Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
While Jerry’s traveling, I thought it would be a good time to post the second installment of southern trees. In the first, I showed mostly the epiphytes that grow on trees, and now it will be the trees themselves.
The northeastern US– roughly around the Great Lakes, New England, and the mid-Atlantic– is dominated by broad-leaved, deciduous, hardwood forests (think oaks, maples, hickories), grading to evergreen coniferous forest to the north, tall grass prairie to the west, and southern forest to the south. Interestingly, a big swath of the American south, like the far north, is dominated by coniferous forest: very tall pines, with a short, shrubby understory. As you get far enough south, the understory becomes palms.
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
The above photo is of a suburban front yard, but as either a remnant of the pre-development forest, or as a planted recreation, it gives a fair impression of a tiny bit of this southern conifer forest. We see about five pines, a thick palmetto (?Sabal sp.) understory, and to the left front and right background, two broad-leaved trees, deciduous on the left, evergreen on the right.
The pines have very long needles, many over a foot long, and longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) is one of the characteristic species. But there are several other pines with long needles, and I’ve never been able to convince myself that I can tell them apart. I think there are two species in this little stand, one with short cones and the other with long cones.
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
But cones vary both within a tree, related to age and cone-specific effects, and among trees of the same species, so I’m not sure. Here’s some of the range of variation in the long cones:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
and among the short cones:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
Many of the long cones were damaged, the scales being torn or chewed off. I’m not sure what does this, or why. Gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) are common at this site, but I don’t think pine cone scales are edible or nutritious.
“Chewed” cone at top. Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
There also seemed to be differences in the bark. The short cone pine has a more blocky texture to the bark:
Bark of “short cone pine”. Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
While the long cone pine had longer, more flattened ridges; but, again, I’m not sure how much individual variation there is within species.
Bark of “long cone pine”. Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
The broad-leaved trees included evergreen magnolias (Magnolia sp.):
Magnolia. Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
with loads of their seed pods nearby. These pods were not under the magnolia, but over a fence and under one of the pines, so must have been moved– by squirrels?
Magnolia pods. Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
This is the live oak of some sort (Quercus sp.) from my epiphyte post. Astute readers were able to identify the clumps of leaves higher in the tree as mistletoe.
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
The tree had lost most of its leaves, but still had some, including non-lobed, “live oaky” leaves”:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
and slightly-lobed, much more, at least to a northerner, “oaky” leaves:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
We’ll finish with the red maple (Acer rubrum) a tree I am very familiar with from the north, that in Florida seems to be semi-deciduous– losing most, but not all of its leaves in the winter. This row of trees is clearly planted:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
And, though mostly leafless, there were some leaves still on the trees:
Jacksonville, Florida, January 9, 2024.
As with the previous post on this, please weigh in with plant identifications!
A Hindu charity has threatened to report a secularist group to the police over a talk critical of Hinduism.
In December, Leicester Secular Society (LSS) held a talk, entitled “Hinduism: Wretched Immoral Compass”, by a former Hindu.
The talk aimed to “highlight the failure of Hinduism as a moral compass and show that it was flawed from the very outset”. It also examined “the contribution of several neglected Indian figures who stood for liberty, equality, fraternity, social justice, women’s rights, secularism/humanism and more”.
The promotional image for the flier included a diagram of the Hindu ‘caste system’.
Before the talk took place, LSS received an email from Rajnish Kashyap, general secretary of the London-based Hindu Council UK (HCUK), to express the charity’s “deep concern and offense [sic]” at the event’s title.
The email said the title “seems designed to appeal and incite hatred towards Hindus, who are one of the largest and most peaceful groups globally”.
It went on: “We intend to bring this matter to the attention of the local Hindu community, and local authorities, including the police.
The Divine Duo laughs it up—until Ganesha appears. Mo sets the elephant-headed God straight, telling him that the caste system builds religious discrimination right into the Hindu faith:
Over the last several months, I’ve seen and read about demonstrations on our campus by the pro-Palestinian group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which apparently has roughly 200 campus branches in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand.
SJP has been particularly active since last year’s October 7 massacre of Israelis and others, which they defended in a long letter (2,471 words!) in the Chicago Maroon, our student newspaper. Click below to read this hate-filled diatribe, or find it archived here. It was written a few days after the massacre but was updated and published in the Maroon on December 1. The instant I saw this justification for butchery (just read the bit below), I felt that I somehow had to respond.
The beginning of the SJP’s “explanation”:
The events of the past week have been historic and unprecedented by all measures. Last Saturday, for the first time in history, Palestinian resistance groups broke out of Gaza, reclaimed land from the Israeli occupation, and seized control of numerous Israeli military posts. Scrambling to recover from this humiliation and collectively punish Palestine’s population for the accompanying violence inflicted on Israeli soldiers, settlers, and civilians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has—predictably—resorted to openly genocidal tactics.
How euphemistic can you get? But even before this letter appeared, the SJP engaged in several loud demonstrations (conducted with another non-student organization)—demonstrations that were almost frightening in their anger, hatred and calls for genocide (“from the river to the sea”, etc.) . It was simply scary to listen to these people, and for the first time in decades I felt a bit frightened to be a Jew, although a secular one. Of course, their behavior is intended to frighten us, and many Jewish students have become intimidated.
And it doesn’t matter that I’m a secular Jew. SJP’s hatred of Jews doesn’t depend on whether or not they subscribe to the tenets of Judaism. As with the Nazis, secular Jews also count as targets.
On October 19, a peaceful demonstration by Jewish students in the Quad was disrupted by SJP, who had promised not to do so. This deplatforming, which canceled the demonstration (it involved a lecture by a rabbi, which is what Jews call a “demonstration”) violated several campus rules, which you can see in my post at WEIT on the incident, and it caused two Jewish students to write a heartfelt letter to the administration, which was never acknowledged, much less answered. The “dean on call” was summoned to quash the deplatforming, but she did nothing.
A group of faculty, including myself, also wrote to the administration, and eventually President Paul Alivisatos wrote a good letter to the University community explaining that University policy doesn’t allow the disruption of speakers. It didn’t give specifics, but at least to many of us it seemed prompted by the behavior of SJP. An excerpt:
In any venue, no member of our community may shout down or seek to prevent the protected expression of those with whom they disagree. You may not tear down a poster. You may not seek to intimidate or threaten another person, or prevent them from hearing an invited speaker. These are egregious offenses against our community. We have policies and processes for guiding community norms, reporting instances that require investigation, and disciplinary action when needed. Our Dean of Students in the University will share more about those policies and processes with students later today.
Good for the President! This is a clear expression of University policy, though I don’t think that any SJP students were warned or discipline for violating it.
Three days before the SJP letter appeared, on November 28, a Maroon “reporter,” actually a pro-Palestinian student activist who participates in SJP demonstrations, wrote a very long article (4,077 words) in a section of the Maroon called The Grey City. It’s really a puff piece for the SJP, describing a week of the group’s activities. Click below to read that account or find it archived here.
There’s an “editor’s note” appearing at the beginning:
Editor’s note: Kelly X. Hui attended the quad protests and documented them as a protester with Students for Justice in Palestine UChicago and as an organizer with #CareNotCops and UChicago United for Palestine. The identities of protesters and organizers were kept anonymous.
This is hardly the objective reporting one expects from a news report! In effect, the Maroon did (and still does) harbor about 6,500 words of pro-Hamas “reportage” on its front page.
Was there any reporting on the other side—by those who are more pro-Israel? Not that I’ve seen. At the end of Hui’s piece there’s yet another editor’s note:
Editor’s note: As The Maroon’s long-form and narrative features section, Grey City seeks to produce coverage that gives students a direct voice in reporting. As a separate report, Grey City will soon be publishing a story written by pro-Israel student organizer [sic] who has been active in recent campus demonstrations.
This promised story hasn’t yet appeared, even though two months have lapsed. I might have missed it, but I don’t think so. I suspect that they couldn’t find anybody to write it. But if that’s the case the Maroon should have commissioned a piece. The newspaper owes its audience a more balanced view of the controversy.
At any rate, I felt that the paper needed a voice that argued against the discomfiting pro-Palestinian stand of these two long pieces, particularly the SJP’s screed justifying Hamas’s attacks of October 7. And if there wasn’t such a piece, I had to write one. So I produced an op-ed for the paper that came out yesterday. You can see it by clicking below, and I’ve put the text of my letter below the fold at the bottom.
I am under no illusions about the pushback I’ll get for what I wrote. SJP is aggressive if it’s anything, and standing up against the organization, and for Israel, is not the most popular thing to do on campus these days. But the laws of physics—instantiated in SJP’s writings, violations of campus policies (see photo below), and chants that, to many, are calls for the elimination of Israel (and probably not peacefully!), compelled me to write the letter. In the absence of the promised pro-Israel article, my letter shows that at least shows that one member of the University community abhors the violence and hatred embodied in SJP. And I hope what I wrote gives a bit of succor to our intimidated Jewish students.
********
Click “read more” to see the text of my letter, which isn’t long. The photo that accompanies it is of an SJP demonstration, and below is an Instagram post from SJP that testifies to their blocking of the administration building (Levi Hall), a violation of University policy. Note that they’ve covered their faces with hearts, showing their cowardice at the same time. their failure to recognize a wildly inappropriate symbol.
PCC(E) is returning from the West Coast, so light posting today. Feel free to behave in the usual, well-mannered way, in the comments, on whatever tickles your fancy.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is a materialist, as you would expect from an animal:
Hili: We do not have any other choice.
A: In what matter?
Hili: Unfortunately, we have to accept reality.
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In Polish:
Hili: Nie mamy innego wyboru.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: Niestety musimy zaakceptować rzeczywistość.
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For your morning delight, I give you this tweet. Note the dot is the size of Earth’s *orbit*.
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From JAC, a bit of Nooz: Nikki Haley was trounced in the New Hampshire Republican primaries last night. It’s all over now: barring an aneurysm, Trump will be running against Biden in November. Ceiling Cat help us all!
The much-fabled power of New Hampshire’s fiercely independent voters wasn’t enough to break the spell Donald J. Trump has cast over the Republican Party.
Brushing aside Nikki Haley a little over a week after he steamrolled her and Ron DeSantis in Iowa, Mr. Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate who was not a White House incumbent to carry the nation’s first two contests. His winning margin of 11 percentage points in moderate New Hampshire demonstrated his ironclad control of the party’s hard-right base and set him on what could very well be a short march to the nomination.
For Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, it was a disappointing finish in a state she had poured considerable resources into carrying. Her efforts to cobble together a coalition of independents and anti-Trump Republicans, with support from the state’s popular governor, were no match for Mr. Trump’s legions of loyalists.
. . .The contest now moves to South Carolina, the next competitive primary and one where Ms. Haley faces a steep uphill battle. Mr. Trump has led polls in her conservative home state by more than 30 points for months.
There’s little question that a defeat there for Ms. Haley would be devastating, making it difficult for her to justify carrying on in the race.
Figure from the NYT:
At FiveThirtyEight, most of the polls pitting Biden against Trump show Trump leading by a few percentage points, like this one with Trump 5% ahead (click to enlarge):
The Oscar nominations are out, and the NYT lists all the big ones (and more) in the article below, which you can access by clicking. But I’ll list the nominees for eight categories as well:
Part of their summary:
Oscar voters lined up behind a classic studio blockbuster on Tuesday, giving 13 nominations to Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” the most of any movie, and setting up the long-awaited coronation of Nolan as Hollywood’s leading filmmaker.
The recognition for “Oppenheimer” had been expected. But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threw surprises into all of the other major categories.
Most prominently, Greta Gerwig did not receive a nomination as best director for “Barbie.” Instead, the increasingly international academy gave a first nomination to the French filmmaker Justine Triet, who directed “Anatomy of a Fall,” a did-she-or-didn’t-she thriller. “Barbie” also failed to figure into the best actress category, with Margot Robbie overlooked for bringing the doll to zany life. Instead, Annette Bening was honored as a best actress candidate for her obsessive, aging swimmer in the Netflix film “Nyad.”
In the best picture category, “Oppenheimer” will contend against “American Fiction,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Barbie,” “The Holdovers,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro,” “Oppenheimer,” “Past Lives,” “Poor Things” and “Zone of Interest.” The entries in this field had been widely expected; no surprises.
Sadly, I’ve seen few of the Oscar-nominated pictures this year: only two— “Oppenheimer” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and I’d give the nod to the latter. Readers are welcome to weigh in with their favorites in each category
I just realized that the categories of “actor” versus “actress” (terms that are no longer politically correct), the Academy is assuming a sex binary. This will, I suspect, lead to big trouble in the future when we have transgender actors in movies.
In the face of a seemingly intractable war between Hamas and Israel, two fantasies have arisen as “solutions” that will being peace. Neither will work, and we know they won’t work.
The first is that if Israel only approved a two-state solution—one Palestinian and the other Israeli—this would help end the war. But that’s pure nonsense for a variety of reasons. Do I need to list them? First, the Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution, and never have; they’ve rejected it repeatedly. They want a one-state solution, and that one state would be Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea. What about the Jews? Well, they wouldn’t survive long in such a state, for, to the Palestinians, the object of a one-state solution is the end of Israel.
Nor do the Israelis want a Palestinian state abutting their country, for they now have a well-deserved fear that this would simply continue the terrorism from Palestinians that’s plagued Israel for decades. Hamas, as you know, have threatened to repeat an October 7th like even over and over again.
Which brings up the second question of who would govern a Palestinian state, and the proposed but equally futile solution: the Palestinian Authority.
That’s risible for several reasons. If Hamas still exists at the end of this war, then that’s who would be in charge, for the people of Gaza, as well as Palestinians in the West Bank, prefer Hamas over the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA might be marginally better than Hamas at running a Palestinian state, but it’s not an honest broker: the PA supports terrorism as well, also aims at a single state, and has the infamous “pay for slay” program that rewards Palestinian terrorists who kill Jews.
In truth, neither side now wants a two-state solution, and neither side has an honest broker to negotiate one. Nevertheless, ignoramuses like Blinken, egged on by Biden, somehow think that the magic words “two states” will bring lasting peace. That’s insane. (I once promoted the two-state solution myself, but that was before October 7.)
Now, in an article at The Hill,Nitsana Darshan-Leinter, an Israeli attorney and human-rights lawyer who defends victims of terrorism, explains why one solution that liberals are now suggesting—governance of a Gaza (and probably the new Palestinian state) by the PA—is hopeless.
(The Hill is a widely-read nonpartisan site, and, according to Wikipedia, is second only to CNN in online readership for a political venue.)
Here’s Darshan-Leitner’s argument, which begins with some history:
. . . Most Western leaders, including President Biden, are calling for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to assume control of the Gaza Strip and its 2.2 million inhabitants. Pinning Gaza’s future on the PA is a recipe for surefire disaster.
The PA was the byproduct of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the wishful thinking that terrorists could be rehabilitated into becoming responsible statesmen. Then-President Bill Clinton, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, hoped that an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict along with billions of dollars of American and European Union tax money could convince, and bribe, Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and the heads of the other Palestinian fronts to test drive self-governance and create a peaceful future of coexistence for their people.
The U.S. leader hoped that Arafat would abandon his AK-47 for the democratic principles of Washington, Jefferson and Madison. Yitzhak Rabin dreamed that Oslo would provide the Palestinian people with the rewards of living side-by-side with the Jewish state. Both men were wrong, and their optimism resulted in 30 years of incessant conflict and unspeakable suffering.
In 1994, as part of the Oslo Accords, Israel ceded governance of the Gaza Strip and major cities in the West Bank to the newly established Palestinian Authority. Arafat, the head of the PLO’s Fatah faction, was the self-appointed PA president for life and apparently had no intention of swapping land for peace, even after he was repeatedly offered the framework for a two-state solution, including East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Arafat’s PA never ended its war against Israel, even though under the treaty they had become Israel’s partners for peace.
Since 1994, the State Department’s USAID has sent more than $5.5 billion to prop up the PA. The CIA and other federal agencies have spent untold billions more to prop up the PA’s numerous security agencies, but that training and the funds were merely used to facilitate and finance the mechanisms of terror rather than to combat it. It took legal action by the human rights NGO that I founded to help force the Congress to stop the PA from using American taxpayer money from paying stipends to the terrorists and their families as a reward for murdering Jewish civilians.
Yes, the U.S. taxpayer supplied rewards to Palestinians for killing Jews. And now Arafat has been replaced by another proponent of terrorism, Mahmoud Abbas.
Mahmoud Abbas — Arafat’s successor, and the current PA president known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mazen — is 88 years old and serving the 19th year of a four-year term. He is corrupt, ineffective and a promoter of virulent antisemitic conspiracies. A pro-Palestinian pundit appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” recently commented that “Abu Mazen does three things every day, he sleeps, he smokes, and when he wakes up, he says something dumb about the Holocaust.” Abu Mazen has been a feckless leader of an authoritarian fiefdom where nepotism is rife, public funds are used to enrich government officials and their family enterprises, and the welfare of the Palestinian people is a distant afterthought.
The corruption of the PA is well known. Both PA and Hamas leaders are millionaires or even billionaires, and that money came from corruption, including levying taxes on goods coming into the Palestinian Territories. Abbas’s net worth is estimated at $100 million, and many of the Hamas leaders, who live in luxury in Qatar, have even more. Rife with corruption and scheming for a one-state solution, these organizations cannot be honest brokers for a two-state solution.
As Darshan-Leitner notes, the corruption of the PA is one reason why Hamas is more popular than the PA, even in the West Bank. If there’s to be one elected force to Rule Them All, it would be Hamas.
If you encounter one of those misguided people who tout the two-state solution as a cure-all, particularly one governed by the PA, just point them to this article. Part of its peroration:
How then, one must ask of the U.S. State Department and the UK’s Foreign Office, can anyone expect the PA to govern a war-torn Gaza Strip and rehabilitate the lives of more than 2 million people who have been reared on intimidation, radicalization, terror, conflict and self-inflicted suffering?
Western diplomats have argued that the PA must assume a central role in governing the post-war reality because anything would be better than Hamas. But that is like saying one form of terminal cancer is better than another — neither guarantees anything more than continued misery and mortality. Israeli border communities, evacuated at the start of the war, will not agree to return home if the PA is placed in charge again. A post-Hamas Gaza will require capable hands to erase the legacy of the terror state from where the Oct. 7 attacks were financed, planned and executed.
. . . For 30 years, the PA has failed its benefactors and partners in peace and, most tragically, betrayed the Palestinian people. Fantasizing that the PA will be Israel’s sheriff and can solve the gargantuan problems of post-Oct. 7 Gaza is a mistake of epic proportions that will only guarantee continued bloodshed and misery for all sides. Hope is not a strategy.
In the absence of honest brokers on both sides, I have no confidence in a two-state solution—not until the political situation changes drastically. Those who promote such a solution are simply ignorant—or so desperate to end the war in the face of world opinion against Israel that they’ll grasp at any solutinon. Blinken and Biden are among these straw-graspers.
Welcome to the Cruelest Day, Tuesday, January 23, 2024, with one day left of my trip to California. Foodwise, it’s National Pie Day, and, coincidentally, I’ll be having a slice of Key Lime pie for breakfast. I’ve long maintained that pie is the best breakfast.
“Key Lime Pie à Everglades City” by Guillaume Capron is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
It’s also Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Jayanti (Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal, India). Bose, born on this day in 1897, is seen as a national hero by many Indians despite the fact that, in his attempts to free India from the British, he collaborated with the Nazis and created the Indian National Army in collaboration with the Japanese. He died in a mysterious plane crash in 1945. Finally, in Taiwan and South Korea, it’s World Freedom Day.
Oh, and posting will be light today, tomorrow, and perhaps Friday as I prepare for the trip back home. Bear with me; I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*Despite Iran’s support for terrorist organizations like Hamas and the Houthis,Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh have written an op-ed for the NYT called “Why Iran doesn’t want a war.“
For years, Iran has provided funding, arms or training to Hamas and Hezbollah, which are fighting Israel, and to the Houthis, who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea. Iran has also launched its own strikes in recent days in retaliation for a deadly bombing earlier this month, claiming to target Israeli spy headquarters in Iraq and the Islamic State in Syria. It has also exchanged strikes with Pakistan across their shared border.
While Iran is clearly asserting its military strength amid the widening regional turmoil, that doesn’t mean its leaders want to be drawn into a wider war. They have said as much publicly, and perhaps more important, they have meticulously avoided taking direct military action against either Israel or the United States. The regime appears to be content for now to lean into its longtime strategy of proxy warfare: The groups they back are fighting Iran’s foes and so far, neither Israel nor the United States has signaled any interest in retaliating directly.
Some of this reluctance clearly stems from political unrest in the country, much of it promoted by Iran’s brave women (see my daily tweets from Masih Alinejad):
At the heart of Iran’s aversion to a major conflict are the domestic issues that have been preoccupying the regime. The elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seeking to secure his legacy — by overcoming political headwinds to install a like-minded successor, pursuing a nuclear weapon and ensuring the survival of the regime as an Islamist paladin dominating the Middle East — and that means not getting dragged into a wider war.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s government has been trying to keep his political opposition in check since 2022, when the Islamic Republic faced perhaps its most serious uprising since the revolution. The death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police tapped into widespread frustration with the country’s leaders and triggered a national movement explicitly intent on toppling the theocracy. Using brutal methods, the mullahs’ security forces regained the streets and schools, well aware that even unorganized protests can become a threat to the regime. Iran is also facing an economic crisis because of corruption, chronic fiscal mismanagement and sanctions imposed because of its nuclear infractions.
. . . Of course, the more conflict Iran engages in — directly or indirectly — also increases the chance that a rogue or poorly judged strike could send the violence spinning out of control — in a direction Iran does not favor. History is riddled with miscalculations, and there is a real possibility that Iran could find itself pulled into the larger conflict that it has sought to avoid.
And of course if Iran gets embroiled in a war with the U.S., Iran would lose. That, combined with public discontent, might destroy any theocracy for good.
*According to MEMRI, a biology teacher in Pakistan was forced to publicly renounce evolution and Darwin. After being badly injured by a bomb earlier, the teacher continued to teach the prohibited material, and so clerics demanded an long public recantation. The teacher, Sher Ali, is a brave man. There is an audio at the link above that tells you exactly what Ali said in his renunciation, including an affirmation that women’s intellects are inferior to those of men. (I’m sure he doesn’t accept that.):
In October 2023, a video emerged on social media showing a group of Islamic religious scholars in the Bannu district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In the film, the clerics are forcing Sher Ali, a teacher of zoology, to renounce, on camera, a number of beliefs and scientific ideas such as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Sher Ali is an assistant professor of biology at the Government Postgraduate Decree College in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He holds a Master of Science degree in Zoology from the University of Peshawar, and a Master of Philosophy degree in human genetics from the Quaid-e-Azam University of Islamabad.
In some images available on social media, Sher Ali can be seen holding a copy of the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by internationally acclaimed Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari. Sher Ali is an intellectual who publicly discusses widely respected scientific ideas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Islamist groups are powerful.
In May 2022, Sher Ali’s car was attacked with a magnetic bomb, leaving him in a wheelchair for months and raising the question among his students and followers whether he would continue to speak at seminars and teach openly. However, in an interview with one of his students from his hospital bed, Sher Ali revealed his optimism that he would continue to teach.
This seems to have prompted a group of radical clerics associated with the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam to gather together to force him to renounce certain scientific ideas. The Deobandi school is named after the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, the second largest Islamic seminary in the word, after Jamia Al-Azhar of Cairo. The Dar-ul-Uloom seminary is near New Delhi, India. A translation of Sher Ali’s renunciation, as written by the clerics, is given below.
Here’s the poor guy being forced to renounce what he said. If he tries to teach Darwin again, or extol the minds of women, he’ll be killed for sure:
*The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, has overruled Texas by requiring the state to remove some of the barriers between the U.S. and Mexico, barriers intended to prevent immigrants from entering.
As is typical in emergency actions, the majority did not explain its reasoning for dissolving an order from a lower court. Four conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — noted their dissents without explanation.
Even though immigration and border security matters are generally the purview of the federal government, Abbott has mobilized thousands of National Guard troops and lined the banks of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass with razor wire to try to block illegal entries.
Earlier this month, federal officials said Texas National Guard personnel had blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents who were investigating reports of drowning migrants from a section of the Rio Grande where the state had placed the wire barriers.The bodies of three migrants, a woman and two children, were found in the river by Mexican authorities days later.
. . .Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar urged the justices to “restore Border Patrol’s access to the border it is charged with patrolling and the migrants it is responsible for apprehending, inspecting, and processing.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have been overwhelmed by the volume of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest one-month total ever, according to preliminary CBP data obtained by The Washington Post.
Yes, there’s a crisis at the border, but it needs to be resolved legally, not with Texas going rogue. That a conservative court would at least put a stay on the state’s behavior suggests that these things need federal approval. The problem, of course, is that neither Congress nor Biden is doing much about it. And that may tell in November’s election.
*Once again the US and UK have struck back at the Houthis for trying to control shipping traffic in the Sea, particularly to Israel. This time it was a big strike, and of course the media wag their fingers and say that this could lead to a “wider war”. But what are we to do, and if not us, who? Should we let the Houthis take what they want, like Portland shoplifters?
A U.S.-led coalition launched a series of strikes against Houthi targets Monday, U.S. and U.K. officials and the Houthis said, in the second major assault in a continuing bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group’s attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.
The strikes marked at least the sixth time the U.S. has targeted the group, which is armed, funded and supported by Iran. In most instances, the U.S. said it was launching self-defense strikes. Monday’s strikes were aimed at stopping the group from being able to launch attacks.
An official in the Royal Navy said the attacks struck dozens of targets, including rocket launchers, missile depots, warehouses and radar sites.
. . . In the hours leading up to the coalition strikes, a U.S.-flagged and -owned heavy load carrier was targeted with a Houthi missile while sailing eastbound in the Gulf of Aden, British security consulting firm Ambrey said, while mariners were warned to avoid the area. Roughly 85 ships were sailing through the waterway to the Suez earlier Monday.
. . .In what they said was a response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis began attacking commercial ships in the end of November, rattling global markets and upending international shipping routes.
Initially directed against Israeli-linked vessels, the attacks have become increasingly indiscriminate. The rebels have attacked vessels from boxships to tankers moving sanctioned Russian oil as the global shipping nexus complicates their ability to identify specific targets.
Last week, vessel traffic through the Suez Canal was down 34% compared with the end of November, according to data by Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
Though eager to protect global shipping, the Biden administration has been reluctant to respond too forcefully to the Houthis lest it trigger a war in the region, in part because of the group’s backing from Tehran, Western security officials and advisers have said.
But, as noted above, perhaps Iran wouldn’t want to get involved, and if the Houthis are widening their war by indiscriminately raiding ships, then they have to be stopped. The alternative is to stop all shipping through the Suez Canal, which would be unthinkable.
More than 300,000 people have signed a petition calling for a Russian train conductor to lose her job after she threw a pet cat off a train, believing it was a stray.
The white and ginger tom cat, known as Twix, escaped from his carrier on a train traveling between Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg on Jan. 11. He was found by the conductor, who forcibly ejected the animal from the carriage while the train was stopped in the town of Kirov, east of Moscow.
Hundreds of people banded together in sub-zero temperatures to search for the animal, who was later found dead on Jan. 20, a little over half a mile from the train tracks where he had been left. Volunteers reported that Twix had perished from the severe cold and suffered a number of suspected animal bites.
The incident has sparked widespread outrage in Russia, with thousands following the story on dedicated social media accounts. Others reshared viral footage of the cat being dropped into the snow in temperatures approaching -22 Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius).
. . .A separate petition calling for criminal charges to be brought against the conductor had gathered more than 100,000 signatures on Sunday, after being published online on Jan. 19.
Local authorities have so far declined to prosecute the conductor, who has not been publicly named.
In a statement, Russian state train operator RZhD said that it “sincerely regretted” the death of Twix, and vowed that it would change its rules on how employees should approach unaccompanied animals.
Here’s the poor moggie from The Moscow Times (credited to “social media”). You can see a short video of Twix being dumped at this site (I can’t bear to post it.)
Now no animals will be heaved off of trains, but will be handed to people in the station who will take them to rescue organization. I still say that the conductor should be fired. What kind of person would throw out a cat into the snow in subfreezing weather?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is cold (she hates winter):
Hili: I’m going back home.
A: Why?
Hili: My paws are freezing.
In Polish:
Hili: Wracam do domu.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: W łapki zimno.
*******************
From Stash Krod:
From Thomas:
From Facebook: product duplicity!
From Masih; a video showing Iranian “morality police” beating up a woman for showing a bit of her hair. For, you know, a bit of hair could incite the uncontrollable lust of men and lead to trouble. . .
See the brutality of morality police in Afghanistan. Yes! we Iranians have seen this movie before. On display: female morality police officers in Afghanistan and Iran. They berate and beat up women for showing their hair or wearing “improper” hijab. This is how deep the rot of… pic.twitter.com/65YpifFlFK
From cesar: Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, beefs about the constitution of Harvard’s new antisematism task force. The tweet is long, so expand it. Harvard can’t seem to do anything right these days.
After Friday’s new anti-Semitism task force announcement, I have lost confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a place where Jews and Israelis can flourish.
From Luana, a CodwPink member accosts Marco Rubio about Hamas. I’m no Republican, but he gives a good answer, and it would be good no matter what his political affiliation.
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. He considers the statement in the first one to be deeply wrong (well, Matthew used language that I can’t reproduce here):
Honored to host George Church, PhD – Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School & pioneer in genomics on ep2 of pod!
"I think the trend is going to be towards everybody getting IVF as the main way of having babies. I think that's a plausible future." @geochurchpic.twitter.com/o7pVCDb04t
