Monday: Hili dialogue

December 11, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning at the top of a long work week: it’s Monday, to December 11, 2023, and National Noodle Ring Day: noodles baked into a round casserole.  This dish went out of style in the Fifties, but here’s one with creamed chicken (I’d eat it):

It’s also Green Monday and National Stretching Day. Finally, it’s the fourth full day of Hanukkah (it began at sundown on Thursday), and note that are only 14 days until the onset of Coynzaa, my personal holiday extending from Christmas until your my birthday (December 30)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded this year to imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, was handed to her children in Oslo. First, a brief note about Mohammadi from Wikipedia:

[She] is the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by her fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi. Mohammadi has been a vocal proponent of mass feminist civil disobedience against the hijab in Iran and a vocal critic of the hijab and chastity program of 2023. In May 2016, she was sentenced in Tehran to 16 years’ imprisonment for establishing and running “a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.”  She was released in 2020 but sent back to prison in 2021, where she has since given reports of the abuse and solitary confinement of detained women.

That’s a tough life, and she can’t even receive her own prize. From the BBC:

The teenage twins of jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi have accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

Ms Mohammadi – who is serving a 10-year jail term in Tehran – won this year’s prize for her work fighting against the oppression of women in Iran.

In a speech smuggled from prison and read out by her children, she denounced Iran’s “tyrannical” government.

“The Iranian people, with perseverance, will overcome repression and authoritarianism,” she said.

“Have no doubt, this is certain.”

Ms Mohammadi has for years been a prominent human rights figure in Iran. The 51-year-old has been in jail almost continuously since 2010 – and in total has been arrested 13 times, convicted five times, and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison.

She is currently in jail for “spreading propaganda”.

Her husband, political activist Taghi Rahmani, lives in exile in Paris with their two children and they have not seen one another for years.

That is doubly sad, and what makes it triply sad is that the damn Iranians won’t let her go into exile to join her family, even though she has a Nobel Prize. But that would be admitting that the Nobel Committee has a point.

Here are her fraternal twins in Oslo, with an empty chair for mom between them:

*Andrew Sullivan analyzes the Congressional grilling of three college Presidents in a piece called “The day the Empress’ clothes fell off.” Sullivan pulls no punches about Gay and Harvard:

The mediocrities smirked, finessed, condescended, and stonewalled. Take a good look at them. These are the people who now select our elites. And they select them, as they select every single member of the faculty, and every student, by actively discriminating against members of certain “privileged” groups and aggressively favoring other “marginalized” ones. They were themselves appointed in exactly the same way, from DEI-approved pools of candidates. As a Harvard dean, Claudine Gay’s top priority was “making more progress on diversity,” i.e. intensifying the already systemic race, sex and gender discrimination that defines the place.

That’s true, but it’s not something that everybody would be willing to say. Gay, for example, seems to have published not one book and only eleven papers in a reasonably-long career as a political scientist. She’s spent most of that career, though, as an administrator.

Sullivan:

Thanks to the recent Supreme Court case, the energetic discrimination against Asian-American candidates for admission at Harvard is no longer in doubt. But countless other candidates for admission have little to no chance, regardless of their grades, or extracurriculars, because they belong to the wrong race, sex, sexual orientation, and “gender identity.” As soon as students are admitted under this identity framework, they are taught its core precepts: that the “truth” — or, in Harvard’s now-ironic motto, “Veritas” — is a function not of logic or reason or of open, free, robust debate and dialogue, let alone of Western civilization, but of inimical and evil “power structures” rooted in identity that need to be dismantled first. Identity first; truth second — because truth is rooted in identity and cannot exist outside of it.

In the hearings, President Gay actually said, with a straight face, that “we embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.” This is the president whose university mandates all students attend a Title IX training session where they are told that “fatphobia” and “cisheterosexism” are forms of “violence,” and that “using the wrong pronouns” constitutes “abuse.” This is the same president who engineered the ouster of a law professor, Ronald Sullivan, simply because he represented a client, of whom Gay and students (rightly but irrelevantly) disapproved, Harvey Weinstein.

This is the same president who watched a brilliant and popular professor, Carole Hooven, be effectively hounded out of her position after a public shaming campaign by one of her department’s DEI enforcers, and a mob of teaching fellows, because Hooven dared to state on television that biological sex is binary. This is the president of a university where a grand total of 1.46 percent of faculty call themselves “conservative” and 82 percent call themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” This is the president of a university which ranked 248th out of 248 colleges this year on free speech (and Penn was the 247th), according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard is a place where free expression goes to die.

I’m not going to contest any of that, nor Sullivan’s important point: that it is the oppressor/victim narrative that dominates colleges these days, and that itself has led the Jews, considered the ultimate oppressor, to be the victims of antisemitism without any attempt by Harvard (or many other colleges) to defend them. Jews should certainly not let themselves be folded into the “oppressed” class now, but should reject the ministrations of DEI, which has become a malign force in American higher education.

*What does theology have to contribute to resolving the Middle East war? A lot, if you believe the NYT columnist Esau McCaulley, also a  an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. His essay, “The theological truth we must press during war,” is a mess starting with its title. Theology gives us no truth!  So what’s the “lesson” we can draw from Biblical fiction? Nothing that we can’t find in secular humanism:

A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect. We are not alone in this belief. Other religious and secular traditions have articulated a similar idea. This provides an opportunity for cooperation. The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.

There is no more crucial time to press this basic truth than in times of war, when the humanity of one’s opponents gets tossed to the side. Contending for the dignity of Palestinian and Israeli civilians is a theological act when the goals of victory and of the protection of the innocent struggle with each other for supremacy. Giving equal value to human beings on both sides of the conflict does not entail making moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas. It requires considering the lives of noncombatants in Israel and Gaza as equally sacred.

So what do we do? (And we don’t need the word “sacred” here.)

After the horrible events of Oct. 7, over 2,000 evangelical leaders issued a statement correctly condemning the actions of Hamas.

They asserted Israel’s right to self-defense and affirmed that the people of the Middle East had “dignity and personhood,” but that statement did not speak explicitly about how that personhood ought to affect the conduct of the war. I would have liked to see the group outline how the humanity of all those involved places moral limits on military actions during wartime.

A statement released by the National African American Clergy Network, on the other hand, condemned the attack on Israel by Hamas but also directly addressed the suffering of the people of Gaza. It called for “humanitarian pathways and aid,” including food, shelter and medical help for civilians. The evangelical and Black church statements evoked the just-war tradition and the right to self-defense, but only the latter tied that tradition directly to the protection and rescue of the innocent.

The sweating columnist winds up saying that we should go to church more, for there we’ll learn that “God values the lives of all civilians.” But that still gives us no hint about how Israel should defend itself  Just one more example of how theology offers us nothing beyond what we can derive from rationality and secular humanism.  Humans can be valuable without being “sacred.”

*Kasha Patel reveals, in the WaPo, “The other explosive theory for the demise of the dinosaurs.” The theory involves global cooling due to volcanic activity (not connected with the famous asteroid strike 66 million years ago) and is based on a paper from October in Science Advances. But volcanic activity has never gone out of style as at least a contributor to the demise of the dinosaurs. It’s just that this theory proposes that the volcanoes made the world colder rather than, as assumed previously, warming it up by producing greenhouse gases. The activity, occurring before, during, and after the asteroid strike, took place in an area called the Deccan Traps, now in India. As Wikipedia notes:

The Deccan Traps could have caused extinction through several mechanisms, including the release of dust and sulfuric aerosols into the air, which might have blocked sunlight and thereby reduced photosynthesis in plants. In addition, the late Cretaceous saw a rise in global temperatures; Deccan Traps volcanism might have resulted in carbon dioxide emissions that increased the greenhouse effect when the dust and aerosols cleared from the atmosphere.  The increased carbon dioxide emissions also caused acid rain, evidenced by increased mercury deposition due to increased solubility of mercury compounds in more acidic water.

Here’s where the Deccan traps are:

And a bit of the Post piece:

Sixty-six million years ago, an almost nine-mile-wide meteor crashed into Earth and triggered a mass extinction of dinosaurs. But what if that’s not the whole story?

A series of enormous volcanic eruptions — occurring before, during and after the meteor collision — were also complicating life for the reptiles. Gases emitted from the eruptions shielded sunlight and likely significantly cooled the atmosphere beyond the dinosaurs’ comfort for centuries, recent research shows.

“This cooling changed the climate so much that it made it difficult for the dinosaurs, and the meteorite was the coup de grâce,” said Don Baker, study co-author and geochemist at McGill University. “That was the final extinction event, but they were not in good shape before the time of that meteorite impact.”

The data consists of high amounts of sulfur (and fluorine, which can also affect climate) in some of the Deccan lava, which leads to the following conclusion (quoted from the origina paper):

“Our data suggest that volcanic sulfur degassing from such activity could have caused repeated short-lived global drops in temperature, stressing the ecosystems long before the bolide impact delivered its final blow at the end of the Cretaceous.”

The final word is not in on whether it was global heating or cooling that led to the dinosaurs’ demise.

*In these days of $5 per carton eggs and $4 gas, the Wall Street Journal tells us “Here’s where prices are actually coming down.”

Supply-chain constraints have eased and manufacturers’ staffing has improved, executives and economists say, helping get production lines humming again and helping push down prices.

At Famous Tate, which sells appliances and other goods across 11 stores in the Tampa, Fla., area, marketing director Jason Horst said that shoppers these days find midrange washing-machine models about $50 to $100 cheaper than they were a year ago. Some manufacturers overproduced during the pandemic-driven demand surge, he said, and the glut led to price drops this fall.

. . . Overall, prices for durable goods—long-lasting items such as consumer electronics—have fallen on a year-over-year basis for five straight months, according to the Commerce Department. For some product categories such as televisions, prices are lower now than before the pandemic, according to Circana, a firm that tracks consumer goods. Grocery and clothing prices have continued to move higher, the Commerce Department data show.

. . . The consumer-price index for airfares has declined in five of the past seven months, and in October the index was 13% lower than it was a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of early December, fare deals for trips over the Christmas holiday averaged around $350 round trip—up 3% from this time last year but down 2% from 2019, according to data from Hopper, a flight-booking app.

. . .Deals are gradually returning on auto-dealership lots, as vehicle inventory rebounds from the supply chain-driven shortages that led many new car buyers to pay thousands of dollars above the sticker price.

The average price paid for a new vehicle at retail was about $45,300 in November, according to research firm J.D. Power, down from $47,000 in December of 2022. The current average price remains more than $10,000 higher than what it was before the pandemic.

And don’t expect your grocery bill to get lower, either:

Prices for most foods are still rising or staying high, though some have declined over the past year. Average unit prices of avocados have decreased by double digits, while oranges, lobster and tilapia have declined by single digits, according to data by research firm NIQ. U.S. supermarket prices overall were up 2.1% in October from a year before, the Labor Department said last month.

I don’t eat many avocados so I’m screwed. All this news is not very heartening, I have to say. At least my 2000 Honda Civic is in good running order.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it seems that Hili’s going on a trip, and made sure that she showed off her best features. (I heard, though, that her trip is only to the kitchen.)

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m posing for a passport photograph.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Pozuję do paszportowego zdjęcia.

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

From Stash Krod, a cat Hanukkah cartoon from Scott Metzger:

A political cartoon from Andrzej:

Another example of deceptive packaging. It would really tick me off as I love taro.  If you find such examples, photograph them and send them to me.

From Masih. I forgot to say that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nargess Mohammadi (see above).  It’s a boost to Iranian activists and a kick in the ass to the Iranian regime. Here’s what Mahsi would say to the imprisoned Laureate.

Titania has emitted one of her rare tweets:

Sheryl Sandberg has turned out to be a prolific and eloquent spokesperson against the mass rapes committed by Hamas (and neglected by most media and feminist organizations):

From Larry the Cat via reader Simon. The BBC article showing the last meal (evidenced in the gut fossils) is here.

Why the U.S. voted against the U.N. resolution for a ceasefire:

A tweet from Jez and a cartoon from someone whose name appears to be “Heath,” but I can’t find the name through a Google image search. Meow!

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

Two from Matthew. He calls the first one “God save the Constitution!”  INDEED!

And the explosion of Mount St. Helens as reconstructed from still photos taken by a camper:

31 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    1. And then there is this piece, which asserts that she covered up research misconduct by a collaborator. (As well as presenting — largely anonymous — denunciations of the quality of her own research.)

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      1. But we must remember that Claudine Gay did not appoint herself to be president nor did she independently just slide into an empty chair. She, a known quantity from her time as dean of faculty of arts and sciences, was tapped by one or more very influential members of the Board or Corporation. President Gay is their instrument and I would expect that, if she were to leave, her replacement, being selected by these same people, would be cut from the same cloth.

        So Mr. Ackman needs to aim upstream…and he is a good one to do it.

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        1. Agree Jim but those people seem to me to be untouchable. The chair of the Harvard search committee that chose Claudine Gay as president is Penny Pritzker: billionaire, sister of the governor of Illinois J. B. Pritzker, and cousin of Jennifer (nee James) Priztker who is the billionaire benefactor of transgender activists and groups around the USA.

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      2. Gay got tenure at Stanford with only 5 journal articles and no book to her name, after six years as a PhD student at Harvard and five more years as a professor at Stanford working with the most influential people in her field.

        According to Brunet’s sources, “she would have likely been denied [tenure] at Stanford had King, her former advisor and author of the infamous EI disaster, not made her an external offer at Harvard, which she could shamelessly leverage at Stanford.”

        That’s really a scandal if true.

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  2. On this day (Part 1):
    1282 – Battle of Orewin Bridge: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales, is killed at Cilmeri near Builth Wells in mid-Wales.

    1688 – Glorious Revolution: James II of England, while trying to flee to France, throws the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames.

    1792 – French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France is put on trial for treason by the National Convention.

    1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to Saint John’s, Newfoundland.

    1907 – The New Zealand Parliament Buildings are almost completely destroyed by fire.

    1913 – More than two years after it was stolen from the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, Italy. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, is immediately arrested.

    1917 – World War I: British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot and declares martial law.

    1920 – Irish War of Independence: In retaliation for a recent IRA ambush, British forces burn and loot numerous buildings in Cork city. Many civilians report being beaten, shot at, robbed and verbally abused by British forces.

    1931 – Statute of Westminster 1931: The British Parliament establishes legislative equality between the UK and the Dominions of the Commonwealth—Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland.

    1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the final time.

    1941 – World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans’ declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.

    1941 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy suffers its first loss of surface vessels during the Battle of Wake Island.

    1946 – The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.

    1948 – Arab–Israeli War: The United Nations passes General Assembly Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission to mediate the conflict.

    1960 – French forces crack down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French President Charles de Gaulle.

    1962 – Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada.

    1964 – Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

    1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

    1978 – The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.

    1981 – El Mozote massacre: Armed forces in El Salvador kill an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War.

    1994 – First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Russian troops into Chechnya.

    2001 – China joins the World Trade Organization (WTO).

    2005 – Cronulla riots: Thousands of White Australians demonstrate against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese in Cronulla, New South Wales; these are followed up by retaliatory ethnic attacks on Cronulla.

    2006 – The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust is opened in Tehran, Iran, by then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; nations such as Israel and the United States express concern.

    2006 – Felipe Calderón, the President of Mexico, launches a military-led offensive to put down the drug cartel violence in the state of Michoacán. This effort is often regarded as the first event in the Mexican Drug War.

    2008 – Bernie Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

    2009 – Finnish game developer Rovio Entertainment releases the hit mobile game Angry Birds internationally on iOS.

    2020 – The Food and Drug Administration issues an Emergency Use Authorization on the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the agency.

    Reply

    1. On this day (Part 2)
      Births:
      1803 – Hector Berlioz, French composer, conductor, and critic (d. 1869).

      1843 – Robert Koch, German microbiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1910).

      1863 – Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer and academic (d. 1941).

      1882 – Max Born, German physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970). [Instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics, he also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s.]

      1910 – Mildred Cleghorn, Native American chairwoman and educator (d. 1997).

      1911 – Val Guest, English-American director, producer, screenwriter, and composer (d. 2006).

      1918 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2008).

      1920 – Mary Ivy Burks, American environmental activist (d. 2007).

      1926 – Big Mama Thornton, American singer-songwriter (d. 1984).

      1943 – John Kerry, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 68th United States Secretary of State.

      1944 – Brenda Lee, American singer-songwriter.

      1954 – Jermaine Jackson, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer.

      1958 – Nikki Sixx, American bass player, songwriter, and producer.

      1968 – Emmanuelle Charpentier, French researcher in microbiology, genetics and biochemistry, and Nobel laureate.

      There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval:
      1198 – Averroes, Spanish astronomer, physicist, and philosopher (b. 1126).

      1880 – Oliver Winchester, American businessman, founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company (b. 1810).

      1909 – Ludwig Mond, German-born chemist and British industrialist who discovered the metal carbonyls (b. 1839).

      1920 – Olive Schreiner, South African author and activist (b. 1855).

      1964 – Sam Cooke, American singer-songwriter (b. 1931).

      1966 – Augusta Fox Bronner, American psychologist, specialist in juvenile psychology (b. 1881).

      1971 – Maurice McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald’s (b. 1902).

      1996 – Willie Rushton, English cartoonist, author, and publisher, co-founded Private Eye (b. 1937).

      1997 – Eddie Chapman, English spy (b. 1914). [A double agent known as Agent Zigzag, he consistently reported to the Germans that the V1s were hitting their central London target, when in fact they were undershooting. Perhaps as a result of this disinformation, the Germans never corrected their aim, with the end result that most bombs landed in the south London suburbs or the Kent countryside, doing far less damage than they otherwise might have done. Unknown to the Germans, by this point in the war all German agents in Britain had been turned.]

      2008 – Bettie Page, American model (b. 1923)

      2012 – Ravi Shankar, Indian-American sitar player and composer (b. 1920).

      2017 – Keith Chegwin, British TV presenter (b. 1957).

      2020 – James Flynn, New Zealand intelligence researcher. (b. 1934).

      2021 – Anne Rice, American author (b. 1941).

      Reply

  3. I just looked up some noodle ring casserole recipes. I can only conclude that there are good reasons that some foods go extinct.

    Not sure where you are paying $5 for eggs ($1.79 a dozen in the burbs today – it says on the local Jewel website) or $4 for gas – it’s $3.19 here (this morning) – and much cheaper if you drive out of the Chicago suburbs.

    Happy Monday

    Reply

    1. Every time I hear an American friend kvetch about the price of petrol, I laugh. Here in Cambridge (the original one, in England), the price is £1.49 per litre right now. With the pound currently at $1.26, that’s equivalent to $7.10 per US gallon.

      Eggs at my local supermarket are £3.00 for a dozen free-range, medium size. That’s $3.78.

      Reply

      1. The egg price was the basic one – I’m pretty sure that the ones that come with a life history of the “hen of the week” that seem to be the dominant sort in our fridge, are more expensive – but they’ve all dropped a lot in price since the avian flu bounced prices up some months back.

        And yes on petrol prices – but then again every British or European rental I’ve driven in the last decade has had amazing fuel economy, so there is less difference in cost per mile (and less miles to be driven)

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        1. We have a 2008 Toyota Aygo, a super-mini model that was never sold in the United States. It has no boot (trunk) to speak of, but it comfortably seats four adults. Our 6ft 2in-tall godson happily rides in the back without hitting his head. We get 55 miles per UK gallon even in town driving.

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    2. Macaroni and Cheese is awfully popular. I contemplate the existential culinary threat of someone cooking it in ring form. 😉

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  4. “The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.”

    Wow, that’s the kind of deepity you get when you give a NYT column to someone with nothing of substance to say.

    Wonder how long the associate professor of New Testament had to schvitz over that empty turn of phrase.

    Reply

    2. And “God values the lives of all civilians.” Tell that to the Ammonites, Philistines, and all the other tribes who were exterminated by the Israelites by command of their Invisible Magic Friend (according to the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, anyway). Good job all this slaughter never actually happened.

      Reply

  5. I’m a bit of a newcomer here. How does one celebrate Coynzaa? I’m hoping there’s special food and song. Perhaps a cat parade.

    Reply

    2. I don’t know the details of Coynzaa, but I can make some guesses. Like all holidays, it must have special foods. In this case, they would of course be based on Jerry’s favorite foods, which I know include rare (raw, really) steak and rice pudding.

      Rice pudding is also a feature of Danish Christmas menus. This was very unfortunate for me when I had a Danish spouse, because I personally loathe the stuff. Yet, every Xmas, my in-laws would plop a bowl of the noxious stuff in front of me and seriously expect me to eat it. I trust that Jerry would give haters a special dispensation.

      Reply

  7. Eggs cost half of that here I think… I think US food prices are much higher than in the UK.

    BTW I recall you moaning about tooth paste prices too – that is also very low here.

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  8. A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect

    And another central teaching of both Christianity and Islam is that most of these same human beings are enemies of God and deserving of eternal damnation in a universe in which Good conquers Evil. This seems to undercut the whole concept of a universal “inherent worth.”

    Reply

  9. […] the mass rapes committed by Hamas (and neglected by most media and feminist organizations)
    BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, the world’s oldest programme devoted to women, has repeatedly invited UN Women to discuss this issue and to defend their woefully inadequate response so far. The organisation hasn’t even bothered to reply. Meanwhile, journalist Christina Lamb, the Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times, and who has covered rape in conflicts around the world, was on this morning and made an eloquent contribution.

    You can hear the episode here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001tb8t

    Reply

    1. From 48:10 minutes in there’s a discussion between two women, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, and their efforts for peace despite everything that is underway. There are some technical problems at the start of the segment.

      Reply

  10. OMG. The first thing I thought when seeing the noodle ring is kugel! My mother, grandmother, and aunts all made it in a square or rectangular baking pan. Battles raged over whether kugel should be baked with raisins inside or not. (I stayed out of it.)

    No. Jews should *not* want to be reclassified into the ”oppressed” category in the DEI lexicon. That simply reinforces the evil. Jews should end any ties they may still have with DEI and should speak out against the entire enterprise. Thank you, Jerry, for bringing this up.

    The problem with the university presidents is not that they cloaked themselves under the smokescreen of “context.” The problem is their hypocrisy—now on display for everyone to see. An administration that forces incoming students to listen to propaganda about fatphobia being a form of violence but that says or does nothing about Jew hate on campus is dangerously hypocritical. And when pushed hard enough by donors and critics to do something, what does Harvard’s President do? After first failing to mollify them by “tacking” her way to an anodyne final statement, she does what every toothless leader does: she establishes a committee.

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  12. I don’t like leaving multiple comments on a post, as I like to let things simmer and observe what gets cooked up. But, speaking of cooking, my wife told me that the noodle ring looks terrible, and that it needs garnish to make it palatable. I tend to agree that it looks pretty bland—just like the kugels of yore. My wife would be able to make that casserole both delicious and beautiful.

    There. I said it.

    Reply

  13. A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect

    How would it be if, instead, we started hammering on the genetic evidence that Palestinians and at least a large subset of Jews are more genetically similar than groups outside those two, and that therefore this supports a tribal rift that only happened in the last couple thousand years or so, and thus that it is idiotic to pursue this tribalism when there are actual important things to be dealt with.

    And on a wider range, the same sort of evidence points to our collective emergence from / remaining in Africa some 100Kyr ago, leading to the same conclusion.

    Accept the evidence and work from it!

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  15. The BBC Women’s Hour radio report on two women, opposite sides of the conflict is cause for hope, just as the women in Iran are.
    I’ll let this speak for itself:
    https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-border-troops-women-hamas-warnings-war-october-7-benjamin-netanyahu/
    This, if true, I am not familiar with Politico suggest quiet a lot about this war, like it may not have got off the ground sort of speak, all you can do is shake your head…

    Reply

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