Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 5, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sabbath for goyische moggies: Sunday, May 5, 2024, and National Hoagie Day (also known as a “submarine sandwich”, “sub”, “grinder”, or “hero sandwich,” depending where you are in America. Here’s a pastrami sub:

jeffreyw, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the U.S., National Enchilada Day, Oyster Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day.Lemonade Day, World Laughter Day, International Midwives’ Day, National Cartoonist Day, and, in Canada and the U.S., Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Awareness Day.

In honor of Cartoonist Day, I’ll put up my very favorite cartoon by Gary Larson, the Biologists’ Favorite Cartoonist:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Been expelled from campus for illegal protests? No worried: Iran is offering scholarships to students from the United States! (from Jonathan Turley’s website, h/t Bill):

Now this could truly be educational. Students protesting on our campuses have been offered free scholarships at Shiraz University in Fars. So, while Northwestern has reached a settlement with protesters to give scholarships to Palestinian students and positions to Palestinian faculty, U.S. protesters can now go to Iran for their education.

Mohammad Moazzeni, head of Shiraz University told media that “students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the conditions].”

This could be the single most transformative educational experience of their lives. Of course, Iran is better known for floggings than free speech.

Iran is particularly prone to such contradictions like executing homosexuals while denying that there are any homosexuals in Iran or objecting to the treatment of protesters in the West while jailing, beating and killing protesters.

Warning: vegan meals are not available at Iranian protests. Instead, it has ordered the arrest and killing of writers and artists while holding such fun events as a cartoon competition on the Holocaust.

While expungements are not a common feature of the criminal justice system, it does have unique elements like judicially ordered blindings. Likewise, where else can you go where a criminal defendant was ordered to be executed by being tied into a burlap bag and thrown down a cliff with sharp rocks?

Some universities clearly have space after students were arrested for protesting the death sentence given a rapper. That includes Shiraz University where the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested students for protests.

The good thing is that U.S. students are already covering up their faces. Iranian women have faced arrest for being photographed without hijabs.

There’s a bit more at the site:

*At the University of Chicago Free Speech Alliance site,  Law Professor Law Richard Epstein (formerly form here, now at NYU) dispenses some “Hard truths about speech and assembly,” with the subheading “The First Amendment doesn’t excuse violence, trespassing, or capture of public spaces.”

The logic of the First Amendment needs further clarification. It is all too easy to insist that it allows all people to speak whatever and wherever they want, as if all speech were somehow free. But the word “freedom” as used in the First Amendment has to be carefully integrated with the rest of legal and constitutional doctrine. We often say that people are entitled to freedom of action. But that does not mean that they are allowed to use force and fraud against other individuals, so murder, theft, rape, and trespass are out from under the umbrella of protected activities, as are the threat of force, fraud, deceit, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And so it is that the protection of speech is only intelligible against a backdrop that also respects the limitations that are imposed on both speech and action.

The same type of argument applies with equal force in dealing with the phrase “peaceably to assemble,” which rules out cases of violence in either public or private places. There are no doubts about the right to peaceably assemble on your own property. It is a ticklish matter as to when there is a right to assemble on public property, where it is commonly understood that all such activities are subject to reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions. First on that list are those demonstrations that blockroads, airports, train stations, and bridges, which never are allowed, even as they have been undertaken by Palestine and Hamas supporters in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and dozens more cities. None of these political acts is legally justified by the supposed justice of the underlying cause, which if anything aggravates the criminal charges. And matters only get worse when these demonstrations take place on private property, where any owner (universities included) has a right to prevent any protests on the land, whether peaceful or not.

And be under no illusions that the gatherings were assemblies, let alone peaceful ones. The standard definitions of an assembly include meetings that are done for particular purposes, which should certainly include protests of specific government or private actions. But an occupation of property by setting up camps and tents for overnight use is no assembly but an outright seizure of property, whether public or private. And it is not peaceful if it uses vicious epithets and hostile actions against outsiders, which has certainly happened multiple times at Columbia, New York University, Yale, and other places, and likely to recur. At Columbia, the impasse persisted as of Tuesday, and the university has blinked in using force to defend itself against the intrusion, which is simply further evidence of the utter breakdown of both social norms and legal protections that will only encourage the spread of disorder.

