Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Send ’em in if you got ’em. The photo situation is dire.
But today we have whale photos by reader Ephriam Heller. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
The best whale watching I have experienced is observing gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in the San Ignacio Lagoon on the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. These whales are curious and “friendly,” often swimming up to boats to observe their occupants and even allowing themselves to be touched. Here is an example of an interaction between two species that each appear to exhibit curiosity and intelligence:
They engage in numerous photogenic behaviors, such as rolling, riding the surf, waving their flippers and flukes in the air, and spyhopping to observe their surroundings.
The gray whale has longitudinal double blowholes. People claim that they form a heart shape, but think a heart with this shape needs immediate treatment:
When the sunlight hits their spray just right, one sees “rainblows”:
The gray whale has the most parasites of any whale, carrying up to 180 kg. At birth, babies have no barnacles or sea lice, but quickly acquire them from their mothers. The older the whale, the more barnacles and lice they collect. The whales rub along the seabed and piers to try to rid themselves of the parasites.
The whales carry one species of barnacle and four species of whale lice. The barnacles are Cryptolepas rhachianecti (whale barnacles) which are specific to gray whale hosts (i.e., they rarely occur on any other species), and they die when the whale dies.
There are four species of “whale lice,” which are not true lice (which are insects) but are amphipods in family Cyamidae: Cyamus scammony (the most common), Cyamus kessleri, and Cyamus eschrichtii are all found only on gray whales. Cyamus ceti is found on gray and bowhead whales. These cause minor irritation to healthy whales. Researchers view cyamid coverage and distribution (e.g., heavy clusters near blowhole, mouthline, genital slit) as indicators of stress, nutritional status, and chronic skin disease rather than as a primary cause of these problems.
There are two populations. The larger Eastern North Pacific population migrates along the continental coast between its breeding grounds in Baja, Mexico and its feeding grounds in Alaska. The small Western North Pacific population migrates along the Pacific coast of Asia. Gray whales hold the record for the longest migration of any mammal, with typical round-trip distances of about 20,000 km annually (although this isn’t close to the 70,000 km migration of the arctic tern).
Whales fall into two suborders: baleen (Mysticeti) and toothed (Odontoceti). Gray whales are in Mysticeti and use their baleen to feed on amphipods and plankton on the seafloor. During the six month summer feeding season, adults consume over 1 ton of food per day. They then fast for the remainder of the year, including the migration and winter birthing / breeding season. They exhibit “handedness,” in that most gray whales feed by scooping up sediments from the seafloor with the right side of their heads, resulting in their right sides having fewer adhering barnacles and sea lice.
They live up to ~70 years. Biggs transient killer whales (orcas) kill up to 35% of the calf population annually. Based on scarring, researchers speculate that almost every gray whale has been attacked by orcas. Most attacks occur as the young calves migrate north through Monterey Bay, California and Unimak Pass, Alaska.
The Eastern North Pacific population dropped to ~1,000 individuals around 1885 due to whaling, but has since recovered to ~27,000 in 2015-2016. The Western North Pacific population is tiny, comprising just a few hundred individuals. North Atlantic populations were extirpated (perhaps by whaling at the end of the medieval warm period) on the European coast in the 12th to 14th centuries, and on the American and African Atlantic coasts around the late 17th to early 18th centuries. Remains of gray whales from the time of the Roman empire have been found in the Mediterranean Sea, and they are still rarely seen there in modern times.
The gray whale has a dark slate-gray color and is covered by characteristic gray-white patterns, which are scars left by parasites that drop off in its cold feeding grounds. Individuals can be identified by their pigmentation patterns and their scars. I got this great photo of a whale’s tail; but it was just a fluke:
In case you are the kind of person who is interested in this sort of thing, this is what it looks like when whales mate:
Anyone with a younger brother will recognize this as the “head butt” greeting, a conserved behavior across all mammal species:
And this is the view when you saddle up a gray whale (I use a western saddle):
The eyes of gray whales are unlike the eyes of any other mammal I have seen, with what appear to be tangled filaments. My AI friend assures me that this is not the case and that they do not have any “extra” organs in their eyes: “The ‘tangled filaments’ you’re seeing are structures in the gray whale’s iris and surrounding tissues that become visible because the eye is small, very dark, and strongly three‑dimensional, so you are effectively looking across folded, ridged iris and ciliary tissues rather than through a flat, open pupil as in most mammals you see up close.”
Welcome to another damn Monday: it’s March 23, 2026, and the temperature in Chicago is 31°F, just below freezing, but with the wind it feels like 15°F. My ducks! (Vashit didn’t show yesterday; I hope she’s not incubating eggs at this early date.) It’s also National Melba Toast Day. Why this thin rusk deserves celebrating is beyond me, but at least it’s in the same subspecies as Peach Melba (named after the same person):
It is named after DameNellie Melba, the stage name of Australian opera singer Helen Porter Mitchell. Its name is thought to date from 1897, when the singer was very ill and it became a staple of her diet. The toast was created for her by a chef who was also a fan of her, Auguste Escoffier, who also created the peach Melba dessert for her. The hotel proprietor César Ritz supposedly named it in a conversation with Escoffier
I’ve had it a few times, and it’s okay, but it’s best if you smother it with goodies, like this plate served with goat cheese and tomato jam:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 23 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Former FBI director Robert Mueller died at 81. Perhaps his biggest accomplishment was revitalizing the FBI, but he’s most famous for investigating claims that Russia (possibly with the cooperation of Trump) interfered with the 2016 Presidential election. (His report concluded that Russia did but Trump didn’t.)
Robert S. Mueller III, who led the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 12 tumultuous years, brought politically explosive indictments as a special counsel examining Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, and then concluded that he could neither absolve nor accuse President Trump of a crime, died on Friday. He was 81.
His family confirmed the death in a statement but did not say where he died or specify the cause. Last August, the family disclosed publicly that Mr. Mueller was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the summer of 2021. The law firm WilmerHale, from which Mr. Mueller retired in 2022, said he died on Friday night in Charlottesville, Va.
