Bill Aims to Stop Funding Terror Education | Clarion Project

 

The times I've discussed Middle East issues with pro-Palestinian friends and I claim that young Palestinians are educated to hate Israel and hate Jews, often as not there's no acceptance of that and a challenge to me to "prove it". 

Well here it is, in the Clarion Project. By two unimpeachable bodies, the UN's UNESCO and IMPACT-se. Full detail of what's going on in Palestinian schools. Sad thing is that it's getting worse. 

Including that kids are taught there can be no negotiated settlement, ever. 

So what of those who always blame Israel for "no progress" in talks. It's true, as Israel says, that it "has no counterpart"'to talk to.

This 8-Year-Old Girl Absolutely Crushes Led Zeppelin's 'Good Times Bad Times'

Where I first saw this, the guy said: "you know what you need to do right now? You need to listen to an 8-year-old girl rip the living shit out of Zep's Good Times, Bad Times.  INCREDIBLE!"

The Esquire link here tells you a bit more about this young Japanese girl, Yoyoka Soma. She plays in her family band. 

Watch for her giggle at the end. 

More buzz for China’s solar-panel highway | Asia Times

Wow!  This is really something! Roads turned into solar power generators. 

Could be a major game changer. And happening right here across the border from us in Hong Kong. 

China's determination to become a leader in renewable energy is picking up speed on a highway in the city of Jinan, and people are taking notice.A New York Times report Monday on a solar panel-paved highway followed up on recent stories from Quartz and Bloomberg, generating more hype for the potentially game-changing development.China's capacity for tackling new infrastructure projects, coupled with the country's leadership in solar panel manufacturing, presents a unique opportunity. Beijing's support for renewable energy industries also offers a boost."Because roads run through and around cities, the electricity could be used practically next door to where it is generated. That means virtually no power would be lost in transmission, as can happen with projects in outlying locations," the Times noted. "And the land is essentially free, because roads are needed anyway. Roads must be resurfaced every few years at great cost, so the installation of durable solar panels could reduce the price of maintenance."Solar roads may even transform the entire driving experience. "Electric heating strips can melt snow that falls on them. Light-emitting diodes embedded in the surface can provide illuminated signage to direct drivers to exits and alert them to construction and other traffic hazards," the article went on.Bloomberg reported in April that the company spearheading the solar panel highway project, Qilu transportation, is looking to do more than just generate electricity."[Qilu] wants the road to be just as smart as the vehicles of the future. The government says 10 percent of all cars should be fully self-driving by 2030, and Qilu considers that an opportunity to deliver better traffic updates, more accurate mapping and on-the-go recharging of electric-vehicle batteries—all from the ground up."'The highways we have been using can only carry vehicles passing by, and they are like the 1.0-generation product,' said Zhou Yong, the company's general manager. We're working on the 2.0 and 3.0 generations by transplanting brains and a nervous system.'France opened what it said was the world's first solar-panel road in 2016, and the Netherlands built a bike path embedded with solar panels several years before that, Quartz reported last year. But China is the first to try the same with a highway."The project signals China's solar-power ambitions," Quartz noted. "Last year the country became the world's top solar-energy producer, boosting its photovoltaic capacity to around 78 gigawatts, and it's aiming for 105 by 2020. China's eastern city of Huainan, meanwhile, operates the world's biggest floating solar project, which could eventually power 94,000 homes."
And Sent from my iPad

Traditional or simplified? Debate on Chinese characters should be decided by pragmatics, not politics | SCMP | Paul Stapleton

LETTER TO SCMP:

LATER: PUBLISHED 15th JUNE

There's no need for the kerfuffle over use of simplified characters in Hong Kong. (Alex Lo and Paul Stapleton, recently). 

I learnt Chinese as an adult, first in Beijing in the mid-1970s. Being Beijing, I was taught simplified characters. In later full-time study in Hong Kong I learnt the traditional forms. I found this a pretty straightforward process. 

