Tuesday: Hili dialogue

November 21, 2023 • 7:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 21, 2023, and, in anticipation of Thanksgiving this week, it’s National Cranberry Day.  It’s a low shrub and requires lots of water at harvest time (see below). Wikipedia says this:

In 2020, the United States, Canada, and Chile accounted for 97% of the world production of cranberries. Most cranberries are processed into products such as juice, sauce, jam, and sweetened dried cranberries, with the remainder sold fresh to consumers. Cranberry sauce is a traditional accompaniment to turkey at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners in the United States and Canada, and at Christmas dinner in the United Kingdom.

When I was a kid it was served only in the jellied form at Thanksgiving (I like it), but then they discovered cranberry juice (my choice of drinks on a plane), and the industry boomed. Here’s how they grow and are harvested, and, as lagniappe, there’s a recipe at the end showing you how to make a “killer cranberry sauce” from fresh berries.

It’s also National Gingerbread Day, National Red Mitten Day (in Canada), National Stuffing Day, Pumpkin Pie Day, and the UN observance of  World Television Day.

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot below) celebrates the life and work of Dr. Victor Chang, who would be 87 today had he not be murdered in 1991 at only 54. From Wikipedia:

Victor Peter Chang, AC (born Chang Yam Him; 21 November 1936 – 4 July 1991), was a Chinese-born Australian cardiac surgeon and a pioneer of modern heart transplantation in Australia. His sudden murder in 1991 stunned Australia, and is considered one of the most notorious in the country’s history. Chang was given a state funeral, and in 1999, he was voted Australian of the Century at the People’s Choice Awards.

and how he died:

On the morning of 4 July 1991, Chang was shot twice in the head in a failed extortion attempt. His body was found slumped in the gutter next to his Mercedes-Benz 500SL in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. Two Malaysian men, Chew Seng (Ah Sung) Liew and Choon Tee (Phillip) Lim,  picked Chang at random from a magazine featuring Asians who had ‘made it good’ in Australia. They ran their Toyota Corolla into Chang’s vehicle, forcing him to pull over.After getting into an argument with Chang, who refused to give them money, Liew fired the fatal shots. The first shot entered near the right cheek and exited below the right ear while the fatal second, fired from point-blank range, entered the right temple and passed through the brain. Police investigators initially suspected the involvement of Triad syndicates but later concluded the killing was an amateur act.

The perps went to jail, but now they’re released and one have been deported.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the November 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*War news from the NYT.  Two quick pieces. First, the war is widening a bit, involving Hezbollah attacking Israel from Lebanon:

Hezbollah claimed responsibility on Monday for a powerful cross-border rocket attack on an Israeli military base, the latest sign that the Lebanese militia is ramping up their use of newer and more sophisticated weaponry as it attempts to sap the strength of Israeli forces already fighting Hamas.

Although the Israeli military reported no casualties in the attack, footage from the scene verified by The New York Times showed damage to at least six buildings, with one entirely reduced to rubble and burning.

Hezbollah said it had struck the Biranit military base, the headquarters for the Israeli army’s 91st Division, with two Burkan rockets — a powerful improvised munition that the group is increasingly using against Israeli forces. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said the weapons can carry as much as 500 kilograms of explosives.

Video recorded from Lebanon that was released by Hezbollah and verified by The Times shows two munitions apparently hitting the base.

This is what Biden was referring to when he said that other countries should not “take advantage” of the Hamas/Israel war to attack Israel. I wonder if now the U.S. will use drones or jets to bomb Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the meantime, Israel struck back, but two journalists died in the attack:

An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed three people — including two journalists — as cross-border clashes intensified between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported.

Al-Mayadeen, a pan-Arab network based in Beirut, said in a statement that reporter Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Al-Maamari were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Another civilian was also killed in the strike, which took place about four miles from the Israeli border near the Lebanese town of Tayr Harfa, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.

A photograph taken at the scene showed bodies lying around what appeared to be a strike, and a camera on a tripod burning in the background.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, blamed Israel for the killings, saying in a statement: “This attack proves once again that there are no limits to Israel’s crimes.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike. Earlier Tuesday, the military said that it had “struck three armed terrorist cells” operating along the Lebanese border, and that fighter jets had also struck Hezbollah targets.

Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia, vowed to retaliate. “This aggression and the martyrdom of other citizens will not pass without a response,” it said in a statement.

