Solicitor General had said?

Bernard Wooley: Well he accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression but….

Sir Humphrey Appleby: [Interrupting] “He Accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression.” You see?

Bernard Wooley: [Suddenly understanding] Oh!

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Is that a lie? 

Bernard Wooley: No. 

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Can you write it in the minutes?

Bernard Wooley: Yes

Sir Humphrey Appleby: How’s your conscience?

Bernard Wooley: Much better thank you.

Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987

One of the most valuable things about doing shoe leather reporting in person is the ability to actually see what is going on and hear what is being said as opposed to the filers of the media, who, particularly by omission, create a path to the narrative they wish or if there is no path to such narrative simply omit info completely or refuse to cover a story.

This is why first hand observation is huge and while folks like Robert Stacy McCain and James O’Keefe are so valuable to those who want to know actual truth.

A great example of this came out this week. For a long time we have heard the narrative of the Yesterday there was a report that was tweeted out concerning the Israel Hamas War. 

The war has gone on long enough that troop rotations are taking place. IDF soldiers are coming home and they are telling what they’ve seen and apparently it doesn’t match either the “open air prison” or the “innocent civilians” business.

an excerpt:

There is poverty, and there are also entire areas of cities full of buildings packed with apartments and homes full of appliances, modern comforts, vehicles, and a standard of living that could rival many places in Israel, that easily surpass most of the Arab world. This is not a deprived blockaded population in concentration camps. Soldiers describe being shocked by this – GAZA is under Egyptian & Israeli blockade but you would never know it, it (was) a modern prosperous thriving territory. – The tunnels, the weapons, the preparations & infrastructure to ‘go get the Jews’ are everywhere. In the houses, under the businesses, in the mosques, the UNRWA schools, the hospitals and clinics, GAZA is not an open prison – it is a giant terror base.

and this isn’t the only source:

Earlier this month, one of the 646’s battalions began going through central Gaza’s al-Azhar neighborhood, dubbed by Israeli officials the “Towers neighborhood” for the 31 apartment buildings allegedly populated by Hamas officials.

“We discovered that every house has a shaft, and a whole underground network connects them, including the school and the mosque,” said Shushan.

We have to abandon the fiction that peace is possible between the Gazans and Israel. 

Update: Rush Limbaugh understood this years ago:

Risk and Reward Under the Fedora: Gun Crime, Electric Car Compliance Credits, China Lab Theory, Victory Speeches and Jesus and Gaza

Posted: January 18, 2024 by datechguy in business, crime, economy, elections, Israel vs Hamas, media, medicine, middle east, politics, primaries, under the fedora
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A report out of Florida tells us that despite dire warnings from the left about “constitutional carry” adopted in Florida concerning violence the opposite effect has taken place:

Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”

Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.

Apparently in Florida the increased risk of getting shot by an armed citizen is no longer low enough to justify the reward of crime to many. Fortunately for criminals NYC doesn’t have said risk.

The move by Hertz to sell of 20,000 electric cars (just to Whom they will sell them to and how much on the dollar they will get we don’t know) illustrates something that drivers who jumped on the electric car bandwagon have been discovering to their regret. The risk of not having sufficient battery to get where you are going in the time allotted does not match the reward of the “efficiency” of an electric car.

And apparently it turns out that said “efficiency” has as much science behind it as the 6′ social distancing business:

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

If you ever wondered why carmakers were willing to take the risk of making cars people didn’t want to buy without the reward of actual buyers, now you know.

The times are a changing for the government COVID crowd who forced all kinds of rules upon us while censoring those who might speak out about risks.

One of those bits of censorship were hitting or de-platforming folks who theorized that COVID came from a lab leak in China. The whole Fauci team was big on going after such folks with the help of a compliant media.

One of that team doing the insisting was Dr. Francis Collins who had no problem calling such statements a “very destructive conspiracy” for years. But apparently the reward of such a stance disappears when one is asked about it under pains of perjury when testifying under oath:

In a significant U-turn, House Republicans who led the hearing revealed that Dr Collins, 73, told them that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.

His answers were similar to those of Dr Fauci, who sat for a marathon 14 hours of questioning last week when he finally acknowledged that the lab leak theory — that Covid escaped from a Chinese biolab — should not have been so easily dismissed.

