Tuesday: Hili dialogue

December 5, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the cruelest day, a Tuesday, which happens to be December 5, 2023, and National Comfort Food Day. Here’s an American classic in that genre: tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich:

It’s also National Blue Jeans Day, National Sachertorte Day (cultural appropriation), Repeal Day (the day in 1933 when the 21st Amendment banning the manufacture and sale of booze was repealed), Walt Disney Day (Walt was born on this day in 1901), International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, World Soil Day, Saint Nicholas’ Eve in Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Poland and the UK, and, finally, Krampusnacht in Austria. Wikipedia describes Krampus as

. . . a horned, anthropomorphic figure in the Central and Eastern Alpine folklore of Europe who, during the Advent season, scares children who have misbehaved. Assisting Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, the pair visit children on the night of 6 December, with Saint Nicholas rewarding the well-behaved children with gifts such as oranges, dried fruit, walnuts and chocolate, while the badly behaved ones only receive punishment from Krampus with birch rods.

Here’s an Austrian postcard showing Krampus in action (the caption is “Greetings from Krampus”). The girl has clearly been good this year, but the boy is going to get his bottom swatted—or worse:

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

Most important: there are only 20 shopping days left until Coynezaa (for newbies, this is the personal holiday celebrating your host, which extends for the five days between Christmas and my birthday (December, 30).

Da Nooz:

*War nooz from the NYT. We have two items. First, the movement of the IDF to southern Gaza has begun:

The Israeli military has begun an invasion of southern Gaza, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery, evidence of a long-awaited operation that could decide the fate of its war with Hamas and create more peril for Palestinian civilians.

After capturing large parts of northern Gaza since late October, Israeli troops have now advanced into the last section of the territory that had been under full Hamas control. Their move sets the stage for what is likely to be the decisive battle of the war: a showdown in Khan Younis, the largest city in the south, where Israeli officials believe Hamas’s military and political leadership has sought shelter since fleeing from the north.

. . . The invasion of the south is expected to be the most intense phase of a war that is already the deadliest in the Arab-Israeli conflict since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and which has prompted the largest displacement of Palestinians since the wars that surrounded the creation of Israel in 1948.

And a group of women at the UN, partly organized by Sheryl Sandberg, Ceiling Cat bless her, have brought to the body’s attention how it ignored the sexual violence of women during Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. (The UN hates Israel, of course):

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.

Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.

On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.

“Silence is complicity,” Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, told those assembled. She, along with Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, was among the event’s primary organizers. “On Oct. 7, Hamas brutally murdered 1,200 souls and in some cases, they first raped their victims,” Ms. Sandberg added. “We know this from eyewitnesses, we know this from combat paramedics, we would know this from some victims if more had been allowed to live.”

. . . . Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles.

But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.

Hamas are brutal (and also liars of course), and the UN is reprehensible. At least they’re forced to listen to evidence of violence against women that the organization UN Women chose to ignore.

Here are 20 minites of testimony and speeches from the event, which was indeed held under the auspices of the UN. A longer, 90-minute version with more testimony, some of it horrific, is here.

*Trump is back in the news as the Hamas/Israel war becomes more familiar And yesterday’s headline in the NYT is a scary one (any headline containing “Trump” is scary: “Why a second Trump Presidency may be more radical than his first.” OY!

. . .Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.

As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.

. . .What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

And then comes a laundry list of things an autocratic second-term Trump could do:

Other parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, however, are aberrational. No U.S. president before him had toyed with withdrawing from NATO, the United States’ military alliance with Western democracies. He has said he would fundamentally re-evaluate “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” in a second term.

He has said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, which would violate international law unless its government consented. It most likely would not.

He would also use the military on domestic soil. While it is generally illegal to use troops for domestic law enforcement, the Insurrection Act allows exceptions. After some demonstrations against police violence in 2020 became riots, Mr. Trump had an order drafted to use troops to crack down on protesters in Washington, D.C., but didn’t sign it. He suggested at a rally in Iowa this year that he intends to unilaterally send troops into Democratic-run cities to enforce public order in general.

“You look at any Democrat-run state, and it’s just not the same — it doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, calling cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco crime dens. “We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”

Mr. Trump’s plans to purge undocumented immigrants include sweeping raids, huge detention camps, deportations on the scale of millions per year, stopping asylum, trying to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border to also use troops as immigration agents.

Best not to think about this stuff yet. Maybe he’ll sit out his second term in jail. .