What is rarely mentioned by commenters is this: that simplified characters are most often derived from a cursive version of the traditional.  For example: 言 (yan) is written cursively as 讠. This character is also a common radical, so it is a part of many characters. In one stroke (as it were) you've learnt both forms of hundreds of characters. 

Learning a few basic rules for the connection between simplified and traditional characters allows anyone to be literate in both. In short order. 

By the way, if there's a sensible order in which to learn, it's simplified then traditional: walk before you run. (Though it's no big drama if it's the other way around). 

Take it from me: if I can learn both simplified and traditional forms of Chinese characters anyone can! 

Pf

Trump gamed in North Korea

Shapiro calls it a big nothingburger (558). It's even worse: Trump gave away a lot in return for nothing. And I've been hoping T would have a big win in this. (I'm not hoping for his failure).
Give aways:

1. Giving Kim face and publicity
2. Stopping "war games" (NK terminology).
3. Because they are "provocative". (NK terminology).
4. Easing sanctions. According to KCNA

In return:
A vague one pager which is less binding than previous ones all of which have been cheated on.
In all looks like Trump has been gamed.

I don’t have TDS....

.... but...

I've criticised his trade efforts.

They seem like a dog's breakfast to me.*

And the Trudeau tantrum was unhinged.

Agreed that he's right to tackle China, but that's best done with your allies, not having them agin' ya. Surely. 

Check out Shapiro's latest on all this and on the Kim-in-Singapore meeting. 

*I say "efforts" not "policy" because there's nothing close to a policy to be gleaned from these thrashing arounds...at least that I can discern. 

The secret life of Thailand’s ladyboys from Muslim majority southern provinces | SCMP

Ardulmalik Maskul talks of her difficulties in Pattani in Islamic south Thailand in the SCMP

"In Pattani I can't dress like this," says Maskul, gesturing at her tightfitting navy-blue dress with a plunging neckline and a hemline that sits well above the knees. She's in a Bangkok shopping centre and no one pays her any attention.

"If I did this at home, people would shout insults at me. They might attack me." 

Ladyboys: safe and accepted in North Thailand (Buddhist)

Ladyboys: unsafe and not accepted in South Thailand (Muslim). 

Note that these are not wild and wacky Muslim extremists, in South Thailand. They're not the so-called "tiny minority" of Muslims who have "hijacked" the "religion of peace". These are run-of-the-mill Muslims in one of the most tolerant countries on earth. 

Yet there are groups of LGBT who support Islam. Like "LGBT against Islamophobia" in the U.K. 

Suicidal. Even if they are naive and well meaning. 

Print version headline: "The prisoners of gender"

Evermore the victim | SCMP | David Dodwell

I agree 100% with David Dodwell writing in today's South China Morning Post. 

I too was involved in international trade negotiations with US officials, in my case representing Australian interests, and mainly in agricultural trade. We became frustrated at times because the US was able to obtain what we thought were over-favourable terms for its own farmers because of its immensely larger economy and clout. 

For Trump to claim victimhood is pathetic nonsense. 

Scott Adams would say the truth doesn't matter; it's all about persuasion and creating the tone: presumably for even greater bias to America. To MAGA. 

But it could well backfire. I hope it does because speaking nonsense helps

noone not even American farmers. 

From Dodwell, for me the money shot:

/Snip

My insight into this story, over decades of being inside some negotiations, and watching many more from close by? US trade negotiators were persistently the most dogged and ferocious in defining US interests, ensuring these were at the heart of any set of negotiations, and in fighting through concessions that helped US companies win access to export and investment opportunities in other

These negotiators were almost all legal experts. They were almost always the best informed in the room. Their negotiating teams were always the largest and best resourced. They had set the forum, set the agenda, forged support for every possible agenda item, and flown home with concessions that were celebrated by US businesses.

To suggest that these negotiators betrayed their country by signing dumb deals that gifted away the US economy is not only egregiously inaccurate, but is grossly insulting to decades of work by conscientious and fiercely patriotic US diplomats.

http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2150081/dont-listen-trump-us-has-persistently-and-ferociously

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No, Islamophobia is not the new anti-Semitism | Anti-Semitism | Race | spiked

Despite hysteria about Islamophobia, anti-semitic attacks are always the most

A clear and concise explanation of a modern false equivalence, one I've written about before. 

