Jonathan Pollard To Go Free?

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Luke Ford

From Wikipedia: Four former directors of Naval Intelligence — William Studeman, Sumner Shapiro, John L. Butts, and Thomas Brooks — issued a public response to the call for clemency, and what they termed “the myths that have arisen from this clever public relations campaign … aimed at transforming Pollard from greedy, arrogant betrayer of the American national trust into Pollard, committed Israeli patriot”:[148][149]

Pollard pleaded guilty and therefore never was publicly tried. Thus, the American people never came to know that he offered classified information to three other countries before working for the Israelis and that he offered his services to a fourth country while he was spying for Israel. They also never came to understand that he was being highly paid for his services …

Pollard and his apologists argue he turned over to the Israelis information they were being denied that was critical to their security. The fact is, however, Pollard had no way of knowing what the Israeli government was already receiving by way of official intelligence exchange agreements … Some of the data he compromised had nothing to do with Israeli security or even with the Middle East. He betrayed worldwide intelligence data, including sources and methods developed at significant cost to the U.S. taxpayer. As a result of his perfidy, some of those sources are lost forever.

… Another claim Pollard made is that the U.S. government reneged on its bargain not to seek the life sentence. What is not heard is that Pollard’s part of the bargain was to cooperate fully in an assessment of the damage he had done and to refrain from talking to the press prior to the completion of his sentencing. He blatantly and contemptuously failed to live up to either part of the plea agreement … It was this coupled with the magnitude and consequences of his criminal actions that resulted in the judge imposing a life sentence … The appellate court subsequently upheld the life sentence.

If, as Pollard and his supporters claim, he has “suffered enough” for his crimes, he is free to apply for parole as the American judicial system provides. In his arrogance, he has refused to do so, but insists on being granted clemency or a pardon.

Admiral Shapiro stated that he was troubled by the support of Jewish organizations for Pollard: “We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up … and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me.”[20]

Ron Olive, retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service, led the Pollard investigation. In his 2006 book, Capturing Jonathan Pollard – How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice, Olive wrote that Pollard did not serve Israel solely, but admitted passing secrets to South Africa, and to his financial advisers, and to shopping his access to Pakistan and other countries.[150]

New Republic editor Martin Peretz has argued against freeing Pollard: “Jonathan Pollard is not a Jewish martyr. He is a convicted espionage agent who spied on his country for both Israel and Pakistan (!) — a spy, moreover, who got paid for his work. His professional career, then, reeks of infamy and is suffused with depravity.” Peretz called Pollard’s supporters “professional victims, mostly brutal themselves, who originate in the ultra-nationalist and religious right. They are insatiable. And they want America to be Israel’s patsy.”[151]

Former FBI and U.S. Navy lawyer M.E. “Spike” Bowman, a top legal adviser to navy intelligence at the time of Pollard’s arrest, who had intimate knowledge of the Pollard case, issued a detailed critique of the case for clemency in 2011. “Because the case never went to trial, it is difficult for outside observers to understand the potential impact and complexity of the Pollard betrayal,” he wrote. “There is no doubt that Pollard was devoted to Israel. However, the extent of the theft and the damage was far broader and more complex than evidenced by the single charge and sentence.”[152] In his estimation Pollard “was neither a U.S. nor an Israeli patriot. He was a self-serving, gluttonous character seeking financial reward and personal gratification.”[152]

In September 2011, according to one report, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of rabbis, “President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life’.”[153] Biden later denied having used those words, but acknowledged that the report characterized his position accurately.[154]

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Men Who Fear Women

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Luke Ford

Camille Paglia says: We are formed by all kinds of strange or vague memories from childhood. That kind of understanding is needed to see that Cosby was involved in a symbiotic, push-pull thing with his wife, where he went out and did these awful things to assert his own independence. But for that, he required the women to be inert. He needed them to be dead! Cosby is actually a necrophiliac–a style that was popular in the late Victorian period in the nineteenth-century.

