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May 2018

#NoMoreApologies by Steve Lipman

Does anyone say “department store” anymore? If you’re a Millennial or maybe even a tad older, you may not even be aware of what a department store is. If you’re thinking, Walmart or Target, or even Kohl’s, think again.

Until the 1970s or so, department stores were grand affairs; multi-story edifices, arranged in “departments,” and organized by floor. You needed to take an elevator, usually operated by a real person, to get to the floor that stocked whatever you were looking for. And as the elevator approached a floor, the operator would shout out the stops like a train conductor: “Fourth floor, kitchen appliances! Fifth floor, ladies lingerie!”

These days, you won’t find too many department store elevator operators, but even if you could, Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, recently showed that it’s no job for an amateur. A lot can go wrong just calling out the floors.

While attending an academic convention, Ledbow was riding in a hotel elevator―not in a department store elevator―with other passengers, including a number of women. Instead of saying the number of the floor he wanted to another passenger to press, Lebow quipped “Ladies Lingerie” as his floor choice.

Anyone who’d ever taken an old-fashioned department store elevator ride would have gotten the joke, and probably chuckled. Anyone not schooled in department store lore but possessed of good manners and an unexcitable mind probably would have ignored the comment, or thought this guy wandered into the wrong building. And that would be the end of it.

But that was just the beginning of it for Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College. Sharoni was also on that elevator, and Lebow’s seems to have crack ruined her whole day.

Sharoni didn’t think Lebow was only joking. She couldn’t imagine anyone having the temerity to “make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference.”

Right. Who does that? But still . . . what’s the problem?

Michael Kile: Kelp, Flannery’s Latest Brainwave

Apparently, if humanity would only listen, the planet could be saved from the ravages of global warming if we were to cultivate seaweed and then consign it to the ocean depths. It’s the latest grand scheme from the man who promoted ‘hot rocks’ salvation.

Two indefatigable disciples of Jeremiah for the price of a few cheers is a bargain in any language, but especially when the dialect of choice is climate babble. So it was at the earthy 2018 WOMADelaide’s carbon-neutral Planet Talks, where one of those warmist specimens, a resurgent Tim Flannery, revealed his latest eco-bright idea: salvation by seaweed.

Climate babble, n., 1. Silly or sincere speech about the climate and its effects, esp. the use of words or phrases designed to alarm, give an impression of authenticity, knowledge, precision, etc., such as: becoming obvious, not inconsistent with, in all likelihood, almost inevitable, not a moment to lose, carbon-negative technology, gut feeling, robust, runaway, tipping point, etc. 2. Climate-babbler: a person skilled in the art of climate babble. Syn., driveller, haruspex, snake oil salesperson. E.g.: “A decade ago climate experts were deeply worried; now they are terrified, tearful, traumatised and shaking in their sneakers.”

ABC Science Show’s legendary presenter, self-described “Methuselah” Robyn Williams was the other carbonphobic, teamed up for a fascinating “live” conversation with 60-year-old Flannery; mammalogist, palaeontologist, activist, explorer, discoverer of the greater monkey-faced bat, Pteralopex flanneryi, and author. His latest tome is Sunlight and Seaweed and it was assiduously promoted in their chat, all 51 minutes of which can be heard here.

Williams and Flannery go back a long way. The latter was a director of the South Australian Museum for seven years, from 1999. Williams, now a bequest ambassador for the Australian Museum Trust, was its president for eight years from 1986 and retains the title President Emeritus. It must be very nice to have friends with a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster at their disposal when you are trying to flog a book that presents seaweed as the salvation of mankind.

Augusto Zimmermann Adolf Hitler’s Debt to Karl Marx

This week, when people who should know better were marking the birth of modern Communism’s founder, his socialist heirs were flinging the standard slur that conservatives are ‘Nazis’. To find the Austrian Corporal’s real legatees they should look much closer to home.

May 5 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital and the spiritual leader of Communism, a totalitarian ideology that killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone. We should expect the European Union oligarchs to show a bit more respect for the innocent victims of Communism. And yet, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission attended the celebration marking the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth in Trier and openly declared that he was ‘celebrating the father of Communism’. The media also reports that the EU President defended Marx by arguing that he is not “responsible” for mistakes and atrocities committed in his name after his death. He delivered ‘an impassioned speech praising the legacy of the German philosopher’.[1]

The celebration of Marx by the European Commission President is particularly appalling for the European countries which suffered for decades under Communist dictatorships. And yet, Marx is not just the ‘father of Communism’. He is also the ‘mother’ of Nazi-Fascism, another ideology that claimed millions of lives in that continent. Indeed, all the intellectual frontrunners of Nazi-Fascism were radical Marxists at some stage of their lives. Like Marx, the early fascists condemned economic freedom and individual liberty. Above all, they agreed with Marx that capitalism should be eliminated because it supposedly favour only the ‘unproductive classes’ of industrialists at the expense of the working class.

