Saturday: Hili dialogue

October 7, 2023 • 7:00 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 7, 2023; it’s cat shabbos and National Frappe Day, celebrating drinks made with ice, especially iced coffee, but they can also include milkshakes, though the term “frappe” for a milkshake is confined to New England in America.

It’s also Bathtub Day, International Newspaper Carrier Day, National Flower Day, and National Forgiveness and Happiness Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the October 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

The previous post describes how war has broken out between Israel and Palestine.

*The NYT reports that Trump revealed classified information about American nuclear submarines to an American member of his Mar-a-Lago golf club soon after he left office.

Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.

Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s disclosures of the secrets to Mr. Pratt, which were first revealed by ABC News, and interviewed him as part of their investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, the people said.

According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Mr. Pratt’s name does not appear in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to nearly three dozen classified documents after he left office and then conspiring with two of his aides at Mar-a-Lago to obstruct the government’s attempts to get them back.

But the account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.

And here’s what the Trumpster revealed:

During his talk with Mr. Pratt, Mr. Trump revealed at least two pieces of critical information about the U.S. submarines’ tactical capacities, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those included how many nuclear warheads the vessels carried and how close they could get to their Russian counterparts without being detected.

Now I doubt that this revelation is prosecution-worthy, and Trump might not even have given accurate information (no documents were shown), but it does speak to how Trump plays fast and loose with classified information. I can’t believe that if he’s convicted on these felony charges, he won’t go to jail!

*ARTnews reports that Oberlin has relented, finally deciding to return its Egon Schiele drawing to the rightful owners: the heirs of the Fritz Grünbaum, who was forced to sign over all his art to the Nazis while he was imprisoned in Dachau. Another museum has also coughed up illegal gains (h/t Norm):

The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Ohio’s Oberlin College and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh will voluntarily return works by Egon Schiele to the family of Fritz Grünbaum after the Manhattan District Attorney’s office issued warrants for them last month.

The seizure warrants were issued as part of a criminal investigation based on the claims the Schiele works had been stolen from Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector who was forced to liquidate his assets during his internment at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

The returned works by Schiele are the pencil-on-paper drawing Portrait of a Man (1917), from the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the watercolor-and-pencil on paper work Girl With Black Hair (1911), from Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum.

The two stipulations about the returned works were signed by Carnegie Museums president and CEO Steven Knapp as well as Oberlin College vice president, general counsel, and secretary Matt Lahey.

Last December, the Manhattan DA’s office was first approached by Grünbaum’s heirs about investigating works by Schiele, formerly owned by their ancestor, that were in New York or had been bought and sold by American art dealer Otto Kallir. These works, the heirs believed, could constitute stolen property, as defined under New York law. They were emboldened by a 2018 ruling by a judge that said Grünbaum could not have voluntarily sold the works during his internment.

Seven other works by Schiele, held by private collectors and museums, were also returned:

The value of each of the works returned on September 20 is estimated to be between $780,000 and $2.75 million, according to the New York Times, which first reported the story.

If you want to excuse Oberlin because the law didn’t force them to turn over the works, be aware that Grünbaum’s heirs have been trying to get Oberlin to cough up the Schiele drawing since 2006,  and it was clear that the works were acquired by the Nazis through force. It should have been morality alone, not the law, that forced Oberlin to relinquish the art. Oberlin’s intransigence reminds me of their behavior during the Gibson’s Bakery case, and the college still hasn’t apologized despite having been fined over $36 million for defamation.

*In his main piece at the Weekly Dish, “A culture primed for indecency,” Andrew Sullivan discusses reactions on Twitter to the death of a social-justice warrior, stabbed to death in front of his girlfriend this week, and to the deaths of other. Sullivan feels that it’s okay to call out people’s bad acts after they die (I like to wait a while), but that it’s NOT okay to rejoice in their deaths (on Pharyngula, P. Z. Myers regularly shows great glee when people he doesn’t like kick the bucket).