It’s hard to believe now, but you had men digging up corpses from graveyards, stealing the bodies, hiding them under their beds, and then having sex with them. So that’s exactly what’s happening here: to give a woman a drug, to make her inert, to make her dead is the man saying that I need her to be dead for me to function. She’s too powerful for me as a living woman. And this is what is also going on in those barbaric fraternity orgies, where women are sexually assaulted while lying unconscious. And women don’t understand this! They have no idea why any men would find it arousing to have sex with a young woman who’s passed out at a fraternity house. But it’s necrophilia–this fear and envy of a woman’s power.

And it’s the same thing with Bill Clinton: to find the answer, you have to look at his relationship to his flamboyant mother. He felt smothered by her in some way. But let’s be clear–I’m not trying to blame the mother! What I’m saying is that male sexuality is extremely complicated, and the formation of male identity is very tentative and sensitive–but feminist rhetoric doesn’t allow for it. This is why women are having so much trouble dealing with men in the feminist era. They don’t understand men, and they demonize men. They accord to men far more power than men actually have in sex. Women control the sexual world in ways that most feminists simply don’t understand…

The erasure of motherhood from feminist rhetoric has led us to this current politicization of sex talk, which doesn’t allow women to recognize their immense power vis-à-vis men. When motherhood was more at the center of culture, you had mothers who understood the fragility of boys and the boy’s need for nurturance and for confidence to overcome his weaknesses. The old-style country women–the Italian matriarchs and Jewish mothers–they all understood the fragility of men. The mothers ruled their own world and didn’t take men that seriously. They understood how to nurture men and encourage them to be strong–whereas current feminism simply doesn’t perceive the power of women vis-a-vis men. But when you talk like this with most men, it really resonates with them, and they say “Yes, yes! That’s it!”

Currently, feminists lack sympathy and compassion for men and for the difficulties that men face in the formation of their identities. I’m not talking in terms of the men’s rights movement, which got infected by p.c. The heterosexual professional woman, emerging with her shiny Ivy League degree, wants to communicate with her husband exactly the way she communicates with her friends–as in “Sex and the City.” That show really caught the animated way that women actually talk with each other. But that’s not a style that straight men can do! Gay men can do it, sure–but not straight men! Guess what–women are different than men! When will feminism wake up to this basic reality? Women relate differently to each other than they do to men. And straight men do not have the same communication skills or values as women–their brains are different!

If Emma Sulkowicz were a student of yours, in an art class you were teaching, how would you grade her work?

[laughs] I’d give her a D! I call it “mattress feminism.” Perpetually lugging around your bad memories–never evolving or moving on! It’s like a parody of the worst aspects of that kind of grievance-oriented feminism. I called my feminism “Amazon feminism” or “street-smart feminism,” where you remain vigilant, learn how to defend yourself, and take responsibility for the choices you make. If something bad happens, you learn from it. You become stronger and move on. But hauling a mattress around on campus? Columbia, one of the great Ivy League schools with a tremendous history of scholarship, utterly disgraced itself in how it handled that case. It enabled this protracted masochistic exercise where a young woman trapped herself in her own bad memories and publicly labeled herself as a victim, which will now be her identity forever. This isn’t feminism–which should empower women, not cripple them.

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How Do You Look At Women?

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Luke Ford

My married friend says that when he sees a woman, his first thought is not about relations (nor his second nor his third). He says that when he watches women’s soccer, he thinks about the play. “Nice pass” and that sort of thing. My first thought upon seeing a woman, whether on TV or in real life, is a tad more visceral. I instinctively assess how fertile and fun she might be.

When my friend watches football cheerleaders, are his first thoughts, “What great dance moves!” My 12-Step buddies warn me against using women (even an extended gaze, let alone a conversation) as a hit, a high, an opportunity to intrigue, and to distract myself and to feel better about myself. My therapist says that women are people too. I think my dad taught me that women are not watermelons — you don’t drill a hole in them to see if they’re sweet. A friend says women are not gas stations that you use to fill up your empty self.

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Stories Of Recovery

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Luke Ford

I love listening to stories of recovery. This one is share #40 from the unofficial Underearners Anonymous Dropbox.