And, surprisingly, the NYT calls attention to the medical needs of many of the Israeli hostages. The paper rarely gives any sympathetic attention to those hostages:

Ms. Engelbert [recovering from a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction] is one of about 240 hostages abducted from Israel, many of whom need urgent medical attention.

They range in age from infants to octogenarians, and include a Thai foreign worker who was nine months pregnant on Oct. 7 and may have given birth in captivity. There are many kibbutz members in their mid-80s who were taking medications for chronic conditions like high blood pressure, and younger adults who have both psychiatric conditions and medical conditions that can be fatal if left untreated.

, , , , And then there were those who sustained potentially life-threatening injuries in the raid itself, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

Most elderly captives depend on medications to manage high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, according to Hagai Levine, an Israeli physician who has been working with the families of the hostages.

Among the roughly 40 children being held, most of whom are girls, there is a 4-year-old boy whose growth is delayed and who takes a nutritional supplement because he is underweight, and the boy’s 10-month-old brother. A photo of the two redheads in the arms of their mother when they were abducted has been widely circulated.

Some hostages now being held by Hamas were shot, beaten or otherwise wounded during the attack.

*Here are some tweets from various sources, but every afternoon the Elder of Ziyon publishes the most complete collection of pro-Israel tweets and videos, but of course you won’t find anything but Jewish or pro-Israeli sites that will publicize tweets like these:

I hadn’t noticed the meat cleaver at first, but it is certainly real. And notice how Hamas terrorists are palling around with medical staff, though the medical staff has uniformly denied that Hamas isn’t there

Hezbollah is of course operating here out of Lebanon, so the war has widened a bit.

The women of the IDF are awesome and brave.  They don’t just get the easy jobs!

I didn’t know who Owen Jones is, but Wikipedia tells me that he’s “a British newspaper columnist, political commentator, journalist, author, and left-wing activist.” Naturally he has to be left wing. . .

And then the meat cleaver tweet. If the hostage is a patient, why the meat cleaver? Nope, the guy is being dragged in.

Here’s a Hamas video showing (on left) a boy being kidnapped and a break-in of a house, while on the right you see a kidnapping: a mother and her two children. I feel weird about the “savages” remark, but can’t dismiss it completely.

I don’t think this is the same boy as in the video above, as he has a hat here (the one above is bare-headed).  At any rate, this makes at least three people dragged to the hospital, one wounded.

The “meat cleaver” hostage and the injured one.

This is one reason why I don’t think you can divide Palestinians into two disparate classes: the terrorists and the totally innocent people who don’t want anything to do with Hamas. These are Palestinian civilians celebrating the kidnapping of Israelis. And remember the widespread celebration and distributing of sweets by and two civilians when Jews were killed in terrorist acts. I don’t of course think those civilians should be attacked by the IDF simply for hating Jews, but Palestinians are like the biological sexes: they’re not binary.

And some good news to finish:

*Biden wants to hand over the governance of all of the Palestinian territories to the Palestinian Authority. As I said, it’s insane, and this article tells you why. Bolding is in the original article from Palestinian Media Watch.

Senior Palestinian Authority official Hussein Al-Sheikh, who many see as the person Mahmoud Abbas may have designated as his successor, has announced that the PA’s “arms are still open” to Hamas, and that “our hearts are open to all dialogue that will lead in the end to the unity” of all Palestinian military forces. (See full text and video below.)

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah [Fatah is the political party of which Abbas is head] celebrated the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, have since refused to condemn it, and now they are going one step further: instead of distancing themselves from Hamas’ atrocities of rape, murder, and burning people alive, the PA and Fatah are calling for unity with the terrorist organization.

To further encourage unity with Hamas, Fatah has even broadcast two videos of Palestinian icon and PA leader Yasser Arafat from more than 20 years ago stressing unity with Hamas, even using the words: “Hamas is like Fatah.”

An English-language interview with Fatah Spokesman Jamal Nazzal on BBC radio shows that Fatah is willing to accept continued Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip:

Posted text: “An interview with Fatah Movement Spokesman [and Fatah Revolutionary Council member] Dr. Jamal Nazzal on BBC radio.”

BBC interviewer: “Israel says it won’t accept the existence of Hamas. Do you believe that is realistic in your view?”

Fatah Spokesman Jamal Nazzal: “Maybe it is time for Israel to stop choosing for us who we would like to be governed by. I mean, mutual respect requires for Israel to respect the will of the Palestinian people, no matter who the Palestinian people would elect in office.”