What crosses the line of what Orwell prized as “common decency” is using the occasion of someone’s untimely death to say they deserved it. “The homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution” was Pat Buchanan’s charming response to the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. In the same vein today, on the other side as it were, there’s a “Herman Cain Award” subreddit with half a million members, devoted to naming and mocking vaccine skeptics who subsequently died of Covid. A giant, unified chorus of “ha-ha”s across the decades.

Social media and CCTV cameras have made the schadenfreude more visceral. This past week, a young “social justice” activist, Ryan Carson, was knifed to death on the street by a deranged 18-year-old assailant, as Carson’s girlfriend, paralyzed with shock, looked on. We might once have just heard of or read about this attack. Now we see it as it happens. . .

. . .Within hours of Carson’s death, his last, terrifying moments were accessible to millions: a snuff video in all but name, now available to be monetized by gawkers.

And indecent gawkers. “It’s good to make fun of people who support criminals when they get murdered by criminals,” commented one on Twitter. “Ryan Carson took the phrase ‘bleeding heart liberal’ way too literally,” said another. (Carson’s actual heart was pierced by the murder weapon.) Other virtual tricoteuses went after the traumatized bystander: “Ryan Carson’s girlfriend is the Douche of the Week. 1. Showed almost no concern as her guy was murdered. 2. Expressed zero concern as he lay on the ground dying. Didn’t even bend down. 3. Refused to give police the murderer’s description. Soulless Marxist.” Another: “WHAT??? Ryan Carson’s girlfriend … started a GoFundMe page to make money off his death. I would tell her to eat trash but that’s cannibalism.” Or this: “She didn’t react when he was stabbed but she sure didn’t hesitate to raise $50k on go fund me. Makes you wonder.”

Yes, this kind of sickening glee is increasing as society becomes more politically polarized, and connecting Carson’s death with politics is what saves this piece from mere moral posturing:

And of course this is related to our political dysfunction. The tribalization of our allegiances has led to the dehumanization of our political opponents so that, yes, decency is close to extinct. One of the more thoughtful refections on this was, oddly enough, from Tucker Carlson, who found himself watching a video in which three Trump toughs were attacking a single Antifa supporter. In a private text exchange, leaked during the Dominion trial, Carlson felt himself rooting for the Trumpists. Then he caught himself:

The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it.

Of course we should. It’s a bedrock civilizational value. It’s what sets us apart from barbarism. And without it, our level of political polarization is dangerously combustible. One of the first signs of looming social conflict is mutual dehumanization: see an image of your opponent suffering and revel in it. Kick someone when they’ve just been gunned down.

Just keep your eye peeled for this kind of stuff, because only a ghoul would be gleeful at the death of another human being, who, after all, values his own life, as do his friends and family. By all means call out their repugnant views, but dancing on their graves? Not for me

*I’ve highlighted two bits of the discussion between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter about the downfall of Ibram Kendi and his antiracism institute at Boston University. Loury blames both Kendi and society for allowing this kind of mishigas to happen, while McWhorter, more polite, says that Kendi didn’t do anything wrong; it was the Zeitgeist.  (I’m between them, but closer to Loury.) T

The conversation continues at the site below (click to listen to the 71-minute segment) and includes Dan Subotnik, identified by Wikipedia as “a Professor of Law at the Touro Law Center who has written extensively about race and gender theory. He is the author of Toxic Diversity: Race, Gender, and Law Talk  and an early skeptic of critical race theory [CRT] as interpreted by legal scholars.

There more than discussion of Kendi; the discussion begins, for instance, with a discussion of CRT and how it personally affected McWhorter, and then goes into CRT in general, its tenets, and its problems. They go on to whether and how the damage cause by CRT can be reversed, and the Kendi bit starts at 39:52.

*It’s worthwhile looking at the AP’s “oddities” section every week or so, as you find stuff like this (click to read):

Federal customs agents pooh-poohed the plans of an Iowa woman who wanted to make jewelry from giraffe feces she picked up on a trip to Kenya and brought back to the U.S. in her luggage.