“Before this program, I was spiritually dead. I had no relationships that were not based on what can I get out of you? Even with men, even with my parents. I had deep self-loathing. I woke up in fear and anger and I went to bed in fear and anger. I cried every day. My feelings would overwhelm me. My lack of emotional sobriety led me to underearn over and over again. These were symptoms of my real problem — a hole inside of me I could not fill. I would pour money and other things into that hole, because I didn’t think I was enough. I based my self-image on what the world said.” (UA)

Darren Melamed Do you go to the meetings to improve yourself, or for the entertainment?

Miriam Lilian D Or I personally feel like it’s for entertainment. I see Luke as someone with enough resilience to overcome life obstacles. But, there is just something about watching others who don’t have that resilience, who have poor coping skills (both emotionally or mental) and try to get themselves out of their bad habits. To see them struggle to get out of a familiar place (a dark hole) and know that “I was once that person”. Certainly, it must be a curious sight- a sort of looking at a mirror, yet rejecting the reflection. Perhaps a personal victory to see “I am not like that any more”. Yet, a feeling of compassion too. Plus, he said there was something soothing about hearing other people cry. Or a nice way to meet ladies, who knows.

Before Luke’s posts, I was socially dead. Now I go on dates with his readers.

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Can A Small Group Dominate The World?

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: Academic historians dislike the concept that history is often made by groups of individuals plotting together in confidence, even though one obvious way to get big things done is to make plans with your friends and allies while keeping your rivals in the dark as long as possible.

One exception is the late Georgetown history professor Carroll Quigley, who in 1949 completed a book rather grandly entitled The Anglo-American Establishment.

…The South African connection is also reminiscent of the large but now largely ignored Jewish role in British Empire politics. Neither Rhodes nor Milner were Jewish, but their allies such as Beit often were. (Current Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, who was born in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1943, is a late example of the Jewish role in southern Africa.)

…A culture of male self-admiration tended to elicit high male achievement. (In contrast, in today’s culture of male denigration, males tend to live down to society’s expectations.)

…Quigley’s explanation of the how the Milner Group coordinated Establishment opinion is relevant in the U.S. today:

“The Times was to be a paper for the people who are influential, and not for the masses. … By the interaction of these various branches on one another, under the pretense that each branch was an autonomous power, the influence of each branch was increased through a process of mutual reinforcement. The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was result of a single group. Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman’s policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a “leader” in T he Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the “leader” and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of “informal discussions” with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the “informal discussions” in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject. …

There is no effort here to contend that the Milner Group ever falsified or even concealed evidence (although this charge could be made against The Times). Rather it propagated its point point of view by interpretation and selection of evidence. In this fashion it directed policy ways that were sometimes disastrous. The Group as a whole was made up of intelligent men who believed sincerely, and usually intensely, in what they advocated, and who knew that their writings were intended for a small minority as intelligent as themselves. In such conditions there could be no value in distorting or concealing evidence. To do so would discredit the instruments they controlled. By giving the facts as they stood, and as completely as could be done in consistency with the interpretation desired, a picture could be construed that would remain convincing for a long time.”

COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:

* It’s really too bad that we’ve all been told a thousand times that conspiracy theories are only for crazy people. The idea is both comforting to powerless people and is a smokescreen for powerful people, so journalists can please both their bosses and audiences by spreading it.

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Who Needs Standardized Tests?

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comment to Steve Sailer:

University makes submission of standardized test-scores “optional” for applicants.

It seems likely this game will catch on if, as expected, the Supreme Court’s decision to re-take the University of Texas case results in a ruling against overt affirmative action in University admissions next year.

I suspect the game will work like this: While SAT scores will be “optional” de jure, they will be required, de facto, if the applicant lacks sufficient “vibrancy.”

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Should American Black Be Grateful That Whites Fought A Civil War To Free Them?

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Ta-Nehisi Coates–among many others–insists that the American Civil War was solely about slavery. I haven’t read enough Civil War history to know whether that’s the case. One of the things that puzzles me about that view, however, is that its own proponents don’t behave as though they believe it. When I visited the Netherlands a few years ago, I was embarrassed to be fervently thanked for the role my Canadian forebears played in liberating that country, even though I was clearly decades too young to have served personally. This experience was not an anomaly–see, e.g., this recent WaPo feature.

