Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 16, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 16, 2023, shabbos AND Rosh Hashanah for Jewish cats. It will be a very quiet day in Jerusalem as it’s both shabbos and the holidays, so many things will be closed and there will be no public transportation. I hope I can find some food.

In the US it’s National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day, a treat my mom used to give me for breakfast (another was French toast).

It’s also National Guacamole Day, Batman Day, International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer, National Gymnastics Day, International Eat an Apple Day, Mexican Independence Day (“Cry of Dolores“), National Dance Day, International Red Panda Day, and National Stay Away from Seattle Day (once meant to keep people out of a lovely city, but now there are other reasons).  They should include Portland in there, too.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the September 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*It once looked as if Hunter Biden would get off unindicted, but that’s gone now, as he’s just been indicted on three felony gun charges, one involving lying:

Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was charged on Thursday by federal prosecutors with lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018 and with illegally possessing the weapon, setting up the potential for a trial coinciding with his father’s re-election campaign.

The indictment came as House Republicans stepped up their efforts to use Hunter Biden’s work abroad to build a case for impeaching President Biden. And it puts the Biden Justice Department in the remarkable position of prosecuting cases against both the president’s son and former President Donald J. Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

The gun charges are related to whether Mr. Biden had lied on a federal government form that he was required to complete when he purchased a .38 handgun in Delaware in 2018.

In response to a question on the form about whether he was using drugs, Mr. Biden had said he was not — an assertion that prosecutors concluded was false. Mr. Biden has publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol and had been in and out of rehab around the time of the gun purchase.

The indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Wilmington, Del., charged Mr. Biden with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the federal firearms application used to screen applicants and possession of an illegally obtained gun for 11 days, from Oct. 12 to Oct. 23, 2018.

CNN has an annotated version of the indictment here. Again, I have no canids in this fight; the canons of justice should apply to all Americans, including Trump, too.

*Once again I’m stealing three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Stranger things,”

→ Working really hard to spin this: The New York Times is working very hard to somehow spin the migrant situation in New York and Chicago into being a problem Republicans caused. It’s hard. Biden is president and in charge of the border. These cities are all run by Democrats. But. . . there must be a way that Republicans created this. We got it! They hoped it into existence:

I hope you’re happy, GOP, with all the families sleeping in gyms in Staten Island, just like you planned.

→ There was no 2007: In Toronto public schools, to make it easier to ensure the books are equitable, everything written in 2008 or earlier has been removed from shelves. For real. It’s just too risky to have old books that might have old ideas written by the wrong type of author. And so, to make the so-called book “weeding” process easier, we’re not even looking past 2008. Goodbye to The Very Hungry Caterpillar and goodbye to The Diary of Anne Frank (I’m sure there are others, but really, are there?). The world began in 2009. We have no knowledge of what came before that year. Why are you asking about it? Why do you need to read a book from before then? Is it your homophobia? Is it that you hate Latinos? I’m just taking notes because it’s interesting that you’re so interested.

The linked article says the removal was done in the interest of “inclusivity”. Has Nineteen Eighty-Four arrived in Canada?

→ Free Press makes a big impact: There’s been a lot of fallout since whistleblower Jamie Reed’s groundbreaking essay on what was going on inside a Missouri pediatric gender clinic. Now: The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital will stop prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children, a method of care that, if started early enough, can prevent a child from ever reaching sexual maturity, from ever having an orgasm, and certainly from ever having children. Some gender-nonconforming tween in Missouri will have kids one day and they won’t even know that there was a time when the local clinic would have looked at their “unusual” behavior (wearing. . . PANTS? Playing with. . . TRUCKS?) and said: okay let’s do it, give me your arm. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, a detransitioner who had a double mastectomy at 16 is suing the hospital. Literally, all these clinics need to do is wait until the kid turns 18.

*In his main article on this week’s Substack, “The nihilism of Trump’s GOP,” Andrew Sullivan calls out Republicans for impeachment mania born solely of th view that the Democratic Party is illegitimate:

This week’s launching of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden when there is no solid proof of a “high crime” anywhere in sight is also far outside Constitutional norms. Investigate the Biden family’s lobbying connections? Sure. Search for any indication that the president was secretly on the take from foreign sources? Absolutely. Make Biden pay a political price for staying too close to his sleaze-ridden grifter son, Hunter? Go for it.