The woman declared the small box of feces when she was selected to have her belongings inspected upon arriving at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport on Sept. 29, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The woman, who was not identified, told officials she planned to use the waste to make a necklace, as she had done in the past with moose poop.

Giraffe poop can be brought back to the U.S. with the proper permits and inspections, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The station reported that the woman won’t face sanctions because she declared the feces and gave it to Customs.

Customs said that the feces could have infected the owner of the jewelry with a disease. Giraffe poop necklaces??

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is really peeved!

Hili: A cat is sitting in front of my bowl.
A: It’s Kulka.
Hili: So much the worse.
In Polish:
Hili: Jakiś kot siedzi koło mojej miseczki.
Ja: To Kulka.
Hili: Tym gorzej.

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

A police report from Buzzfeed:

From Stash Krod:

Bad spacing, from the Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

From Masih, who’s tweeting about today’s Nobel Laureate in Peace (a jailed Iranian dissident). But here’s a different tweet:

This showed up in my Twitter feed, and, not being a big fan of AOC (one reason being the pragmatic opportunism evinced here), I’ll post it:

From Malcolm: a cat that sounds like a car alarm:

A clean owl is a happy owl!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, some history:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, who’s beavering away on his Crick biography. Sound up on this first one; the ducklings aren’t mallards, but muscovies:

But WHY? The authors speculate that it may simply be the default state of mammalian hair:

Not good news. . .

20 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Re the “Godisnowhere” sign. This is deliberate on the part of Christians, in that it’s intended to be read two ways in order to grab attention.

    1. I’ve seen it used as an illustration of how hard it is to read and “correctly” interpret old books – such as early bibles – written with neither gaps between words or punctuation. We take these little written hints for granted, until they are not there.

  2. On this day:
    1763 – King George III issues the Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing Indigenous lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements.

    1826 – The Granite Railway begins operations as the first chartered railway in the U.S.

    1868 – Cornell University holds opening day ceremonies; initial student enrollment is 412, the highest at any American university to that date.

    1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Léon Gambetta escapes the siege of Paris in a hot-air balloon.

    1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving vehicle assembly line.

    1919 – KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, is founded. It is the oldest airline still operating under its original name.

    1944 – World War II: During an uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down Crematorium IV.

    1958 – The U.S. crewed space-flight project is renamed to Project Mercury.

    1959 – The Soviet probe Luna 3 transmits the first-ever photographs of the far side of the Moon.

    1963 – President Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

    1985 – Four men from the Palestine Liberation Front hijack the MS Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt.

    1988 – A hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice near Alaska; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales.

    1996 – Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.

    1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming. He dies five days later.

    2000 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Hezbollah militants capture three Israeli Defense Force soldiers in a cross-border raid.

    2001 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground, starting the longest war in American history.

    2002 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-112 to continue assembly of the International Space Station.

    2008 – Asteroid 2008 TC3 impacts the Earth over Sudan, the first time an asteroid impact is detected prior to its entry into earth’s atmosphere.

    Births:
    1885 – Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962).

    1893 – Alice Dalgliesh, Trinidadian-American author and publisher (d. 1979).

    1909 – Anni Blomqvist, Finnish author (d. 1990).

    1927 – R. D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist and author (d. 1989).

    1928 – Lorna Wing, English autism researcher (d. 2014).

    1929 – Graeme Ferguson, Canadian director and producer, co-founded the IMAX Corporation (d. 2021).

    1931 – Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2021).

    1934 – Ulrike Meinhof, German far-left terrorist, co-founder of the Red Army Faction, journalist (d. 1976).

    1935 – Thomas Keneally, Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist.

    1937 – Chet Powers, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1994).

    1939 – Clive James, Australian television host, author, and critic (d. 2019).

    1945 – Kevin Godley, English singer-songwriter and director.

    1951 – John Mellencamp, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor.

    1952 – Vladimir Putin, Russian colonel and politician, 4th President of Russia.

