Class Differences in Education

At NYT, "College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are":

This is a sobering piece that will give insight into the plight of those trying to improve their lot. College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are. https://t.co/kYNuiLDp3M

— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) April 4, 2020

The political science class was called “Forced Migration and Refugees.” Students read accounts of migrants fleeing broken economies and seeking better futures, of life plans drastically altered and the political forces that made it all seem necessary.

Then suddenly, the subject matter became personal: Haverford College shut down and evicted most students from the dormitories as the coronavirus spread through Pennsylvania.

Like many college courses around the country, the class soldiered on. The syllabus was revised. The students reconvened on a videoconferencing app.

But as each logged in, not everyone’s new reality looked the same.

One student sat at a vacation home on the coast of Maine. Another struggled to keep her mother’s Puerto Rican food truck running while meat vanished from Florida grocery shelves. As one young woman’s father, a private equity executive, urged the family to decamp to a country where infections were falling, another student’s mother in Russia couldn’t afford the plane ticket to bring her daughter home.

“Now Russia is about to close its borders,” Sophie Chochaeva told her classmates, in the days before the country did. She was one of 135 students still on campus, in a dorm room she called “the cozy foxhole,” as the world outside became a ghost town. “This crisis is exposing that a lot of people don’t have anywhere to go.”

The outbreak of the coronavirus — and the accompanying economic devastation that has left 10 million people almost instantly unemployed — has put America’s class divide on full display. Gig employees were the first to suffer, with many of their jobs vanishing without unemployment benefits. Office employees retreated to work-from-home arrangements while janitors cleaned the buildings they fled and delivery workers brought packages to their doorsteps.

But college was meant to be different. For decades, small liberal arts schools like Haverford, a short ride from Philadelphia, prided themselves on being the “great equalizer,” offering pedigrees not just to the scions of East Coast elites but also to the children of first-generation immigrants. Scholarships filled in for family money. Students ate the same cafeteria food in the morning and bunked in the same creaky beds at night.

No longer — at least not while the virus spreads through the country.

“It’s as though you had a front-row view on American inequality and the ways in which it was disguised and papered over,” said Anita Isaacs, the course’s professor who has taught political science at Haverford since 1988. The first gulf war, the Sept. 11 attacks, the Great Recession — she had seen them all through the eyes of her students.

“There’s been nothing like this before,” she said.

Several nights before the class was to reconvene online in late March, Professor Isaacs received an email from one of her teaching assistants, Tatiana Lathion, a college senior whose parents own the food truck. Their source of income was on the verge of liquidation as stay-at-home orders loomed in Jacksonville, Fla., where they lived.

“I’m not sure my savings will allow them both to survive this quarantine and still keep the business,” she wrote. She said she was thinking of getting a part-time job at a grocery store.

Wasn’t college supposed to get her away from all that?

“I have this panic moment that it’s literally for nothing now,” Ms. Lathion wrote to her professor.

Ms. Lathion had not thought she would attend college...

Still more.

U.S. Risks Escalation in the Middle East

I'm not that worried about it. I'd say the paleocon obsession with isolationism is bad for American vital interests.

And I'm pleased by Trump's foreign policy approach thus far, as it's not tied down to alt-right dogmas (to the everlasting condemnation of the alt-right idiots).

At the Los Angeles Times, "'The closer we get, the more complex it gets.' White House struggles on strategy as Islamic State nears defeat in Iraq and Syria":

With American-backed ground forces poised to recapture Mosul in Iraq and Raqqah in Syria, Islamic State’s de facto capitals, U.S. commanders are confident they soon will vanquish the militant group from its self-declared caliphate after three years of fighting.

But the White House has yet to define strategy for the next step in the struggle to restore stability in the region, including key decisions about safe zones, reconstruction, nascent governance, easing sectarian tensions and commitment of U.S. troops.

Nor has the Trump administration set policy for how it will confront forces from Iran and Russia, the two outside powers that arguably gained the most in the bitter conflict — and that now are hoping to collect the spoils and expand their influence.

Iran, in particular, is pushing to secure a land corridor from its western border across Iraq and Syria and up to Lebanon, where it supports Hezbollah militants, giving it a far larger foothold in the turbulent region.

“Right now everyone is positioned” for routing Islamic State “without having the rules of the road,” said Michael Yaffe, a former State Department envoy for the Middle East who is now vice president of the Middle East and Africa center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “That’s a dangerous situation.”

The risk of a broader confrontation was clear in recent weeks when a U.S. F/A-18 shot down a Syrian fighter jet for the first time in the multi-sided six-year war, provoking an angry response from Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar Assad.

U.S. warplanes also destroyed two Iranian-made drone aircraft, although it’s not clear who was flying them. The Pentagon said all the attacks were in self-defense as the aircraft approached or fired on American forces or U.S.-backed Syrian fighters.

“What I worry about is the muddled mess scenario,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former senior State Department official who now heads the Middle East program at the nonpartisan Center for a New American Security. “When you start shooting down planes and running into each other, it quickly goes up the escalation ladder.”

The clashes occurred in eastern Syria, where Russian-backed Syrian and Iranian forces are pushing against U.S. special operations forces and U.S.-backed Syrian opposition fighters trying to break Islamic State’s hold on the Euphrates River valley south of Raqqah and into Iraq.

Except for a few towns, Islamic State still controls the remote area, and U.S. officials fear the militants could regroup there and plan future attacks. Many of the group’s leaders and operatives have taken shelter in Dair Alzour province...

Still more.

Stop Pretending You're Not Rich

Here's Richard V. Reeves, at the New York Times:

Opinion: "Imagine my horror at discovering that the United States is more calcified by class than Britain" https://t.co/h25WWCkqUy

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 11, 2017

And his book's out tomorrow, at Amazon, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It.

Harleys, Hamburgers, and American Flags Welcome Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia

At the New York Times, surprisingly:

Saudis welcomed President Trump with a Harley-Davidson biker rally and a burrito truck https://t.co/f2TWoZ9SCK

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2017

President Trump Calls Commanding Officers of Navy Ships

At ABC News:

Photos show president calling commanding officers of Navy ships that launched missiles on Syria to thank them, crew. https://t.co/wdpUBeXBSA pic.twitter.com/9HLKNKpuE1

— ABC News (@ABC) April 10, 2017

Mike Huckabee Blasts United Nations Report Calling Israel an 'Apartheid State' (VIDEO)

Good for him.

Watch, "Fox News contributor sounds off: It's time for the U.S. to quit funding this is nonsense."

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — Dead at 82

Rafsanjani was a so-called moderate.

A lot of good he did, pfft.

From Austin Bay, at Instapundit, "SHED NO TEARS: Iran’s Rafsanjani is dead. He died of a heart attack."

And FWIW, at NYT:

The NYT obituary for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani https://t.co/PUsrefuYnJ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 8, 2017

Ilan Berman, Iran’s Deadly Ambition

At Amazon, Iran’s Deadly Ambition: The Islamic Republic’s Quest for Global Power.

Israel Charges World Vision's Gaza Director of Funneling Cash to Hamas

Shoot, we might as well open up Western banks for terrorists and their state-sponsor to walk in and clean house.

We're talking millions of dollars funneled to Hamas through so-called "humanitarian" NGOs.

I'd say it's a bloody joke, but it's much too deadly serious. It's Murder Inc.

At London's Daily Mail, "Israel alleges Gaza World Vision head sent millions to Hamas."

And at the Times of Israel, "Israel charges senior Gaza aid worker with funneling tens of millions to Hamas: Muhammad Halabi indicted in Israeli court."

Israel accuses manager of Christian aid charity of siphoning off $50m to Hamas militants https://t.co/eIBECL6B5Q pic.twitter.com/CjcYcNp3WH

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) August 4, 2016

Letter to my counterparts in world foreign ministries re #WorldVision revelations. #Hamas exploiting aid for terror. pic.twitter.com/wnXJ28aKDQ

— Dr. Dore Gold (@DoreGoldMFA) August 4, 2016

Pew Research Center: America's Shrinking Middle Class

At Pew:

Who is "middle income" and "upper income" in 2014? https://t.co/jz76pj9h6y https://t.co/drKOo36oGw

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) May 12, 2016

And at the Los Angeles Times:

From coast to coast, middle-class communities are shrinking https://t.co/wgdlO2qKj4 pic.twitter.com/Oh3aAzBqpA

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 12, 2016

Well, the Democrats promised hope and change. Folks are a bit tuckered out on the hope amid all this change.

Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu

From Caroline Glick:

Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe.

On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM.

On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before.

The missile and the launch pad indicate that Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is an integral part of its nuclear weapons program, is moving forward at full throttle. The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States as well.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner has asked Netanyahu to address US lawmakers on February 11 regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the threat to international security posed by radical Islam.

Opposition leaders were quick to accuse Boehner and the Republican Party of interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by providing Netanyahu with such a prestigious stage just five weeks before Israelis go to the polls.

Labor MK Nachman Shai told The Jerusalem Post that for the sake of fairness, Boehner should extend the same invitation to opposition leader Isaac Herzog.

But in protesting as they have, opposition members have missed the point. Boehner didn’t invite Netanyahu because he cares about Israel’s election. He invited Netanyahu because he cares about US national security. He believes that by having Netanyahu speak on the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and radical Islam, he will advance America’s national security.

Boehner’s chief concern, and that of the majority of his colleagues from the Democratic and Republican parties alike, is that President Barack Obama’s policy in regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program imperils the US. Just as the invitation to Netanyahu was a bipartisan invitation, so concerns about Obama’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program are bipartisan concerns.

Over the past week in particular, Obama has adopted a position on Iran that puts him far beyond the mainstream of US politics. This radical position has placed the president on a collision course with Congress best expressed on Wednesday by Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez. During a hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where Menendez serves as ranking Democratic member, he said, “The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”

Menendez was referring to threats that Obama has made three times over the past week, most prominently at his State of the Union address on Tuesday, to veto any sanctions legislation against Iran brought to his desk for signature.

He has cast proponents of sanctions – and Menendez is the co-sponsor of a pending sanctions bill – as enemies of a diplomatic strategy of dealing with Iran, and by implication, as warmongers.

Indeed, in remarks to the Democratic members of the Senate last week, Obama impugned the motivations of lawmakers who support further sanctions legislation. He indirectly alleged that they were being forced to take their positions due to pressure from their donors and others.

The problem for American lawmakers is that the diplomatic course that Obama has chosen makes it impossible for the US to use the tools of diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That course of diplomatic action is anchored in the Joint Plan of Action that the US and its partners Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia (the P5+1) signed with Tehran in November 2013...

Keep reading.

Glenn Reynolds Interviews Joel Kotkin, Author of The New Class Conflict

I've got a lot of books stacked up, but no doubt I'll be getting to Kotkin's soon.

Buy it at Amazon, The New Class Conflict.

And watch this great interview, via Instapundit:

Holocaust Denial and the Iranian Regime

From Reuel Marc Gerecht, at the Wall Street Journal (via Google):

Well, we know that there's at least one person who won't be marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday. "Observe that no one in Europe dares to speak about the Holocaust even though it's not clear what the reality is about it, whether it even has a reality, or how it happened," said Iran's ruling cleric, Ali Khamenei, in a March 21 speech. "Expressing an opinion or doubts about the Holocaust is considered to be one of the greatest of sins [in Europe] where someone can get stopped, arrested, sued or imprisoned for this offense."

The ayatollah's recent comments on the Holocaust were part of a longer speech that was a scorching stemwinder against the West and Iranians who embrace Western ways. Holocaust revisionism is part of Mr. Khamenei's resistance to a world organized around Western norms and history. Other strategies include developing Iran's nuclear program, making its economy more sanctions-proof, and maintaining a religious culture capable of closing the "cracks" opened by the allure of a deviant Occident.

Many observers, including some within the Obama administration, have sought to play down the matter of Iranian Holocaust denial. So have many Iranians and Westerners who sincerely want to get past the nuclear issue and see Iran reintegrated into the world—Holocaust denial is just too awkward and painful to examine. It's an aberration, many insist, nasty insecure rhetoric without roots in Persian culture. In truth it is a symptom of a worldview utterly at odds with our own. It strongly suggests that Mr. Khamenei's republic will endure great economic hardship to realize its dream of becoming a nuclear power.

Holocaust revisionism permeates and defines the Iranian regime. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously supported a research mission to Poland in 2005 to investigate whether millions of Jews could have died at Auschwitz. (Poland's foreign ministry turned down the request.) Today, in addition to Supreme Leader Khamenei, commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps—who oversee Iran's nuclear program and terrorist operations—embrace Holocaust-denial with gusto.

Even the "moderate" president elected last year, Hasan Rouhani, danced around the subject of the Holocaust in his interview last September with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, saying it was up to historians to decide—as if they hadn't already—the true "dimensions" of Nazi slaughter. Mr. Rouhani didn't deny that the Germans killed Jews, but he grouped them with other victims of Nazi barbarism.

The Tehran regime's Holocaust reflections spring in great part from two sources...

Keep reading.

Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Calls for Destruction of Israel (VIDEO)

And so it goes in the Middle East.



And at JPost, "75% of Palestinians: Chances for state in 5 years ‘nonexistent’":

A total of 62 percent of Palestinians would oppose US Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposed framework agreement if it includes a request to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a public opinion poll published on Monday showed.

Because peace.

Ariel Sharon, 1928-2014

The big man has died.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Ariel Sharon, Israel's controversial, iron-willed former leader, dies":

JERUSALEM — Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the iron-willed army general who fought in nearly all of his nation's major wars and spearheaded Jewish settlement of Palestinian territories, then years later presided over Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, died Saturday. He was 85.

The controversial leader, who had been incapacitated since suffering a severe stroke in 2006, was moved in 2010 to his ranch in the Negev desert at the request of his family. In September he underwent abdominal surgery, but his condition worsened this month as his organs deteriorated.

Sharon's death at a hospital near Tel Aviv was announced by his son Gilad.

"That's it. He's gone. He went when he decided to go," his son said.

Sharon, often called "the Bulldozer" for his aggressive style, endured many ups and downs in his lengthy career, but at the end was lauded as one of Israel's greatest leaders.

"[Sharon] was a brave soldier and a daring leader who loved his nation and his nation loved him," Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement. "He was one of Israel's great protectors and most important architects, who knew no fear and certainly never feared vision. He knew how to take difficult decisions and implement them."

Yet in the eyes of many Palestinians and even some Israelis, his actions were tantamount to war crimes; he was blamed for the massacres by Israel's Lebanese allies of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in southern Lebanon in 1982 and previous attacks in Jordan.

Sharon devoted decades to the dream of establishing a "greater Israel" by seeking to populate the West Bank and Gaza with tens of thousands of Jews and exhorting them to seize the hills. But in his eighth decade, the old warrior set about dismantling some of the settlements. He withdrew settlers from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements in 2005 and declared his belief that Israel's best chance for lasting security lay in drawing defensible borders and ultimately living side by side with a Palestinian state.

The shift infuriated Sharon's right-wing supporters and led him to abandon the hawkish Likud Party for a newly formed centrist party, Kadima. Just months later, Sharon suffered the stroke, leaving much of his agenda unfulfilled. Analysts still debate whether Sharon was intending to make peace with the Palestinians or unilaterally consolidate Israel's hold on the West Bank.

Most agree that the Gaza withdrawal did not turn out as Sharon had hoped. Weeks after he was stricken, the Islamist group Hamas won Palestinian elections, and it later seized control of the Gaza Strip, breaking with the rival Fatah party.

Two years later, prompted by a resumption of Hamas rocket attacks, Israel launched a 22-day military offensive in Gaza, killing 1,200 Palestinians and drawing an international outcry. The Kadima-led government was replaced by Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2009.

Sharon, born Ariel Scheinerman to Russian immigrants on Feb. 27, 1928, lived his life in the bloody crucible of the Israeli-Arab struggle...

Continue reading.

Also at the New York Times, "Ariel Sharon, Fierce Defender of a Strong Israel, Dies at 85" (at Memeorandum).

Reactions at Israel Matzav, Jawa Report, and the Other McCain.

Deadly Bombing Rocks Beirut Near Parliament Building

At Telegraph UK, "Aide to Lebanese Prime Minister dies in Beirut car bomb."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Huge Beirut blast kills 6 including former ambassador to U.S."

Obama Lifted Sanctions on Iran to Grease Nuclear Deal That Devastates Israel's National Security

The news is buzzing today with talk of an "historic" diplomatic deal on Iran's nuclear weapons program. The Wall Street Journal has that, "Kerry, European Ministers in Geneva as Iran Talks Continue: French, German and British Foreign Ministers Also in Attendance":

GENEVA—Iran and world powers raced to try to seal an initial deal Friday to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for some easing of sanctions, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and several European foreign ministers arriving in Geneva to push the talks forward.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the possible deal. Asked about Mr. Netanyahu's concerns, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said "any critique of the deal is premature."

President Barack Obama called Mr. Netanyahu later Friday to underscore what the White House described as the president's "strong commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Western and Iranian officials said Friday that while there had been significant advances, a deal wasn't nailed down yet.

"I want to emphasize there are still some very important issues on the table that are unresolved. It is important for those to be properly, thoroughly addressed," Mr. Kerry said upon his arrival in Geneva.

Yeah, "some very important issues" are left, like how Israel's getting reamed up the ass by Obama's terror-enabling foreign policy.

Blazing Cat Fur has that, "Netanyahu slams Obama's Iran deal..."



Plus, Eli Lake reports that this "breakthrough" has been in the works for awhile. Turn's out Obama's been selling out Israel's security for some time, with the lifting of Iran sanctions going back to earlier this year. See, "Exclusive: Obama’s Secret Iran Détente":

The Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after the election of Iran’s new president in June, months before the current round of nuclear talks in Geneva or the historic phone call between the two leaders in September.

While those negotiations now appear on the verge of a breakthrough the key condition for Iran—relief from crippling sanctions—began quietly and modestly five months ago.
A review of Treasury Department notices reveals that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.

On Wednesday Obama said in an interview with NBC News the negotiations in Geneva “are not about easing sanctions.” “The negotiations taking place are about how Iran begins to meet its international obligations and provide assurances not just to us but to the entire world,” the president said.

But it has also long been Obama’s strategy to squeeze Iran’s economy until Iran would be willing to trade relief from sanctions for abandoning key elements of its nuclear program.

Listen to Netanyahu at the clip.

The terror-coddling Obama White House threw the Israelis under the bus --- and then rammed a nuclear-tipped intermediate range missile up the Jewish state's butt.

Also at Pamela's, "NETANYAHU TO KERRY ON IRAN DEAL: 'THIS IS A BAD DEAL, A VERY, VERY, BAD DEAL'." And, "KERRY THREATENS ISRAEL WITH 'THIRD INTIFADA'."

Yeah, he would. The Democrats want Israel eradicated.

Single Head Shot Takes Out Two Syrian Rebels

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Not for the Squeamish."

Hey, I Thought Those Muslima Wenches Were Supposed to Be Hip Swingers?

I guess not.

Muslim women apparently don't want hot liberated Western women interfering with their battle against the patriarchy. Good luck with that.

At BCF, "Pseudo-Feminists Agree: Islam Just Peachy- Femen Bad":

"FEMEN needs to recognize that Muslim women do in fact have agency, and the idea that Muslim women are helpless, passively indoctrinated by the alleged evils of Islam, and desperately need of Western feminist help is oppressive and orientalist.

"Agency." That's a big word, right? Click through for the full article.

#Femen #muslimahpride #toplessjihadday "I do not need patriarchal states or eurocentric feminists to dictate to me!" twitter.com/sofiaahmed1/st…

— Sofia Ahmed (@sofiaahmed1) April 4, 2013

John Yoo on the Iraq War 10 Years After

At Ricochet, "Considering Iraq: Another View."

Read it all at the link.

Those who're arguing against the war, saying it wasn't worth it, essentially favor tyranny over democracy. That is, the antiwar idiots think Iraq would be better off had we never toppled Saddam. Who knows where the Middle East would be with the Ba'athists still in power today? But we know that Iraq is not threatening the region with weapons of mass destruction, that Iraqis have freedom and self-determination, and that regional tyrants know that America will stand up for its interests and for the rule of law internationally (or at least they did know, when G.W. Bush was in office).

See also Fouad Ajami, "Ten Years Ago, an Honorable War Began With Wide Support":

There is no way of writing a convincing alternative history of the region without this war. That kind of effort is inherently speculative, subject to whim and preference. Perhaps we could have let Saddam be, could have tolerated the misery he inflicted on his people, convinced ourselves that the sanctions imposed on his regime were sufficient to keep him quarantined. But a different history played out. It delivered the Iraqis from a tyranny that they would have never been able to overthrow on their own.

RTWT.

America's precipitous withdraw under President Obama risks squandering the blood, treasure, and sacrifice of American people for Iraq and the Middle East.

BONUS: For your boilerplate leftist 10 year antiwar anniversary, see Neta Crawford, at Foreign Policy, "The Iraq War: Ten Years in Ten Numbers."