A button-down, lockjawed, rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste, the liberal Republican, Mr. Mueller became the F.B.I. director just a week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
He went on to impose the most significant structural and cultural changes in the history of the F.B.I., seeking to transform the bureau into a 21st-century intelligence service that could protect both national security and civil liberties. And his counterterrorism agents were the first to blow the whistle on abuses at the secret prisons that the C.I.A. had established after 9/11 to detain, interrogate and, in some cases, torture terrorism suspects.
But he may be best remembered for what he did after he left the F.B.I., when he was summoned to investigate a sitting president.
The Justice Department named Mr. Mueller special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after Mr. Trump dismissed the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was investigating the interactions between the Trump campaign and a Russian covert operation to help him win the White House.
The president’s reason for dismissing Mr. Comey was no secret. The next day, in the Oval Office, he told the Russia foreign minister and the Russian ambassador: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy.” Mr. Trump continued: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
And here, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades, is Trump’s reaction from Truth Social:
Maybe some people can express glee at the death of a person, but it’s inappropriate for a U.S. President, and it’s inappropriate with respect to Robert Mueller. He was not, after all, like Jerry Falwell, whose death Christopher Hitchens celebrated. And of course Mueller had a family who is grieving, and the President makes a public pronouncment like this. It’s reprehensible.
*A reader told me of what looks like a good site for news from the Middle East, It’s Noon in Israel by Israeli journalist Amit Segal. The reader touted it for its “solid facts and anlysis”, and that seems about right. Curious that Israeli sites often give more objective news than, say, the New York Times. A summary from yesterday.
Last night Iranian ballistic missiles struck the southern cities of Dimona and Arad, injuring nearly 200 people—11 of them seriously—after Israeli air defenses failed to intercept two missiles. Iran said it was targeting Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, claiming the strikes were in retaliation for an alleged U.S. attack on Natanz, which the IDF denied. As a result of the attacks, in-person schooling—which had resumed in certain areas of the country—has been canceled for the next two days.
Fifteen people were wounded—most lightly—in an Iranian missile strike on central Israel this morning. The ballistic missile carried a cluster bomb warhead, scattering bomblets across a wide area.
Trump threatened last night to destroy Iran’s power plants “starting with the biggest one first” if the Strait of Hormuz is not fully opened within 48 hours. The ultimatum follows signs of growing international acceptance of Iran’s position. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told Japan’s Kyodo News that Tehran has begun talks with Tokyo about possibly allowing Japanese-linked vessels through the strait. Meanwhile, Iran is reportedly considering a separate proposal to levy transit fees on ships passing through—an attempt to monetize its grip on the waterway.
The Pentagon is deploying a second amphibious ready group to the Middle East in as many weeks—adding roughly 2,200 to 2,500 troops. This follows last week’s deployment of a 5,000-strong force based in Japan, bringing total U.S. troop levels in the region to approximately 50,000.
Iran fired two ballistic missiles at the joint U.K.–U.S. base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—and missed. One missile failed in flight; the other was intercepted by a U.S. warship. The attempted strike revealed something significant: the missiles traveled roughly 4,000 kilometers, double Iran’s previously declared self-imposed limit of 2,000 kilometers—putting most of Western Europe within range.
And some commentary:
The prime minister (or his avatar, if one is to believe the Iranians) believes that Trump needs many more achievements in this war than Israel does. Israel’s war aims are regional: nuclear capabilities, missiles, terror proxies. America’s war aims include severing the threat Iran waved around for decades and has now been pushed to use: closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending oil prices soaring. The Gulf states are pressing Trump to eliminate that threat once and for all. They do not trust a future regime not to extort the entire region and the world with the threat of shaking the energy market.
And so Israel finds itself helping the United States achieve that goal. The rationale, beyond returning a favor for a favor, is clear: every joint action against Iran frames the Middle East as a story of fundamentalists versus moderates, not Jews versus Muslims. The broader implications of the event are only beginning to emerge. For example, Qatar’s warnings to senior Hamas figures that the Palestinian issue is dropping off the agenda and that they must immediately choose which side to support. For example, the expanding IDF operation up to the Litani River. Is this a temporary, isolated event? Soldiers who went deeper into Lebanon this week should think again, and remember that IDF forces have now been on the summit of the Syrian Hermon since the end of 2024, with no expiration date.
The newsletter is giving a day-by-day account of the doings; what’s above is the report sent Sunday. I’d get a subscription to this news letter (some are free) if you want to follow the war without cant.
*Even if the Strait of Hormuz is secured, that doesn’t mean the danger to oil shipments is over, for there’s still the narrow Red Sea. The WSJ reports on the possibility that the Houthis could start attacking shipping there.
Iran has successfully strangled the Persian Gulf, the most critical maritime route for energy supplies in the world. It hasn’t yet prevented its foes from using a workaround that runs through the Red Sea.
That could change if the Houthis get involved.
The U.S. and its partners in the Middle East are keeping a close eye on the Yemeni militant group which—armed and funded by Iran—crippled shipping through the Red Sea for much of two years.
The Houthis have recently stepped up threatening rhetoric that has caught officials’ attention. While they haven’t started shooting yet, the militants are an important lever for Iran, if it decides to further squeeze the global economy or expand its targets to Saudi Arabia and nearby U.S. assets, such as a base in Djibouti.
“If the Houthis enter the conflict, it really raises the stakes,” said Adam Baron, a fellow at think tank New America who specializes in Yemen and the Gulf. “It pulls the Suez Canal and the Egyptians in, it brings Saudi further in.”
Iran has long cultivated militia allies across the Middle East as a way to project power and as a deterrent against attack. Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Iran-aligned militias in Iraq have jumped into the war to attack Israel and U.S. bases.
The Houthis are a notable holdout but have signaled they could jump in at any moment.
Here’s a digram from the region, showing the Strait of Hormuz at 3 o’clock (the passage with the pointy bit), and the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the left. The narrowest passage at the southern end is about 20 miles wide.
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Suez Canal is owned by Egypt, which makes billions of dollars per year from ships taking that short cut. Closing it will bring Egypt into the conflict, when it’s already been dragged into the war between Israel and Hamas. And if the Houthis start firing on ships, then the war with Iran will expand into Yemen.
It took three decades of battles and lobbying for Cesar Chavez’s name and likeness to grace hundreds of buildings, roads, parks and schools.
It is taking just days for them to come down.