Brendan O'Neill in Spiked.
/Snip

It is the definition of historical illiteracy to compare Islamophobia to anti-Semitism. And yet that is what is happening. People who feel put out by the discussion of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and possibly even envious of the attention that anti-Jewish prejudice is receiving in comparison with anti-Muslim prejudice, have taken to saying: 'What about the cancer of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party? When are we talking about that?' They fail to realise the fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: the former is one of the world's oldest hatreds and has caused the deaths of millions of people; the latter is a word invented by the Runnymede Trust in 1997 to demonise criticism of Islam.

Read on...

Inverted crosses installed by Dark Mofo offend some in Christian community - ABC News

"I wonder why Islam is not ridiculed in the same way?"
Exactly!
Their "fearless provocation" stops at the edge of the star and crescent ...
Attacking Christianity with impunity. Being scared to attack Islam in the same way.  From the ABC.

Gay Pride parade lights up Tel Aviv, attracting more than 250,000 revellers | SCMP

Gay Pride in Tel Aviv. Try this in Cairo

Nasty nasty Israel! They are so kind to gays that clearly it's just "pinkmail".

Well, gay pride paraders... try this elsewhere in the Middle East. 

Where WP says:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens generally have limited or highly restrictive rights in most parts of the Middle East, and open to hostility in others. Homosexuality is illegal in 10 of the 18 countries that make up the region; and punishable by death in six of these. The rights and freedoms of LGBT citizens are strongly influenced by the prevailing cultural traditions and religious mores of people living in the region - particularly Islam. 

Link. 

A Costly, Deadly Obsession With Coal - WSJ | Greg Ip

This article in the Wall Street Journal by Greg Ip clearly lays out the silliness of trying to save the coal industry, one of Trump's obsessions — because he made a promise to miners in the campaign.

Greg Ip shows clearly that all other forms of electricity generation — all — are cheaper and safer than coal.

Ip also goes after nuclear which I wouldn't. Especially on safety as coal is disastrous by comparison with nuclear; and note how cheap it is in the chart above. 

Ip covers the cost to human life well, though in addition to the issues in the quote below, in a place like China there's also mine accidents which claim, by China's own statistics, around 3,000 miners per year. Not all the nuclear plant accidents in all time added up would equal just one year's worth of China's  mine accidents alone. Never mind the black lung disease. 

In pursuing his inane coal policy Trump is harming America and the world.
/Snip 

Finally, there is the cost to human life. Burning coal emits soot that even in tiny quantities causes cardiovascular and respiratory illness. In one study, Mr. Greenstone and his co-authors found that in China, which is currently negotiating to buy more U.S. coal, life expectancy is reduced by three years in households that use subsidized coal in the winter. The toll in the U.S., where emission standards are tougher, is much smaller, but still measurable.

The miners themselves pay the highest price. Overexposure to coal mine dust leads to black lung disease—inflammation and scarring of the lungs, which eventually leads to organ damage and failure, and premature death.

Jefferson's Quran

Salon.com gets it wrong on Jefferson's Koran. Surprise!

For some reason I got thinking again today about "Jefferson's Koran". 

Most of the comments on this Founding Father's ownership of the founding document of Islam seem to think he did so because he respected Islam and wanted to know more about it. Not so. The latter, sure: he wanted to know more about Islam because Islamic Berber pirates were attacking American ships in North African waters and he had been told by the Tripoli ambassador that they did so because of their Islamic religion, which required them to predate on infidels. 

So, in keeping with China's Sun Zi's Art of War, Jefferson wanted to "know thine enemy". 

So he bought a Koran. 

He didn't buy a Koran because he respected the Religion of Peace. 

He bought it to study the enemy. 

Christopher Hitchens, the wise and inimitable, here.

“The High Price of Stale Grievances” | Coleman Hughes | Quillette

Great article by young Coleman Hughes in Quilette, getting good traction on Twitter. A new talent. 