*When I was reading about press coverage of the war, I kept coming across the name of Owen Jones, usually mentioned in a pejorative way. Wikipedia says this about his background doesn’t mention anything about the war.

Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984) is a British newspaper columnist, political commentator, journalist, author, and left-wing activist. He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman and Tribune. He has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show, and The Owen Jones Podcast. He was previously a columnist for The Independent.

Reader Jez Grove gave me more information (indented) below and I’ve given or quoted from some of the links. His response to “Who is Owen Jones?”

. . . . a misogynistic and anti-Semitic  man who is a columnist at the Guardian (where else?)

He recently posted a YouTube video of his reaction after watching the 7 October film compiled from footage recorded by Hamas terrorists and CCTV cameras on the day of the atrocities. Essentially,  his take was (I paraphrase, but probably not by much), “Yes, there were shots of dead women with their skirts pulled up and no underwear, but how do we know that they were raped?”

It seems to have provoked civil war at the Guardian, with his fellow columnist Gaby Hinsliff writing a powerful retort to denialists like Jones. She didn’t mention him by name, but it might as well have been called “An open letter to Owen Jones”. You can read her piece here [JAC: see below]

UnHerd has this article about him: “How the Guardian enables Own Jones.”

He’s alleged to have bullied female colleagues, two of whom left the Guardian. (They were Hadley Freeman, who happens to be Jewish, and Suzanne Moore.)

He was called a “shit weasel” on Twitter after his reaction video came out and that insult was trending on Twitter here soon afterwards.

Jones released his video as an individual rather than as a Guardian “journalist”, which I presume is the figleaf that prevents the paper from dispensing with his services.

Here’s Jones in Hamas-apologetic mode. This video caused a lot of ruckus.  About the rapes: Israel is investigating this assertion by examining the bodies of the dead for wounds, semen, and the like. We’ll know more if and when Hamas releases more women prisoners—if they release any. But as far as I know from observers, including those at the rave party who actually witnessed rape, there’s already ample evidence of sexual violence committed by Hamas against women.

Judge for yourselves. All I can say that in his constant insistence on “good journalistic practice”, he’s seems far more credulous about the claims of Hamas than about the claims of Israel.

Hinsliff’s piece is called “Whatever your view of the Israel-Hamas war, rape is rape. To trivialise it is to diminish ourselves.”  An excerpt:

Why do people who would probably happily judge an allegedly predatory actor or MP based on little more than hearsay seemingly struggle to entertain doubts about the sexual conduct of a terrorist, as if to do so would somehow be a betrayal of the Palestinian cause? For those who still conceive of Hamas gunmen as freedom fighters engaged in glorious resistance, it’s perhaps easier to rationalise away dead women than raped ones. It’s a war, they might tell themselves, and people die in war; anyway, look how many thousands more innocent women and children have died in Gaza. But a crime so obviously born of misogyny, revenge and exploitative power is not so easily explained away. For those who can’t deal with the troubling cognitive dissonance, the easiest thing is to decide that it just didn’t happen. The survivors must be liars, along with the first responders who reported finding half-naked bodies with injuries I won’t describe here, and the pathologists and women’s rights activists and news agencies claiming to have been shown supporting photographs and ambassadors saying they believe what they’ve heard from morgue workers; liars, the lot of them. Because if they aren’t, what are you?

Here’s another critical take from Honest Reporting: “The dangerous lies of Guardian columnist Owen Jones about Israel-Hamas War.”

*If you’ve read Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (and you should; it’s a fantastic but disturbing book), you’ll know about the Sackler family, who were big-time philanthropists, all the while keeping their deep involvement in promoting opioids like Oxycontin a secret. The way they made Americans addicted to painkillers is frightening, but it came out and now they’ve been sued and are going into bankruptcy. Now, according to the WaPo, the Supreme Court is weighing their bankruptcy plan, which pays big bucks to plaintiffs but also protects the family’s finances (it’s discussed at the end of the book.

The Supreme Court on Monday seemed torn about both the merits and the legality of a proposed Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan thatwould allocate billions of dollars to help ease the nation’s opioid crisis, but also shield the family that owns the company from future lawsuits.

Justices across the ideological spectrum asked tough questions of lawyers from the Justice Department, which opposes the deal, and attorneysfor Purdue and the vast number of parties that have an interest in the outcome.

Those parties say unraveling the settlement plan would leave some victims with nothing.

“Forget a better deal — there is no other deal,” said Washington lawyer Pratik Shah, who represents the interests of states, hospitals, tribes, insurance companies, individual victims and other creditors who agreed to the settlement.