. . .Even worse: there is a very strong case that the positions the protesters take are themselves deliberate acts of defamation, or false statements intended to lower the targets of the abuse—Israel, Zionists, and Jews—in the esteem of the world, which has real consequences if the defamation disrupts military operations in Gaza, or Israeli commercial and military relationships with nations around the world. And that is what has taken place. The constant naked refrain that Israel is responsible for the deaths of more than 34,000 people, mostly women and children, is based on fake numberspromulgated by Hamas and resting on fabricated data, marked by the repeated unwillingness to break out military causalities from civilian ones, as well as to treat all civilian casualties as though they were attributable to Israeli actions without breaking out deaths caused by Hamas’s use of its own people as human shields, killing them with errant missiles or gunfire, or blocking or diverting humanitarian aid from civilians.

Turley goes on to suggest sanctions that universities can apply to acts of “group defamation”, though I don’t agree with him on that one. I do agree, however, with his construal of how private property can be used for “free speech.”

*The disruptions of college graduations are beginning. Here’s the University of Michigan’s graduation yesterday:

From the AP:

Protesters chanted anti-war messages and waved Palestinian flags during the University of Michigan’s commencement Saturday, as student demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war collided with the annual pomp-and-circumstance of graduation season at American universities.

The protest happened at the beginning of the event at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. About 75 people, many wearing traditional Arabic kaffiyeh along with their graduation caps, marched up the main aisle toward the graduation stage.

They chanted “Regents, regents, you can’t hide! You are funding genocide!” while holding signs, including one that read: “No universities left in Gaza.”

Overhead, planes flew competing messages. One read: “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” The other read: “We stand with Israel. Jewish lives matter.”

Officials said no one was arrested, and the protest didn’t seriously interrupt the nearly two-hour event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people, some of them waving Israeli flags.

State police prevented the demonstrators from reaching the stage and university spokesperson Colleen Mastony said public safety personnel escorted the protesters to the rear of the stadium, where they remained through the conclusion of the event.

Let’s hope that these gits, who have to make graduation all about their ideology, won’t cause more intense disruptions. Note that many of them are still covering their faces, cowardly solipsists that they are. This is why we can’t have nice graduations. Of course their actions are going to rapidly bring a stop to the war in Gaza, right?

*From the WSJ: “Activist groups trained students for months before campus protests.” This isn’t really a surprise given the degree of organization of these protests, and the fealty of Students for Justice in Palestine (with more than 200 campus branches) to their national organization.

The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses came on suddenly and shocked people across the nation. But the political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were the result of months of training, planning and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups.

At Columbia University, in the weeks and months before police took down encampments at the New York City campus and removed demonstrators occupying an academic building, student organizers began consulting with groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine, veterans of campus protests and former Black Panthers.

They researched past protests over Columbia’s expansion into Harlem, went to a community meeting on gentrification and development and studied parallels with the fight over land between Palestinians and Israelis. They attended a “teach-in” put on by several former Black Panthers, who told them about the importance of handling internal disputes within their movement.

“We took notes from our elders, engaged in dialogue with them and analyzed how the university responded to previous protests,” said Sueda Polat, a graduate student and organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment.

. . . .The National Students for Justice in Palestine, or NSJP, has been around some two decades and has more than 300 chapters across the U.S., many of which have helped organize the college encampments and building occupations.

NSJP has for months called on students to stand strong against colleges until they divest themselves of investments in entities doing business with Israel. Its social-media pages have become a scroll of encouragement to protesting students, with videos showing activity at encampments and around the world. As early as October, NSJP was promoting a “day of resistance” with demonstrations at colleges.

Over time, the messages from the national group became more pointed. “The Student Movement for Palestinian Liberation will not be silenced; we will escalate until our demands are met,” NSJP posted on social media on April 25.