In the two days after allegations emerged that the famed farmworker rights leader and Chicano figure sexually assaulted minors and fellow labor icon Dolores Huerta, Chavez is being erased at an unprecedented rate. This is especially true in California, where his fight for agricultural workers’ rights was cemented in state history.
In San Fernando, a completely covered Chavez statue was pulled off its pedestal and put into storage. Murals depicting Chavez in Los Angeles were unceremoniously painted over. In Fresno, the City Council voted to strip his name from a major street — just three years after its controversial decision to rebrand it in his honor. Soon, the old street names — Kings Canyon Road, Ventura Street and California Avenue — will return to the nearly 10-mile-long corridor.
. . . On Thursday, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and members of the City Council announced they would abandon the holiday honoring Chavez’s birthday and instead rename it “Farm Workers Day” to honor laborers who toil in the fields.
. . . There has been talk within some communities to removed the Chavez name and replace it with a more generic honor for farmworkers and activists, placing the movement above any individual.
In an interview with Latino USA, Huerta said that streets named for Chavez should be renamed instead after the movement.
“Everything should be named for the martyrs of the Farm Workers Movement. Every street should be named after them,” Huerta said.
There has been a steady drumbeat to honor Chavez after his death in 1993. One of the first was renaming old Brooklyn Avenue on L.A.’s Eastside for Chavez. That faced some controversy from the community who argued the city was erasing their history and burdening them with the cost to change stationery. But over time, naming things after the labor leader became shorthand for honoring Latino civil rights and activism.
Historians and educators of history, including Gudis, said instead of zeroing in on one person to encapsulate a historical movement or event, there should be a greater effort to uplift lesser-known figures in the community who have contributed to a broader cause. These are people whom the community can actually resonate and connect with.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation and family said on Friday that it is aware of the city of Los Angeles’ intent to rename the holiday that once celebrated its namesake to instead honor farmworkers and supported it.
“The decision about how to commemorate the movement and its participants rests with the local communities who organize those recognitions, events and commemorations. That has always been the case,” the foundation’s statement said. “We support and respect whatever decision they ultimately make.”
Nobody is contesting the allegations or even arguing over them (at least I haven’t heard any criticisms of the cancellation): the evidence is too pervasive. It’s being handled well, and they’re replacing Chavez as the symbol of the movement with the farmworkers as a group, as well as Dolores Huerta (now 90), a largely unrecognized force in the farmerworkers movement (she was also assaulted by Chavez and had two of his children). Of all the cancellations I’ve seen, this is the one that most saddens me, as Chavez was a hero to me and many of my peers. I even boycotted grapes.
*The baseball season is about to begin, and with it is the advent of the robot umpire. The NYT explains (free archived link.)
Ready or not, the robots are here … in … the … house. You can find them in a big-league batter’s box near you, fully locked and loaded to decide baseball’s most important question: What’s a strike?
Technically speaking, of course, they won’t be whizzing around the field like your Roomba, wooing batters, catchers and paying customers with their robotic charms. They’re actually invisible, lurking in the background, waiting for somebody to tap his cap, challenge and ask their opinions.
But this is not the latest “Star Wars” installment, and it’s not a laughing matter. Those robot umpires are here to stay.
MLB’s Automated Ball-Strike challenge system (ABS) is up and running this spring. And unlike last year, when this was just a fun experiment, this time that challenge system will remain once the real games start. It will be ball-striking away in every game, in all 30 parks, from Opening Day through the postseason and then (theoretically) …
The system is a series of cameras honed in on a player’s strike zone, which differs from player to player. And it doesn’t call every pitch: each team gets two challenges of an umpire’s call in each game:
This is the easy part. The rules will be the same as the ones used in Triple A and in big-league spring training last season. Each team gets two challenges per game. If it gets a challenge right, it keeps that challenge. If it gets that challenge wrong, it loses a challenge.
Only hitters, catchers and pitchers have the power to challenge — and they need to do that within two seconds of the umpire’s call. They’re being told they have to both tap their head and verbally challenge so there’s no confusion. Hmm, think we’ll make it through a whole season with no confusion? Why do I think that answer is … no!
Here’s a video showing it in action; note the pitcher challenging the umpire’s call by tapping his head and calling “challenge that!” as per the rules.
Here’s a called ball in the tweet: note that the ball is wholly outside the strike zone
We almost had today’s Blue Jays-Phillies game end on a robot-off!
Jays catcher Aaron Parker challenged this 1-2 pitch to Dante Nori that was called a ball.
So it would have been game over if it had even right. But…
I used to watch a lot of baseball, both live and on television (my dad was a big fan). I am not a huge fan of this, but we do have instant replays in football that can be reviewed by referees. But other changes in the game have upset me more, including having to vacate the stadium during double header and pay twice to see two games, as well as starting each half-inning with a man on second if a game is tied after the ninth inning. These rules were made to speed up the game, and probably at bottom involve revenue. It’s not right to start with a man on second when he didn’t do anything to get on second. And of course pitchers haven’t batted in years!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is angling for some pets, but Andrzej turns her request around:
Hili: Everyone enjoys a gentle stroke from time to time. Andrzej: You can stroke me.
In Polish:
Hili: Każdy lubi być czasem pogłaskany.
Ja: Możesz mnie pogłaskać.
*******************
From The Language Nerds: Pay attention! There will be a quiz. “Enormity”, “nauseous,” and “peruse” are especially important.
From Masih: a disturbing look at how the families of executed Iranian protestors are treated:
Breaking: in this video, the mother of one of January’s killed protesters has exposed that she was threatened with gang rape. Now, it’s just come out that her husband has been arrested. First, they kill the child. Second, they threaten gang rape. Finally, they arrest the father.… pic.twitter.com/90N1j52ms2
Matt Ridley gave a lecture at the NIH defending his view that the SARS coronavirus was engineered in the Wuhan virus lab. I haven’t followed this controversy, but it seems that scientific opinion is coalescing around the “wet market” origin theory. Matthew sent me a tweet about Ridley’s talk and discussion (see link below), and a virologist, who participated in the discussion below, also took apart Ridley’s arguments on a Bluesky thread. You can find the thread by clicking on the screenshot below, which leads to the rest of the comments:
Click on the screenshot below to see three evolutionary virologists vs. Ridley in an NIH-sponsored “Freedom from Science” lecture, all taking apart Ridley’s claims in real time (i;e., his lecture is sporadically interrupted and corrected; it’s a bit hectic). This annotated video was put up on virologist Angela Rasmussen‘s private Substack site, and you can see her and two colleagues take strong issue with not only Ridley’s claim of lab engineering, but also with similar claims by NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. I have watched only part of the video as it’s 4½ hours long!
