Friday: Hili dialogue

December 29, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last Friday of 2023:  December 29, with only one more day left of Coynezaa. It’s National “Get on the Scales” Day, apparently intended to see if you’ve gained the infamous “Holiday Five”. But why the scare quotes around “Get on the Scales”? Are we supposed to be only pretending to get on the scales?

It’s also National Pepper Pot Day (that’s a soup, but it has tripe), the fifth day of Christmas, and the fourth day of Kwanzaa in the U.S.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As Anthony Blinken is in Mexico discussing the immigration crisis with the Mexican President, there’s yet another unprecedented surge of migration at our southern border. It’s now reached the point where Biden, whose reelection is endangered by a refusal to do anything about this, is now making noises that he’s willing to compromise. (As for the number of migrants, CBS News reports that “in just five days last week, Border Patrol processed nearly 50,000 migrants who entered the U.S. illegally, with daily apprehensions surpassing 10,000 thrice, up from the 6,400 average last month.”)

Heading into the heat of the 2024 election season, Joe Biden is weighing major changes to US immigration policy that would toughen border enforcement and address an issue that has emerged as one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities ahead of a likely rematch against his anti-immigration rival Donald Trump.

But it is also a risk for Biden, who entered the White House in 2021 promising to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system” after Trump’s four-year crackdown on immigration.

. . .Exceptionally high levels of migration at the southern border with Mexico – and withering Republican attacks on the president’s response – have vaulted immigration to the fore. On Wednesday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for talks aimed at limiting migrants reaching the US south-western border.

A bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers have been engaged in talks with the White House over a border deal that would unlock aid to Ukraine and Israel.

. . .But for many Democratic officials, immigration activists and progressive leaders, the dramatic changes Biden is considering to asylum law and border enforcement are nearly indistinguishable from the policies of his predecessor. They argue that the US has a humanitarian responsibility to provide refuge to the millions of migrants fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters.

“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix. In fact it will make the problem worse,” the California senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said in a speech on the steps of the Capitol earlier this month, in which he urged the president to oppose Republicans’ border security proposals. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”

Yet for many Americans, especially Republicans, the upswing in undocumented migrants arriving at the southern border is an urgent concern.

But do we have a humanitarian responsibility to provide a home for the many, many immigrants who are not fleeing anything, but merely seeking a better life in the U.S. than they had in their natal country, which the U.S. considers as an invalid reason to take migrants. I have no idea what proportion of immigrants fall into that category, but it’s surely appreciable.  The way things are now, if you get released into the U.S., it could take years (if ever) before your case is heard.

*It’s about time that the anti-Israel NYT covered the issue of sexual violence committed by Hamas; it’s now done so in a piece called, “‘Screams without words’: How Hamas weaponised sexual violence on Oct. 7.”

Israeli officials say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women.

A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.

Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.

. . .Many of the accounts are difficult to bear, and the visual evidence is disturbing to see.

The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.

The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.

Hamas has denied Israel’s accusations of sexual violence. Israeli activists have been outraged that the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, and the agency U.N. Women did not acknowledge the many accusations until weeks after the attacks.

This part is graphic, so don’t read it if you are squeamish. The details are provided by an Israeli woman, shot in the back, who survived and described what she saw:

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

This is what UN Women waited so long to even mention, and many Western feminists remain silent about. It’s impossible to believe that humans can actually do this in this day and age, and nearly as impossible that any women’s group would refuse to condemn it.

*This is definitely clickbait for me: a NYT piece called “How Columbia’s President has avoided fallout over Israel-Gaza protests.”  Although Columbia University in NYC started off the semester after October 7 with protests and even violence, things settled down, and the school has avoided the opprobrium and heat descending on schools like Harvard and MIT. What’s the key?

But as the fall semester ended, Columbia faded from the spotlight even as its peer schools, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in particular, were scrutinized over their responses to the war and claims of antisemitism on campus.

Supporters of Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, credit her diplomatic skills in avoiding a similar public relations crisis. But detractors said she has bent too far to the demands of Israel supporters, angering students and some faculty members but keeping powerful donors and trustees mostly happy.

She might also have benefited from a bit of luck. [The luck is that Shafik had a commitment overseas and couldn’t make it to the disastrous House committee hearing that brought down the President of Penn and almost did so to the President of Harvard.]

. . . But instead of fighting for her job, Dr. Shafik was announcing a new initiative, called Values in Action, in which she called for informed debate, not “taunts and cruelty.”

Still, she is walking a precarious path.

Her call for compassion and respect, some students said, does not reflect what they say has been a repressive effort to rein in pro-Palestinian protesters that has gone farther than at other Ivy League universities: In November, Columbia’s administration made the extraordinary decision to suspend temporarily two pro-Palestinian student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

. . . Two days after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, Dr. Shafik issued a statement saying she was “devastated by the horrific attack on Israel,” adding that “we must reject forces that seek to pull us apart.” But in the days that followed, protests became so tense that the university closed its campus to outsiders and postponed a major fund-raising drive.

Then, on Nov. 10, it suspended the two pro-Palestinian student groups. According to a statement from Gerald Rosberg, the chair of the school’s Special Committee on Campus Safety, the action was justified because the two groups had repeatedly violated university policies requiring them to get permission and give 10 business days’ notice before holding an event.

Now it’s wrong to suspend student groups, whatever their views, simply because of their speech. But if the two groups that were temporarily suspended repeatedly did violate university policies, that’s a different matter.  You cannot censor speech, at least in a public university, and should not in a private school like Columbia. But if an organization continually disrupts campus activities, like holding sit-ins or blocking buildings, one might consider sanctions. I’m not sure, though, that the two (temporarily) banned organizations failure to get permits could itself be considered disruptive.

*Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is of course opposing Donald Trump in the Republican Presidential primary. She’ll lose, but I’d rather have her as President than Trump. Unfortunately for her, she put her foot in her mouth this week when asked what the cause of the Civil War was. She didn’t even mention slavery until forced to, saying instead that it what was behind the war was “the role of government, and what the rights of the people are.” That’s the old state’s-rights trope. Here’s the interaction that got her in trouble.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that Haley has walked back her answer, saying “of course it was about slavery.” But that’s bogus if you’ve watched the video above. If the answer was that easy, why didn’t Haley mention it?

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Thursday the Civil War was caused by a fight over slavery as she tried to tamp down a political uproar hours after she failed to mention it when asked about the conflict’s origins.

“Of course the Civil War was about slavery, we know that, that’s the easy part of it,” she said on a Pulse of NH radio show. “I’m from the South. Of course you know it’s about slavery.”

The earlier omission of slavery by the former South Carolina governor at an event Wednesday evening was particularly notable given that the legacy of the Civil War and race relations have been a constant in her decadeslong political career.

. . . The remarks Wednesday had drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans, while also prompting news outlets and political foes to resurface comments she made earlier in her political career that also minimized the role of slavery in the war.

At least some Republicans criticized her for omitting the obvious, but it probably didn’t hurt her too badly.. After all, she’s a Republican. Only Republicans who care about historical accuracy will change their vote from Haley. . . but to whom?

*The New Tolerance Campaign has given out the 2023 “Worst of the Woke” Awards, as well as a 2023 “Champion of Tolerance” Prize.  (h/t: Ginger K.; this is an organization whose press releases are worth following.) I’ll summarize five of the ten awards.

Award Winner: Bud Light / Anheuser-Busch 

Reason: For decades, Bud Light had bragging rights as America’s best-selling beer — until April, when an ill-advised marketing campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney went viral for all the wrong reasons

Award Winner: Target 

Reason: Retail giant Target hasn’t been shy about marketing to LGBTQ consumers during “Pride Month” in June, but this year, after word spread that the brand was pushing “pride-themed” clothing for babies and kids, shoppers drew the line.

Award Winner: The Academy Awards

Reason: The Academy Awards implemented onerous “inclusion” standards for filmmakers and movie studios to abide by if they wish to be eligible for “Best Picture” honors. The list is quite something to behold. Quotas that demand that “at least one of the lead actors must be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.” In addition, “30% of actors in secondary roles be from underrepresented groups such as LGBT+ and people with cognitive or physical disabilities,” and the plot must “center around an underrepresented group.” [JAC: Note that the Best Picture nominees have to meet two of four standards, not all of the above.]

Award Winner: Southern Poverty Law Center 

Reason: The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), long known for frivolously flagging groups as “extremists,” was suddenly silent when Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 Jewish civilians on October 7 in the worst mass-killing of Jews since the Holocaust. The group shrugged off critics, claiming that it was “outside of our purview and expertise to comment on international events” — despite loudly issuing statements on international events in the past.

Let me add here that the SPLC is shameful, now impeding rather than furthering moral progress.  One more:

Award Winner: Morningstar

Reason: Chicago investment firm Morningstar made headlines for its discriminatory appraisal of Jewish businesses after announcing a “socially conscious” approach to investments. Under the Morningstar Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rules, Israel found itself on the same blacklist as China, Russia, and Iran. In June, Florida’s State Board of Administration announced it had open an investigation into the firm’s discriminatory methodology.

And give it up for the 2023 “Champion of Tolerance” Award:

Award Winner: Stanford Law School

Reason: When Judge Kyle Duncan spoke before a meeting of Stanford’s Federalist Society in March, he was met with the heckler’s veto. Unhinged students sabotaged the event, with the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leading the charge. At a time when speech at universities is under assault like never before by “safe space” mobs, the response of Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez was bold. She published a 10-page public letter condemning the censorial throng and mandated free speech training for all Stanford Law students. In an age where “cancel culture” advocates number too many and defenders of viewpoint diversity too few, Dean Martinez stood out from the crowd with a courageous, principled, and forceful commitment to the Stanford Law’s stated values.

Indeed!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej put a new twist on an old bromide:

Hili: We are living in interesting times.
A: Unfortunately.
In Polish:
Hili: Żyjemy w ciekawych czasach.
Ja: Niestety.

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

From Linkiest, a bar sign:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Richard:

Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman’s two cats. First, Mishka:

Geddi:

From Masih: yet another courageous, hijabless Iranian woman. Not only that, but she’s called attention to her hair by not only removing the hijab, but also coloring what’s under it!

From Malcolm; brave kitties:

Jay sent some calls made to admissions offices by comedians. They’re reall recordings, but, like the second tweet, were set up as  joke calls. (Jay notes that, “According to a tweet by i24News, she is an Israeli comedian and cartoonist, and these are actual conversations.”)  More information and YouTube videos (same as below) here.

And another one:

 

From Jez (second tweet): The Cat That Walked By Himself. (You’ve already seen the first tweet, but it’s the best cat tweet ever):

From Luana. Chicago is really inundated with unvetted immigrants; they’re even flying them here by the planeload, and locals are objecting loudly.

From the Auschwitz Memorial: a 13-year-old boy gassed upon arrival:

One tweet from Professor Cobb showing a beautiful willow ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus). Sound up to hear its very weird call:

17 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day
    1170 – Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.

    1607 – According to John Smith, Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan leader Wahunsenacawh, successfully pleads for his life after tribal leaders attempt to execute him.

    1835 – The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

    1845 – The United States annexes the Republic of Texas and admits it as the 28th state.

    1860 – The launch of HMS Warrior, with her combination of screw propeller, iron hull and iron armour, renders all previous warships obsolete.

    1913 – Cecil B. DeMille starts filming Hollywood’s first feature film, The Squaw Man.

    1930 – Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s presidential address in Allahabad introduces the two-nation theory and outlines a vision for the creation of Pakistan.

    1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.

    1940 – In the Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, England, killing almost 200 civilians during World War II.

    1989 – Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.

    1998 – Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the Cambodian genocide that claimed over one million lives.

    2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

    2006 – The UK settles its Anglo-American loan, post-WWII loan debt.

    2013 – Seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher suffers a massive head injury while skiing in the French Alps.

    Births:
    1766 – Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist and the inventor of waterproof fabric (d. 1843).

    1800 – Charles Goodyear, American chemist and engineer (d. 1860).

    1809 – William Ewart Gladstone, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1898). [Served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-consecutive terms (the most of any British prime minister).]

    1844 – Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee, Indian barrister and first president of Indian National Congress (d. 1906).

    1876 – Pablo Casals, Catalan cellist and conductor (d. 1973).

    1908 – Magnus Pyke, English scientist and author (d. 1992).

    1911 – Klaus Fuchs, German physicist and spy (d. 1988).

    1914 – Billy Tipton, American pianist and saxophonist (d. 1989).

    1923 – Dina Merrill, American actress, game show panelist, socialite, heiress, and businesswoman (d. 2017).

    1923 – Shlomo Venezia, Greek-Italian author and Holocaust survivor (d. 2012).

    1928 – Bernard Cribbins, British actor (d. 2022).

    1936 – Mary Tyler Moore, American actress and producer (d. 2017).

    1938 – Jon Voight, American actor and producer.

    1946 – Marianne Faithfull, English singer-songwriter and actress.

    1947 – Ted Danson, American actor and producer.

    1947 – Cozy Powell, English drummer, songwriter, and producer (d. 1998).

    1951 – Yvonne Elliman, American singer-songwriter and actress.

    1953 – Alan Rusbridger, Zambian-English journalist and academic. [Edited The Guardian back in the days before it started circling the drain.]

    1953 – Stanley Williams, American gang leader, co-founded the Crips (d. 2005).

    1962 – Carles Puigdemont, Catalan politician and journalist, former president. [Declared the unilateral independence of Catalonia from Spain, for which the Spanish government unsuccessfully sought to jail him.]

    1965 – Dexter Holland, American musician, singer, songwriter, and biologist.

    1967 – Lilly Wachowski, American director, screenwriter and producer. [In a relationship with a transman, so a heterosexual couple, then… Wachowski’s brother is also a transwoman.]

    1972 – Jude Law, English actor.

    oh i should worry and fret
    death and i will coquette
    there s a dance in the old dame yet
    toujours gai toujours gai
    1720 – Maria Margaretha Kirch, German astronomer and educator (b. 1670). [One of the first famous astronomers of her period due to her writing on the conjunction of the sun with Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in 1709 and 1712 respectively.]

    1890 – Spotted Elk, American tribal leader (b. 1826).

    1894 – Christina Rossetti, English poet and hymn-writer (b. 1830).I

    1900 – John Henry Leech, English entomologist (b. 1862).

    1921 – Hermann Paul, German philologist, linguist and lexicographer (b. 1846).

    1924 – Carl Spitteler, Swiss poet and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1845).

    1926 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and author (b. 1875).

    1937 – Don Marquis, American journalist, author, and playwright (b. 1878). [i loved archy and mehitabel when i was younger]

    1939 – Kelly Miller, American mathematician, sociologist, essayist, newspaper columnist and author (b. 1863). [Known as “the Bard of the Potomac”.]

    1939 – Madeleine Pelletier, French psychiatrist, feminist and political activist (b. 1874).

    1952 – Fletcher Henderson, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1897).

    1952 – Beryl Rubinstein, American pianist, composer and teacher (b. 1898).

    1970 – William King Gregory, American zoologist and anatomist (b. 1876).

    1986 – Harold Macmillan, English captain and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894).

    2003 – Dinsdale Landen, English actor (b. 1932).

    2003 – Bob Monkhouse, English comedian, actor, and game show host (b. 1928).

    2012 – William Rees-Mogg, British newspaper journalist (b. 1928). [Editor of The Times, where he wrote the “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” editorial criticising the severity of the custodial sentence given to Mick Jagger for a drugs offence. Four amphetamine tablets had been found in Jagger’s pocket during a police raid. These required a prescription in the UK, despite having been bought legally in Italy. Although Rees-Mogg didn’t mention him, Keef Richards was charged with permitting the smoking of cannabis resin in his property. For these pretty desperate charges Jagger was fined £100 (quite a lot in 1967) and sentenced to three months in prison while Richards was fined £500 and sentenced to one year in gaol. They spent a night in Brixton and Wormwood Scrubs, respectively, before the prison sentences were quashed. Jagger claims that a prison warden delivered a copy of The Times containing Rees-Mogg’s piece to him in his cell.]

    2019 – Neil Innes, English writer, comedian and musician (b. 1944).

    2020 – Pierre Cardin, Italian-French fashion designer (b. 1922).

    2022 – Pelé, Brazilian footballer (b. 1940).

    2. Michael Schumacher was terribly injured while skiing off-piste between trails on level ground at slow speed with his young children. He was wearing a helmet and had recently retired from the dangerous sport of 200mph Formula 1 racing. He fell and his helmet cracked on a small rock leading to a serious concussion. He has been isolated at home hospital room for the past ten years. It is amazing how much damage just the weight of a human body can induce in what appears to be a simple fall. Several of my friends have suffered serious injuries to their face and jaw from such accidents while simply walking on a downtown sidewalk.

  2. Unfortunately for her [Nikki Haley], she put her foot in her mouth this week when asked what the cause of the Civil War was.

    For the former governor of South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union in 1860) to fail even to mention the peculiar institution of slavery when asked about the cause of the Civil War was kind of like Ahab failing to mention the white whale if asked what the purpose of the voyage of the Pequod was.

    Haley has always been a politician with way more ambition than principle.

      1. All US politicians are driven by overweening ambition. But some also manage to maintain some commitment to principle. Nikki Haley never has.

    2. OK, I’ll bite. The purpose of the voyage of the Pequod was to hunt whales, render them into oil at sea, and return a profit for her owners. The peculiar obsession of Captain Ahab for a certain white whale becomes a central point of the elaborate narrative that leads to the ship’s destruction but the pedestrian purpose of the voyage from the point of view of the ship’s owners, as with all the whaling expeditions, was to make money. Moby Dick himself appears only at the end of the story.

      1. OK, I’ll bite back. My comment was written not from the viewpoint of the novel’s narrator, Ishmael, but from that of the ship’s captain. Ahab had had his leg bitten off by Moby Dick on an earlier whaling voyage and was plainly operating under a monomaniacal desire for revenge against the white whale ever since. He simply didn’t share these intentions with his crew until late in the novel (and late in what turned out to be the Pequod‘s ill-fated voyage).

        Then again, there are Lost Cause proponents who claim that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, but about states’ rights and unfair tariffs and the preservation of the Southern way of life against Northern aggression.

        Nikki Haley didn’t mention slavery in her answer to the question put to her at the town hall meeting because she knows that, in the unlikely event that the Republican presidential nomination should somehow fall into her lap, she will need the support of Trump’s MAGA base in the general election. And she fears that any mention of slavery during a Republican campaign appearance will be taken by them as support for creeping critical race theory.

  4. Columbia’s ten-day notice period for protests is pretty restrictive to free speech. While in this case it might provide a cooling off period, protests are often linked to contemporary events, not just general conditions. It’s one thing to say we can wait ten days to protest for endangered species, but, when political events happen, to be told you have to wait ten days serves to also lessen the impact of the protest and blunt the message. I don’t think waiting periods are any better than free speech zones.

    1. It was by way procedural requirements such as the denial of assembly permits and the imposition of unrealistic waiting periods that Southern officeholders and judges sought to impede the civil-rights movement during the 1960s. It was his civil disobedience in refusing to abide these requirements that landed Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Birmingham County Jail, whence he penned his famous missive.

  5. I heard Jenny Martinez speak a couple of times at my Stanford reunion in October. A very impressive woman!

  6. “Migrants”: How are the services normally paid for? If Chicago and New York are having trouble paying for housing/feeding everyone bussed to their cities how do Texas and other border states normally cope? Do the feds pay for it since the border is a federal responsibility?

    If the feds normally pay, I wonder if there are people in Texas collecting money for people that have been bussed to other states.

  7. I would like to know the English translation of the “acceptable” Hebrew slogans for Yale University.

    2. One of the slogans was “We are a stupid university”, the other “omelet sandwich”, the third, shlufim, probably has a slang meaning I’m not familiar with, literally it means “drawn” as in drawn pistols or swords.

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