That same day on X, the group posted drawings with “friendly advice” to protesting students. One suggested they wear comfortable clothes and running shoes and bring water, an energy bar and a bandanna in case of surveillance. Another referred to police as “pigs” and offered this advice: “If someone is arrested, don’t linger too long or pigs will kettle the march,” referring to a crowd-control tactic. “Free the comrade, or else get their name and birthdate for jail support and keep it moving.”

On April 29, the group announced a new chant on social media: “No divestment, no commencement.” University administrators have been concerned that coming graduations could be interrupted by protesters.

*The Washington Post makes a serious accusation: “Residents accuse Israeli forces of executions during West Bank raid.” The story reports executions of an adult and two younger people:

When Israeli soldiers arrived at Mohamad Abu Sweilem’s door and summoned his son during a raid on this Palestinian refugee camp, he pleaded with the soldiers to take him instead.

He could not fathom why the Israelis wanted Rajai, a 39-year-old father of four who worked at the family hardware store and was not a militant, he said. The soldiers, who had been in the camp for days, did not seem to know who his son was, or care much: They never asked for identification, his family said. Still, they led him away.

Less than a minute later, Mohamed heard gunshots, and his son’s voice crying out in pain, he said. The family found Rajai’s body hours later, after the soldiers had withdrawn. They suspect soldiers used him as a human shield to confront militants in a downstairs apartmentand then shot him, a claim the Israeli military denies.

. . . . Fourteen Palestinians were killed during the raid onNur Shams, including at least twochildren, residents said. Family members said at least three of the victims were summarily executed or used as human shields by Israeli soldiers. The dead included Rajai; Jihad Zandiq, a 14-year-old boy whose family said he was surrendering to troops when he was shot in the head; and Ahmed Arref, a wounded 20-year-old militant who hid in a family’s home and was found dead after soldiers expelled the family and took over the house.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at an April 23 news conference that the office had “received reports that several Palestinians were unlawfully killed” and that soldiers “used unarmed Palestinians to shield their forces from attack and killed others in apparent extrajudicial executions.”

I’m not going to hide stories just because they might make the IDF look bad, but one has to be careful about these reports, as the IDF doesn’t countenance its soldiers engaging in executions, and they could be jailed. Further, there is no mention of Mohamed Abu Sweilem except in Al-Jazeera and the Post; normally if there was an accused “execution,” Israeli human-rights organizations, which aren’t at all friendly to the Israeli government, would be all over it. But they haven’t mentioned a word, which makes me suspicious that this is a false report. I will keep checking the name “Mohamed Abu Sweilem,” and readers are welcome to as well.

Here’s one tweet I found about these accusations.  As I said, I can’t find information about Mohamad Abu Sweilem, but stay tuned. The BBC article about the raid on the terrorists of that village is here and mentions a 15-year-old and eight-year old.

And the ToI reports that this was a raid to capture terrorists and their weapons, a raid in which 10 IDF soldiers were hurt.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is kvetching again:

Hili: Flowers at home are a nuisance.
A: Why?
Hili: You always have to be careful not to knock the vase over.
In Polish:
Hili: Kwiaty w domu są kłopotliwe.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Trzeba ciągle uważać, żeby wazon się nie przewrócił.

*******************

Another cartoon from Pliny the in Between’s site The Far Corner Cafe.  If you don’t remember what Batesian mimicry is, go here.

From The Dodo Pet (clearly photoshopped with a thumb):

And another from the same source. I vote low:

From Masih: Walking While Unveiled is a crime in Iran, sometimes a capital one:

“Martyrs”, are, of course, terrorists who died in the process of killing Jews. That is who these students admire. (“DMV” appears to be a coalition of SJP students form D.C., Maryland, and Virginia).

From Luana: Humor is rare in these protests, but here’s one example. I love the Jewish students brandishing bananas!

From Barry, who says that “someone did something wrong”  (second tweet):

From Malcolm; a cat that fails the mirror test. Not sentient!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, and Italian Jewish woman died in Auschwitz. She was around sixteen years old.