From Luana, public prayer in New York, promoted by Mayor Mamdani. It’s legal, of course, and should be, but I see it as a way to parade Islam in public. Group prayers in public are prohibited in some Muslim countries if they obstruct traffic or are a disruption, and in most of them group prayer is encouraged to take place in mosques, not in the streets. I’ve always thought as Mamdani as an Islamist, and that impression has only been strengthened by his encouragement of public religious activities. As I mentioned a few days ago, the Freedom from Religion Foundation has rebuked Mamdani for mixing religion with public business.
This is Washington Square Park, New York. One of the many locations that Muslims took over for their mass public prayers.
Again, NOBODY does this in Muslim countries. If they did this in Saudi Arabia or Dubai, they would be arrested!
One from my feed: A young girl doing a lovely Iranian dance, but I wonder how she gets away with it. I thought public dancing by women was forbidden in Iran.
🇮🇷 An Iranian girl performing a traditional dance at the Rasht Fish Market, Gilan Province, Iran. (August 2025)
This Jewish boy, born in Tel Aviv and whose family moved to Paris, was transported to Auschwitz and gassed upon arrival, along with 90% of the people on his train. https://t.co/6OSkRm1uyZ
And two from Dr. Cobb (besides the one above). The first one is amazing, and not fake:
Doomscrolling break…A pantropical spotted dolphin about 15 feet / 4.5 metres in the airPhoto by Jessica McCordic, MSc around 2017, a research biologist for the Pacific Whale Foundation at the time – now working at NOAA fisheries monitoring marine acoustics
As usual, I watched the NBC Evening News last night, even though some of its reporting has seemed slanted against Israel. Since I wrote about the Guardian article yesterday, though, I’ve become more sensitized to how the media uses language to express political opinions—even in supposedly objective news reports.
Here’s a video showing all the NBC Evening News from last night, but you don’t have to watch it all unless you want to see bodycam video of a clearly inebriated Justin Timberlake being arrested for DUI (17:05). The part that made me prick up my ears is at 4:07, when the news shows cute little Lebanese Muslim kids getting presents at the end of Ramadan. But they are not in their homes. The narration says this (bolding is mine):
While across the Muslim world, the end of Ramadan means presents for children. These kids are among the one million people displaced in Lebanon by Israel’s expanding offensive against Hezbollah.
The rest of the short segment seems designed to evoke the viewers’ sympathy for Lebanese people—especially the kids—displaced by the wicked Jewish state. And indeed, it’s sad that people have to flee their homes. HOWEVER, the report neglects to mention that there had been a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that largely held until March 2 of this year. Then, on March 2, three days after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, Hezbollah in fired a barrage of missiles and drones from Lebanon at northern Israel, explicitly saying that this was in response to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and what Hezbollah called were “repeated Israeli aggressions” (there were minor attacks by both sides during the ceasefire, with UNIFIL and the Lebanese government failing to rein in Hezbollah, as they are supposed to. Israel responded big time, but to construe that as an “expanding offensive” minimizes the defensive nature of Israel’s attacks, designed to stop Hezbollah’s rockets and drones for once and for all.
Again, it’s a small remark, but a telling one. “Expanding offensive” implies that Israel started the attacks in Lebanon going on now. It didn’t, just as Israel didn’t start the war with Hamas on October 7.
But at the end you might want to see the inevitable “there’s-good-news-tonight” segment (several nice pieces starting at 18:05, with an especially moving bit at 19:54 as a woman is assigned to take the final call from an Air Force officer as he leaves the military—an officer who happens to be her dad). As the world is falling apart, nearly all the major television news stations like to leave viewers with a good taste in their mouths.
There’s simply no news today, I’m exhausted from lack of sleep, and as I looked at the latest draft posts I have (there are over 2,600 drafts, most of which will never see the light of day), I was not inspired to write anything, though there are two science posts that I’ll be working on. We’ll see if anybody reads them.
Ergo, enjoy Bill Maher’s comedy-and-politics bit from his latest episode of Real Time. In this 8.75-minute segment, Maher decries Terminally Online Disease (TOD), one of whose symptoms is the fervent need to express an opinion on everything. (The video begins by excusing cat haters, who include Oscar-winning actress Jessie Buckley—not a propitious start.) Maher then goes on to criticize people who spend all their time doomscrolling through social-media sites on “devices”, mistaking what they read for a national or international consensus and apparently anxious to get outraged. The scrollers are contrasted with regular people who have “shit to do.”
All told, it’s a pretty curmudgeonly bit and not as funny as his usual shticks. But it’s all I got.
Today we have some travel and wildlife photos from reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. (Don’t miss the Taiwan barbet!)
Here are a few pictures I took during my short stay in Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China) in 2016. Business trips usually allow very little time for sightseeing — the familiar, morbid cycle of airport → hotel → conference room → hotel → airport — but on this occasion I had a few free hours in the afternoon. Naturally, I decided to explore the nearby Taipei Botanical Garden with a birding lens that mysteriously strayed into my suitcase:
On my way to the Botanical Garden, I visited the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park and Hall, the latter built in the late 1970s after the President’s death. I include it here for documentary reasons — who knows how long it is going to survive, given the volatile political situation.