But Curtis E. Gannon, representing the Justice Department, said that claim already has been proven untrue. After some states and individuals objected to a previous version of the plan, he said, the Sackler family — which owns Purdue — ponied up more cash, increasing their contributions from more than $4 billion to about $6 billion, to be paid over nearly two decades.

. . .Purdue declared bankruptcy in 2019, as it faced thousands of lawsuits and allegations that the company helped fuel the opioid crisis by the marketing of its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin. But members of the Sackler family did not themselves file for bankruptcy.

It’s complicated, but comes down to the question of whether individuals who aren’t part of the bankruptcy proceedings can be individually sued. And the nature of the questions suggests that this isn’t going to be decided along ideological lines.

*From the ever-engaging “oddities” section of the Associated Press, we hear of a woman who got a bit more than she bargained for when she ordered a restaurant salad. Note the name of the restaurant!

A customer has filed a lawsuit against the fast casual chain Chopt over a salad that she says contained a piece of the manager’s finger.

The lawsuit filed Monday by Allison Cozzi of Greenwich, Connecticut, alleges that she bought a salad at a Chopt location in Mount Kisco, New York, on April 7, 2023, and realized while eating it that “she was chewing on a portion of a human finger that had been mixed in to, and made a part of, the salad.”

According to the suit, a manager at the restaurant accidentally severed a piece of her left pointer finger while chopping arugula.

The manager went to the hospital but the contaminated arugula was served to customers including Cozzi, the lawsuit says.

Westchester County health department records show that Chopt was fined $900.

Cozzi said in the lawsuit that she suffered injuries including shock, panic attacks, migraine, cognitive impairment, nausea, dizziness, and neck and shoulder pain as a result of eating the contaminated salad.

She is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Crikey! How did they let that finger get in there?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gets praise for being editor of Listy:

Hili: Running a serious website is a big challenge.
A:You are managing to do it very well.
In Polish:
Hili: Redagowanie poważnej strony internetowej to duże wyzwanie.
Ja: Doskonale sobie radzisz.

Here’s Hili’s position of “editor in chief” given on Listy:

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

From Merilee:

From Annie:

From David:

From Masih.  The bravery of young Iranian women never ceases to arouse my admiration. Be sure to watch the video. It looks like the odious Morality Police are walking around her. . .

From reader Roz:

From Simon, who claims that his Twitter feed “is not a happy place”:

Bill Ackman is a billionaire hedge fund manager, a philanthropist who has donated extensively to Harvard, and a Jew who has refused to donate more to Harvard after some of their students wrote a screed blamed Hamas’s attack on Israel. Ackman wrote this long letter to Harvard’s President Claudine Gay excoriating Harvard for its low free-speech rating and censorious atmosphere on campus. The long tweet includes a lot of anonymous but damning quotes from faculty. (h/t cesar)

The latest count of hostages:

A critique of the Red Cross’s behavior in the Hamas/Israel war, which has been reprehensible. All they do is drive the hostages back into Israel.  It’s in response to the second tweet, in which a Red Cross official makes pathetic excuses.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a four year old boy gassed upon arrival:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, a gorgeous nudibranch:

. . . and juggling skills:

18 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany.

    1578 – Sir Francis Drake, after sailing through Strait of Magellan, raids Valparaiso.

    1766 – In London, auctioneer James Christie holds his first sale.

    1776 – Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the U.S., holds its first meeting at the College of William & Mary.

    1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

    1914 – The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition began in an attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.

    1919 – Ukrainian War of Independence: The Polonsky conspiracy is suppressed and its participants are executed by the Kontrrazvedka.

    1921 – The Football Association bans women’s football in England from league grounds, a ban that stays in place for 50 years.

    1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. [It repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide prohibition on alcohol.]

    1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women in New York City.

    1943 – World War II: Allied air forces begin attacking Germany’s secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow.

    1945 – Flight 19, a group of TBF Avengers, disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

    1952 – Beginning of the Great Smog in London. A cold fog combines with air pollution and brings the city to a standstill for four days. Later, a Ministry of Health report estimates 4,000 fatalities as a result of it.

    1955 – E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery bus boycott.

    1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

    1958 – The Preston By-pass, the UK’s first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.)

    1964 – Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.

    1964 – Lloyd J. Old discovers the first linkage between the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and disease—mouse leukemia—opening the way for the recognition of the importance of the MHC in the immune response.

    1991 – Leonid Kravchuk is elected the first president of Ukraine.