    1955 – Yo-Yo Ma, French-American cellist and educator.

    1957 – Jayne Torvill, English figure skater.

    1959 – Simon Cowell, English businessman and record producer.

    1968 – Thom Yorke, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1975 – Tim Minchin, English-Australian comedian, actor, and singer.

    1978 – Alison Balsom, English trumpet player and educator. [She had her first trumpet lesson at a school a five-minute walk from where I’m sitting.]

    I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again: [Elie Wiesel]
    1849 – Edgar Allan Poe, American short story writer, poet, and critic (b. 1809).

    1894 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., American physician, author, and poet (b. 1809).

    1904 – Isabella Bird, English historian and explorer (b. 1831).

    1943 – Radclyffe Hall, English author and poet (b. 1880).

    1951 – Anton Philips, Dutch businessman, co-founded Philips (b. 1874).

    1956 – Clarence Birdseye, American businessman, founded Birds Eye (b. 1886).

    1959 – Mario Lanza, American tenor and actor (b. 1921).

    1995 – Olga Taussky-Todd, Austrian-Czech-American mathematician, attendant of the Vienna Circle (b. 1906).

    2006 – Anna Politkovskaya, American-Russian journalist and activist (b. 1958). [Murdered on Putin’s birthday – hmmm…]

    2. 1996 – Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.

      So begins America’s steady decline into MAGA-fascism.

      Speaking of MAGA-fascism, anyone hear those Trump quotes from last week coming right out of Hitler’s playbook? Immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and the like? Of course, the media barely covered this hair-on-fire Hitler channeling. I wonder why…

  4. “The homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution”
    In South Africa HIV is mainly affecting heterosexuals, a sizable majority of them women. And take my word, Southern Africa (not just the RSA) has AIDS numberswaaay higher than the US or Europe. In my province the prevalence of HIV is estimated at 15% of the population between 18 and 40. 🙁

    1. Indeed. Although Pat Buchanan isn’t unique among Americans in having a very US-centric view of global events.

  5. Who’s “Godi”, and how do they make it snow?

    Mysterious ways!

    I refer of course to

    Godi Snow Here

  7. Skepticism of the newest Trump allegation should extend to questioning whether it is even true. The NYT has for the last seven years regularly peddled “anonymous” leaks that latter turned out to be completely made up.

    1. I don’t read the NY Times, so can you share some examples of the Times publishing what turned out to be made up information about Trump?

    2. Why are you skeptical? It’s been well documented with witnesses and photographs that Trump stored thousands of documents he had no right to have–many of them classified and top secret–on an open stage and bathroom at his club. There is an audio recording of Trump discussing classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on a foreign country. Witnesses to this include a writer, a publisher and two of Trump’s staff members. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock told Carlson that Trump ‘showed him maps of North Korea’ during 2017 White House visit. Why do you think this allegation about Trump telling miliary secrets to an Australian billionaire is a lie? It’s completely in line with behavior he’s been exhibiting for many years.

      1. Can’t wait for all this to be tested in Court, can you? The defendant and his supporters & sympathizers are entitled to raise skepticism about the government’s case, including leaks about it. It is unseemly for the defendant’s political enemies to be rushing to the government’s side. Observers might get the wrong idea that the prosecution is politically motivated. The People already have the unlimited investigative and prosecutorial resources of the State on their side. They don’t need cheerleaders. All the defendant has is the right of cross-examination of the government’s witnesses. Let the government put this submarine story into evidence and see what happens.

        From my reading of the Mar-a-Largo indictment, the former president is charged with, as you say, being illegally in possession of documents belonging to an agency of the U.S. government (in this case the DoD), refusing to return them when asked nicely, and attempting to hide them from government agents trying to get them back. Serious offences if true. It is alleged that the documents were of a nature that could harm American national security if seen by the wrong people, upping the ante over, say, projections of rail-freight loadings or housing starts for FY 2020-21. The indictment doesn’t make any claim as to their classified nature, thus nicely finessing the ex-President’s claim that he could, while he was President, de-classify anything he wanted just by thinking about it. This claim was regularly and publicly mocked as preposterous but seems to have been accepted by the government’s lawyers because the indictment makes no reference to the de-classification authority. It focuses on the possession and obstruction aspects applicable to any government document, whether classified or not.