Inside stands a larger‑than‑life sculpture of the Generalissimo. Taiwan’s history is typical of right‑wing dictatorships which, like South Korea, Spain, or Portugal, began as oppressive authoritarian regimes and then evolved into genuine democracies. Conversely, left‑wing dictatorships typically resist fundamental change and persist until their eventual collapse:
Onward to wildlife. The entrance to the Mausoleum was guarded by a lion (Panthera leo var. lapideus):
Already in the Botanical Garden, I encountered a cat, doing what cats do best – contemplating:
In one of the alleys I came upon a sizable crowd — people were observing local celebrities, a pair of nesting Oriental magpie‑robins (Copsychus saularis). The birds seemed completely unfazed by the attention, the male singing and standing guard at the nest;
These birds are bold and well adapted to human habitats. The female does most of the feeding; here she brings an unidentified moth to her chicks in a rotted‑out branch stump:
At a nearby pond I spotted a duck. It was likely a domestic bird, possibly with a dash of wild Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) ancestry:
The pond was full of lotus plants, which provided excellent habitat for the Common moorhen (Gallinula chloropus). Like all rails, these birds have relatively small wings and strong feet, well suited to foraging on land as well as in water. They swim well despite lacking webbing between their toes. These traits help explain why, when rails successfully colonize remote predator‑free islands, they often evolve reduced flight or complete flightlessness;
Moving further along the park alleys, I spotted a Taiwan barbet (Psilopogon nuchalis) looking out of its nest cavity. As an endemic species, it was a special find for me. Barbets vary widely in sexual dimorphism — in the Taiwan barbet the sexes are practically indistinguishable, in others (like the Coppersmith barbet) the differences are subtle, and in still others (such as the Red‑and‑yellow barbet) they are striking. I wonder why, in this species, bright coloration in females is not maladaptive. Perhaps the fact that they are obligate cavity nesters shields incubating females from predators. The same logic applies to woodpeckers, whose sexes are also similar aside from modest red patches in males:
Shortly after the barbet, I hit another jackpot in my endemics count — the Taiwan blue magpie (Urocissa caerulea). Like other corvids, it is social and omnivorous, and like Taiwanese barbets, it is sexually monomorphic. Corvids also evolved cooperative breeding: fledglings often remain with their parents and help raise the next brood. This likely evolved through kin selection. Why does it work so well in corvids and not in most other birds? Perhaps in environments with limited resources, young birds have better reproductive success by helping relatives than by attempting to breed independently?:
Having spent some time observing the magpie, I moved on — my remaining time before the flight was getting short. Soon I saw another first for me, though a common sight in Southeast Asia: the light‑vented bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis). An omnivorous bird, here it was about to snatch a ripe fig:
Moving on, I photographed a dragonfly, which I believe is a male Crimson Marsh Glider (Trithemis aurora). These insects are sexually dimorphic, with olive‑colored females. This male appears to be orienting its abdomen toward the sun to reduce the surface area exposed to solar radiation and prevent overheating — a behavior known as “obelisking”:
Near the Botanical Garden exit I saw the last animal in this series, the Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus). They always bring a smile to my face. Unlike many other sparrows, the sexes are alike. In 1958 they were targeted during China’s “Four Pests” campaign, a fine example of how ideology can override basic biological understanding:
While driving toward the airport that evening, I saw a Buddhist temple by the roadside, adorned with a symbol that, in European cultural circles, evokes entirely non‑religious sentiments. It was adopted in the 1920s by the National‑Socialist German Workers’ Party, but in Asia it is an ancient religious emblem. It is not identical to the Hakenkreuz — it “rotates” counterclockwise — and its meaning here is entirely benign:
Welcome to Sunday, March 22, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats and International Day of the Seal. Here’s a seal—I forgot the species)—resting on a piece of iceberg (photographed off Svalbard last July):
Three weeks into the war, the Iranian regime is signaling that it believes it is winning and has the power to impose a settlement on Washington that entrenches Tehran’s dominance of Middle East energy resources for decades to come.
This attitude may prove to be a dangerous misreading of President Trump’s determination, or of Israel’s capacity to inflict strategic blows on the Islamic Republic’s surviving leadership and military capabilities.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have given mixed signals on how long the war would go on, as they try to talk markets down and keep Tehran guessing. Netanyahu said Thursday that the war would end “a lot faster than people think.” Trump said this week the U.S. would wrap up the conflict in the “near future” even as the Pentagon dispatched thousands of additional Marines to the Middle East.
The problem is, Iran also has a say in when the guns fall silent—and, for now, it seems to think time works to its benefit.
Despite optimistic U.S. and Israeli pronouncements about destroying launchers and missile stocks, Iran has retained the ability to fire dozens of ballistic missiles, and many more drones, every day across the Middle East.
Instead of declining, the rate of fire actually picked up in recent days compared with 10 days ago. Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage this week on key energy installations in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates—while Iran’s own oil exports kept booming.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf’s chokepoint, remains only possible with Iranian permission. Surging oil and gas prices, meanwhile, are exacting growing pain on economies worldwide—and putting pressure on Trump to end the war that he began in expectation of swift victory on Feb. 28.
One can hope this will change, but Iran thinks it’s winning, well, what can you say? It’s lost all of its navy, its uranium-enriching facilities, most of its ballistic-missile launching sites, most of its leadership (including leaders of the Revolutionary Guards), and I have a feeling that things in the Strait of Hormuz will change within a week or two. But what do I know? I’m a biologist, not a political pundit.
*In the NYT op-eds, Lis Smith and John Guida discuss “The future of the Democratic Party” (the IDs: “Ms. Smith is a senior adviser to the political organizations Majority Democrats and the Bench. Mr. Guida is an editor in Opinion.”) The article is archived here.
Democrats hardly need reminding that, however unpopular President Trump is at the moment, the Democratic Party is right there with him.
For the midterms, the party is attempting something of a makeover on the fly.
Guida: . . . what good or bad or other practices are you seeing among Democrats in their responses to the war?
Lis Smith: This is exhibit A of why we don’t need more lawyers in Congress and need people who bring different life experiences to Washington. Too many Democrats, when something like this happens, default to playing legalistic hall monitor and complaining about how Donald Trump didn’t fill out the right paperwork before launching strikes. That’s technically true and important, but that is not at all a persuasive argument.
The best messaging we’ve seen on this issue, by far, has come from post-9/11 war veterans like Platner [Graham Platner, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Maine]. They don’t sound like lawyers, but like people who actually understand what’s at stake because they’ve lived it.
Guida: What about Democrats outside the campaigns?