    2005 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there. [It should have been enacted earlier to avoid the nonsense that is the Gender Recognition Act (2004).]

    2017 – The International Olympic Committee bans Russia from competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics for doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

    Births:
    1666 – Francesco Scarlatti, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1741).

    1822 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, American philosopher and academic, co-founded Radcliffe College (d. 1907).

    1830 – Christina Rossetti, English poet and author (d. 1894).

    1839 – George Armstrong Custer, American general (d. 1876).

    1855 – Clinton Hart Merriam, American zoologist, ornithologist, entomologist, and ethnographer (d. 1942).

    1859 – John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, English admiral and politician, 2nd Governor-General of New Zealand (d. 1935). [Churchill described him as “the only man on either side who could lose the [First World] war in an afternoon”.]

    1879 – Clyde Vernon Cessna, American pilot and businessman, founded the Cessna Aircraft Corporation (d. 1954).

    1890 – Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1976).

    1901 – Walt Disney, American animator, director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (d. 1966).

    1901 – Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976).

    1902 – Emeric Pressburger, Hungarian-English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1988).

    1905 – Otto Preminger, Austrian-American actor, director, and producer (d. 1986).

    1912 – Sonny Boy Williamson II, American singer-songwriter and harmonica player (d. 1965).

    1916 – Hilary Koprowski, Polish-American virologist and immunologist, created the world’s first effective live polio vaccine (d. 2013).

    1926 – Adetowun Ogunsheye, first female Nigerian professor and university dean.

    1932 – Alf Dubs, Baron Dubs, British politician. [One of 669 Czech-resident, mainly Jewish, children saved by British stockbroker Nicholas Winton, and others, from the Nazis on the Kindertransport between March and September 1939.]

    1932 – Little Richard, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor (d. 2020).

    1934 – Joan Didion, American novelist and screenwriter (d. 2021).

    1938 – J. J. Cale, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2013).

    1940 – Frank Wilson, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2012). [Wrote and produced hit records for Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Temptations, and others. He became particularly important after Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown.]

    1946 – José Carreras, Spanish tenor and actor.

    1954 – Hanif Kureishi, English author and playwright.

    1963 – Doctor Dré, American television and radio host.

    1969 – Catherine Tate, English actress, comedian, and writer.

    Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?
    1784 – Phillis Wheatley, Senegal-born slave, later American poet (b. 1753).

    1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer and musician (b. 1756).

    1870 – Alexandre Dumas, French novelist and playwright (b. 1802).

    1925 – Władysław Reymont, Polish novelist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1867).

    1926 – Claude Monet, French painter (b. 1840).

    1951 – Shoeless Joe Jackson, American baseball player and manager (b. 1887).

    1973 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, invented the radar (b. 1892).

    1977 – Katherine Milhous, American author and illustrator (b. 1894).

    2007 – Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer and academic (b. 1928).

    2012 – Dave Brubeck, American pianist and composer (b. 1920).

    2012 – Oscar Niemeyer, Brazilian architect, designed the United Nations Headquarters and Cathedral of Brasília (b. 1907).

    2013 – Nelson Mandela, South African lawyer and politician, 1st President of South Africa, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918).

    2022 – Kirstie Alley, American actress and producer (b. 1951).

    Reply

    1. 1776 Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the U.S. holds its first meeting at the College of William & Mary.

      In a tip of the hat toward continuity and longevity, and, hopefully, not too much embarrassment to our host, almost 200 years later he became a Class of 1971 initiate of that same Alpha Virginia Chapter.

      Reply

    1. Owen Jones is vile and wrong about so many things. He clearly believes he is a shining beacon of humanity which is odd as I view him as a dark excrement of inhumanity.

      Shitweazel is being far too kind to him tbh.

      Reply

  3. Mr. Trump’s plans to purge undocumented immigrants include sweeping raids, huge detention camps, deportations on the scale of millions per year, stopping asylum, trying to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border to also use troops as immigration agents.

    I don’t have an issue with any of this, and I think it’s an indication of the MSM’s lack of engagement with public opinion and its own extremism that they think this sounds bad. The Biden Administration has been flouting the law and Congress and flooding the country with illegal immigrants for three years for the obvious purpose of creating a new Democratic voting block, dependent for their continued residence on a Democratic administration and for their livelihood on Federal dollars. Now Dick Durbin wants to get them into the Army in exchange for citizenship. I’d be more worried about an Army of criminals than about the Army used on the border.