The PA is corrupt and supports terrorism nearly as much as does Gaza.  As does Fatah.  If there’s to be a Palestinian state, it seems, the entire government of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and Gaza, has to be reorganized.  How would that happen? The despair of the war, when it’s over, will simply give way to the despair of figuring out how to make two conflicting groups of people live next to each other amicably, especially because one is sworn to destroy the other.

*Trump is appealing a gag order imposed by a D. C. circuit judge in his indictment for trying to obstruct the 2020 election.  Right now the gag order is on hold while a three-judge federal appeals court weighs Trump’s claim that his freedom of speech was violated.

Both the government and an attorney representing Donald Trump faced intense questioning Monday morning from a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The topic was whether a limited gag order imposed on Trump by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan unfairly limits his speech. Trump’s lawyer argued that the former president has a First Amendment right to talk about his federal election interference case, especially because he is again running for president. A lawyer from special counsel Jack Smith’s office countered that without guardrails on his speech, Trump will intimidate witnesses, incite threats against government employees and distort public understanding of the case. The judges will consider the matter and, eventually, issue a written opinion.

This is the ruling he’s appealing:

The gag order is on hold for now, while the appeals court weighs the issue. Chutkan put some limits on Trump’s speech but not as many as prosecutors sought. (The same limits apply to the special counsel’s office, but Justice Department policy already precludes out-of-court statements by prosecutors.) Trump can attack President Biden and the Justice Department, including by claiming they are prosecuting him for political reasons. But he can’t single out individual prosecutors, court staffers or witnesses.

Trump’s attorneys said those rules “muzzle the core political speech of the leading candidate for President at the height of his reelection campaign,” while allowing “purported witnesses” — potentially including former attorney general William P. Barr, former vice president Mike Pence and Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to “routinely attack him.”

The judges were given the Justice Department a good grilling, too:

Appeals court judge Patricia Millett said Donald Trump’s rhetoric “is not how I want my children to speak, but that’s really not the question.”

The judges have continually pushed prosecutor Cecil Vandevender to explain how the Justice Department justifies a partial muzzle on Trump for things his followers may do.

Vandevender said the purpose of the gag order is to bar “inflammatory language that poses significant risk that they will be exposed to … threats, harassment and intimidation.”

Millett focused on a social media post Trump wrote attacking Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Trump said that in another era, treasonous military officers were executed.

Prosecutors have argued that Trump’s post about Milley, particularly the mention of execution, is an attempt to intimidate a potential witness and justification for a gag order.

“So once he’s under this order, he really can’t say anything” about witnesses, asked Millett. Vandevender said no, but he could not and should not be allowed to trigger his followers to hound prosecutors, witnesses or court staff.

*As immigration across our border with Mexico skyrockets (2 million illegal crossings last year), and immigrants are being bused to cities throughout the U.S., overstrained Democratic cities are offering immigrant bus tickets to other cities; it’s a “Move on, nothing to see here” strategy.

As weary migrants arrive in Denver on buses from the U.S.-Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, officials offer them two options: temporary shelter or a bus ticket out.

Nearly half of the 27,000 migrants who arrived in Denver since November 2022 have chosen the bus, plane or train tickets to other cities in the U.S., city data shows. In New York and Illinois, taxpayer dollars also are being spent on tickets, creating a shuffle of migrants in the interior U.S. who need shelter, food and medical assistance as they await rulings on asylum cases that can take years.

The transfer of migrants has gained momentum since Republican governors in Texas and Florida started chartering buses and planes to Democratic-led cities in what critics waved off as political stunts. More than a year later, some of those cities, their resources dwindling, are eager to help migrants move on to their final destinations.

The efforts show the increased pressures cities are facing as more migrants from around the globe are coming to the U.S. southern border, often fleeing economic turmoil. Illegal border crossings topped 2 million during the government’s fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the second-highest number on record.

. . .With many migrants in shelters or living on the street, the next phase of the challenge is getting them to their families, friends or court cases, said Mario Russell, director at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

That “has been in a sense dropped into the laps of interior cities without much preparation, without much forethought really at any level,” Russell added.

It’s a mess, and it’s only going to get worse as migrants continue to cross illegally. Is there a solution? Not so long as the President doesn’t have both houses of Congress with him.

*The Wall Street Journal interviewed people born on Biden’s exact birthday—November 20, 1942 (he turned 81 yesterday)—and asked them if they thought he was too old to serve as President. Now given the variance in mental and physical condition among 81 year olds, I’m not sure how enlightening this is, but let’s have a look.