But impeachment? On the basis of evidence yet to be found? On the tenuous principle that “courts have historically proved more willing to honor congressional demands when they are made as part of an impeachment inquiry”? That’s a recipe for routine impeachment for routine congressional oversight. It makes Newt Gingrich look like Howard Baker.

It’s not just in Washington. In Wisconsin, a crucible for partisan insanity, the state GOP appears intent on impeaching a recently elected state Supreme Court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, before she has even issued a ruling! Her alleged high crime is to have expressed an opinion about the grotesquely gerrymandered congressional maps that Wisconsin Republicans have constructed to give them a super-majority in state government out of all proportion to how they do in the actual vote. The charge is that having expressed an opinion during an election campaign, she is required to recuse herself from voting on the constitutionality of the gerrymander.

. . . The theme that connects all these dots is simply a refusal to grant legitimacy to the Democratic Party — even if that party wins a majority of the votes, even if they play by the rules, even if this means flouting the obvious democratic wishes of the voters. That’s also the underlying rationale behind Trump’s grotesque attempt to overthrow the results of the last presidential election — with no evidence of malfeasance. It is that no Democrat has a right to be president; and if they are elected, it must be because they cheated.

. . .As a Republican Senator told Romney as he settled in, their view is that the first consideration in voting on any bill should always be: “Will this help me win re-election?”

There’s no definitive moment in the collapse of a republic, but that quote comes close. If all you care about is your own grip on power, regard the opposing party as ipso facto illegitimate, and give zero fucks for the system as a whole, a liberal democracy has effectively ceased to exist. A single major party, captured by radicals and nihilists, can do that.

And yet I still see online claims that Sullivan is a dihard Republican. It ain’t so, Joe! At best he’s a centrist leaning right.

*The University of Pennsylvania is holding an anti-Israel festival right after Rosh Hashanah, a festival featuring some odious antisemites:

Once again, American university campuses are at the forefront of hostile anti-Israel and antisemitic activity bordering on the absurd. On September 22-24, in the midst of the Jewish High Holidays, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is hosting the Palestine Writes Literature Festival with known anti-Israel, pro-terror, and antisemitic speakers such as Roger Waters, Marc Lamont Hill, Noura Erekat and representatives from U.S.-designated Palestinian terror groups such as the PFLP, as well as representatives from their affiliates.

Among the featured speakers are PFLP militant Wisam Rafeedie, Salman Abusitta from the UK Hamas-affiliated organization Palestine Return Center (PRC), Marc Lamont Hill, American journalist who was fired from CNN for his antisemitic comments and has praised the likes of Louis Farrakhan and convicted PFLP terrorists, Roger Waters, known for his anti-Israel and antisemitic stunts, and Noura Erekat.

This same festival in 2020 awarded notorious pro-terror Palestinian activist Mohammed el Kurd with its Emerging Writer Award. El Kurd has spread antisemitic blood libels on social media accusing Israel of “trafficking Palestinian organs.”
The primary festival organizer, Susan Abulhawa, also has a colorful track record of support for PFLP terrorists such as Ghassan Kanafani and Dalal Mughrabi, as well as comparing Israel to Nazis. Abulhawa’s events in Australia have previously been canceled due to her pro-terror stances and extremist associations.
Penn of course has every right to hold this event, but the hatred of Jews it evinces overall is just more evidence that, regarding Palestinians as “people of color”, American campuses are becoming more anti-Semitic. Just once I’d like to see a seminar on “Palestine: the real apartheid state” held by Jewish students, but for a number of reasons, including fear, you’ll never see that. But Roger Waters, for crying out loud?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has another question for Andrzej:

Hili: Does logic help to understand the world?
A: Undoubtedly, but it’s always worth it to check what studies say about our premises.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy logika pomaga zrozumieć świat?Ja: Niewątpliwie, ale zawsze warto sprawdzić, co mówią badania o naszych przesłankach.

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

These may be old memes, but so be it:

From Science Humor:

From Nicole:

From Merilee:

Masih has received several dozen credible threats on her life. She won’t go into hiding for sure.

. . . and she calls out America’s reaction to the Iranian protests (read her new WaPo editorial, her piece in The Free Press, and there’s a lead article in the WaPo by another writer).

