Category Archives: morality

Tacit Hamas Apologia

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United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his nation would join France in recognizing a Palestinian state by the end of summer. Never mind that there is no state to recognize; the far larger problem and UK failure is this:

So today [Starmer said], as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations general assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
This includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank. Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal.
The Palestinian people have endured terrible suffering. Now, in Gaza, because of a catastrophic failure of aid we see starving babies, children too weak to stand—images that will stay with us for a lifetime.
The suffering must end. Yesterday I discussed this with President Trump and we are mounting a major effort to get humanitarian supplies back in, by air—and UK aid has been air-dropped into Gaza today—and, crucially, by land. We need to see at least 500 trucks entering Gaza every day.

The trouble with Starmer’s position is that it entirely mischaracterizes the source of the problem. It is Hamas that opposes peace and refuses any sort of ceasefire short of Israel’s abject surrender; it is Hamas that is actively interfering with delivery of humanitarian aid, actively interfering as it does with Gazans’ efforts to get to aid deliveries unless they come through Hamas, diverting UN-sourced aid from deliveries to Gazans toward itself, stealing delivered aid from Gazans; it is Hamas causing the Gazans’ suffering, especially that of children for the sake of the optics—which is rewarded by their effects on the naïve and those like Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, who should know better.

This is Starmer sub rosa (not sotto voce because he really does know better) supporting the terrorists. That’s the unequivocal message he has for Hamas. How far the UK has fallen.

It’s a Start

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This time, it’s a start on cleaning up the bigotry sewage and ideological indoctrination that’s polluting our colleges and universities. Columbia University, of antisemitic bigotry and pro-terrorist/Hamas infamy, has agreed to pay the Trump administration $200 million along with an additional $21 million to EEOC to settle the latter’s investigations. Now,

[t]he administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, and Brown, the person familiar with the talks said, though it sees striking a deal with Harvard, America’s oldest university, as a key target.

The deal:

The Columbia agreement prohibits programs that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes” in student admissions and faculty hiring. It calls for the appointment of a senior vice provost to review programs in the department that houses Middle Eastern studies. It also appoints new faculty members in Jewish studies, economics, and political science to “contribute to a robust and intellectually diverse academic environment.”
The deal [provides for] a “resolution monitor,” who has been jointly selected by Columbia and the government, and paid for by the school, will keep tabs on Columbia’s compliance.

This is a good step with Columbia, and I hope the administration succeeds with those additional institutions, along with so many others, also. On the other hand, Michael Roth, Wesleyan University President, is already distorting what’s going on.

We’re in a world now where the government can say to all these schools, “Hey, we’re serious, you’re going to have to pay the piper to get along with the most powerful organization in the world. Which is the federal government.

It’s not at all a matter of “getting along” with the Federal government. It’s a matter of, if the institution wants Federal money—us average Americans‘ tax dollars—money the Federal government has no obligation to provide and which the institution has no intrinsic right to get, the institution must leave off its bigotry and support for terrorism, and it must stop discriminating in hiring and teaching based on political stance in addition to the discriminations that already are illegal. If Roth is going to insist on pretending to not understand that, his behavior should drive up the cost to Wesleyan.

There are two more step that are necessary, though. Each of those institutions first must admit, explicitly, to its bigotry, pro-terrorist support, and naked indoctrination of its students. Second, each of those institutions must identify the concretely measurable and publicly accessible steps it’s taking to correct those failures and its hard, unchanging schedule for completing those steps.

Snowflake Insult

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A pressman, CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Scott MacFarlane, is crying that he has PTSD as a result of the crowd’s real-time reaction to the attempted murder of then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America. And it wasn’t the shooting, Chuck [Todd on The Chuck Todd Cast podcast]. This was—I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but because you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people.
They were coming for us. If [Trump] didn’t jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us!

This is disgusting and despicable even for a member of the journalism guild. No one was coming for MacFarlane or any other member of the press present during that rally and shooting. Any diagnosis of PTSD for a journalist in that environment is almost tautologically erroneous.

Worse, MacFarlane’s crying and PTSD diagnosis are insults to our soldiers who have been injured, traumatized, and suffer from actual PTSD. They’re insults to all of our firemen, policemen, and EMTs who have been injured or traumatized in the course of their life-threatening duties or, in the particular case of EMTs, the horrific abuses they’ve seen and treated in the course of their duties.

MacFarlane is a Snowflake Poster Boy for why journalist guildsmen and -women are viewed with such utter distrust and contempt by us average Americans.

Mistake

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In their piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors wrote about President Donald Trump’s decision to continue sending weapons to Ukraine because [t]hey have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.

Unfortunately, the editors wrote this near the end of their bit:

What matters is giving Ukraine enough firepower to change Mr Putin’s cost-benefit calculation about continuing the war.

This isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply immoral. Arming Ukraine enough to change the barbarian’s cost-benefit calculation is just a means to keep Ukrainian soldiers in the field fighting, being maimed, and dying and to keep Ukrainian women and children available as targets for the barbarian.

Putin has already made his cost-benefit calculation: he doesn’t care about the cost, even having decided that his soldiers are nothing more than consumables on a par with fuel and ammunition. No amount of continued Ukrainian resistance, no matter how effective and costly (in the editors’ eyes) the war continues to be for Putin, he sees the benefit—conquering and occupying Ukraine, erasing it from the list of sovereign nations—as well worth the expenditure, whatever its size.

It isn’t enough to arm Ukraine enough that it can continue the war. Ukraine must win the war outright. That requires sending it the offensive and defensive weapons systems the UA needs in the numbers and in the timing that the UA needs them. Naysayers in government and Timid Tesses like these editors and their brethren elsewhere in the news media gallery need to get out of the way of that.

Trump and Ukraine

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President Donald Trump (R) says he’s “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the latest telecon between the two. Even, I don’t think he’s looking to stop his war. NSS.

Mr Putin added an exclamation point by hitting Kyiv with one of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war the same night as his conversation with Mr Trump.

Putin has followed prior telecons with Trump with heavy drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and residences.

Even so, Trump continues to dither regarding serious responses to Putin’s barbarism.

One possibility is that Trump is giving Putin every diplomatic opportunity to call off his barbaric invasion and war against Ukraine before Trump takes concrete action in Ukraine’s favor: serious sanctions against Russia and those persons, businesses, and nations that do business of any sort with Russia, coupled with unfettered arms deliveries to Ukraine in the amounts and times the UA says they need them.

That time is long past, though; Putin has responded militarily overtly negatively to those opportunities. It’s time to act.

The WSJ editors closed their piece with this:

Mr Putin thinks he can make President Trump look plaintive and weak, and then get away with it as Russia swallows Ukraine. If the Russian is right, much of the US deterrence benefit of the Iran strike will vanish.

That misstates the case. If Putin succeeds, all of our deterrence will disappear. And more: we’ll be actively inviting further moves by our enemies.