Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Hamas
2. Oz
3. Ebony
4. RFK Jr
5. Shepard
6. Collective
7. Ambler
1. Hamas. The Iranian proxy war against Israel continued last week with a variety of actions, reactions and opportunities. The biggest news was claimed bombing of a Hamas hospital, with the claim of upwards of 500 killed, and the worldwide reaction to the story. Let’s start with that.
- The instant this turned into a dead baby war (where both sides trot out casualties for the cameras), it was inevitable that Hamas would claim an atrocity in the most blood curdling way possible, and it never mattered whether the claim was real or not. This one was a claim out of the Hamas public health apparat of a bomb hitting a hospital killing 300 – 500, complete with video of a burning building. As the IDF was (and still is) in the middle of an air campaign, there are a lot of burning buildings. International media instantly and more importantly, unquestioningly passed along the Hamas claims early, often and loudly for all to see and hear, giving Hamas a temporary propaganda victory in the media. Most notable was the lockstep reporting of the Hamas claim as accurate, at least for a day or so. This in turn, allowed Iran to stir up the mobs in the western world, which we will get to later.
- As it turned out, it wasn’t the IDF that hit the hospital, it was a rocket aimed at Israel launched that fell short. Depending on whose bogus numbers you believe, perhaps 20% of the rockets don’t make it out of Gaza. The one in question hit a parking lot outside the building, blew a hole a foot or so across in it, and torched a few cars in the lot. Remember, the fog of war here, where everyone on both sides must be assumed to be lying, demonstrated for months in Ukraine. OTOH, my experience is that the IDF is pretty reliable. It has to be, as they are fighting for their very lives in both the military and persuasion worlds.
- It was the mobs that got my attention. Iran has figured out how to use its proxy mobs on the streets as military assets. Difficult for local law enforcement and military to harshly shut down these proxy mobs committing all manner of mayhem and violence in front of the cameras in the way that they are so desperately begging for. The thing that surprised me was that the street mobs did not become the central story, though they are still going on. Did someone warn Iran in a way that got their attention? Perhaps. Perhaps not. As of this writing, the mob action in Europe continues, though not to the extent that they are changing any government support for Israel. And those riots are not front and center in any national reporting here in the US that I can see. Sadly, the new anti-Semitic Jihad did ramp up nicely with a 10 – 15x increase in attacks on Jewish citizens worldwide. They are particularly bad on college campuses here in the US. That, along with the pro-Hamas blather out of the university leadership and faculty is having the predictable effect of chasing away large caliber donors to those schools, not a day too soon.
- Iran’s attempt to open a second front in Lebanon led by Hezbollah has not gone as well as hoped, with action between Hezbollah and the IDF being mostly sparring. There are also a few airstrikes on Iranian assets in Syria.
- The happiest news of the week was discovery that the Hamas terrorists were using Captagon (fenethylline, a synthetic amphetamine type stimulant prescribed for attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy). It is a central nervous system stimulant, which allows its users to fight fiercely for hours and hours. It is also addictive. Captagon was used by Isis and fueled their murderous fighting. It is generally banned and produced by the Assad regime in Syria as an export item. The good news about the Captagon use is that what we are seeing out of Hamas is not entirely due to bulletproof brainwashing. And now that we know about its use, it becomes something that Israel can respond to in a military manner. How so? Do the same thing the fentanyl pushers are doing to opioids, drive the good stuff out of the marketplace by overwhelming it with the bad stuff. Produce a version that isn’t nearly as strong and distribute it along with a pill that will kill the user in a 1:5 mix and the Hamas fighter problem solves itself over time.
- Last, but certainly not least, is the gun control component of the attack. I didn’t know that Israel was a gun control nation, something they will have to rethink. The lack of firearms in the hands of the citizenry was one of the things that allowed the Hamas attack to run wild for as long as it did.
2. Oz. Happy and completely unexpected result out of Oz last week as voters soundly defeated a ballot initiative that would carve out special rights for indigenous (Aboriginals) in the national constitution. The vote was 60-40% against, shocking national media and all the Usual Suspects in the national government and on the left pushing it. The proposal was for creation of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that would advise Parliament and the national government on indigenous matters. Essentially, the citizenry of Oz rejected the notion of special rights based on race, something we here in the US ought to embrace. I think we do, which is why democrats and their cheerleaders keep on trying to gift those special rights without benefit of involvement by anyone who votes.
3. Ebony. Speaking of special rights based on race, comes a story out of California, where the state government has updated their Amber Alert operation, creating what they now call Ebony Alerts, which will focus on missing black people. The Amber Alert was named after a missing girl called Amber, a name rather than a color. Not good enough for a black state senator who managed to get the rest of his fellow race-baiting democrat legislators to go along with him creating a parallel system. Gavin Newsom must have agreed, as he signed the legislation. Of course, there is no data describing how Amber Alerts are not working for missing blacks to the point where a new blacks only system had to be created. Sounds like democrats doing what they always have done, dividing Americans by the color of their skin, democrats being democrats.