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a good demonstration of the effect of colors on solar absorption and reflection:

Matthew had a smell in a dream. . .  sort of:

21 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

    1. I found this online:

      “The area contained the five cities (the Pentapolis) of the Philistine confederacy (Gaza, Ashkelon [Ascalon], Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron) and was known as Philistia, or the Land of the Philistines. It was from this designation that the whole of the country was later called Palestine by the Greeks.”

      Reply

  2. I can well believe that we don’t normally include a sense of smell while dreaming. But one odd detail encountered more than once is that I can read peoples’ minds while dreaming. When I approach someone in dream-land, as I get closer their thoughts become more and more clear. When I move away, their thoughts fade away into the background.
    Amazing.

    Reply

  3. I would scarf down that pastrami sub so fast. It looks like a sub from Publix Supermarket, which makes the best subs.

    I don’t remember ever smelling something in a dream, but I do vividly remember *tasting* something. Specifically, one night in college when I was very hungover, I dreamed I was drinking the most delicious drink in the world. I mean, I could actually taste it in my dream, and it tasted like liquid ambrosia. If I could recreate that taste IRL, I’d be a millionaire.

    Reply

  4. I made a note on a previous post on this :

    The watermelon imagery observed as of late is related to a Red Green Alliance of some flavor (there are many).

    I didn’t read this book yet, but I bet this is the relevant one :

    Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Destroying America’s Freedom
    Asra Q. Nomani
    Bombardier Books, Feb 27, 2023

    Reply

  5. “Turley goes on to suggest sanctions that universities can apply to acts of “group defamation”, ”

    I think you mean “Epstein” there.

    Reply

  6. At the end of the cat mirror test, the “reflection” turns to look, but the actual cat does not. So is it really a window? If so, these are some really clever cats, doing a Marx Brothers “Duck Soup” skit.

    Reply

      1. As a Doubting Thomas (sic), my first thought is: filmed with a mirror and after-recording video manipulation.

        Reply

  7. We often say that people are entitled to freedom of action. But that does not mean that they are allowed to use force and fraud against other individuals, so murder, theft, rape, and trespass are out from under the umbrella of protected activities, as are the threat of force, fraud, deceit, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

    I’m not sure I’m understanding Epstein correctly — is he saying that name-calling and shaming don’t fall under Freedom of Speech? That doesn’t seem right. I can see them being banned in private venues or used as evidence in civil cases, but if those aren’t legally or constitutionally protected activities in the broader sense the government is going to be very busy.

    Reply

    2. Just a thought or two on your comment.
      Would it be correct to say tRump is engaging in emotional distress by bagging jurors and interfering with their job as jurors.
      Freedom of speech may go as far as, if it stops you from functioning ligitimately then it is not.
      Otherwise below that line it is a subjective perception of distress.

      Reply

  8. I love that cat mirror video. Those always remind me of that episode of “I Love Lucy,” when she does that with Harpo Marx.

    Reply

  9. All these Pal “kids.”
    Are our teen school shooters “kids” as well?
    The Pals are kids presumably when they’re not on the way to Jihad class? Kill-the-Jew summer camp? Or there also?

    Ah those silly, pesky tykes …. with their suicide belts and Kalashnikovs. Naughty! Blew up all those civilians. Naughty boy!

    It demeans us to take their savage morality seriously.
    D.A.
    NYC

    Reply

  10. Many years ago I’d read somewhere about the idea that no one dreams about smelling something. I was intrigued but skeptical. A couple days later I woke up from a dream wherein I had the very strong sensation of smelling a dirty ashtray, as if it was being held right next to my nose. I could almost taste it. Since then I’ve noted many other times when I’ve smelled things, though it isn’t very common.

    When I was much younger, I very much enjoyed my flying dreams. They’re rare now, but I had one a couple months ago. (It’s rare enough for me to remember its occurrence.) I was even glad in my dream to be flying again. This old body can still do it!

    Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *