Sunday: Hili dialogue

56 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

1. ” “We don’t want a small group of parents deciding on who should have access to which books in the entire community,” said Malaviya, 49, in an interview. ”

   No books are banned. They are all freely available from libraries or stores. Trust me I got them.

   “The publisher’s stance is that teachers, librarians and school administrators, as expert educators, already make decisions about what is appropriate for young readers, and should be left to do their jobs.”

   This is dialectical political warfare.

   The “jobs” are Marxist brainwashing / cult grooming. “Expert educators” are Marxists with critical consciousness, such as Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, or Randi Weingarten, of the National Education Association (though she’s a anarcho-syndicalist, I think).

   I read enough of the books they mean. The objective is to get the books sold and read and talked about, which is working 100%. In order to negate any justification for material in school, and to keep parents from interfering, activists say there are “book bans”. They also redefine “age appropriate”.

   This is the strategy for counterhegemony written by Marxists like Antonio Gramsci and Gyorgi Lukac to infiltrate and break the private property of the family unit.

   The Book Bans Did Not Take Place
   (Borrowing from Baudrillard).

   1. Since a library does not obtain every book published, the books have to be chosen from all books available. So there already large numbers of books that are not in libraries. This is a fight over who gets to choose, not over whether or not there is a choice.

      If the schools and libraries were controlled by religious conservatives I am sure the people who now get upset about “book bans” would be objecting to the books chosen by those in control and would want to “ban” some of them.

      1. I think that most people, left and right, would agree that there are books that are inappropriate for school libraries or classrooms. It is usually liberals, not conservatives, who object to Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Little House on the Prairie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street and so on.

         I’ve told this before; my mother used to work as a volunteer at a public library. One day, they had her go through the children’s room and look for books that had not been checked out in years so they could be discarded. She found a “Bobbsey Twins” book (a popular series from the early 20th century) and began leafing through it. She saw that it featured a stereotypical Black maid who spoke in minstrel-show dialect. She showed the book to the head librarian said “I think we can discard this one.” The librarian agreed. I suspect that many people who object to “book banning ” would have agreed with them in this case.

         1. What if it had been checked out now and then?

            FWIW, in the small town in Nova Scotia I grew up in in the early 1960s a few families of kids I played with, not fabulously wealthy, had female housekeepers drawn from the community of descendants of black United Empire Loyalists who had come to Halifax. Few had any schooling and did speak in a kind of onomatopoeic patois that, were it to be rendered phonetically faithfully in dialogue, would make modern readers wince. In some isolated communities like the Prestons they still do. And of course, attempts to transliterate Newfoundland English as spoken by white people are supposed to be received with good nature and mostly are.

            I’m not defending this social arrangement, only that a story set in our childhood time and place would read much like the Bobbsey Twins. (Times changed slowly before television.) If moderns still wanted to read about us, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to. Maids and all.

            1. You make some good points.

               What I was trying to say in my original post was that book-banning is not, as it is sometimes portrayed, strictly a right-wing phenomenon. Liberals who would agree with banning the Bobbsey Twins, or books about characters from one ethnic group that are written by authors from another, will react with outrage when others deem sexually explicit books unsuitable for children. Conservatives and liberals actually agree that some books do not belong in schools; they just disagree about WHICH books.

               Several years ago, a local public access TV station ran “The Silent Scream,” an anti-abortion documentary. A columnist in a local newspaper wrote “No-one condemns censorship more than I do, but this film should not be shown,” not realizing that she contradicted herself. I guess it’s only “censorship” when the other side does it. It’s easy to condemn book-banning and censorship, but I wonder how many people would really allow ANY book (The Turner Diaries? A religious book that condones wife-beating or killing gays?) on school shelves.

      2. I can report that it is true that libraries carry the following titles which can be looked up (I neither endorse nor object to them ):

         Elephants Are Not Birds
         Johnny The Walrus

         However, in order to get a copy – perhaps of only one copy owned by an entire library network – special searches and ordering must be conducted. All do-able, of course.

         Meanwhile, the current crop of books with the ideas that construct the dialectical trap are promoted and have abundant availability with simple searches or just on the shelf, or even handed out by activist librarians.

         Which books are being “banned” here?

         Your Target’s Reaction Is Your Real Action

      3. WRT to who gets to choose, here is one person’s sample of what has been chosen.

         https://www.thefp.com/p/the-truth-about-banned-books

         “I [James Fishback] looked up books written by some of the world’s most well-known progressive thinkers. Here is the percentage, out of the 35 school districts, that stock each book:

         Title and Percentage of 35 Districts

         The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx) — 75%
         Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Isabel Wilkerson) — 60%
         The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones) — 54%
         Stamped (Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi) — 71%
         An African American and Latinx History of the U.S. (Paul Ortiz) — 40%
         The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander) — 60%
         Guide to Political Revolution (Bernie Sanders) — 40%
         White Fragility (Robin DiAngelo) — 54%
         So You Want to Talk About Race (Ijeoma Oluo) — 57%
         This Book Is Anti-Racist (Tiffany Jewell) — 45%
         White Rage (Carol Anderson) — 17%

         Meanwhile, I [Fishback] looked up books written by some of the world’s most well-known conservative thinkers. Here is the percentage, out of the 35 school districts, that stock each book:

         Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman) — 8%
         Created Equal (Dr. Ben Carson) — 5%
         Woke Racism (John McWhorter) — 3%
         Breaking History (Jared Kushner) — 2%
         Social Justice Fallacies (Thomas Sowell) — 0%
         The War on the West (Douglas Murray) — 0%
         The 1619 Project: A Critique (Phillip W. Magness) — 0%
         The Case Against Impeaching Trump (Alan Dershowitz) — 0%
         Decades of Decadence (Marco Rubio) — 0%
         The Diversity Delusion (Heather Mac Donald) — 0%
         The Case for Trump (Victor Davis Hanson) — 0%”

         I wouldn’t have sampled for exactly those conservatives, but the author makes his point.

         In fact, one can make a stronger point by sampling for moderates. I find similar percentages when I scan for books written by moderates in the local book stores and front yard libraries here in San Francisco. One day, I will buy 50 copies each of the following books and place them in the Little Libraries around town.

         Pluckrose, Cynical Theories
         Hamalainen, Indigenous Continent
         Hack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate
         Sokal & Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense
         Mill, On Liberty
         Nemo, What is the West
         Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge
         Shapiro, A Culture of Fact

         And, of course, Coyne, Why Evolution is True.

         1. McWhorter belongs in the “moderate” category.

      4. “This is a fight over who gets to choose, not over whether or not there is a choice.” (A Different Mike)

         So very true

   2. “This is the strategy for counter hegemony written by Marxists . . . to infiltrate and break the private property of the family unit.”

      Perhaps I misunderstand your point – I’ll admit, I don’t fully understand most of your comments – but for three years I was president of my National Education Association-affiliated local teachers’ “union” (in VA we were technically an “association) in a county in rural Virginia. For each of those years I attended our state-wide delegation and once attended the NEA national convention. I got to sit in a room with the NEA executive committee and a battery of NEA lawyers as they tried to come to consensus on some policy.

      Because of those experiences, it’s absolutely laughable to me that either of the major teachers’ unions could come to a national consensus on a strategy to “break the private property of the family unit.”

      But again, perhaps I misunderstand your point.

      A minor point, perhaps: here in rural America, the conservatives are coming after the public libraries:

      https://apnews.com/article/library-book-challenge-closure-virginia-lgbtq-183baafd5b5533108b5fd92b650d78c1

      Oh, and a very minor point: Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, not the NEA.

      1. “Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, not the NEA.”

         I recall her on a promotion for “banned books” ; I appreciate the correction.

         The literature of Engels describes family as private property. Gramsci describes family as a hegemony. Lukac has something along those lines.

         The modern era has phenomena like kids coming home with new names, pronouns, to the surprise of parents, or there are bills to justify the state acting on family interests, e.g. kids. That’s for another debate, but Marxists make a point of family as an obstacle for revolution in their literature.

   3. They play this script because there are few words that get the juices reflexively flowing in old-school liberals like “book ban.” We won’t remind ourselves that many of these publishers, school administrators, teachers, and librarians are over-the-top Woke. They are the ones who exercise “discretion” as to what books will be published, purchased, and available. Do we really think that a high-schooler has anywhere near an equal chance of finding a book in the school library by, let’s say, John McWhorter or Abigail Shrier or Douglas Murray as she does of finding one by Ibram Kendi or any number of trans authors? (For that matter, it would be interesting to research how many one would find about Sandra Day O’Connor versus Ruth Bader Ginsburg—you know, with one of the two being the first woman on the Supreme Court.) There are many ways to “ban” books and conduct a culture war. And TP, as I interpret TP, is correct overall: every time the right wing reacts to the excess, the Woke band plays the predictable tunes and has much of the non-Woke left jumping up and down like fools, dancing to the political Oldies.

   4. Book banning can get even more complicated when the complaint is that the books are factually wrong, or promote what’s factually wrong. An obvious example is Young Earth Creationism literature aimed at children. A public library should probably have this, but I’d argue that a school library shouldn’t. The earth isn’t six thousand years old. We can establish that objectively without needing to address any of the moral arguments about how evolution corrupts society. It’s a scientific matter.

      A lot of the vitriol surrounding child and young adult materials on the topic of trans identities is fueled by both sides claiming the facts are on their side — and the other side is ideological nonsense. Same for books presenting controversial takes on race, which critics may want to ban for playing fast and loose with truth claims and not just worried that “it’s harmful.”

      1. I’ve made a similar criticism of faculty members at my university who sponsor a Campus Crusade for Christ-like student club that meets weekly during the work day in regular classroom space for discussions like “How do we know the bible is true?” or “How old is the earth anyway?” Other civic institutions (our public libraries or community centres) should host students for this club. But because we know that evolution is true (and the bible is not), the university should not be helping these students to meet during class times or in the same classrooms where we teach evolution, archaeology, geology, and other topics that contradict the Abrahamic traditions. I’ve been told my views are censorious, but I think the university has an obligation to avoid promoting views that get in the way of the university’s mission (a la Kalven).

2. On this day:
   1069 – Robert de Comines, appointed Earl of Northumbria by William the Conqueror, rides into Durham, England, where he is defeated and killed by rebels. This incident leads to the Harrying of the North.

   1521 – The Diet of Worms begins, lasting until May 25.

   1568 – The Edict of Torda prohibits the persecution of individuals on religious grounds in John Sigismund Zápolya’s Eastern Hungarian Kingdom.

   1573 – Articles of the Warsaw Confederation are signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland.

   1591 – Execution of Agnes Sampson, accused of witchcraft in Edinburgh.

   1624 – Sir Thomas Warner founds the first British colony in the Caribbean, on the island of Saint Kitts.

   1754 – Sir Horace Walpole coins the word serendipity in a letter to a friend.

   1813 – Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom.

   1851 – Northwestern University becomes the first chartered university in Illinois.

   1855 – A locomotive on the Panama Canal Railway runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

   1871 – Franco-Prussian War: The Siege of Paris ends in French defeat and an armistice.

   1878 – Yale Daily News becomes the first independent daily college newspaper in the United States.

   1896 – Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h).

   1909 – United States troops leave Cuba, with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, after being there since the Spanish–American War.

   1915 – An act of the U.S. Congress creates the United States Coast Guard as a branch of the United States Armed Forces.

   1938 – The World Land Speed Record on a public road is broken by Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen at a speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph). [Clearly a good day for speeding…!]

   1916 – The Canadian province of Manitoba grants women the right to vote and run for office in provincial elections (although still excluding women of Indigenous or Asian heritage), marking the first time women in Canada are granted voting rights.

   1922 – Knickerbocker Storm: Washington, D.C.’s biggest snowfall, causes a disaster when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre collapses, killing over 100 people.

   1933 – The name Pakistan is coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan and is accepted by Indian Muslims who then thereby adopted it further for the Pakistan Movement seeking independence.

   1935 – Iceland becomes the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion.

   1956 – Elvis Presley makes his first national television appearance.

   1958 – The Lego company patents the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today.

   1965 – The current design of the Flag of Canada is chosen by an act of Parliament.

   1977 – The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which dumps 3 metres (10 ft) of snow in one day in Upstate New York. Buffalo, Syracuse, Watertown, and surrounding areas are most affected.

   1985 – Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) records the hit single “We Are the World”, to help raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief.

   1986 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.

   1988 – In R v Morgentaler the Supreme Court of Canada strikes down all anti-abortion laws.

   2021 – A nitrogen leak at a poultry food processing facility in Gainesville, Georgia kills six and injures at least ten.

   Births:
   1540 – Ludolph van Ceulen, German-Dutch mathematician and academic (d. 1610).

   1608 – Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and physicist (d. 1679).

   1755 – Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, Polish-German physician, anthropologist, and paleontologist (d. 1830).

   1855 – William Seward Burroughs I, American businessman, founded the Burroughs Corporation (d. 1898).

   1873 – Colette, French novelist and journalist (d. 1954).

   1884 – Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist and explorer (d. 1962). [Known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth’s upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere. Piccard was also known for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean’s depths.]

   1887 – Arthur Rubinstein, Polish-American pianist and educator (d. 1982).

   1900 – Alice Neel, American painter (d. 1984).

   1903 – Kathleen Lonsdale, Irish crystallographer and 1st female FRS (d. 1971). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1911 – Johan van Hulst, Dutch politician, academic and author, Yad Vashem recipient (d. 2018).

   1912 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (d. 1956).

   1918 – Harry Corbett, English puppeteer, actor, and screenwriter (d. 1989).

   1922 – Robert W. Holley, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1993).

   1927 – Ronnie Scott, English saxophonist (d. 1996).

   1929 – Acker Bilk, English singer and clarinet player (d. 2014).

   1929 – Edith M. Flanigen, American chemist.

   1930 – Roy Clarke, English screenwriter, comedian and soldier.

   1935 – David Lodge, English author and critic.

   1936 – Alan Alda, American actor, director, and writer.

   1938 – Tomas Lindahl, Swedish-English biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate.

   1940 – Carlos Slim, Mexican businessman and philanthropist, founded Grupo Carso.

   1944 – Rosalía Mera, Spanish businesswoman, co-founded Inditex and Zara (d. 2013).

   1944 – John Tavener, English composer (d. 2013).

   1955 – Vinod Khosla, Indian-American businessman, co-founded Sun Microsystems.

   1955 – Nicolas Sarkozy, French lawyer and politician, 23rd President of France.

   1957 – Frank Skinner, English comedian, actor, and author.

   1968 – Sarah McLachlan, Canadian singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer.

   1972 – Amy Coney Barrett, American jurist, academic, attorney, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

   1981 – Elijah Wood, American actor and producer.

   1986 – Jessica Ennis-Hill, English heptathlete and hurdler. [As a competitor in heptathlon, she is the 2012 Olympic champion, a three-time world champion (2009, 2011, 2015), and the 2010 European champion. She is also the 2010 World Indoor pentathlon champion. She is a former British national record holder for the heptathlon and also a former British record holder in the 100 metres hurdles, the high jump and the indoor pentathlon.]

   At the moment of death I hope to be surprised. (Ivan Illich):
   814 – Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor (b. 742).

   1547 – Henry VIII, king of England (b. 1491).

   1613 – Thomas Bodley, English diplomat and scholar, founded the Bodleian Library (b. 1545).

   1782 – Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, French geographer and cartographer (b. 1697).

   1903 – Augusta Holmès, French pianist and composer (b. 1847).

   1939 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865).

   1960 – Zora Neale Hurston, American novelist, short story writer, and folklorist (b. 1891).

   1983 – Billy Fury. English pop star (b. 1940).

   1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger crew:
   Gregory Jarvis, American captain, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1944)
   Christa McAuliffe, American educator and astronaut (b. 1948)
   Ronald McNair, American physicist and astronaut (b. 1950)
   Ellison Onizuka, American engineer and astronaut (b. 1946)
   Judith Resnik, American colonel, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1949)
   Dick Scobee, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1939)
   Michael J. Smith, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1945).

   1988 – Klaus Fuchs, German physicist and politician (b. 1911).

   1993 – Helen Sawyer Hogg, Canadian astronomer and academic (b. 1905).

   1996 – Jerry Siegel, American author and illustrator, co-created Superman (b. 1914).

   2002 – Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author and screenwriter (b. 1907).

   2005 – Jim Capaldi, English singer-songwriter and drummer (b. 1944).

   2009 – Billy Powell, American keyboard player and songwriter (b. 1952).

   2017 – Geoff Nicholls, British musician (b. 1948).

   2021 – Cicely Tyson, American actress (b. 1924).

   1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Dame Kathleen Lonsdale DBE FRS (née Yardley; born on this day in 1903, died 1 April 1971) was an Irish crystallographer, pacifist, and prison reform activist. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945 (along with Marjory Stephenson), first female professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography (1966), and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1967).

      She was the youngest of ten children, four of whom died in infancy. Her father, a postmaster, had issues with alcohol, which meant her family was often short on money. As the unrest in Ireland became more severe Kathleen’s mother separated from her father and took the rest of the family to England.

      Her family moved to Seven Kings, Essex, England, when she was five years old. The family’s financial troubles meant the four older children left school early to support the family. For the same reason, her brother Fred was unable to take up an educational scholarship, though he later become one of the first wireless operators.

      She studied at Ilford County High School for Girls, then transferred to Ilford County High School for Boys to study mathematics and science, because the girls’ school did not offer these subjects. Kathleen had the highest score in physics that any student at London University ever had. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree from Bedford College for Women in 1922, and Master of Science (MSc) degree in physics from University College London in 1924.

      In 1924 she joined the crystallography research team headed by William Henry Bragg at the Royal Institution. Following her marriage in 1927, she moved to the University of Leeds, but continued to correspond with Bragg. From 1929 to 1934, she started a family and largely stayed at home while continuing her work calculating structure factors. Her husband, Thomas Lonsdale, was a textile chemist who supported his wife’s research. He encouraged his wife to work from home and to go back to work when offered.

      In 1934, Lonsdale returned to work with Bragg at the Royal Institution as a researcher. She was awarded a DSc from University of London in 1936 while at the Royal Institution. In addition to discovering the structure of benzene and hexachlorobenzene, Lonsdale worked on the synthesis of diamonds. She was a pioneer in the use of X-rays to study crystals. Lonsdale was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945 (the other was the biochemist Marjory Stephenson).

      Lonsdale returned to University College London (UCL) in 1946 with the rank of reader. In 1949, she was appointed Professor of Chemistry and head of the Department of Crystallography at UCL. She was the first woman to be made a professor at UCL, an appointment she held until 1968 when she was named professor emeritus.

      As a keen table tennis player, Lonsdale made use of ping pong balls to demonstrate the molecular structure to her students. One such model—of the silicate group Si2O5—is in the Science Museum collection.

      In 1956, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

      During her later career, she became interested in stones and minerals produced in the human body e.g. kidney stones or gall stones.

      Lonsdale died on 1 April 1971, aged 68, from an anaplastic cancer of unknown origin.

      Lonsdaleite, an allotrope of carbon, was named in her honour; it is a rare harder form of diamond found in meteorites.

      Several universities have names buildings in her honour including at University College London, the University of Limerick, Dublin City University, and Maynooth University.

      The Royal Irish Academy Chemistry Prize for the best chemistry PhD thesis in Ireland has been named in her honour since 2000.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Lonsdale

   2. Regarding Shuttle Challenger, I can recommend Rogers Investigation Commission member and Nobel Prize Laureate Richard Feynmen’s Appendix F as a short but informative read ( https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm ). And rocket engineer Alan McDonald’s 2009 book, “Truth, Lies, and O-rings”. Thanks for recognizing the late crew on this day, Jez.

      1. Jim, many thanks for this link. Lots of reading and I was particularly interested in the “Avionics” part reference to the ascent and landing computer and the technique used for software validation. At around this time and earlier I was involved in the UK CAA Certification of Rotorcraft Flight Control Systems which were moving from the origins of Stabilisation Augmentation to that of 3 and 4 axis dual channel Digital AFCS with Flight Director and the hardware and software was fundamental to the Approval / Certification. Then Sperry Flight Systems at Ph Az (Goodyear AZ) were pioneers in these products and the software development was different to that protocol used for Challenger. Not a detail for this post.
         The report shows human and organisational failures at its worst and it still feels very recent, the avoidable loss of this vehicle and its crew.
         More still to read but again thanks.

         1. Glad it was helpful Robert. I was working a joint NASA/RAE/MOD/PE high-alpha flight project at that time with engineers at RAE Bedford and Farnborough….a wonderful professional experience for me! Yes it was an interesting migration to DFCS, but careful as it indeed should have been.

            WRT the Shuttle System, while the joints were redesigned and beefed up, the organizational, human, and general cultural failure was not corrected (in my less than humble opinion) as attested to by the agency management’s disastrous approach to Columbia just a few years later.

            1. Jim.
               My time with Sperry at Goodyear AZ was also very interesting experiencing what automatic flight was possible for rotorcraft including not just AFCS but also the beginnings of terrain and traffic avoidance using the then very new GPS constellation plus it had unexpectedly rained and the desert bloomed with flowers even the Saguaro cactus which was quite some view from a helicopter.
               I remember well the great staff and the welcome afforded to me and our CAA Test Pilot plus of course the most unusual location where Sperry had their own large airfield complete with all the “aids”.
               I believe that this was where they adapted ex USAF fighters for use as unmanned targets.

      2. Thanks for the book recommendation. Just bought it.

   3. A small correction in the list of Challenger astronauts. I do not believe that Judy Resnik was ever in the military. Thus, “colonel” should be deleted from her descriptor. Thanks.

3. I also thought that photo was Trump.

4. The Biden proposal, at 5,000/day, is still 1.8 million a year, which is absurd. And, as you say, that relies on Biden actually enforcing the restrictions. He might want the extra CBP personnel to help hand out gift cards and cell phones. I think that, if Biden wants to convince people he is being sincere, he needs to explain why he’s left this running sore untreated for so long, and what, now, has changed that makes him think he needs to do something (other than the upcoming election). At the end of the day, he has all the power and personnel he needs; the bill just gives him cover and more money. We should remember that one of his first acts was to open the faucet. Speculate as we will on the purpose, this has been a deliberate policy of this Administration, and I don’t think there’s any reason to think that Biden intends, at best, a pause.

5. I would like to add a day late “on this date” item. On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln gave the Lyceum Address, perhaps the first to be written down. In it he warned of how our Republic will be destroyed:

   “How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

   At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

   And why would this occur?:

   “ I know the American People are much attached to their Government;–I know they would suffer much for its sake;–I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”

   Great respect for Mr. Lincoln.

   Full speech here:

   https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm

6. Bravo to Random Penguin. Also the judge from Uganda and esp Finland (since I’m partial to them) on those issues.

   Further re. the latter, attention to the protesters @ Sen. Fetterman’s place and his defiance of them seems to be growing more across the pond than here at the moment.

7. Well, Uganda has apparently disowned the dissenting ICJ judge because she had the integrity to base her ruling on FACTS and LAW and not anti-Israel bias.
   https://www.timesofisrael.com/uganda-disowns-its-dissenting-judge-in-court-ruling-on-israel-genocide-claim/

   But you know what? Uganda’s loss could be Harvard’s gain. That’s right. Harvard could go at least a tiny way towards redeeming itself for its shameful behavior by offering this judge a visiting professorship at its Law School. She would be an *ideal* instructor: she not only has the legal chops, she has shown that she has something that is especially rare and valuable these days – judicial character. That’s the willingness to follow the facts and law wherever they may lead – even if they lead to rulings that the judge knows will garner popular and governmental disapproval

8. “If you live in Chicago, where we regularly get buses full of migrants without adequate places to house them (and many will, by law, soon be released into the cold, you see there’s a problem that’s almost insoluble.”

   This passage infuriated me for two reasons. It’s irritating that it took illegals coming to Eastern, Democrat-led cities for the rest of the country to give a shit about this unchecked invasion of foreign nationals. I’m a Mexican heritage American who was born and raised in Arizona, where this has been a problem for more the 50 years. Texas Governor Abbott is not playing political games. Because of him, and Biden’s non-enforcement, people in Chicago and elsewhere are now experiencing what the Southwest and California have had to endure for decades.

   This problem is not insoluble. Don’t admit illegals, if for no other reason than our immigration court system is overburdened. The backlog should be no more than 6 months.

   Other countries have a responsible immigration system. So should the United States.

   1. Rick, respectfully. Unfortunately a lot of other countries do not have a responsible immigration system, your closest northern neighbour Canada has an unsustainable immigration policy including illegal arrivals resulting in problems similar to the US admittedly at a smaller scale but a big problem for housing, healthcare etc etc. Canada now announced it will take refugees from Palestine, why? No one else wants them just the LPC of Canada for votes!
      The UK and much of Europe particularly those countries bordering the Mediterranean have huge problems from sub Sahara Africa migrants mostly young and male and successive governments have proven incompetence in managing this problem. It is not a problem however in countries such as Russia and China and other “desirable” destinations, I wonder why??
      The “desirable “ parts of the northern hemisphere are full up, standing room only.

      1. I thought Canada was more restrictive than what you portray. I will do additional reading. Thanks for the info.

         1. Canada has little illegal immigration especially compared to the US. The massive legal immigration is a deliberate policy of the current government. Apparently these migrants have money and have driven housing prices to crazy levels. In my city a realtor told me that young people can no longer afford to buy. It is this development that has led the Trudeau government to announce that immigration levels will be reduced by a third.

9. Hey, hey! Oy vey! UNRWA must go away! (After all, the organization is an affiliate of Hamas.)

   We have a framed print of Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” in our house. It’s stunning and has a fascinating history you can read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Adele_Bloch-Bauer_I. One of the reasons we love this painting is that a lengthy court battle with Austria led to its eventual repatriation with the family of the original owner. Yes, the painting was stolen by the Nazis.

   1. Did you also see the movie with Helen Mirren?

10. From yesterday’s WEIT, Kim Jong Un (“Fatty the Third” to the Chinese) is perfectly sane, just a narcissist – which is expected in circumstances where a person was brought up since birth as a god-king. This can be seen very frequently in sons of dictators (think Uday/Qusay Hussein, most dictators’ brats, royalty (Saudi princes), etc.)
    He’s no fool, very un-crazy.

    Counter-intuitively, his rocketry is not a bad thing. NK has no satellites so can’t see what we’re doing on the other side of the DMZ. From a game-theory perspective that lack of info is very, very dangerous. We can zoom in through his bathroom window almost, see what he’s reading on the toilet but he has little idea whether we’re amassing troops (or not). Ignorance is danger in this scenario. 

    He has the nukes but not the precision guidance necessary: as evidenced by a test 4 years ago which was supposed to go between two Japanese islands but flew over a peninsula.

    I think he realizes the zero sum suicide game pushing things too far as his Dad, Il, Fatty 2nd did whacking Yongbyong Island in 2010.
    I’m an amateur Pyongyangologist and once wrote a piece for Forbes about the ethics of NK tourism (hint: don’t go).
    to wit:https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/03/06/useful-idiots-tourism-in-north-korea/?sh=67b5b83f7dcd

    It is an amazing place though I’ve never been, just studied it, written about it and once peeped in on it from Panmunjom, RoK, on vacation from Tokyo where I lived. 

    But don’t go to NK. All the internet tours are the same, it is a Potemkin trick and even if you speak Korean you’ll never meet “real” NKeans. NK is a deeply evil place, worse than maybe anywhere. Don’t finance that shit.

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

    1. Thanks for the comment and links.

11. Apparently, when in doubt, blame the Nazis?

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/long-lost-gustav-klimt-painting-resurfaces-in-austria-after-almost-100-years/

    “But he stressed that they had found no evidence that the work had been looted, stolen or unlawfully seized before or during the Second World War.

    The back of the painting is “completely untouched” and has “no stamps, no stickers, nothing”, Ploil said.

    “There are no indications of any illegal confiscation during the Nazi era, i.e. the usual stamps from the Gestapo or a shipping house where looted art was stored,” he added. “

12. Reframe the UN schools in Gaza: Imagine if schools in Texas, say, were entirely devoted to valorizing the entire destruction of Mexico, the murder of all Mexicans and building little warriors to do suicide bombings in Mexico.
    And your taxes were paying for it.