Compared to American slavery–which, in the American public imagination, is a moral horror rivaled in human history only by the Holocaust–the German occupation of Holland was a comparatively slight oppression from which to be saved. But I’m not aware of any kind of ongoing recognition/appreciation by black America of the +500,000 casualties the Union ostensibly incurred solely for their sake.

That’s a question of etiquette, or ethics, however. The question I’m more interested in is a historical one: if the orthodox view of the Civil War is correct, is there any greater example of inter-racial altruism in history? Anything that even comes close? I can think of similarly substantial instances of intra-racial sacrifice, or inter-racial sacrifice involving mixed motives of principle and self-interest (WWII obviously contains examples of both categories), but no instance of pure inter-racial self-sacrifice that’s anywhere close in magnitude to what TNC and others contend occurred in the American Civil War. Any ideas?

Luke: Gratitude and empathy, like most moral virtues, depend on the ability for abstract thought, which is measured by IQ. High IQ people like the Dutch are more likely to be grateful than low IQ people.

Also, the Dutch come from a Protestant heritage and these people tend to be particularly altruistic and nice. They don’t make major in-group vs out-group distinctions.

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Why Didn’t Boston Bid For The 2024 Olympics?

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Boston did not have a facility problem as much as it has a logistics problem. Under ideal conditions, getting around eastern Mass is unpleasant. Holding big events like a convention can make daily life unbearable. An Olympics would shut down the state for a month.

Then there is the fact the political class would probably all end up in Federal prison by the time it was over. Mass can tolerate the grubby corruption it has because the stakes are small. Something like the Big Dig or an Olympics means a dozen years of FBI investigations.

* As a resident of the Boston metro area, I am so happy we dodged this bullet. There’s no way we could host it with our 3rd world infrastructure and politics.

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How Israel’s Wars Hurt Diaspora Jews

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

As Israel is the Jewish state, how could Jews around the world not become targets of those who dislike the behavior of Israel?

The behavior of Jews and of the Jewish state profoundly affects how Jews are treated by non-Jews.

Actions have consequences. When Jews assert themselves in ways that harm non-Jews, non-Jews push back. This is popularly called “anti-Semitism.” How come there is no term for anti-Gentilism? Just as many non-Jews hate Jews, so too do many Jews hate non-Jews. You may argue that Jews are tiny and powerless. Well, any look at a Fortune 500 list shows you that Jews aren’t powerless (they usually comprise about a third of that list, for instance).

J.J. Goldberg writes:

The real shocker of the cabinet meeting, though, was what wasn’t covered in the briefing: namely, the most explosive of the assessment report’s 12 chapters, “Relations of the Communities and Israel.” It describes dramatic changes detected in the past year, mostly for the worse, in Diaspora Jewish attitudes toward Israel, its government policies and its military actions.
In part the changes reflect shock at Israel’s behavior, both in the domestic arena and in warfare. In part they’re due to discomfort and inability to explain Israel’s actions when asked by non-Jewish friends and family. And in part they’re due, particularly among European Jews, to the increase in “frequency and severity” of anti-Jewish attacks whenever Israel takes military action against its neighbors.

…The report has a lot more to say about the other factor affecting relations with Israel: fallout from last summer’s Gaza war. This is reflected in several spheres, but most important are the strains placed on Diaspora Jews’ relationships with their “environment,” as the report puts it. These strains are serious and growing…