By the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hughes would no doubt be branded a "Native Informant", a "House Negro", an "Uncle Tom"...  

Let alone the fact that OWM like me like him. 

ADDED: (30/3/26): Coleman wrote a great book in 2024. “The End of Race Politics”, subtitled “Arguments for a Colorblind America”. I’ve got and read it. Very powerful book, which he turned into a popular, if controversial Ted Talk. 

Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought | Nature

As Natalie Wolchover notes on Twitter:

The cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere now ranges between $94 and $232. (Humans emit 35 billion tonnes per year.) Governments could afford to pay $100 per tonne by adding a tax of $0.22 cents per liter of gasoline. It's getting viable.

My note: at $100/ tonne that works out at 3.5% of world GDP (PPP), to suck out *all* the world's current annual emissions of CO2.  In other words, doable.
Cost of carbon capture has reduced from $600/ tonne in 2011.
The link

Crawling The Intellectual Dark Web – Anthony Jon Mountjoy – Medium

A useful s summary from Medium of who's who in global intellectual discussions, most of whom I've read at one time or another, many of whom I follow regularly, some daily.

The above is John's photo taken at Agrigento, Sicily

De-radicalisation is derailed by denial in Londonistan

It is, of course, not just ludicrous but lethal to pretend that Islamic attacks or Islamisation are not the outcome of the dominant interpretation of Islam, just as it is false, unpleasant and irresponsible to claim that all Muslims subscribe to it.
From Melanie Phillips

China increasingly challenges American dominance of science - The Washington Post

After decades of American dominance, Chinese science is ascendant, and it is luring scientists like Pastor-Pareja away from the United States. Even more China-born scientists are returning from abroad to a land of new scientific opportunity.The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth. [Washington Post]

Ben Rhodes ‘The World As It Is’: Obama’s Reaction to Trump Revealing | National Review

Barack Obama’s revealing reaction to Trump’s 2016 victory

Maybe you can help me out. I’m puzzling over a line in a New York Times story on The World As It Is, the forthcoming memoir from Barack Obama’s deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes. The article, by Peter Baker, is about the parts of Rhodes’s book that deal with Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.

“In the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election,” Baker reports, “Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages,” including flashes of “anger,” “rare self-doubt,” and taking “the long view.” Do not think, however, that during the final weeks of his presidency Barack Obama was withdrawn or more self-obsessed than usual. People needed him. The day after the election, Baker continues, “Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff.”

For example — and here is the line that confuses me — “he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, ‘There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.'

.... Read on...

Prison Dawah: the spread of Islam in America's prisons

What Kim Kardashian Missed in Her Visit With Trump

I need to bookmark this story in the Clarion Project because of the important message in the video linked in the story and above.

Note that the Imam states clearly in the video that Islam, that the Koran, that Islam's prophet Muhammad, all call for violence and killing of infidels, that there can be "no doubt" about that, it's "not subject to interpretation or discussion", and so on.  In all of which he is, of course, 100% correct.  In other words, the message of violence is inherent in and at the core of Islam.  

He says it, the Imam, not me.

The commentators in the video point this out, but curiously only to say that he is giving a "radical" or "extremist" message, when in fact his message is what's at the core of Islam, is indeed mainstream Islam.  

Perhaps that's a hill too far, and enough for now -- enough for their purposes -- to point out that Islam is being spread at an alarming pace in America's prisons.

Copy/paste link: https://clarionproject.org/what-kim-kardashian-missed-in-her-visit-with-trump/

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Douglas Murray on Tommy Robinson

Another brilliant article in the National Review by Douglas Murray, this one on the principled but flawed Tommy Robinson..

Israel Needs to Protect Its Borders. By Whatever Means Necessary | Shmuel Rosner | New York Times

/Snip, final para from the article linked below...

The Jewish sages had a famous, if not necessarily pleasant, saying that went something like this: Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind. As harsh as this sounds amid the scenes from Gaza, as problematic as this seems to good-intentioned people whose instinct is to sympathize with the weaker side in every conflict, sometimes there is no better choice than being clear, than being firm, than drawing a line that cannot be crossed by those wanting to harm you. By fire, if necessary.

