Society's ChildS


USA

While we're obsessing about the economy and the Fed, society is unraveling

fabric of society


The market and the government will continue to promote and support a neofeudal status quo until they are forced by society to restore the common good and opportunity.


Of the three primary dynamics of human endeavor--the market, government and society--we focus almost exclusively on the first two. Society is rarely considered as a force of its own. It is implicitly viewed as reactive to the market economy and government, the churning wake left as the market and government chart the course.

In other words, society is secondary to the economy and governance, the venue of fashions, trends, entertainment, culture wars, etc., fodder for media and social media, a reflection of what's happening in the market and government.

As I explain in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal, this is a misunderstanding of society's role as a force that changes the economy and governance in profound ways.

We give social transformation short shrift because it's not easy to study or understand. Social change is amorphous and doesn't lend itself to quantification like the market or the legal structures of government policy. We end up relying on snapshots such as opinion polls that are inherently limited in scope and accuracy. Respondents tend to give answers they they believe are expected or reflect their views of the moment. Other data is collected from groups that are self-selecting.

X

Federal judges say they won't hire clerks from Stanford Law School after infantile student protest disrupts guest speaker

Federal judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch
Federal judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch

James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who announced a clerkship boycott of Yale Law last year, are adding Stanford to the list.

James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, the circuit court judges who announced last year that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, are adding Stanford to the boycott.

"We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future," Ho, who sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, said Saturday evening in a speech to the Texas Review of Law and Politics, a transcript of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The clerkship moratorium, like the one on Yale, will exempt current law students.

Comment: If the students (and unbelievably, the faculty) are going to act like overgrown babies, they shouldn't expect to be furthered in their careers. Who wants to take on a bunch of screaming children? What's unfortunate is the actual mature students at Stanford and Yale, assuming there are any, will be painted with the same brush as those more interested in activism than practicing law.

UPDATE from Dinesh D'Souza:


See also:


Fire

The decline and fall of urban America

nyc tourists cartoon
© John Broadley
They're calling it 'revenge travel': the desire to make up for the touring opportunities we all lost when we were locked down in our pandemical homes. As a keen professional traveller, I confess I've got a fearsome case of this bug: I've spent the past 20 months going just about anywhere I can, playing catch up.

Here's a brief list of the cities I have visited since mid-2021: Tbilisi, Seville, Munich, New Orleans, Lisbon, Reykjavik, Bangkok, Yerevan, Rome, Istanbul, Athens, Da Nang, Nashville, Los Angeles, Florence, Phnom Penh, Tucson. I could add a dozen more, but you get the gist. I've missed a terrific number of domestic social engagements; but I have recently seen quite a lot of the world and, more pertinently, seen how the urban world is coping post-pandemic.

Conclusion? Every city has suffered in various ways, and the scars are visible. In East Asia the lingering lesions are psychological: they are all still wearing masks. In Europe, normal unmasked street life has returned, but shuttered shops, gyms and restaurants show a throb of economic pain persists. Some business districts - e.g. the City of London, in my home town - are taking a worrying time to recover that rush-hour vivacity. It may never be what it was.

Comment: See also:


Arrow Up

Twitter shows up fact-checker on Soros defense

george soros
© Getty Images / Jevayona Delita
The Washington Post has attempted to dismiss claims the liberal financier had funded the district attorney prosecuting Trump.

Twitter users corrected the Washington Post's star fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, when he attempted to write off the claim that liberal financier George Soros had funded the Manhattan district attorney who indicted former US President Donald Trump as 'misleading'.

Kessler, who rated the 'incendiary claim' that Soros funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg 'three Pinocchios' in a Saturday fact-check, accused the Trump campaign and other Republicans who echoed the factoid of "being slippery" and conjuring "stereotypes of rich Jewish financiers secretly controlling events."

Comment: See also:


Eye 1

Manhattan garage worker charged with attempted murder after shooting thief. Update: charges dropped

garage worker
© New York PostMoussa Diarra was shot twice by a suspected thief.
A Manhattan parking garage attendant who was shot twice while confronting an alleged thief — then wrestled the gun away and opened fire on the suspect — has been charged with attempted murder, police said.

The overnight worker, identified by cops as Moussa Diarra, 57, was also hit with assault and criminal possession of a weapon charge in the Saturday incident, which unfolded around 5:30 a.m. as the attendant saw a man peering into cars on the second floor of the West 31st Street garage, the sources said.

Believing the man was stealing, the attendant brought him outside and asked what was inside his bag.

Comment: District Attorney Alvin Bragg faced backlash on social media after some accused him of doing more to indict Trump than to convict real criminals and protect the public. Bragg has since dismissed the case against Diarra "pending further investigation". See also:





No Entry

Russian official wants Wikipedia blocked

wikipedia
© Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Wikipedia is a "politically biased" platform and should eventually be banned in Russia, Valery Fadeev, the head of the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC), has said. The Kremlin, however, cautioned that any talk about blocking the website is premature, as there is currently no adequate alternative.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Fadeev said Wikipedia "should be closed." While the website is a convenient platform for receiving all sorts of information, he said, there are also "a lot of distortions when it comes to politics, history."

Fadeev stressed that he is not insisting that the Russian authorities ban the portal right away, but rather only after a viable alternative is launched.

Igor Ashmanov, an HRC member, supported this idea, saying that Moscow has no tools to influence Wikipedia. "This is a strategic weapon. We should create equivalents and block it."

Comment: Wikipedia is pretty much a full-fledged disinformation outlet. Not surprising Russia wants it blocked.


Handcuffs

'New York City is a joke': Manhattan prosecutors charge victim of assault with attempted murder

BraggDiarra
© NY Daily News/Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/KJNManhattan DA Alvin Bragg • NYC Parking Attendant Moussa Diarra
On Saturday, the New York Police Department announced that a man who shot a thief in self defense will be charged with attempted murder despite being shot twice and having to wrestle the firearm away from the thief.

The man, identified as 57-year-old Moussa Diarra, was working in a Manhattan parking garage early Saturday morning when he saw a man looking into vehicles around 5:30 a.m., as reported by the New York Post.

When the attendant confronted the suspected thief, he brought him outside of the garage and asked him what was inside of his bag. When the thief, identified as 59-year-old Charles Rhodie, reached into the bag he pulled out a gun thus leading to a struggle. Diarra lunged for the weapon but was shot in the stomach and ear by the thief. Following this, the worker managed to get the gun away from the would be killer and shot Rhodie in the chest.

Rhodie was also shot [sic and charged] with attempted murder, assault, burglary, and criminal possession of a weapon. It is currently unclear whether the initial charge of attempted murder attached to Diarra will stick, however, it has been met with considerable outrage.

Comment: The collapse of justice has begun. So go the rights of the individual.


Health

CDC investigators got sick while probing toxic train derailment

Road sign
© Michael Swensen/Getty Images
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials investigating potential health concerns in a small Ohio town impacted by a toxic train derailment became ill during their study, a CDC official confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Seven CDC members reported sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea while in East Palestine, Ohio, weeks after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in early February and a controlled burn leaked hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, into the environment, Belsie González, CDC senior public affairs specialist, told the DCNF. The CDC members' symptoms are consistent with health complaints reported by residents and first responders.
"Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours. Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects."
The CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a branch that specializes in health impacts after toxic chemical exposure, sent a 15 person team to East Palestine to conduct a door-to-door survey about resident and pet symptoms, according to CNN. The members worked 18-hour days in teams of two or three in areas near two creeks polluted by the chemicals, but the official cause of their reported symptoms is not confirmed.

Comment: See also:


Book

New edition of 'Gone With the Wind' features essay claiming book is 'white supremacist'

BookScene
© Unknown
The publisher hired a white writer to pen an essay and detail the book's "white supremacist" elements to avoid hiring a black writer and giving them the "emotional labour" of such a task.

Pan Macmillan, the publisher of Margaret Mitchell's classic 1936 American novel Gone With The Wind, has added a trigger warning in the preface of the book's most recent publication telling readers that the text is "harmful" and "problematic" because of its "white supremacist" qualities.

The Telegraph reports that the publisher specifically hired a white writer, Philippa Gregory, to pen an essay to accompany the trigger warning and detail the book's "white supremacist" elements to avoid hiring a black writer and giving them the "emotional labour" of such a task.

Ambulance

Civilians killed in Israeli strikes - media

Israeli missiles, Damascus, Syria
© AP / SANAFILE PHOTO: Missiles are seen in the sky during an alleged Israeli attack on Damascus, Syria, January, 21, 2019.
Two civilians have been killed in an Israeli air raid targeting Syria's capital, state media has reported, noting that missiles also struck the country's southern region. The assault came amid a flurry of similar strikes in recent days, which left several Syrians injured and two Iranian soldiers dead.

Missiles fired from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights hit Damascus and other areas in the south early Tuesday morning, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), which cited an unnamed military source.

In addition to the two civilians killed, the attack also resulted in "material damage" in Damascus, the source said, adding that Syrian air defenses intercepted most of the incoming missiles.