Far more alarming, the report says that Israel’s wars have a strong, direct impact on the relationships of Diaspora Jews to their surrounding communities and societies. Mainstream Jewish community leaders in several countries told the institute that there is an “automatic tendency” for the surrounding non-Jewish society to “view Jews as representatives of the pro-Israel position.”
This has the direct result — as the institute initially noted last year, the current report points out — of “increasing the frequency and severity of harassment/attacks on Jews in various places around the world.”
“This insight was particularly emphasized this year in light of the bloody incidents in the Jewish community of France,” the report says. It quotes a Jewish community leader from France saying: “Every time [Israel uses force] synagogues are burned.”
Curiously, the report avoids the word “anti-Semitism” when describing these attacks as consequences of Israeli actions. No less curious, there’s an earlier chapter in the report, Chapter 8, that’s devoted exclusively to the rise in European anti-Semitism, essentially referring to those same attacks. But Chapter 8 never mentions the testimony by European Jewish leaders in Chapter 9 about a link between Israeli actions and attacks on European Jews. “Anti-Semitism” and “Israeli actions” don’t appear in the same chapter.
In a way, the reticence is understandable. Drawing a causal link between European anti-Semitism and Israeli behavior — between any anti-Semitism and any Jewish behavior, for that matter — is taboo in current Jewish discourse, to the point that suggesting it is itself treated frequently as an anti-Semitic act. It must have been frightening for scholars operating in this environment to stumble across first-hand testimony that the link is real. Even more frightening when they’re preparing to face an Israeli cabinet some of whose ministers view criticism of Israeli military actions as tantamount to treason…

The Jewish People Policy Institute was founded in 2002 at the initiative of the then-chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sallai Meridor. In an interview at the time he told me that one of his major goals was to set up a channel to help the Israel government consider the needs and interests of Diaspora Jews when it makes decisions that might affect them.
Meridor said he’d been profoundly shaken up by the bombing in 1994 of the AMIA building, the headquarters of Argentina’s main Jewish organizations. Israeli intelligence believed it was carried out by Hezbollah and Iran in retaliation for Israel’s assassination in 1992 of Hezbollah’s founding leader, Sheikh Abbas Musawi. Meridor had been present as a senior aide in Israel’s Defense Ministry at the time the decision was made in 1992 to “take out” Musawi, he said, and it never occurred to anyone at the time to wonder whether the action might blow back onto Diaspora Jews.
Since then, the recommendation that Israel develop a channel to consult with Diaspora Jewry before taking actions that might affect them has appeared in nearly every one of the institute’s annual assessments. Never, though, was it driven home as powerfully as it was this year.

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Why do some students take one or two Alexander Technique lessons and then quit even though they – and others – have noticed major benefits?

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Luke Ford

In a podcast, veteran teacher Robert Rickover says to fellow teacher Mark Josefsberg: “One answer is that the student got what he needed, so why come back for more lessons? I’ve had students who had a specific issue that was bothering them and it was quickly sorted out with some basic Alexander work and often within a few minutes.”

Mark: “Most of the time, students that make dramatic changes return but there’s a percentage who don’t.”

Robert: “When we help people to change their patterns and we do it by engaging their thinking and observation skills about themselves, they are forced to confront something that might not be comfortable — that to some extent, they were responsible for their previous issues (pain or discomfort). For some people, it is not pleasant to confront that. I tell my students that they are responsible for themselves. There is a wonderful quote in the old comic strip Pogo — ‘We have met the enemy and they is us!’ You could look at that as good news or bad news. It could be bad news in that you have to own up that at some level you were responsible. On the other hand, it also tells you that you have the power to change it. There are some people for whom that responsibility is scary and they just may leave for that reason.”

Mark: “I came into the Alexander Technique for extreme neck pain and when my teacher told me I was responsible, it was incredibly empowering, uplifting, and powerful. Because finally it said I could do something about this and that felt great to me.”

Robert: “Alexander work does ask people to see things about themselves more clearly and some of those things, they may not be too crazy about.”

“I’ve had students who’ve come with specific conditions that have names and they’ve been diagnosed and they are sometimes active members of support groups for those conditions and I’ve had examples where the condition changed dramatically and quickly with some Alexander work and the student comes back for a second lesson but the thing they came for has faded out and they don’t want to talk about it much any more. It could be because it undermines their identity in that group.”

“Your identity or your social network is disrupted if you no longer have symptoms that that network is based on.”

“It doesn’t have to be a social network of other people with that condition, it could be a social network such as a marriage where part of that relationship has shifted to one spouse looking after the other because of their condition. If that condition changes for the better, then there is some rearrangement that has to go on in that relationship.”

“Another reason is that though student has great results, there is something about you, the teacher, that they can’t stand.”

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