Having just had discussions with Friends of Palestine recently, this article in the New York Times is ... timely. 

I agree with it all. 

The FoP's, though, would be enraged by it, for it criticises Hamas and its maximalist anti-Israel position, arguing for "more realistic expectations" (than "return", control of Jerusalem, the elimination of Israel).
Extra significance in that the Times is Liberal, and usually firmly in the pro-Palestine camp, critical of Israel.

Laughing with Diamond and Silk - Lexington

Joke? True feelings?

[quote from article below] 

... the racial battle-lines Mr Trump has drawn leave no room for such niceties. In reality, African-Americans always vote in line with their interests, and a president who has equivocated on white supremacist violence naturally repels them. Fully 84% consider Mr Trump racist. That represents an American tragedy, a reaffirmation of racial-political divisions from which Diamond and Silk provide no comic relief. The joke is on anyone who thinks they do.

A couple of points from the quote above, the final para on the Economist article here. 

"... the racial battle lines Mr Trump has drawn". Not sure how one can determine that Trump has drawn any battle lines unless you already accept that he is a racist. That might be self evident to many, bit not to me. His comments about Charlottesville were clearly of the incompetence ilk than motivated by racism. He thought there were people there, conservatives, who merely cared about the statues. And that's true. The Left thinks that the tiki-torch wielding Nazis, calling for death to Jews, were the only ones there. They weren't. They were a small minority who quite naturally garnered the most attention. 

"African-Americans always vote in line with their interests". Really? They voted Democrat which led to the greatest unintended bad consequence of a well intentioned policy ever. I'm talking of the welfare policies of the sixties. They led inter alia to an increase in single motherhood from about 10% in the sixties to about 75% today. Because single motherhood was rewarded with welfare. Studies show (...) that kids of single parents are less likely to be successful in life. African Americans tend to be culturally conservative: family and church oriented and so on. They ought to go back to voting along those lines. Then they'd also have some leverage with the Democrats, who now take their support for granted. 

"That represents and American tragedy". Curious wording that would have you think that African/Americans thinking Trump racist is the tragedy. But that's not it. You're supposed to assume, as the Economist does, that the very fact 84% of African Americans think him racist makes him racist. It doesn't.
LATER (3 June): I guess, though haven't checked, that a large percentage of African-Americans consider all Americans (at least white Americans), racist.

Marx is horrible for the world -- there’s *nothing* right about him

Sadly marxists still abide, anti-West, anti-capitalism

I must be one of the very few of the gaggle commenting on Marx's 200th birthday who has actually spent time in a Marxist country.  I lived and worked in China in the seventies; it cured me of my undergraduate fascination with socialism.  When Deng Xiaoping said "it doesn't matter if it's a white cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat", he let loose the hounds on Marx, to mix the animal metaphors.  And that's what has made China successful -- to raise out of poverty over 500 million people.  That was capitalism not Marx.  Xi Jinping is lauding Marx, but that's more for the Party's legitimacy, not for his economic theories.  Which stink.
Yet he won't go away.
The New York Times continues its fascination with Communism, this time in an article titled "Happy Birthday, Karl Marx", which online adds "You Were Right".  It's by an associate professor in Seoul, Jason Barker, whose Wiki entry tells us he's a marxist and hangs out with the likes of Judith Butler, a notorious post-mo marxist theorits herself, and whose "writings" I put in scare quotes, because they're basically impenetrable.  The Times might have given us a warning about Barker's leanings.
Then there's The Economist, in an article "Rulers of the world: read Karl Marx".  This one is quite insidious, because they start off with all the horrors that Marx's theories have visited on the world.  But there's the inevitable "but", and on to lauding his "genius" in coming up with his theory of class struggle and oppression, which they reckon ought to be read even today, hence the headline.
Nonsense.
Marxism has been given a pretty fair run.  More than fair one might say. From Albania to Zaire, via Cuba, the Soviet Union, China and today's still marxist Venezuela and North Korea, not a single version of Marxism has worked.  Not one.
Why continue bashing one's head?  He's done for.  Or should be.
The ever facile penned Shapiro starts off his "Karl Marx, You Were Wrong", like this:

This week marks the birthday of one of history’s worst human beings, Karl Marx. Just because Marx’s philosophy would lead directly to the deaths of 100 million human beings over the course of a century, the imprisonment of tens of millions more in gulags and re-education camps from Russia to China to Vietnam to Cambodia to North Korea, and the oppression of hundreds of millions more hasn’t dissuaded those on the modern western left from embracing Marx’s bloody legacy. Realizing, however, that embracing Communism itself might alienate those who remember the Berlin Wall, today’s Marxists rally instead for identity politics. In the pages of the New York Times — the same newspaper that in the past two years has run opinion pieces endorsing Communism’s impact on female empowerment and female sexual activity and its inspirational effects on Americans — Kyung Hee University associate professor of philosophy Jason Barker celebrated Marx’s birthday, writing, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!”

A little more detail in David Horowitz's "Happy Birthday, Karl Marx, You Were Wrong -- And Worse", where he details his battles with the lefties on the New York Review of Books, an irredeemably leftist publication, but which can't see the obvious in front of its face, because of ideological blinders.
 Karl Marx was bad for the world. Karl Marx is bad from the world.  He should be ditched, dumped and discarded.  Why he's not leaves me bushed, buggered and bewildered.

Mo Salah of Liverpool Breaks Down Cultural Barriers, One Goal at a Time

U.K. and Europe hanging themselves by normalising Islamism

One man, the footballer Mo Salah, Liverpool's Egyptian striker, "embodies Islam's values". So we are told in the New York Times.

But the terrorists of ISIS, of al Qaeda, pf al Shabab, of Boko Haram, of the Taliban, these terrorists with their tens of thousands of devout followers, Korans in their kits... why these murderers have "nothing to do with Islam". Neither do the tens of millions Muslims who follow the teachings of sheik al-Qaradawi, who preaches the genocide of jews and the subjugation of infidels; no, they have been "misled", their thoughts "hijacked". 

Repeat after me: Islam is the "Religion of Peace". 

This New York Times article is a shocking example of the fallacy of generalising from anecdote. 

Note that Mo is being promoted by the Muslim Council of Britain a dodgy organisation with a history of Islamism. 

Further down the article there's mention of "hate crimes" against Muslims, as alleged by the Muslim lobby group Tell MAMA. Not mentioned is that this outfit was defunded by the U.K. government a few years ago for inflating hate crime figures. 

The article might also have mentioned, for context, that hate crimes against Jews remain higher in absolute terms than those against Muslims, and in proportionate terms many multiples of them. That's "whataboutery" I know, but surely relevant context. 

(By the way, the hate crime stats for Jews vs Muslims are true for both the United States and the U.K.) 

Then there's the whole issue of "islamophobia". This term should be dropped and the phrase "anti Muslim bigotry" used instead. Because there's no doubt that the likes of the MCB use "Islamophobia" to silence legitimate criticism of Islam as an idea. This is very different from bigotry against individual Muslims, which must surely be fought as should all bigotry against any marginalised group in society. 

And finally there's the issue of Mo Salah prostrating himself in prayer on the field. The crowd is hushed in respect.  But aren't there rules against this sort of thing? And remember in the "other" football, American, the mocking of Tim Tebow who used to kneel in prayer? More double standard. 

I'm afraid this article is another example of the poor and biased reporting of the New York Times. 

And the Times' tawdry history of normalising the march of Islamism. 

Abe and Bibi's Tempest in a Shoe....

Some of the Tom Dixon shoe sculpture collection

This relates to the story that Japanese PM Abe was served "a dessert in a shoe", when he visited Israel. And this was said to be an enourmous gaffe, Bibi had "stepped his foot in it" and similar bad puns....  My email to a friend.

It wasn't  a shoe.  It was a metal sculpture of a shoe, by artist Tom Dixon, and rather nice they are too.  