Marxist Roots of Nazi Fascism

The Fascist movement was introduced in Italy after the World War I by Benito Mussolini. Raised by a Marxist mother, at the age of 29 Mussolini managed to become ‘one of the most effective and widely read socialist journalists in Europe’.[2] In 1912, he was elected the head of the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, opposing ‘bourgeois’ parliaments and proposing that Italy should be thoroughly Marxist. ‘Marx’, wrote Mussolini, ‘is the father and teacher … He is the magnificent philosopher of working-class violence’.[3] Of his own political aspiration, Mussolini remarked: ‘I wish to prepare my country and accustom it to war for the day of the greatest bloodbath of all, when the two basic hostile classes will clash in the supreme trial’.[4]

According to French historian François Furet, ‘Communism and Fascism grew up on the same soil, the soil of Italian socialism’. As Furet also explains, ‘Mussolini was a member of the revolutionary wing of the Socialist movement prior to supporting Italy’s entry into the Great War; then, immediately afterward, he found himself in violent conflict with the Bolshevik-leaning leaders of his former party’.[5] On the eve of that war, Mussolini predicted: ‘With the unleashing of a mighty clash of peoples, the bourgeoisie is playing its last card and calls forth on the world scene that which Karl Marx called the sixth great power: the socialist revolution’.[6]

However, the coming of that war coupled with his determination to bring Italy into it resulted in Mussolini losing his official position within the Italian Socialist Party.[7] As a result, on March 23, 1919, he was forced to create the Fascist Movement which promised, among other things, the partial seizure of all finance capital; the control over the national economy by corporative economic councils; the confiscation of church lands; and agrarian reform.[8] And yet, Lenin’s economic failures in the Soviet Union had turned Mussolini away from direct expropriation of industry. Still, Mussolini’s greatest aspiration was to establish a socialist utopia that should dictate how private business would be allowed to operate.[9] According to the British historian, Paul Johnson,

Mussolini now wanted to use and exploit capitalism rather than destroy it. But his was to be a radical revolution nonetheless, rooted in the pre-war ‘vanguard élite’ Marxism and syndicalism (workers’ rule) which was to remain to his death the most important single element in his politics.[10]

Outlook for Israeli Leader Brightens as Prospects for Iran Nuclear Deal Dim President Trump’s pullout from Iran accord has scrambled Israel’s politics and boosted Netanyahu’s fortunesBy Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv and Rory Jones in Dubai

President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal has dramatically brightened the political outlook for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hold on office was at risk just weeks ago.

Mr. Netanyahu—who has long opposed the Iran deal—has faced spiraling police corruption probes that have entangled his wife and polarized Israelis.

But Israelis have rallied beyond Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing backers to support his policies on Iran, a shift that has scrambled the nation’s politics and boosted his fortunes.

Opposition politicians, who only weeks ago called for the Israeli leader’s resignation over alleged corruption, have lined up alongside Mr. Netanyahu. Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party and Avi Gabbay, head of the Labor Party, both welcomed Mr. Trump’s announcement, saying Israelis should display united support for renewed U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

Ze’ev Elkin, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, said those who doubted the premier’s efforts to rescind the deal should now “eat their hats.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web An alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation. Should we be listening? Bari Weiss

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.”

I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.

Today, people like them who dare venture into this “There Be Dragons” territory on the intellectual map have met with outrage and derision — even, or perhaps especially, from people who pride themselves on openness.

It’s a pattern that has become common in our new era of That Which Cannot Be Said. And it is the reason the Intellectual Dark Web, a term coined half-jokingly by Mr. Weinstein, came to exist.

What is the I.D.W. and who is a member of it? It’s hard to explain, which is both its beauty and its danger.

Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.The closest thing to a phone book for the I.D.W. is a sleek website that lists the dramatis personae of the network, including Mr. Harris; Mr. Weinstein and his brother and sister-in-law, the evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying; Jordan Peterson, the psychologist and best-selling author; the conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray; Maajid Nawaz, the former Islamist turned anti-extremist activist; and the feminists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hoff Sommers. But in typical dark web fashion, no one knows who put the website up.

Sen. Tom Cotton: Gina Haspel has spent her life defending our country. She’s an excellent choice for CIA

President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. As a strong supporter of her nomination, I expect she will do very well.

Despite her opponents’ attempts to paint her as an ideological zealot, Haspel is a consummate professional whose record of accomplishment, bipartisan support, and clear love of country make her an excellent choice to lead our nation’s top intelligence agency.