These octogenarian voters are among nearly a dozen Americans born the same day as the president that The Wall Street Journal interviewed. They are uniquely suited to answer one of the biggest questions hanging over the 2024 election: Is Biden too old to run again?

Most said no. But they were candid about the risks of aging in the years to come.

“He has certainly got his wits about him,” said Smoczynski, a Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020 and plans to support him again.

. . . A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 73% of voters think Biden is too old to seek a second term, compared with 47% of voters who said the same of 77-year-old former President Donald Trump, who is likely to be Biden’s Republican opponent.

Crikey, Trump’s almost surely in worse health than is Biden; he eats burgers all the time and is going to blow an artery. That’s beside his mental problems, too. I’ll vote for Biden if he runs; despite his low approval rating, he’s done a pretty good job with Israel and Ukraine, and the economy isn’t in serious danger right now.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron have a chinwag.

Hili: I’m against hunting.
Szaron: Really or just in theory?
In Polish:
Hili: Jestem przeciwniczką polowań.
Szaron: Naprawdę, czy to tylko teoria?

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

From Rick, a Wiley Miller Non Sequitur cartoon:

From somewhere on Facebook:

From Anna:

Reader Divy sent me a picture of her cat Jango. What a noble beast!

From Masih: These morality police scare the hell out of me, but the women of Iran continue to defy them:

From Jez, in sympathy for my insomnia:

Apparently Susan Sarandon was at an anti-Israel protest in New York and said, “”There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.”  Well, my friend Asra Nomani is a Muslim in America, and she says it isn’t half bad.  Susan Sarandon appears to be one of those Hollywood stars who feels they have special expertise to pronounce on politics in public speeches. This is a very long tweet, so click “show more”. (h/t Muffy)

From women’s sports activist Riley Gaines:

From Barry: a squirrel purloins napkins to build a nest:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz, age 12:

Matthew explains why he tries to stay off Twitter (or “X”):

An attack on 23andMe might have breached my own account. But hell, I have nothing to hide. I’m an Ashkenazi Jew and that’s about it:

23 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. This is one reason why I don’t think you can divide Palestinians into two disparate classes: the terrorists and the totally innocent people who don’t want anything to do with Hamas. . . . I don’t of course think those civilians should be attacked by the IDF simply for hating Jews, but Palestinians are like the biological sexes: they’re not binary.

    This is a problem in modern warfare: To what extent are civilians culpable for their government’s actions? I’ve gone back and forth on this. As I’ve grown older, I’ve seen that even in democratic countries, governments have a lot of scope to execute a policy without the input or consent of the governed. Perhaps Gazans don’t like Israelis, but I’ve seen a number of stories about Gazan’s pointing Hamas facilities to IDF troops. I think it would be wrong to lump all Gazans in the same bucket; we have to at least theoretically hold the binary, the position that some are innocent. Otherwise, we are like Hamas and their Progressive supporters who say that every Israeli is a settler and that there are no innocents.

    Reply

  2. Let me start by saying that both Trump and Biden are too old to be President again. That said, Trump is clearly in much better physical shape than Biden is, at the moment. As for his mental health, that’s nonsense. He is uncouth and his language is extreme, but nothing about his personality puts him outside the spectrum of any number of executives I’ve worked with.

    Reply

    1. I am agreeable with your first comment, but not this one. Everything that comes out of his mouth announces that Trump is a complete narcissist, and is incapable of viewing matters outside of how it affects him personally. We have seen more than enough to learn that this makes him dangerous.

      Reply

    2. Trump is 77 years old (the same age Ronald Reagan was when he left office). He’s fat, has a lousy fast-food diet , and is averse to physical exercise.

      About half the time, Trump looks like he’s gonna blow a 50-amp fuse. He’s frequently confused about facts and mixes up words. And he waxes demented (usually in ALLCAPS) on his ersatz twitter platform, “Truth Social.” Plus, he’s likely to name someone such as Marjorie Taylor Green to be his running mate.

      As between the two, in this alter kocker derby, I’ll take my chances with a superannuated Joe Biden.

      Reply

    3. For my money, if someone gets to be 77 with Donald Trump’s diet and physical habitus, he has probably declared himself as one of those people whose arteries are immune to whatever bad things that a crappy lifestyle is supposed to do to them. If he didn’t have a heart attack in his 60s, he’s probably home free well into his 80s.