Smith: We’re seeing a new generation of leaders emerge in this moment. One person I’ve been really impressed by is Representative Pat Ryan of New York (and a Majority Democrats member) — a former Army intelligence officer who served in Iraq and earned two Bronze Stars. He did an interview recently on “Pod Save America” that I sent to all my friends and family because his messaging on Iran was so searing in its simplicity.
He talked about it in language that was plain, visceral and at times profane.
. . . Smith: Yes, you simply cannot succeed in today’s media environment if you can’t communicate in both long-form and short-form mediums. You can’t skate by with tightly scripted, five-minute-friendly cable hits. People want to see politicians who can have two-hour plus conversations that get them off their talking points. They want to see if their politicians are actually real people, willing to engage in cultural conversations.
Ideology in this context matters less than, say, age. Older generations of politicians were taught to always stick to a script, never have a hair out of place, never show any vulnerability and avoid controversial topics at all costs. Younger politicians like Pete Buttigieg and Mamdani, who certainly come from different wings of the Democratic Party, have really thrived in the new media environment. They are incredibly disciplined communicators, but it’s not because someone handed them a script — it’s because they know who they are, they’re comfortable in their own skin, they have very defined values and worldviews.
They’re also willing to let their guards down and have conversations that would give most old-school political consultants heart attacks. Think about Pete on the Flagrantpodcast — in between serious conversations about transportation policy and income inequality, he fielded questions from the hosts about whether the food in Afghanistan turned him gay.
Smith also touts Mamdani as a master of communicating (these are politicians who, like AOC, grew up knowing how to use the Internet), but I’ll let you read that for yourself. As for me, I remain a big fan of Pete Buttigieg. Yes, I know that polls show that gay candidates are largely unelectable as President, but for crying out loud, it’s 2026. Put Mayor Pete up against Vance and see what happens!
*Virtually every column that Andrew Sullivan writes now is against Israel or in favor of leaving Iran alone, and he does seem to become pretty monomaniacal about this, writing virtually the same column again and again. Still, I’ll give him some airtime, but he’s become a curmudgeonly sourpuss about everything. His latest column is “A war against our own values.”
it’s worth asking if Operation Epic Fury is a just war — on classical just war grounds? Let’s investigate.
Jus ad bellum — the first of two just war categories — refers to starting a conflict. Was the process legit? And even many war supporters concede it wasn’t. With no debate by the Congress, let alone a vote, and no attempt even to inform, let alone persuade, the American public in advance, the war is in a constitutional void. Yes, presidents have launched conflicts with no Congressional debate in the past century. But one that could cost well over $200 billion? With all our global alliances and the world economy in the balance? With a global recession possible? Nah, this is more George III than George Washington.
The war was also begun by a surprise attack: Israel’s sudden assassination of the entire Iranian leadership, which Marco Rubio said mandated our involvement (because it would have led to an immediate Iranian attack on us).But a just war requires an explicit declaration or ultimatum beforehand. The Iran War of 2026 is therefore the equivalent of what the Arab states did to Israel in 1967 and 1973, what Russia did to Ukraine in 2022, and what Japan did to the US at Pearl Harbor. FDR called that kind of surprise attack “unprovoked and dastardly.” For a reason.
Just war theory and international law also require an “imminent threat” to justify self-defense. So ask yourself: last month, how was the US “imminently threatened” by Iran? We weren’t. The only faint threat to the US — Iran’s potential nuclear weaponry — had already been “obliterated” last year. Sure, Iran’s conventional weaponry is still dangerous, but a sovereign state is allowed a military and, as we’ve seen, it’s no match for the mighty US and Israeli forces. And no, a potential threat for 47 years does not equate to an imminent one, unless the word imminent is drained of its entire meaning.
That is Sullivan playing “legalistic hall monitor” in the way Lis Smith decries right above. But wait! There’s more:
Was [the war] motivated by the right reasons? There is indeed a case for the war that is a righteous one: it is designed to remove a toxic theocracy that menaces its neighbors and terrorizes its own people. I sympathize with that case — as it’s the one I made passionately for war against Saddam (and the Dish doggedly covered the Green Revolution against the ayatollahs). But what I learned then is that good intentions are not enough. Regime change in Iraq happened for sure. But over 100,000 civilian deaths, over 3,000 American deaths, over 30,000 wounded, a cost of $2 trillion, and an empowered Iran came with it. And Saddam’s nuclear threat — the casus belli — didn’t exist. Neither does Iran’s anymore.
Is he really sure about Iran? They still have their 60% enriched uranium stockpile, and if the war ended today, as Sullivan wants it to, the bomb program would immediately resume, and, presto, within a few years Iran would have nukes.
Is there a chance of success commensurate with the cost? Another jus ad bellum test. Hard to tell. But right now, it’s clear that a war for regime change without ground troops has no guarantee of success. It could lead to something worse: an entrenched, more extreme Islamist government shutting the Strait of Hormuz and wreaking havoc on the global economy. A war to demolish Iran’s ability to defend itself conventionally? That’s achievable, it seems. Almost done, in fact. But it’s unjust. A world in where a superpower can use force to ensure others cannot defend themselves is raw imperialism.
Well, the “others” trying to defend themselves are a tyrannical regime that not only exports terror throughout the Middle East (and the world), but kills tens of thousands of its own people. Do we need to ensure that that regime can defend itself?
The Trump administration sued Harvard University on Friday over claims that the school was violating the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli people, an escalation of the government’s yearlong clash with the Ivy League university.
The administration has spent months investigating Harvard and trying to force a settlement on the university, the largest target in the White House’s campaign to remake American higher education. But the lawsuit Friday — more than six months after a judge blocked the administration’s opening push to strip Harvard of federal research funding — represented a new threat to the nation’s wealthiest university.
In its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Boston, the Trump administration said that Harvard had “turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis.” The administration said Harvard had strictly enforced policies against other forms of bias, but had allowed anti-Israel protesters to violate rules “with impunity” after the war in Gaza in 2023.
“Instead of arresting the students or even timely stopping the occupation in violation of university policy, Harvard fed them,” according to the lawsuit, adding that faculty members ”brought them burritos for dinner” and “gave them candy.”
The administration said Harvard had failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from severe harassment, including physical assault, stalking and exclusion from campus facilities like libraries and classrooms. Some of the episodes, including one where an Israeli student said he was assaulted during a “die-in” protest, have been contested.
