The rest of the story

This has always been a staggering irony of the Snowden story: the primary attack on him by U.S. officials to impugn his motives and patriotism is that he lives in Russia and thus likely cooperated with Russian authorities (a claim for which no evidence has ever been presented), when the reality is that Snowden would have left Russia eight years ago after a 30-minute stay in its airport had U.S. officials not used a series of maneuvers that barred him from leaving.

Glenn Greenwald, ‌As Anger Toward Belarus Mounts, Recall the 2013 Forced Landing of Bolivia’s Plane to Find Snowden. Indeed, in 2013, the U.S. used another series of maneuvers to divert Bolivia’s presidential jet and force its landing in Austria, with the President aboard it, on the basis of false suspicions that Edward Snowden was on it.

• “France has apologised to Bolivia after Paris admitted barring the Bolivian president’s plane from entering French air space because of rumors Edward Snowden was on board.”
• Spain also ended up apologizing to Bolivia. Its then-Foreign Minister cryptically admitted: "They told us they were sure… that he was on board.” Though the Spanish official refused to specify who the "they” was — as if there were any doubts — he acknowledged that the assurances they got that Snowden was on board Morales’ plane was the only reason they took the actions they did to force the plane of the Bolivian leader to land.
• Given that it was only the U.S. which was so desperate to get their hands on Snowden — they had already used Vice President Biden to lead a highly coercive effort to threaten countries with punishment if they gave him asylum — few doubted where this false intelligence originated and who was behind the unprecedented act of forcing a presidential plane to land. Indeed, all of this was so glaringly obvious that not even the U.S. government was willing to deny it.

So you might want to modulate the outrage at Belarus — or ramp up the skepticism about our own purity.

Parachute efficacy randomized control trial

Parachute use did not significantly reduce death or major injury (0% for parachute v 0% for control; P>0.9). This finding was consistent across multiple subgroups. Compared with individuals screened but not enrolled, participants included in the study were on aircraft at significantly lower altitude (mean of 0.6 m for participants v mean of 9146 m for non-participants; P<0.001) and lower velocity (mean of 0 km/h v mean of 800 km/h; P<0.001).

Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps.

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial | The BMJ. For possible applications, see Slate Star Codex.

Is the Vice-President "Asian"?

If you work in a massage parlor, you likely come from, and are in, a very different economic situation from the one Kamala Harris has inhabited most of her life … What does Harris’s life have to do with theirs, when it comes to any of the stuff that matters? …

In theory, of course, the connection is that Harris is part-Asian, and the victims (well, the ones mentioned in the Politico story), were Asian. But I feel like I should be putting that term — ‘Asian’ — in scare quotes. These particular victims were mostly Korean. So on paper Harris, like the victims, has “Asian heritage.” But I ask you in good faith: What the hell does this mean? The distance from the part of India where Harris’ mother is from to Seoul is about 3,300 miles. These are entirely different civilizations. Even the most racially ignorant rube would be unlikely to mistake someone of Indian descent with someone of Korean descent. And of course even here the language is extremely slippery, because India, in particular, is quite ethnically and linguistically complicated, as one would expect of a gargantuan country of almost 1.4 billion people.

…

I’m just not sure there’s any way to conceive of a concept of ‘Asianness’ that 1) includes both Kamala Harris and the victims of the massage-parlor murders and 2) doesn’t horseshoe into something redolent of old-school racism or Orientalism.

Jesse Singal, On Kamala Harris’s Privileged Upbringing And Why It Matters

He’s right. I, too, have been bothered by the inclusion of Indians as "Asian." Not in common parlance, they’re not.

I’ll second what the self-loathing woman said

Keira Bell was a troubled fourteen-year-old living in England. Daughter of an unemployed, alcoholic mother, she was distressed by the physical changes brought on by puberty. Her mother and others suggested that perhaps she really wanted to be a boy. Keira adopted their idea. At age fifteen, she was referred by a government psychologist to the Gender Identity Development Service. By age sixteen, she was being given a drug regimen of puberty blockers. The National Health Service continued its ministrations with a double mastectomy at twenty. After that surgery, Bell came to some realizations: “I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.” Looking back, she says, “I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naive hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.” Bell sums up: “I was an unhappy girl who needed help. Instead, I was treated like an experiment.”

Some years ago, I asked Paul McHugh, former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, what could stop the medical profession’s adoption of the monstrously destructive transgender ideology. He replied, “When these kids grow up and realize what has been done to them, the lawsuits will be ruinous.” Bell did exactly that. In 2020, a panel of High Court judges issued a unanimous verdict to the effect that Bell’s treatment amounted to an unscientific experiment with life-altering consequences. The Court severely restricted the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children under sixteen. The clinic is appealing the ruling.

It is my hope that people like Keira Bell find the right malpractice lawyers and win billions of dollars in damages. For those severely harmed by the transgender mania, this would be a good start toward something like justice.

R.R. Reno (emphasis added).

Everyone other than "desisters" are labeled "transphobic" for hesistancy about the trans mania, but perhaps desisters can escape with nothing worse than "self-loathing."

Diary this one for a month from now

France, Debray notes, has obligingly assimilated such anglicisms as gender studies, Gay Pride, revenge porn, and #MeToo, along with the collective self-loathing they are meant to carry with them. Since Debray has always been attentive to the role of privilege and guilt in his own early revolutionary enthusiasms, this is a subject that interests him greatly. “The stigma of being a bourgeois oppressor was not irremediable,” he recalls. “You could join the Communist party, a trade union, or a guerrilla commando in Mozambique. But white privilege? Where do you go to get over that? The dermatologist?”

Christopher Caldwell, ‌Régis Debray, Radical Conservative

As I read this fascinating profile (probably paywalled for another month or so), I kept thinking "ironic distancing" of Debray from his revolutionary past, and Caldwell himself eventually so characterized it.

If Debray carries a lesson for his twentieth-century readers, perhaps it is that the French radical tradition really is a tradition, as dedicated to rules, rituals, and reverence as any other.

The sure-fire short-cut to Heaven

My favorite part of Matins may be what I call martyr wordplay. Example:

On this day the holy Martyr Seleucus, having been sawn asunder, was perfected in martyrdom.
Verse: Without a groan, Seleucus bears the sawing
And so saw the saw as a short cut to Heaven.

I’m not kidding. Many of the Martys, while not seeking out martyrdom, welcomed it when it sought them out. I’m just following their lead — in enjoying the wordplay.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

England truly, and enduringly, is "the Mother Country." It’s like — wow! — a parallel universe!

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