    How’d you think that would go down?

    UNRWA has to go, root and branch. And with it the idea that refugee status is something one can INHERIT like a title of nobility or a piano. Insane and evil.

    D.A.
    NYC/FL

    1. Large parts of the UN organisation are unfit for purpose but they seem to just keep taking the cash.

13. Dr. Phil Metzger (a planetary physicist) recently used an A.I. image generator with a Gustav Klimt prompt: “I was trying to get a picture inside a spaceship inspired by Gustav Klimt’s painting ‘the Kiss’. I think it came out pretty good except for the six-fingered man.”
    https://x.com/DrPhiltill/status/1748790269019930845

    My wife says the couple’s orientation doesn’t match the painting very well. (True.) But I think the resulting image does a good job of intimating the overall feeling of the painting, given the prompt. Why do A.I. image generators have so much trouble with human fingers, though?

14. Friends, as I can get quite exercised about book bans and censorship, let me abide by Da Roolz and list a few bullet points from my perspective instead of responding directly to some of the comments above. First, my bona fides: I am a professional librarian with a master’s degree in library and information science (MSLIS) and am currently working as a public library administrator. I am also a former retail bookseller. I have been in the book business for 50 years.

    The vast majority of book bans and challenges have come from the right wing.
    Public libraries are well-protected by the First Amendment and have rarely been subject to book challenges, except in recent years, and those challenges have come more and more from the right by and large.
    Public school libraries are different than public libraries in that they are legally permitted and obligated to act in loco parentis, as is the school as a whole.
    As conservatives are fond of pointing out when it suits their purposes, we live in a representative republic. Thus, the school board is the elected representative of the taxpaying residents of the school district.
    Parents can and are encouraged to take their concerns to the school board, which can then take them into account when drafting and adopting policies, including the Collection Development Policy of the school library. Once the board adopts the policy, everyone in the district must adhere to it, even if they disagree with it. Residents of the district have a remedy if they are continually unsatisfied with the board’s policies: Vote out the board members at the next election.
    The school librarians and media specialists hew to the board’s Collection Development Policy in the selection of materials for the library. They consult reviews in professional journals as well as the blurbs in publishers’ catalogs before making their selections. If the librarians haven’t already read or scanned a review copy of the book sent by the publisher, when the book arrives, they have one more chance to read/scan the book before it is placed on the shelf or rejected.
    Realizing that we can never be totally objective in the selection of materials, we librarians nevertheless strive to keep our subjective views out of the process and always seek to meet the needs of our users, be they teachers, students, or the public at large.

    1. Seems reasonable, though the authoritarian representatives in society seem to have weaponized democracy to their ends, with cut-and-paste policy formulas and “ban lists” that are spread widely among communities throughout the country.

       I do like, however, that my local public library no longer keeps records about the check-out history of its patrons, preserving their anonymity. Is this policy widespread among public libraries, or is this an aspect of my being in the San Francisco Bay Area?

       1. Jon, this policy of not keeping records of book borrowing history is standard and widespread among public libraries in the United States. Here in Illinois, where I live and work, the state has a statute called the Library Records Confidentiality Act. The other states have similar laws.
          Don’t get me started on the detestable USA PATRIOT Act, a higher federal law that contradicts/overrules the state’s Confidentiality Act. In short, the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to do whatever it wants with library patrons’ records without accountability to the public.

          1. Good to know, Stephen. Do you know when it became common for public libraries to not keep borrowing records? Also, I assume that if a library does not keep borrowing records, the FBI then wouldn’t be able to access them, as they don’t exist — correct? Or are there records elsewhere or deeper in a library’s database that could divulge a patron’s borrowing record?

             1. You are correct, Jon. If the records don’t exist, end of story. IIRC, libraries stopped retaining borrowing records when our catalogs went fully digital decades ago. (RIP card catalog.) The PATRIOT Act permits the FBI to barge unannounced in advance into a library and confiscate computers and any other material they want without having to show a court order and leave a record of what they took, all in search of those “deeper” records you allude to. To me, this is unconstitutional because it doesn’t adhere to the required process to show Probable Cause as set forth in the Fourth Amendment.

             2. Sigh. Thanks, Stephen. I knew the Patriot Act was bad, but I wasn’t aware of how it could be used against libraries, even if they don’t keep borrowing records.

15. Stolen artwork (whether this particular piece was ever stolen or not) – As a college freshman in English Composition, we were asked to write a movie review. I hadn’t seen any movies in quite awhile. I couldn’t afford it and wasn’t motivated in any case (American Graffiti was the hot movie of the day), so I wrote my review about “The Train”, an already old movie that I thought warranted an excellent review. In the movie, the French resistance ‘derails’ a German plan to take looted French artwork back to Germany just in front of the arrival of Allied forces. It is violent, but I still think it is an excellent movie.

16. Fatty the Third!
    Pigs with a soul!
    The UN gets a serve!

    So far so good…

17. ‘Fraulein Lieser’ isn’t the only Klimt taken from the rightful owners by Nazis.

    The excellent film ‘Woman in Gold’ tells the story of the family fighting to get ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I’ (1907) back from the Austrian government who tried to claim ownership.

    1. If it was taken by the Nazis and not just squirreled away somewhere. https://www.timesofisrael.com/long-lost-gustav-klimt-painting-resurfaces-in-austria-after-almost-100-years/

       “But he stressed that they had found no evidence that the work had been looted, stolen or unlawfully seized before or during the Second World War.

       The back of the painting is “completely untouched” and has “no stamps, no stickers, nothing”, Ploil said.

       “There are no indications of any illegal confiscation during the Nazi era, i.e. the usual stamps from the Gestapo or a shipping house where looted art was stored,” he added. “

    2. I see that, but “the current owners have had the painting since the 1960s” and there being no detail of how they acquired it gives cause for doubt. The owner being murdered in a concentration camp raises suspicion of Nazis. They were known for book-keeping, so maybe it wasn’t seized officially.

       Some of the sale proceeds being given to the descendants of the original owners makes me assume the sellers know there’s a history. But it’s good to have the painting back on display.

       Hopefully the original Amber Room will turn up one day.

18. “The United States, [..] and Scotland have halted funding to [UNRWA].”

    Sadly, the BBC report is wrong and Scotland should not be included in the list. Our First Minister Humza Yousaf is a Scottish Muslim of Pakistani descent and some see this decision as his religion influencing his politics. I don’t know is this is true, but he has bowed to religious pressure before. He certainly lied to avoid a vote approving gay marriage.

    My personal view of him is that he is just weak and clueless. He had a nasty, ill advised, rant in parliament attacking white people in power (Scotland is 95.4% white) and refuses to answer whether his support for gender ideology means he agrees that men can pray in the women’s section of his mosque.

    I suspect his party will lose many seats at the General Election this year but doubt he will have the integrity to resign.

    https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/humza-yousaf-vows-scotland-has-not-paused-funding-to-allegation-hit-united-nations-gaza-aid-agency-unrwa-4495593

    1. Hanza Yousless as from the Spectator has a history of avoiding required parliamentary action when it conflicts with his Islamic faith and the fool really believes no one notices. A large vote against the SNP should signal his departure as SFM but he has no scruples or morals when it conflicts with his religious origins so we shall have to wait and see.

       1. I loathe him. He really is a fool. I attended my local leadership hustings and he just spoke in clichés. He had family trapped in Gaza. Perhaps continuing to send them Scotland’s money is his way of thanking Gazans for getting them out.

          He’s totally botched up every cabinet post he has held. As Justice Minister he let police record male crimes as women’s crimes, and put men in women’s prisons. As Health and Social Care Minister he introduced the Hate Crime Bill [HCB] which protects every characteristic in the Equality Act from hate *except* sex. Under the HCB a man in a dress has protection from hate, but a woman in the same dress doesn’t.

          I’ve been fair and attach his controversial speech in full, rather than the selected “white” highlights that others share, but as you listen to him, ask why he isn’t as keen to defend the female half of Scotland.

          I won’t even start on him pushing the illegal GRR Bill, I’d be here for another 6 pages!

          1. How does he continue in the Scottish Parliament? If the majority of Scotland are white, 95.4% then the majority of the positions he calls out will be filled by white people or does he expect a “representative quota” of incompetence like himself?? If you or I spoke in this fashion we would be visited by the Scottish “ think” police.
             Un effing believable. Loathsome individual is far too polite.

             1. Alex Salmond’s popularity broke the, supposedly unbreakable, d’Hondt voting system at Holyrood and as First Minister he did great things for Scotland. He was so good he more than doubled support for indy to 46%. When we lost the referendum he did the decent thing and resigned. He handed her a nation in pretty good shape.

                It’s been downhill ever since. Many, including me, were fooled by Sturgeon into thinking she would continue his work. She didn’t. There’ve been scandals over cash in brown envelopes, theft, cronyism, lying, incompetence, Brexit and bad accounting. Not to mention her friends perjuring themselves in court over false sexual assault allegations against Alex. She is currently being investigated by the cops over £666,000 missing donations and her husband over undeclared loans to the party..

                They are protected by the UK media, I suspect because they know she is blocking independence. The media hide her lavender marriage, her ‘French fancy’ and ignored her governing by WhatsApp until recently.

                Humza is her muppet and her puppet. He is just more of the same. They wave the indy banner at elections and idiots fall for the carrot being dangled.

                But I think they are in for a shock at the General Election. I’ll be spoiling my ballot paper as will many ex supporters.

19. But in fact I do believe him because the border problem is unsustainable and Biden has little to lose by cracking down on immigration, at least the illegal forms.

    So what’s prevented him thus far?

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