4. RFK Jr. Does anyone have worse timing than RFK Jr, who announced his candidacy as an indy the same day that Hamas attacked Israel? There are at least two independent / third party national candidates out there now, Cornell West and RFK Jr. Both are democrats running against Biden and the current rules their party use to select national candidates. Media focus on RFK Jr claims he will take votes from Trump, helping Biden or whomever replaces him. I tend to disagree with that view, as Trump supporters are pretty solid, and as his persecution at the hands of the Biden Do(In)J and like-minded democrat prosecutors in NY and GA continue, that support will grow, as will the number of voters who believe that the prosecutions are little more than Soviet-style show trials. Can Biden get more than the 81 million he got without further inflaming the current election fraud suspicions? Don’t think so. During his first week as an indy candidate, RFK Jr came out strongly in favor of reparations for blacks. As reported, this would tend to support the view that he is running to the left of Biden, as it would tend to completely eliminate any potential Republican support. I would caution us to hold our fire on this one, as there may be more behind it. One of the most powerful persuasion plays is to agree with someone, and then take the discussion in an unexpected direction. For reparations, the play is to agree with reparations, and then propose a solution completely unexpected by its backers. Rather than reparations as money and property transferred based on race, perhaps the reparations would be to ensure minority students, and all other students get a good education, the key to escaping awfulness of their parent’s lives. And how do we ensure a good education? Only one way, by destroying the teachers’ unions, the source of systemic racism nationwide, something very popular among Republicans. Take support for reparations as a data point and wait to see what he does with it. My guess is that he will end up as a same old, same old democrat, but he has done other unexpected things so far, so we may be surprised.
5. Shepard. One of the great cause celebs during the Clinton years was the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998. He was a gay student at University of Wyoming, found beaten, tortured, left to die on a fence near Laramie. The story was that he was killed due to a hookup at a bar gone wrong, homophobia at its worst. left used the death to push hate crime legislation for all they were worth. None of the legislation would have saved his life. Hate crime legislation works a lot like gun control laws, giving the impression you are solving the problem while doing nothing other than undermining the Rule of Law for everyone else. As it turned out, his death wasn’t the result of homophobia, making a pass at the wrong guy at a bar. Rather, it was one meth dealer taking out another meth dealer who was competing for the same customer base. The other meth dealer was an on and off lover of Shepard, so homophobia was also off the table. Once again, the media narrative was completely fraudulent.
6. Collective. In the new Hamas – Israel war, we are seeing the masks come off many on the political left, with international media and US colleges and universities being the most prominent. I would like to point to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, D-NY) as an interesting example. NYP reported her accusation of Israel committing war crimes against Hamas, carrying out collective punishment against the 2.3 million living in Gaza for the actions of a few thousand in Israel. It’s not the accusations of war crimes that interest me on this one. Rather, it is the notion that collective punishment is wrong, coming from a leader of the political party that eats, breathes, and sleeps collective punishment it happily uses against its political opposition. Cancellation is collective punishment, especially when used against businesses and non-profits. Going after advertisers is collective punishment. Censorship is collective punishment. Hunting Republicans like Do(In)J is doing to Trump supporters is collective punishment. Involuntary deprogramming all Trump supporters like Hilly wants to do is collective punishment. Essentially, AOC is telling us that collective punishment, like free speech, is something only those on her side of the aisle can use.
7. Ambler. The Biden regime war on Alaska continued last week with Deb Haaland’s BLM issuing a dire draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) on the Ambler Road to the Ambler Mining District west of Fairbanks and south of the Brooks Range. The road is the latest infrastructure project targeted by the anti-development greens. Excuse for not building it this time is negative impact to subsistence opportunities for 66 villages in the region. The Ambler Mining District is rich in minerals and rare earths, vital to Biden’s Green Nude Eel carbon free future. Unfortunately, according to this SEIS it may significantly restrict subsistence opportunities for nearly half of the villages. While the draft released last week does not recommend any of the three possible routes or a no build option, most up here expect a no build recommendation now that they have trotted out their anti-road rationale. The draft SEIS nearly tripled the number of villages considered and updates potential impacts of the road on caribou and fish populations. It was demanded by an anti-development federal judge in 2020. Note that development has always increased the number of caribou here in Alaska, with Prudhoe Bay being the most obvious example, a little factoid the rocket scientists at BLM managed to miss.
More later –
- AG
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded – here and there, now and then – are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck”.” – Lazarus Long via Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough for Love. 1974.