WaPo, the JPost  and others reported the dessert was in an actual shoe, which would indeed have been odd and off-putting.  But a metal sculpture is no more a shoe than a sculpture of Churchill is the Bulldog himself.

The assertion that shoes are "despised" in Japan, the "lowliest" thing in Japanese culture, this being a "massive offence" to Japan?  I don't buy it.  That story was all down to two anonymous diplomats, who don't really seem to know their onions, let alone their footwear.  I just don't buy it, any more than I'd buy that the Chinese, or we, Jing and I, "despise" shoes because we too leave our shoes outside.  Jing Loooves her shoes!  Chinese women looove their shoes.  Japanese women looove their shoes (I'm sure!)

As you suggested the chef should have done, I did Google "Japan and shoes".  Once you get past all the (nonsense) articles about this latest #Shoegate, I can't find anything about Japanese "despising" shoes.   Sure heaps of stories about "Japanese shoe etiquette", the stuff we all know, about how you must leave your shoes outside. So do we here and Mainland.  But Chinese no more despise shoes than do westerners - or Israelis.  I'm sure it's the same with Japan. I can't find anything that would have alerted an alert chef to the alleged "fact" that the Japanese "despise" shoes. They leave shoes outside for the very practical reason that their homes have tatami mats, which shoes would destroy.  

Sure, a metal shoe was an odd choice for a dessert dish, even if it was a famous sculpture.  But it was an artistic piece and apparently Abe loved it. While the media were repeating the same story, all clearly taken from a single source, some wire service I guess, and all gonging around their echo chamber with the same lame puns, and hammering Israel and Netanyahu, Abe was blissfully unconcerned..

These anonymous diplomats shouting "offensive", "appalling" and "contemptible", had too much time on their hands. 

And obviously I do too…. so enough...

I hope in the meantime you've been able to see something of the Art of Japanese Life.  The carpentry, the calligraphy, the design, the architecture. This was a great BBC show.

Best to you both.

p / 

PS: This kerfuffle had the flavour of the recent hubbub in the U.S. over a young high school girl wearing a qipao to her graduation. Check it out at qipaogate….confected outrage at "cultural appropriation" in the U.S., while China thought it was just great...

How Trump stirred controversy in Nigeria - BBC News

I missed this when it happened last week: The Nigerian president in the U.S. and BBC making light of the massacre of Christians in Nigeria -- mainly because it was Trump! who said it.
And the Beebs taking every opportunity to bag Trump.

Really, the BBC tries hard and often manages a reasonable degree of neutrality.  
But this time, some young thing at the Beebs just couldn't keep their bias from showing….

Note how the BBC report downplays the killings of Christians, and makes an equivalence between the killing of Muslims and the killing of Christians.

According to the BBC, it's all just fracas' over land and goats.

It's no doubt some of that.  How could it not be when your wealth is land and goats. 
But on the Muslim side, it's mainly Boko Haram doing the killing, and they are quite clearly inspired by an ideology, and ideology known as Islam.

As for the equivalence of deaths on both sides?  Of course there have been Muslims killed.  Often minority Shia Muslims killed by majority Sunni Muslims.  And then some horrible cases of the army going on rampage and killing indiscriminately.

But the scorecard is heavily skewed: by far the most killed in Nigeria are Christians.  Just as in north Africa Christians have been literally decimated (and I mean that "literally" literally).

According to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, there have been 16,000 Christians killed in Nigeria since 2015.  

And this is not a "genocide" according to the BBC?!

You don't have to take the word of the International Society.  There's also a Wikipedia entry "list of massacres in Nigeria".  (imagine living in a country where you can have such a Wiki entry!  We're so lucky to live in Hong Kong.  And all other folks in the developed west, ditto. We just have our first world problems...).  

Thanks to Clarion Project

LATER: let it be said re Trump's "shithole" comment -- first that it's not been determined that he did in fact use that word.  Second, an inconsistency on the Left, which says that we must let into our first world countries all who want to come from such countries because of the poor state they're in, i.e. essentially "shitholes", but gets upset when someone else -- especially Trump! -- states the same fact...