    Reply

    1. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed a law prohibiting noncitizens from voting in federal elections, including elections for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and presidential elections. This does not apply to elections at the state and local levels.[1]

      No state constitutions explicitly allowed noncitizens to vote in state or local elections. As of June 2023, seven states specified that noncitizens may not vote in state and local elections: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Ohio.[2]

      The District of Columbia and municipalities in three states allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections as of June 2023: California, Maryland, and Vermont.

      Reply

  4. … yesterday’s headline in the NYT is a scary one (any headline containing “Trump” is scary: “Why a second Trump Presidency may be more radical than his first.”

    The Atlantic began releasing its Jan/Feb 2024 issue online yesterday. It features 24 essays by 24 writers writing about their particular area of expertise regarding what the consequences of a second Trump term would likely be. You can find the introduction and a list of the essays (all of which will be online by the end of the week) here. And you can read the opening essay by conservative columnist David Frum — “The Danger Ahead” — here.

    Reply

  5. Churchill’s quip about Adm. Jellicoe was not a personal swipe at the commander of the Grand Fleet, the way it sounds out of context. It was a reference to the long-anticipated titanic clash between the German and Royal Navies. Britain, being a sea power, had more to lose in a naval disaster than Germany did and so Churchill’s statement would be apt regardless of who was the British commander. It was an analysis of the stakes in battle, not of the merits of the man in charge. Jellicoe was not a shmoozer with politicians and the press and was frequently belittled in the newspapers out of spite. Churchill had a nasty streak and was yet to be humbled in the Dardanelles.

    At Jutland, despite some heavy losses due to poor tactics by his independently operating battlecruiser commander, Jellicoe’s battleships did force the German battle line to disengage and run for Germany. No doubt heeding Churchill’s aphorism, Jellicoe did not give chase in a running fight which would have exposed his battleships to disaster from mines and torpedo boats as they approached German territorial waters. The Royal Navy lived to fight another day, while the German Navy never sortied in force again.

    Jellicoe did take the blame for the Navy’s failure to win a decisive victory that every Briton believed was their right and several ships were lost with nearly all hands when they blew up or sank rapidly. Nonetheless he succeeded in not losing the war.

    Reply

  7. For books, since that thread is now old and I just heard about Liz Cheney’s new one called Oath and Honor via her interview on NPR that is just wrapping up, it sounds like an important one.

    She is clearly evaluating whether to run as an independent, but for her the most important thing would be to wreck any possibility of the return of Orange Julius.

    Reply

  8. I missed the chance to recommend books yesterday, so I’m gonna cheat and give you my recommendations here.

    These two book series are in the top ten reading experiences of my life:

    The first is The Cairo Trilogy by the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. The three novels, in order, are: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street.

    The second series is the four novels comprising the Emigrants series by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg. The four novels, in order, are: The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers, and The Last Letter Home

    The books are absolutely engrossing and yet almost nobody I know has ever read them (although they are among the most popular books ever written in Egypt and Sweden, respectively). I urge you to read them (if you haven’t already done so).

    On edit: I just remembered you said you’re in the mood for non-fiction, so I’ll add one more book: Into the Great Emptiness: Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap by David Robert (2022).

    I’ve recommended this book to a lot of people and everyone who has read it has made a point of coming back to me and telling me how much they loved it.

    Reply

  9. Also, is there any indication that Israel has been capturing/killing any Hamas of late, or are they just finding their empty hideouts and encampments etc, as with the tunnels a few wks ago?

    Reply

  11. Did everyone read/hear this?

    https://x.com/billackman/status/1732179418787783089?s=46

    “The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:

    Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?

    The answers they gave reflect the profound moral bankruptcy of Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth. ”

    [ etc. ]

    Reply

    1. Thanks for posting that. It reminded me to watch the hearing.

      Ms. Stefanik should have reformulated the question by changing three words: Does calling for the lynching of blacks violate your university’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment? Context dependent, right? Yeah, sure.

      These people disgust me. Truly, deeply, completely.

      Reply

    2. Good (IMHO) follow up by Jon Haidt:

      https://x.com/jonhaidt/status/1732389011983900857?s=46

      … he “can sympathize” with the “nuance” – but I’d have said “I can sympathize but also recognize evil making itself look innocent”.

      Remember – this is not applying fundamental Free Speech principles in the large picture, but the universities’ own microcosmic “bullying” or “harassment” policies back on their own violations of institutional neutrality (which WEIT readers recognize as the Kalven principles).

      Reply

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