“The United States cannot and will not tolerate these failures and brings this action to compel Harvard to comply with Title VI, and to recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution,” the suit added.
The lawsuit asks a court to declare that Harvard is “in material breach” of its responsibilities under Title VI and, therefore, the government does not have to pay Harvard any existing grants. The suit further asks the court to force Harvard to pay back grants it has already received. And it asks for an independent monitor, approved by the government, to oversee the school’s compliance.
Well, the accusations seem valid to me, though Harvard says it’s already doing a lot to reduce antisemitism. In fact, the “burrito” accusation is true: in November 2023, when pro-Palestinian protestors illegally occupied the administration building, two Harvard deans, Rakesh Khurana and Salmaan Keshavjee, bought burritos for those students. However, even Harvard itself admitted it wasn’t doing enough for its Jewish students, and enrollment of Jews is down substantially as they are voting with their feet. Harvard’s response:
A Harvard spokeswoman, Sarah Kennedy-O’Reilly, said Friday that the university had “taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies on campus” and that its “efforts demonstrate the very opposite of deliberate indifference.”
“We will continue to prioritize this important work,” she added, “and will defend the university against this lawsuit, which represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.”
Taking away the grant money was heavy-handed, but a lawsuit accusing Harvard of civil rights violations is not itself “turning over Harvard to the federal government,.” It’s ensuring that a university that takes federal money does not tolerate discrimination.
*The U.S. mint may produce a gold coin with Trump’s mug on it, which is both inappropriate and illegal. But so, probably, was the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. Here is what you need to know!
A federal arts commission on Thursday voted to approve a commemorative U.S. gold coin featuring Donald Trump, the administration’s latest effort to celebrate the president, even as Democrats and members of another federal committee say the idea is deeply inappropriate and potentially illegal.
The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars. A Mint official told the panel that Trump had personally approved the design.
Members of the Commission of Fine Arts — composed entirely of Trump appointees, including a 26-year-old executive assistant whose only listed credential for the post was managing Trump’s portrait project — spent several minutes discussing potential changes to the coin, including how big to make it, before officially endorsing it.
“I think the larger the better, and the largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” said Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s executive assistant. Harris also said that the image captured Trump looking “very strong and very tough” and that it would be “fitting” to have him on a coin to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.
James McCrery II, who served as Trump’s first architect on his planned ballroom before wrangling with the president over its size, encouraged Treasury officials to make the coin “as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter” as he led the vote to approve it.
But new coin designs are supposed to receive approval from two panels — and that second panel, the bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, refused last month to consider the proposed gold coin. In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty.
“It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage,” said Michael Moran, a Republican coin collector who then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) recommended for appointment. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
Yep, it’s wrong, it’s big (look at a rule to see the diameter of a three inch coin; half the length of a dollar bill), and have a look at one design below posted online by the U.S. Mint (in the WaPo). I find it particularly funny that right under Trump is the motto “In God We Trust”. And look at that scowl! Although federal law says no living President can appears on U.S. currency, NPR notes that “Megan Sullivan, the acting chief of the Office of Design Management at the Mint, said the Treasury secretary has authority to authorize the minting and issuance of new 24-karat gold coins, which Scott Bessent has used to get around that prohibition and put Trump on a coin.”
The final size and denomination haven’t yet been determined.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are discussing noms (Hili is making a purrito):
Hili: Whenever I come across a problem I cannot understand, I remind myself that I have not eaten in a long time.
Andrzej: That is an interesting phenomenon, it should be properly studied on a large, transnational representative sample of cats.
In Polish:
Hili: Ilekroć natrafiam na problem, którego nie mogę zrozumieć przypominam sobie, że dawno nic nie jadłam.
Ja: To ciekawy fenomen, powinien być porządnie zbadany na dużej, ponadnarodowej próbie reprezentacyjnej kotów.
From Masih. The excuse the Iranian regime used to execute this man and two others is this:
The three men — whom Mizan identified as Mehdi Qasemi, Saleh Mohammadi and Saeed Davoudi — were convicted for their role in the killing of two law enforcement officers at a police station. According to Mizan, they used swords, knives and machetes in separate assaults on the two officers.
I don’t believe it, and neither does Masih:
Stop repeating the narrative of the Islamic Republic in the West about this brave Iranian wrestling champion who was executed by hanging in Iran. Watch this video.
🚨NEW: This guy got a PhD for interviewing 8 music therapy professors chosen through “purposive expert sampling” (i.e., completely non-random) and cramming as many woke buzzwords as possible into his dissertation title before reaching the character limit. pic.twitter.com/GeqT0dChOr
And two from the estimable Dr. Cobb. First, Bastet!:
This bronze statue, made in Egypt between 715 and 343 BCE, represents the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet. While Ancient Egyptians worshipped several male and female lion deities, Bastet is the only who came to be depicted as a domestic cat.
There’s been some kerfuffle about a Guardian article describing the arrival in London of a new branch of a bakery connected to Israel. And it looks pretty much like the article was, to its author Jonathan Liew, a metaphor for the war in Gaza, with the piece (because it’s the Guardian, of course) seeing the bakery as an evil Israeli colonizer of a block already harboring a Palestinian “supper club”. The outcry about this cockeyed metaphor was so loud that the Guardian decided the article needed to be changed and given a public correction.
First some background from Grok on for Gail’s bakery:
Gail’s Bakery (a UK chain with around 200 branches) has historical founding ties to Israel and indirect links through its current majority owner, which have sparked boycotts and vandalism by pro-Palestine activists. There are no direct operations, stores, or suppliers in Israel, nor any confirmed company donations to the Israeli government or military.
The business began in the 1990s as a wholesale bakery called The Bread Factory, founded by Yael “Gail” Mejia, an Israeli businesswoman (who moved to London in 1978). It supplied artisanal bread to London restaurants.
In 2003, American investor Tom Molnar (from Florida) and Israeli investor Ran Avidan (from Tel Aviv) bought half the business. The first retail Gail’s store opened in 2005 on Hampstead High Street, named after Mejia. Early team members included other Israeli bakers (e.g., creative head baker Roy Levy).