      The fact that he doesn’t smoke or drink and has been not only wealthy but in a position of high control over his life events undoubtedly helps. He seems to relish his legal troubles as a source of challenge (even when he loses) instead of despair, the way a mentally “normal” person is expected to.

      This of course has no bearing on his fitness (or lack of it) to be president, only on the betting that he will keel over and die during his second term.

      Reply

      1. He seems to relish his legal troubles as a source of challenge (even when he loses) instead of despair, the way a mentally “normal” person is expected to.

        I think his legal troubles are a huge stress for him (esp. the New York tax fraud case which is a threat against him doing any business in New York). His rants are becoming more and more unhinged, angry and fascistic. A recent example: calling his enemies (or pretty much anyone who is not in his cult) “vermin.” He’s also framing the 2024 election as “The Final Battle” to finally rid America of the “Deep State.” I imagine the deep state is anyone who doesn’t like him or any institution that is investigating him. To me, he is acting exactly like a desperate man who knows the walls are closing in and he’s lashing out. A malignant narcissist like Trump would never show “despair” as this would be a sign of weakness; his despair manifests into hate and rage.

        Reply

  3. On this day:
    164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, rededicates the Temple in Jerusalem, an event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah. (25 Kislev 3597 in the Hebrew calendar.)

    1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

    1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

    1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

    1900 – Claude Monet’s paintings shown at Gallery Durand-Ruel in Paris.

    1905 – Albert Einstein’s paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.

    1918 – The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 is passed, allowing women to stand for Parliament in the UK.

    1918 – A pogrom takes place in Lwów (now Lviv); over three days, at least 50 Jews and 270 Ukrainian Christians are killed by Poles.

    1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.

    1942 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by standard road vehicles until 1943). [It’s not clear to me what was being celebrated in that case.]

    1953 – The Natural History Museum, London announces that the “Piltdown Man” skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.

    1964 – The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic. At the time it is the world’s longest bridge span. [It is named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 was the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River.]

    1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: “I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.”

    1969 – The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.

    1974 – The Birmingham pub bombings kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six are sentenced to life in prison for the crime but subsequently acquitted.

    1977 – Minister of Internal Affairs Allan Highet announces that the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem “God Save the Queen” and “God Defend New Zealand”. [Couldn’t they have combined them?]

    1980 – A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally’s Las Vegas). Eighty-five people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

    1985 – United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations. He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

    1986 – National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the Iran–Contra affair.

    2012 – At least 28 are wounded after a bomb is thrown onto a bus in Tel Aviv.

    2013 – Massive protests start in Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych suspended signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement.

    2017 – Robert Mugabe formally resigns as President of Zimbabwe, after thirty-seven years in office.

    2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

    2019 – Tesla launches the SUV Cybertruck. A gaffe occurs during the launch event when its “unbreakable” windows shatter during demonstration.

    Births:
    1694 – Voltaire, French writer and philosopher (d. 1778).

    1787 – Samuel Cunard, Canadian businessman, founded the Cunard Line (d. 1865).

    1834 – Hetty Green, American businesswoman and financier (d. 1916).

    1852 – Francisco Tárrega, Spanish guitarist and composer (d. 1909).

    1898 – René Magritte, Belgian painter (d. 1967).

    1903 – Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-American novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1991).

    1904 – Coleman Hawkins, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1969).

    1913 – John Boulting, English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1985). [Also his identical twin, Roy. The Boulting brothers were known for their series of satirical comedies in the 1950s and 1960s.]

    1929 – Marilyn French, American author and academic (d. 2009).

    1932 – Beryl Bainbridge, English author and screenwriter (d. 2010).

    1944 – Harold Ramis, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2014).

    1945 – Goldie Hawn, American actress, singer, and producer.

    1953 – Tina Brown, English-American journalist and author.

    1965 – Björk, Icelandic singer-songwriter.

    1968 – Alex James, English singer-songwriter, bass player.

    Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave:
    1695 – Henry Purcell, English organist and composer (b. 1659).

    1844 – Ivan Krylov, Russian poet and playwright (b. 1769).

    1874 – Marià Fortuny, Spanish painter (b. 1838).

    1943 – Winifred Carney, Irish suffragist, trade unionist, and Irish republican (b. 1887).

    1945 – Robert Benchley, American humorist, newspaper columnist, and actor (b. 1889).

    1964 – Catherine Bauer Wurster, American architect and public housing advocate (b. 1905).

    1995 – Peter Grant, English actor and manager (b. 1935).