        So that is one widely circulated rumour that turned out to be untrue: that the issue in the case was the handling and possession of classified information, sale of same to Vladimir Putin, or a dispute over Presidential papers. Trump’s babbling about submarines is not part of the charges against him. As the NYT sort of admits, it goes only to his reckless character, not to the charge of illegal possession of DoD documents per se. Certainly during his time in office he would have been briefed on the capabilities of the Navy’s subs of both types (which his conversation seems to conflate.) If he memorized this info and later used it to impress cronies at his golf club, the indictment is silent on whether that was a crime even though the federal investigators supposedly heard it from the witness. Even if the conversation happened, it might never be entered into evidence if it doesn’t go to the government’s case that Mr. Trump, private citizen, retained documents he was not allowed to keep. He is not charged with blabbing about secret technical information.

        I personally don’t think the newspapers out and out lie. But they do say, “We heard this great story. We don’t have any corroboration that it’s true and we admit that. We’re running it because it buttresses our belief, which we want readers to share, in the moral turpitude of the subject.”

        1. The phrase is ‘a story too good to check’. The phrase was heavily used in the context of the UVA rape / Rolling Stone scandal.

        2. I can wait for this case to be tested in court. However, I tend to listen to a variety of lawyers –like Bill Barr–who have read the indictment and every one of them says Trump is toast when it comes to this particular case. These charges will be proven in court. He has been caught red handed not only in possession of these materials but attempting to obstruct justice by hiding the boxes full of documents and then ordering his minions to erase the video tape of them moving the boxes. Numerous witnesses, including his own lawyers, will testify to this. The only thing that might throw a monkey wrench into the mix is that the judge has proven herself not to be impartial and/or someone on the jury won’t be objective. I’m hoping the slap down the judge got from the appellate court will keep her in line. So far, so good.

          I’d not heard any rumors about Trump selling material to Putin and I never said his babbling about submarines was one of the charges. I agree vehemently that some journalists run with a story without checking. However, I personally have no problem believing that Trump did this very thing based on his previous actions and the fact he’s a malignant narcissist who needs to be the center of attention at all times. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, unlike Trump.

    3. While I can’t speak with as much certainty about the possibly that Trump gave away too much about how sneaky US subs are I can say that the number of warheads carried by those submarines is in no way classified. Seriously, you can just google “how many missiles does an Ohio class submarine carry?” And you’ll find plenty of websites, including at least one that’s an official website of the US government, ready to explain that they used to have 24 missiles but thanks to New START treaty obligations have had 4 of them deactivated and now only carry 20. Also the Russians are allowed to inspect US nuclear capabilities to ensure treaty compliance, so it can’t really be meaningfully classified.

    1. I don’t get any pop-up messages. I am using Chrome with no pop-up blockers. What am I doing right/wrong?

  9. As one could reasonably expect, P.Z. Myers goes out of way to demonstrate his basic inhumanity. He actually has a phrase the he repeatedly uses to celebrate the death of people he doesn’t’ like. That phrase is ‘Grave Dancing’. Type ‘grave dancing pharyngula’ into Google and you will find many examples of Myers gloating over someone’s death. By contrast, Matt Walsh reported on the death of Carson in an appropriately somber way. P.Z. Myers’s bad reputation goes back years. See “The hurtful and harmful smears of PZ Myers, “The Happy Atheist”” (https://www.michaelnugent.com/2014/12/16/hurtful-harmful-smears-pz-myers-happy-atheist/). It should be said that Carson’s (Claudia Morales) girlfriend has gotten some well-earned grief. She has refused to ID the subject in spite of being rather close to him (as shown in the video).

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