As we mentioned on Tuesday President Donald Trump decisively won the Iowa Caucus losing only a single county in the state (which by an odd coincidence ran out of party change forms giving democrats who had no caucus to attend a chance to influence the GOP results)

While I found the result interesting compared to 2016 given that Donald Trump now had a record as president vs speculation as to how he would govern. CNN cut away from his speech right away and MSNBC made it a point to not carry his victory speech at all.

“At this point in the evening the projected winner of the Iowa caucuses has just started giving his victory speech,” Maddow began, oddly avoiding Trump’s name. “We will keep an eye on that as it happens. We will let you know if there is any news made in that speech, if there is anything noteworthy, something substantive and important.”

I find this the most interesting thing of all because the small MSNBC audience is about as far left as they come yet even among such an audience they find the risk of such people hearing Donald Trump speaking live so great that they dare not allow him to challenge the narrative that they’ve been sold.

That’s really something.

Finally as Israel continues to discover more and more terror infrastructure in Gaza and continues to systematic take out both Hamas and the terror infrastructure pressure continues to rise among western allies of Hamas and Joe Biden in particular to hold Israel back before the destruction of Hamas becomes complete.

Hamas apparently did not foresee this result figuring they would be able to weather an Israeli response in their incredible terror tunnel network. (Frankly they should all go to an underdeveloped nation that needs miners as they certainly know about digging) which is odd because Hamas claims Jesus as a prophet and apparently didn’t take these words of Christ on risk and reward to heart:

Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.

Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.

Luke 14 28-32

Of course if Hamas actually followed Christ they would be taking the whole “love your enemies” business seriously and stop trying to slaughter Jews, but to Hamas et/al the risk of defeat, humiliation and the devastation and death of their people does not compare to the reward of slaughtered Jews.

(At least among those who do not have billions in cash and live far from Gaza that is).

Question: How Do You Know People From MIT are Smarter than People From Harvard and Penn?

Posted: January 5, 2024 by datechguy in culture, education, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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Answer: Because their president knew when to shut up.

It’s been a month or so since the presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT made fools of themselves in their congressional testimony. The President of Penn resigned that week, the President of Harvard, being a woman of color, needed a month and massive evidence of plagiarism to get her out the door. 

Now as we near the end of the Christmas Season only Sally Kornbluth the President of MIT remains and although Bill Ackman has turned his attention to her and a lecturer has resigned this week over their response to antisemitism on campus Kornbluth still stands.

Why because after her disastrous performance before congress she did the one thing that neither Gay of Harvard nor Magill of Penn did, she managed to keep her mouth shut and her head down.

Both Gay and Magill put out videos declaring loudly once they were not under oath what they should have said under oath. Kornbluth remained silent. In fact if you do a google search for news stories with the word “Kornbluth” and sort by date you will note very few stories concerning her during the period from the time between Magill’s resignation and Gay’s. In fact the most significant story in play was this from the Times of Israel:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, who came under fire after her testimony on the university’s response to antisemitism, attended a screening of a compilation film showing Hamas atrocities carried out on October 7, Prof. Retsef Levi says on X, formerly Twitter.

Levi, a critic of Kornbluth, says he also attended the screening, as did chairman of the MIT board Mark Gorenberg and other faculty.

The screening of the tightly controlled film, which was put together by the IDF, was hosted by the MIT Chabad house

This silence clearly paid dividends. A full month has passed since the base hearing, she can point to her attendance of the screening above while still staying married to the narrativeTM as demonstrated by this memo which came out yesterday:

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

While we address the pressing challenge of how best to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity in our community, we need to talk candidly about practical ways to make our community a place where we all feel that we belong.

While she doesn’t have the advantages of Gay’s racial bona fides she also doesn’t apparently have any of the plagiarism issues to worry about.  Combine that with her pushing of DEI along with repeating the canard that “Islamaphobia” as an issue that needs to be combated on campus and she has put the left on notice that she is on board and no amount of Hamas atrocities are going to derail her from the cause.

Given her history at Duke university this is no surprise.

So while the focus might turn to MIT and some may put some effort in bringing heat toward MIT in general and Kornbluth in particular I’m predicting that Kornbluth will still be president of MIT when this year’s class graduates and the next semester’s class enters.

After all there is nothing that draws those arab billions to a US college like a Jewish president willing to play ball and smart enough to dodge the consequences of same.

Unexpectedly of course.

Bonus Thought: Harvard and Penn are both known for their Law Schools, You would think people who run law schools would know the first rule of law, particularly if you know you’re guilty is to SHUT UP! MIT may not do law but as a school known for more practical skills and thus figured this out.

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