This will be a test of MSM

I'm calling it the "test of the Fifth".
BBC is saying this morning that if Trump is called to testify in front of Mueller, the independent Counsel, Trump may invoke "The Fifth", that is the Fifth Amendment right to silence to avoid self-incrimination.
On Fox News, however, they've had a stream of high-level lawyers saying no way will Trump invoke the Fifth. The most notable being Alan Dershowitz, Harvard professor and constitutional expert, who says that it won't happen because Mueller will offer immunity which invalidates the use of the Fifth. Attendance then becomes a perjury trap instead, for Trump, so he needs to stay away if at all possible.
If you watched only BBC and CNN you would have no idea of the counter-argument and would be led to believe that Trump is going to invoke the Fifth if called by Mueller.
So let's see what happens. It will be a good test of the Main Stream Media (MSM), which kind of self-identifies as the media of the Left. i.e. not Fox!

Shiite Iraqi scholar Jawad Al-Khoei: ISIS violence is rooted in Islam; Christians were owners of land, Muslims their guests | JNS.org

Above is NOT a video, so don't click on it.  Go here to see it. 

... ISIS is deeply rooted in Islam and that "when [violence] dons the cloak of religion, it is a hundred times more evil."

If non-Muslims said that they'd be labelled islamophobic.  Especially for suggesting that ISIS has anything to do with Islam.  For the apologist narrative is the Islamic version of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy: ISIS (and all terrorism) is nothing to do with Islam.

But this is a Shi'ite cleric, Jawad who makes some other startling statements in the article below. Including that when Muslims first came to the Middle East they were "guests"'of Christians. True, but rarely grated by Muslim scholars.
https://www.jns.org/shiite-iraqi-scholar-jawad-al-khoei-isis-violence-is-rooted-in-islam-christians-were-the-owners-of-this-land-muslims-their-guests/

The Post-Campaign Campaign of Donald Trump |The New York Times | Charles Noonan

This is really funny, from the New York Times.
I remember that bit of Trumpian theatre that Charles Noonan refers to, though at the time i was too startled to laugh. But it is laugh-out-loud funny. 

Talking of Trump, Charles Noonan says:

This evening, [at a rally in Pittsburgh] he was talking about Peggy Noonan, the conservative Wall Street Journal columnist. ("She's a Bushie!" an older man next to me yelled scornfully.) Noonan had apparently written something, or (more likely) said something on cable news, where she appears often as a pearl-necklaced avatar of political normalcy, about Trump's appearing inadequately presidential. "I'm very presidential!" Trump told us, with mock indignation. Then he stiffened in his suit and adopted a stentorian tone, like a fourth grader doing an impression of his school principal. "Laaaadies and gentlemen," he intoned, "thank you for being here tonight. Rick Saccone will be a great, great congressman. He will help me very much. He's a fine man, and Yong is a wonderful wife. I just want to tell you on behalf of the United States of America that we appreciate your service. And to all of the military out there, we respect you very much. Thank you. Thank you." He broke character for a second: "And then you go, 'God bless you, and God bless the United States of America, thank you very much.' " He turned and faced the V.I.P. guests in the riser behind him, and did a sort of rigid penguin walk.

The crowd whooped and laughed — not the cruel laughter you come to know at Trump rallies but real belly laughter, for what was a genuinely funny bit. Trump, who loves nothing more than being loved, kept penguin-walking, and everyone kept laughing. It took a few more seconds for the spectacular strangeness of the moment to settle in: We were watching a sitting American president imitating an American president. [my emphasis]

A bit later in the piece, Homans goes on to make the following point, despite which he still ends up hating Trump (whereas I would have thought being "radically post modern"

with no discernible difference between the private and public persona would count in Trump's favour). 

 I have never interviewed Trump, but people I know who have often remark on an uncanny element of the experience: the absence of any indication of an off-limits private self distinct from his public image. The phenomenon feels radically postmodern: a complete communion of the thing with its representation

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/magazine/donald-trump-rallies-campaigning-president.html