All of a sudden my website traffic nearly tripled yesterday. And then I got an email explaining why: Richard Dawkins had tweeted my post on two people’s self-proclaimed genetic superiority of the Māori (see below). But the sad part is that most of the commenters just weighed in with off-the-cuff and often nasty comments without reading the article. Ricky Gervais is right: Twitter (now “X”) truly is a cesspool.

On the vaping Boebert:

From Simon, whose only comment is “indeed!”:

From the Auschwitz Museum; gassed upon arrival at age six:

From Dr. Cobb; look at the markings on this cat!:

Re the tweet below, Matthew says, “Put the date in your diary! (See linked tweet for explanation).  I didn’t look up the Bible quotes, but at this time I’ll be waiting to take off at the Tel Aviv airport.  Our plane will be raptured in Israel!

The wall paintings are in terrific condition (have they been retouched?). Sound up:

36 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Sub. There has always been more offal than nourishment in the Twitterverse. Now, as X, it’s approaching total offal.

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  2. On this day:
    1620 – A determined band of 35 religious dissenters – Pilgrims set sail for Virginia from Plymouth, England in the Mayflower, jubilant at the prospect of practicing their unorthodox brand of worship in the New World.

    1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender”, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.

    1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a “note” read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster’s hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence.

    1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.

    1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 and injuring 400.

    1955 – A Soviet Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.

    1956 – TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts.

    1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.

    1961 – The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury. [The hypothesis was that the silver iodide would cause supercooled water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane, and this led to seeding several Atlantic hurricanes. However, it was later shown that this hypothesis was incorrect. It was determined that most hurricanes do not contain enough supercooled water for cloud seeding to be effective. Additionally, researchers found that unseeded hurricanes often undergo the same structural changes that were expected from seeded hurricanes. This finding called Stormfury’s successes into question, as the changes reported now had a natural explanation.]

    1970 – King Hussein of Jordan declares war against the Palestine Liberation Organization, the conflict came to be known as Black September.

    1976 – Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan reservoir. [Brave guy!]

    1979 – Eight people escape from East Germany to the west in a homemade hot air balloon.

    1982 – Lebanon War: The Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon takes place.

    1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.

    1992 – The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega ends in the United States with a 40-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.

    1992 – Black Wednesday: The British pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.

    1994 – The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups in 1988. [The ban was ridiculous. According to Wikipedia, “Broadcasters quickly found ways around the ban, chiefly by using actors to dub the voices of banned speakers. The legislation did not apply during election campaigns and under certain other circumstances. The restrictions caused difficulties for British journalists who spoke out against censorship imposed by various other countries, such as by Iraq and India”.]

    2007 – Security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad.

    Births:
    1651 – Engelbert Kaempfer, German physician and botanist (d. 1716).

    1666 – Antoine Parent, French mathematician and theorist (d. 1716).

    1725 – Nicolas Desmarest, French geologist, zoologist, and author (d. 1815).

    1812 – Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint, Dutch novelist (d. 1886).

    1823 – Ludwik Teichmann, Polish anatomist (d. 1895).

    1827 – Jean Albert Gaudry, French geologist and paleontologist (d. 1908).

    1846 – Anna Kingsford, English author, poet, and activist (d. 1888).

    1853 – Albrecht Kossel, German physician and biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927).

    1861 – Miriam Benjamin, African-American educator and inventor (d. 1947).

    1880 – Clara Ayres, American nurse (d. 1917).

    1888 – W. O. Bentley, English race car driver and engineer, founded Bentley Motors Limited (d. 1971).

    1891 – Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-German spy (d. 1972).

    1893 – Alexander Korda, Hungarian-English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1956).

    1915 – Cy Walter, American pianist (d. 1968).

    1920 – Sheila Quinn, English nurse and educator (d. 2016).

    1921 – Ursula Franklin, German-Canadian metallurgist (d. 2016).

    1922 – Guy Hamilton, French-English director and screenwriter (d. 2016).

    1924 – Lauren Bacall, American actress (d. 2014).

    1925 – Charlie Byrd, American singer and guitarist (d. 1999).

    1925 – B.B. King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2015).

    1927 – Peter Falk, American actor (d. 2011).

    1942 – Susan L. Graham, American computer scientist and academic.

    1948 – Julia Donaldson, English author and playwright. [I could probably recite some of her children’s books.]

    1956 – David Copperfield, American magician and actor. [Real name David Seth Kotkin.]

    1971 – Amy Poehler, American actress, comedian, and producer.

    1984 – Katie Melua, Georgian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover:
    1736 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Polish-Dutch physicist and engineer, invented the thermometer (b. 1686).

    1803 – Nicolas Baudin, French explorer, hydrographer, and cartographer (b. 1754).

    1946 – James Hopwood Jeans, English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician (b. 1877).

    1965 – Fred Quimby, American animator and producer (b. 1886).

    1976 – Bertha Lutz, Brazilian feminist and scientist (b. 1894).

    1977 – Marc Bolan, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1947).

    1977 – Maria Callas, Greek operatic soprano (b. 1923).

    1980 – Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist and philosopher (b. 1896).

    1984 – Louis Réard, French engineer and fashion designer, created the bikini (b. 1897).

    2005 – Gordon Gould, American physicist and academic, invented the laser (b. 1920).

    2016 – Edward Albee, American director and playwright (b. 1928).

    2021 – Clive Sinclair, English entrepreneur and inventor (b. 1940).[I remember a review of one of his programmable calculators saying that it was good provided that you had a trained stick insect to operate it – the buttons were tiny!]

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  3. It’s my understanding that the “impeachment” is simply to appease tRump. The GQP’s orange Fuhrer was impeached twice and he’s angry, so he has ordered his faithful minions to do the same to Biden, despite the fact there was no evidence found for impeachment after 5 months of hearings. The GQP whistleblowers all appear to be criminals on the run or have outright contradicted the innuendos and slander that imply Joe Biden participated in his sleazy son’s doings. Pure political posturing from the clownish GQP. Heaven forfend that there be any actual “evidence” like there was with tRump’s two impeachments. SMH.

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    1. I’ve only been looking in on this issue from afar, but isn’t it the case that there is good evidence — including from words attributed to Hunter himself — that Biden Snr used his position and influence to assist Biden Jnr’s business dealings, and that as a consequence Biden Snr received payments, likely in the millions — or is that a wrong assessment?

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      2. It’s like what Rudy Giuliani told then-speaker of the house in the Arizona state legislature, rock-ribbed Republican Rusty Bowers, when Trump and Giuliani were trying to talk Bowers into calling a special session of the Arizona legislature in an effort to claw back Arizona’s 11 electoral votes and award them to Trump on the basis of alleged election fraud: “We’ve got lots of theories; we just don’t have the evidence.”

        The claims you cite by Republicans regarding Joe Biden are Republican theories and talking points, but Republicans have have no more evidence to support these theories and talking points than they had to support Trump’s utterly bogus claims of election fraud.

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        1. Ken, regarding the statements below about Hunter Biden’s laptop, I have a question.

          Aren’t there chain of evidence issues with anything coming out of that source? Even if it actually WAS Hunter Biden’s laptop, it traveled through enough hands that anyone with good computer skills could have added to or manipulated the contents.

          Doesn’t that occur to anyone?

          L

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          1. Linda,

            Yes. And, in addition to the chain-of-custody issue you’ve identified, there are other evidentiary issues regarding the statement on the laptop as described by Coel. I don’t believe the statement in question would be adjudged competent evidence admissible against Joe Biden by any US tribunal.

            K

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      3. You should look into something so important and learn the facts before accepting anything churned out by Faux Noise or any of the right wing media mouthpieces. These clowns in Congress are conducting fact-free smears of Biden in an attempt to connect him with his son’s sleazy business dealings. NONE of their so-called witnesses have been able to provide one iota of evidence that Joe Biden profited from anything Hunter did. They lie about the facts and twist them to try to implicate Biden. All they have are lies, smarmy insinuations and rumors, mostly generated by Russian shills, Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.IMO, they are all lower than snake’s bellies.

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        1. NONE of their so-called witnesses have been able to provide one iota of evidence that Joe Biden profited from anything Hunter did.

          So (for example) is the claim (deriving, I think, from the laptop), that in 2019 Hunter texted his daughter saying “But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.” not true?

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          1. That particular quote was supposed to be from a text and not the infamous laptop. The laptop originated from Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon and has been through so many hands since then there’s no way to determine what is real and what is not at this point. The chain of evidence is corrupt and nothing on it can be trusted as real.

            The only sites that I can find talking about that particular text are media sources hostile to Biden. I suspect it’s not real, just like the WhatsApp message cited by Republicans is fake. I wouldn’t put it past the GQP in Congress to stoop to anything to damage Biden–after all, they tried to destroy our democracy for tRump.

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      4. Biden (not Hunter) has publicly boasted about forcing out the prosecutor in the Burisma case. He claims that the prosecutor was corrupt. The prosecutor claims that he was getting too close to Hunter.

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        1. The prosecutor was corrupt and the Obama administration, as well as most of the European Union, urged he be removed. Here’s a quote from The Financial Times, October 3, 2019: “European and US officials pressed Ukraine to sack Viktor Shokin, the country’s former prosecutor-general, months before Joe Biden, the former US vice-president, personally intervened to force his removal, people involved in the talks said. Mr Biden did not act unilaterally nor did he instigate the push against Mr Shokin, despite suggestions to the contrary by supporters of US president Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said.”

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  4. “In the US it’s National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day, a treat my mom used to give me for breakfast (another was French toast).”

    Try making French toast using cinnamon raisin bread. It’s really good.

    L

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  5. I have just looked at my own photos from tombs in Luxor (not Nefertari’s, but from the same time) and I do not think that those wall paintings have been retouched. My photos are not as good, and not as good as the real thing, but casual photographers are not allowed to use flash, and the lighting is relatively subdued to ensure minimal effect on the colours. What I suspect is that for the photos above better lighting was allowed.

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  6. Hunter Biden is a classic example of selective prosecution. There seems to be a consensus among experts that such a prosecution on the gun charges is very rare, especially when no violence was involved. There must be thousands of people that have lied on the form as Hunter did, yet most are never found out, and, if so, get no more than a slap on the wrist.

    Selective prosecutions by the government are not unusual, indeed, seem the norm. One need only look at the enforcement of tax laws. There are hundreds of thousands of people each year that willfully do not file their tax returns or pay what is due. Does the IRS recommend to the DOJ that this teeming multitude be prosecuted for criminal violations, although technically they could? Of course, not. Rather, the IRS goes chasing after the malefactors using civil means to bring them into compliance. The reason for this is that both the IRS and the DOJ do not have the resources to enforce criminally the tax laws against many thousands of people. Hence, only a minuscule percentage of people are criminally prosecuted – those that the government hopes will serve as a deterrent to violation of the tax laws. The IRS can make life miserable for violators and one is a fool to go through the grief, but jail time is rarely in the cards.

    In both his gun and tax violations, Hunter Biden is such an example that the government wants to make. In addition, his indictment is an attempt by the DOJ to show that it is not biased against Trump.

    There is quite an irony in the Hunter Biden gun violation case. The charges against him may not hold up because they may violate the second amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Thus, Hunter may be let off the hook and the staunch defenders of the second amendment, the Republican Party, may lose their whipping boy.

    Reply

    1. Before the resurrection of the charges, there was a lot (and I mean a LOT) of increasingly scary discontent over the claimed unequal treatment of President Biden and Hunter Biden in comparison to Trump. This discontent was coming from republican voters through their social media. But these indictments, however pointless, can mollify the situation. I would not rule out that the indictments have made things a little safer for now.

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    2. Hunter Biden is simply the GOP’s new Benghazi. Same tactic (faux outrage), looking for the same outcome (voter fatigue and skepticism). Biden’s impeachment falls under the same category. Of course, the only reason for the circus is trying to deflect from Trump’s real and serious indictments.

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    3. You are probably wrong about this. Years ago, I heard of gun law case from a lawyer. The parties involved were far from the headlines. The defendant was offered a deal. He didn’t take it and ended up in prison. My guess is that Hunter is not being selectively prosecuted. He appears to have committed all sorts of offenses and this was just the easiest to criminally prosecute.

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  7. If Hunter Biden has violated our criminal laws, let justice be done though the heavens may fall. The same goes for Joe Biden himself, should it be shown that he has violated the law (something I’ve yet to see any evidence of at all).

    Unlike the Trumpist Republicans, I don’t believe in putting party or personages or politics over country.

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    1. Biden wasn’t even president when this stuff was going on. They have been investigating this crap for 5 years or more. Like everything else with the republicans, it is a joke. If they wanted to investigate a relative they should have gone for Trumps son in law. His stealing 2 billion from Saudi Arabia was done right at the end of Trump’s term.

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  8. Back in the early 1940s, there were publicity-rich “scandals” about the involvement of FDR’s son Elliott, then an Air Force officer, in an air mail contract, and in the ordering of certain military aircraft from Howard Hughes’ company. Can we not look forward to today’s Republican Congress re-investigating these matters, as part of a retroactive impeachment of FDR? After all, if FDR could be retroactively impeached for his son’s misconducts, maybe that would permit a GOP Congress to repeal the entire New Deal enacted during FDR’s presidency.

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  9. I used to beg my father to get Yay-yay Bread (what my sister and I called Raisin Bread; actually, I think my father named it that!). I loved it and still do. Raisin bread toast is the best!

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  10. I think the Rapture people just got confused and read The Lord of the Rings instead of the Bible (it IS a much better book)–September 22nd, at midnight, was when the Sackville-Bagginses took ownership of Bag End, as Frodo left on his journey to destroy the One Ring. It’s an easy enough mistake to make, I guess.

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    1. Sept 22 is also the date Apple promises to deliver the first shipment of new iPhone 15s. This raises so very many questions – will Jesus and his followers take all the phones with them, or leave them behind with the heretics?

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      1. People will be allowed to take their phones with them to the AfterLife?
        Are you sure about that, because for some potential attendees, the presence of mobile phones in Heaven would make it Hell on Earth. Or Hell in Heaven. Something.
        Does anyone have a hotline to the Vatican? I think we need some Infallibility™ on this important question.

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  11. The school library book purging is not Toronto but the suburban regional municipality (which Americans and most Canadians would call a county) called Peel Region, home to 20% of Ontario’s black people. They and their ancestors mostly hail from various self-governing black-majority ruled independent nations in the Caribbean and the South American country of Guyana, very few from the United States, although there has been recent immigration from modern-day African countries that were never even colonized, much less enslaved. The region is ethnically diverse, with a majority of residents not black but South Asian. In some Caribbean countries, particularly Trinidad, the population consisted of slaves from West Africa (as elsewhere) but also indentured servants from the Indian sub-continent and therefore many immigrants are of mixed-race heritage (including indigenous island and South American people) that defies pigeon-holing. As with any diverse group of people, some are highly successful, some not.

    The Peel District School Board has long struggled with identify politics and deteriorating school performance among specifically black students, described more fully here, along with a less squeamish take on racial issues than the CBC story sourced by Nellie Bowles. Because of its publication date, 1984 would likely have been purged.

    https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/bookgate-controversy-at-the-peel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=515626&post_id=137085485&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=123xt5&utm_medium=email
    (I hope it’s not paywalled.)

    Peel is also attempting to set up a Black Health Hub which tries to hook black patients up preferentially with black physicians and create special pathways for black patients to navigate the system. The goal is to improve racial health disparities in a supposedly zero-sum system that works under tight resource constraints.

    Some readers may remember that Peel Region was Ground Zero for Covid in Ontario, suffering the highest case rates and death rates in the province during the entire two years, and often in the whole country. However the disease affected, and killed, chiefly people of South Asian ancestry, not black people, a phenomenon which was seen elsewhere in the world and is believed linked to polymorphisms in the immune response genes as well as cultural factors. (Canada doesn’t collect health statistics by race but it was obvious from news reports that the South Asian community knew it was being hit very hard by the disease.)

    This book purging story is not a good look for Canada’s reputation. I’ve stopped caring about a lost cause.

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    1. Canada’s reputation was lost in the 1960s, when it reportedly banned the Rocky and Bullwinkle TV cartoon series because of its Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties segment.

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    2. I have been following this outrage on main stream media and have become increasingly angry about the whole thing which doesn’t really do much except increase my blood pressure, however thank you very much for the links which explained it all succinctly.
      The Canadian PM has much to answer for with his ideology.
      Robert.

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