Unlike many nominees in recent years, Haspel isn’t the representative of a political faction. She’s a career intelligence officer with over 30 years of experience.

Haspel joined the CIA in 1985, working as a case officer for several years in both Africa and Europe. Over time, she rose up the ranks, serving as deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and chief of staff for the director of operations.

In addition, Haspel served as chief of station – that is, the agent responsible for overseeing all of the CIA’s work in a foreign country – four times. If confirmed, she would be the first CIA director in decades who has spent her entire career at the agency – as well as the first woman to lead the agency.

Having served under six different presidents from both parties, Haspel is far from an ideologue. She’s an institutionalist who has put in so many years of work that she commands respect throughout the rank and file at the CIA.

Haspel’s opponents have tried to use a small sliver of her career against her by arguing, essentially, that she was just too tough on Al Qaeda for this country to bear. But I’d argue that her willingness to serve in what was a highly stressful post only enhances the case for her confirmation.

California Energy Commission Votes to Require Solar Panels in Most New Homes By Jack Crowe

The California Energy Commission voted Wednesday in favor of requiring that almost all new homes built in the state are equipped with rooftop solar panels.

The new energy efficiency standards, which are the first of their kind in the country, require that solar panels be included on all single and multi-family homes built after January 1, 2020, unless they rise above three stories.

The new standards, which will also exempt some homes deemed to be too shady, are part of governor Jerry Brown’s broader effort to decrease the state’s carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

Critics of the new initiative allege it will adversely effect the housing market, citing the California Energy Commission estimate that the measure will raise the cost of new homes by an average of nearly $10,000 — a particularly troubling impact in a state plagued by high housing costs.

“With home prices having risen as much as they have, I think home buyers would find it a little distasteful to be forced to pay more for solar systems that they may not want or feel like they can’t afford,” Brent Anderson, a spokesman for homebuilder Meritage Homes Corp, told Bloomberg. “Even though, in the long term, it’s the right answer.”

Proponents view it as an appropriately aggressive measure to combat climate change and cite the state’s finding that it will likely reduce energy costs by $80 per month for the average household.

Male Professor Faces Discipline for Telling a Female Professor a Joke By Katherine Timpf

Whether you like the joke or not, this should have been handled between the two professors without involving a bureaucracy.

Last month, a King’s College professor told a harmless joke on an elevator during an International Studies Association conference — and now, he’s facing disciplinary charges.

According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Richard Ned Lebow was on a crowded elevator when Simona Sharoni, a professor of gender studies at Merrimack College, asked him what floor he needed, and Lebow jokingly answered, “ladies’ lingerie.”

Seems harmless, right? At the very least, nothing to write home about, right? Apparently not. Sharoni got so offended by the joke that she filed a complaint with the International Studies Association.

“I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that we froze and didn’t confront him,” she wrote in the complaint.

It gets worse: ISA actually determined that Lebow’s joke had violated the group’s code of conduct.

After finding out he was under investigation, Lebow attempted to resolve the matter himself — adult-to-adult and bureaucracy-free — by writing to Sharoni. He didn’t exactly apologize but he did insist that he “certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable,” adding that what he had said was simply a “standard gag line” that he’d heard often when he was young in the 1950s.

Who’s Afraid of Bari Weiss? By Kyle Smith

Her latest piece has the Left rattled.

It happens intermittently, without warning, on no fixed schedule. First: eerie wails in the distance. Then comes the rustle of terrified feet, soon growing into the low roar of a stampede. The faces of the tormented show a mixture of hostility, disbelief, and confusion. Thomas Pynchon captured the mood in his famous description of the V-2 rocket attacks on London, at the start of Gravity’s Rainbow: “A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.” This week the screaming across the skies of the Internet could mean only one thing: Another Bari Weiss column had arrived.

Some right-leaning writers are provocateurs, but Weiss, a New York Times columnist and editor, is not Kevin Williamson or Ben Shapiro. She writes reasonable, even-tempered essays from a commonsense perspective. In her latest, “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” a profile of a loosely affiliated group of public intellectuals from left and right who don’t share much in common except for a belief that ideas should be freely discussed, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a single point that’s outrageous or even controversial.

MY SAY: ON THE IRAN DEAL SENATOR TOM COTTON THE BEST MAN STANDING

Elections are coming. Hold the Senators’ feet to the fire on the Iran deal. Remember that all the Senators of both parties, with the noble exception of Senator Tom Cotton, enabled the Iran deal when they voted for the Cardin/Corker bill in May 2015, which gave Obama a fig leaf. Although the bill promised tougher sanctions, it was a sham which cleared the path for the Iran deal travesty.

Andrew McCarthy explains it all:
Distorting the Iran-Deal Bill By Andrew C. McCarthy
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/11/obama-iran-deal-corker-bill/
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