Mejia was bought out in 2011; Avidan sold his stake later. Neither remains involved. The company has proudly referenced its “Jewish roots” and heritage in interviews and branding
Notice that Jews are not vandalizing Palestinian restaurants, but nobody ever points that out.
Click below to see the original article, now archived:
Below are the quotes that caused the problem. First, the background. One branch of the chain of Gail’s bakery moved near a long-established Palestinian restaurant. (Guardian quotes are indented):
The cafe itself has existed since the 1980s, proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage, and has long attracted a small but loyal clientele. In recent years, however, a number of predators have appeared on its doorstep. Costa Coffee arrived a decade ago. Starbucks and Greggs followed soon after. Then, a few weeks ago, on the site of the former corner shop two doors down, came a new branch of the upmarket bakery, Gail’s.
Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence. In recent years, however, as the brand has expanded to almost 200 shops across the UK, its presence has become increasingly contested. Critics accuse it of accelerating gentrification and squeezing out smaller outlets. Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.
The night before it was due to open, Gail’s was daubed with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and “fuck Bain Capital” were written on its walls. To date, no arrests have been made. A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews has described it as “part of a wider trend to try to drive Jews out of wider civil society” (Gail’s was founded by an Israeli baker in the 1990s). The local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign made it clear it had no involvement. It should scarcely require saying that Mahmoud, a mild-mannered man in his 60s, had nothing to do with it. “We compete with them legally,” he says. Mahmoud believes rivals seek to dominate the local trade, “but our cappuccino is £2.95 and theirs is £4.50. That’s how we compete.”
Here are the two the troublesome quotes. The first one is. to me, unbelievable, and by that I mean the part in bold:
Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence. In recent years, however, as the brand has expanded to almost 200 shops across the UK, its presence has become increasingly contested. Critics accuse it of accelerating gentrification and squeezing out smaller outlets. Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.
Only someone with an anti-Israel agenda could describe the proximity of the bakery to the Palestinian cafe as “an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.” The bakery is a COLONIZER!
And the next part seems to imply that because Palestinians are voiceless and weak, the attack on the Jewish bakery was justifiable simply because there’s nothing else supporters of Palestine can do to express their views:
Does any of this move the dial in the occupied territories even one iota? Almost certainly not. But perhaps this is simply the nature of an increasingly disenfranchised age. Palestinian activism has arguably never been less capable of exerting a meaningful influence on global events, and so is increasingly defined by small acts of petty symbolism. A smashed window. A provocative sticker. You can’t lay a glove on the US-Israeli military-industrial complex, and you can’t get your local council to boycott Israeli goods, and you couldn’t stand with Palestine Action and the protest march on Sunday has been banned by the Metropolitan police. So some people then direct their ire at the bakery with distant links to Israeli security funding.
Not a war. Not a weapons manufacturer. Not a government contractor. A bakery that sells croissants and lattes.
The Guardian published a piece treating the existence of a GAIL’s Bakery near a Palestinian café as — and this is a direct quote from the article — 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘺-𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. The entire case against GAIL’s? Its parent company has worked with Israeli companies. That’s the chain of guilt. That’s the smoking gun.
Julia Hartley-Brewer — who actually worked at the Guardian and knows exactly how that newsroom operates — didn’t mince words. She called the piece 𝗯𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆, 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰 and the author a horrific human being. She’s right on both counts.
Notice what the Guardian finds worth writing about and what it doesn’t. A bakery opening near a Palestinian café? Front of the comment section. Iran executing tens of thousands of young protesters in the streets? Silence. Hamas executing Palestinians in Gaza? Nothing to say. Israeli-linked croissants twenty metres from a falafel shop? 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴.
Hartley-Brewer nailed the real name for this ideology: it’s not anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is a political position about a state.
This is a bakery. There’s no Zionism in a sourdough loaf. What’s left when you strip the political cover away is just Jew-hating — targeting businesses because of who owns them, who funded them, who they might be connected to six degrees away. The British public apparently agrees. Israeli-owned restaurants in London that were targeted by protestors now can’t get a table. GAIL’s will probably see the same bump.
Buy the brownie. Order the latte. Do it on principle.
And the original tweet with the video in which Julia Hartley-Brewer gets upset. I gatber that Hartley-Brewer, who isn’t Jewish, has no Jewish background, and is an atheist, is a well-established journalist in England and hosts an eponymous show on TalkTV and TalkRadio
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗪𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗘 𝗔 𝗛𝗜𝗧 𝗣𝗜𝗘𝗖𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗔 𝗕𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗥𝗬
Not a war. Not a weapons manufacturer. Not a government contractor. A bakery that sells croissants and lattes.
The Guardian published a piece treating the existence of a GAIL’s Bakery near a… pic.twitter.com/P0THXpihmE
After some outcry, the Guardian “corrected” the article in both its corrections section and now at the bottom of the article. But the inflammatory title and “heavy-handed high street aggression” remain.
The correction:
Corrections and clarifications:
Gail’s bakery vandalism
An opinion piece (In my corner of London, food has become an act of defiance, 14 March, Journal, p4) included a comment contrasting pro-Palestinian activism capable of influencing global events with “small acts of petty symbolism”. This was not intended to minimise the described vandalism of a local Gail’s bakery but rather to suggest the misdirected futility of such acts; the reference has been removed from the online version to avoid misunderstanding. Also the piece referred to the arrival of Gail’s close to a small Palestinian cafe as feeling like “an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression”; to clarify, this meant to refer to concerns about its impact, as with other large chains mentioned, on independent outlets. This has been amended online.
Misdirected futility of antisemitic vandalism? My tuchas! And if the reference to Gail’s wasn’t supposted to conjure up a metaphor for the war, why is the Guardian now saying that the “heavy handed high-street agression” was only about large chains outcompeting independent businesses. Does the Guardian expect anybody with two neurons to rub together to believe these are just “clarifications”. All they’ve done is repositioned the “high street aggression bit” and removed the “petty symbolism” bit.
Here’s the current bowdlerized article, which isn’t very bowdlerized.
This whole business may seem to be a tempest in a teapot, but if it’s bad enough for the Guardian to correct because of implied antisemitism, it’s pretty bad. And this kind of anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish rhetoric is getting so common that it’s becoming normalized, so it pays to be aware of it.