    1999 – Quentin Crisp, English actor, author, and illustrator (b. 1908). [The self-styled “naked civil servant”, he had an interesting attitude to housework. Sting wrote the song “Englishman in New York” for and about Crisp.]

    2010 – Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, American painter and author, co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History (b. 1917).

    2011 – Anne McCaffrey, American science fiction and fantasy author (b. 1926).

    2017 – David Cassidy, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1950).

    Reply

  4. The tweet about young Sara Brukner hit me hard. I just finished Modiano’s Dora Bruder who, like Sara, immigrated to Paris but was deported from Drancy to her fate at Auschwitz sometime in September 1942, not much more than a month after Sara.

    Reply

  5. I didn’t know who Owen Jones is, but Wikipedia tells me that he’s “a British newspaper columnist, political commentator, journalist, author, and left-wing activist.” Naturally he has to be left wing. . .
    It won’t surprise our host to learn that Little Owen Jones (LOJ), as he’s known by the women at MumsNet, is employed by the Guardian. He’s a nasty misogynistic and anti-Semitic little twerp, and he was trending on X/Twitter yesterday – and not for reasons that will please him. (It’s not the first time that has happened to him.)

    His former Guardian colleague wrote this condemnatory piece about him last year: https://archive.ph/xvvwz

    Reply

  6. This is likely to be of interest to Jerry and some readers here:

    Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins: What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas. Foreign Affairs, Oct 25, 2023
    Before the War, Gaza’s Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular—but an Israeli Crackdown Could Change That
    Archived (ungated) version: https://archive.li/1SVyj
    Amaney Jamal is Co-Founder and Co-Principal Investigator at Arab Barometer, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is Palestinian. She spent much of her childhood in Ramallah.

    Ezra Klein is a New York Times journalist who has a podcast where he does longer interviews about topics in the news.
    For a list see here:
    https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast
    All podcast come with transcripts.

    On Nov 3, 2023, Klein posted this interview:
    She Polled Gazans on Oct. 6. Here’s What She Found.
    On the eve of the Oct. 7 attacks, Amaney Jamal asked Gazans what they thought about Hamas, their economic circumstances and their hopes for long-term peace.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-amaney-jamal.html?showTranscript=1

    I tried to archive the transcript at archive.today, http://archive.vn/
    It did not work. (It’s not available at the Wayback Machine either.)
    If somebody without access to the New York Times website really wants the transcript of Klein’s interview, leave a message here and I will upload it to the skydrive of my e-mail account (“the cloud”) and make a link for download available.

    Reply

  7. Asra Nomani’s post is stunning. I wonder how someone like Susan Sarandon (whose acting I admire, but who proves excellence in one area does not make one wise or even competent in others) would respond.

    Reply

  8. yes I’m sure there are a few smart people in Gaza who did not see this coming and despise Hamas for it. I for one do not know what living in fear of a thug like gang of raging testosterone fueled jihad extremist could be like. I could have taken a guess but after 07 Oct there is nothing to guess about.

    Reply

  12. On the Palestinians, I put them in three groups. First is the small number who realize that Islamic fundamentalism is the source of most of their misfortune. They keep their heads down and their opinions to themselves.
    Second are the radicals. They believe it is their personal duty to exterminate the Jews, kill apostates, and so forth.
    The third group is the majority. They believe that the Jews should be exterminated, apostates killed, same as the radicals, but are pretty reluctant to actually carry out the action themselves. They allow the radicals to operate in their midst, and support them. They are also the population from which the radicals are most readily recruited.
    I think there is quite a bit of overlap in the latter two groups.
    This has been my personal observation.

    I want to mention that we drove for several hours today, listening to NPR. It really started to bother me, although I had been a faithful listener for decades.
    All day, the hosts, interviewees and guests went on and on about trivial little things that are “problematic”, or that “cause serious harm”. Almost everything around them is racist or caused by oppression. But it is all BS. They do not actually care about any of it, otherwise they would stop whining about microaggressions and speak up against women being raped then burned alive. They do not, because it is their side doing the raping. They support governments and cultures that deal in the sale of human beings, and actual ethnic cleansing. They do not actually care about any of this stuff, except as it can be used to further their political goals and slander their enemies.

    It is not that they do not know how many child slaves have to toil and die to produce the luxury goods they feel entitled to. They literally do not care. It is bad enough that so many people seem to be morally retarded, but they just cannot stop projecting that on everyone else.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

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