Tuesday: Hili dialogue

39 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. “Captured during the surprise Oct 7 raid”: so the nyt refers to the terrorist attack now as simply a “raid”. A similar subtlety is found in WAPO articles which always refer to an “Israel Gaza” war rather than “Israeli Hamas” war.

   1. I don’t object to the “Israel-Gaza War” language. Hamas is not a state. It is the gang of thugs that governs Gaza, which is a state. Israel has declared war on Gaza and is entitled to use all the engines of war against it as a hostile state. That there might, or might not, be “innocent civilians” in Gaza has no bearing on the state of war between it and Israel, precipitated by the actions of Gaza’s government and endorsed by its citizenry. If there were an armed faction in Gaza that was fighting against Hamas and trying to overthrow it, then there would need to be more precise language (and more precise targeting to hit the right gunmen) but there seems not to be.

      (Whether this is why the newspapers refer to the Israel-Gaza war I do not know.)

2. Of course, the irony is that if Hamas had done on October 7th to any Arab country, Gaza would have been leveled the next day with 300,000+ dead. And no one would care or say anything.

   And oft-forgotten is that Egypt, Gaza’s Arab brethren have blockaded Gaza since 2006.

   1. +1

3. Reference the antisemitic UK labour candidate.
   “Rochdale” isn’t that the UK City/ Town that had gangs of predominantly muslim men raping and grooming young “white” girls whilst the authorities including the police ignored the problem because they did not want to antagonize the local immigrant community?
   I believe that this situation persisted for some years before any action was undertaken and this only after a television documentary.
   The UK Labour party and supporters for this individual are as damaged as the antisemitic candidate .
   No change there then, the UK Islamic fifth column is flourishing in Rochdale.

   1. Rochdale was one town among many with a grooming gang problem, which largely remains unaddressed. Rotherham was probably the worst, and Telford was also a shocking case.
      The Labour MP for Bradford, Naz Shah, tweeted “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.” She took it down after eight minutes and said it had been posted in error. But this shows what the Labour party is about in this respect—pandering to the local “community” to get votes at whatever price. Another Labour MP, Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham, had to resign from the shadow cabinet when she wrote a newspaper article about “the problem of white girls being raped and exploited by British Pakistani men.” Naz Shah called that “incendiary and irresponsible.”

      1. Well, thanks for that information, worse than I thought but the reaction of the local muslim community hierarchy and the UK Labour mob does not surprise me one iota. One day western democratic countries might wake up to this problem but I am not holding my breath.
         The Islamic fifth column is flourishing more than just in Rochdale!

      2. For accuracy, Naz Shah retweeted someone else’s statement to that effect, rather than writing it herself.

         I don’t think that makes it any better.

4. Thanks to Matthew for a mini reminder of the sights and sounds of Caenhill morning rush hour. I have missed the proprietor’s voice and the animals starting their day.

   1. Caen Hill, I remember it well, famous flight of broad locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal near Devizes. I helped with some restoration when stationed in the RAF at Colerne near Bath, many moons ago when the Kennet and Avon Canal was in very poor condition.

5. On this day:
   1258 – Siege of Baghdad: Hulegu Khan, a prince of the Mongol Empire, orders his army to sack and plunder the city of Baghdad, which they had just captured.

   1322 – The central tower of Ely Cathedral falls on the night of 12th–13th.

   1542 – Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.

   1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.

   1642 – The Clergy Act becomes law, excluding bishops of the Church of England from serving in the House of Lords. [They’re back now, though, thanks (!) to the 1661 Clergy Act.]

   1689 – William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.

   1692 – Massacre of Glencoe: Almost 80 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.

   1880 – Thomas Edison observes Thermionic emission.

   1913 – The 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence following a period of domination by Manchu Qing dynasty and initiated a period of almost four decades of independence.

   1920 – The Negro National League is formed.

   1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

   1945 – World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.

   1955 – Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

   1960 – With the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue”, France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

   1960 – Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.

   1961 – An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.

   1990 – German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.

   1991 – Gulf War: Two laser-guided “smart bombs” destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.

   2004 – The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star “Lucy” after The Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

   2008 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.

   2012 – The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

   2017 – Kim Jong-nam, brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, is assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

   2021 – Former U.S. President Donald Trump is acquitted in his second impeachment trial.

   2021 – A major winter storm causes blackouts and kills at least 82 people in Texas and northern Mexico.

   Births:
   1728 – John Hunter, Scottish surgeon and anatomist (d. 1793).

   1766 – Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist and scholar (d. 1834).

   1870 – Leopold Godowsky, Polish-American pianist and composer (d. 1938).

   1881 – Eleanor Farjeon, English author, poet, and playwright (d. 1965).

   1891 – Kate Roberts, Welsh author and activist (d. 1985).

   1903 – Georges Simenon, Belgian-Swiss author (d. 1989).

   1910 – William Shockley, English-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989).

   1916 – Dorothy Bliss, American invertebrate zoologist (d. 1987).

   1923 – Chuck Yeager, American general and pilot; first test pilot to break the sound barrier (d. 2020).

   1926 – Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, American nuclear physicist (d. 2012).

   1933 – Kim Novak, American actress.

   1934 – George Segal, American actor (d. 2021).

   1938 – Oliver Reed, English actor (d. 1999).

   1942 – Peter Tork, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and actor (d. 2019).

   1944 – Stockard Channing, American actress.

   1944 – Jerry Springer, English-American television host, actor, and politician, 56th Mayor of Cincinnati (d. 2023).

   1945 – Marian Dawkins, English biologist and academic. [Extremely accomplished ex-wife of Richard Dawkins.]

   1945 – Simon Schama, English historian and author.

   1950 – Peter Gabriel, English singer-songwriter and musician.

   1956 – Peter Hook, English singer, songwriter, bass player, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer.

   1974 – Robbie Williams, English singer-songwriter.

   1979 – Rachel Reeves, English economist and politician, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.

   I find by my calculations, which are according to revealed inspiration, that the sword of death is now approaching us, in the shape of pestilence, war more horrible than has been known in three lifetimes, and famine. (Nostradamus):
   1859 – Eliza Acton, English food writer and poet (b. 1799). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1883 – Richard Wagner, German composer (b. 1813).

   1952 – Josephine Tey, Scottish author and playwright (b. 1896).

   1958 – Christabel Pankhurst, English activist, co-founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (b. 1880).

   1980 – David Janssen, American actor (b. 1931).

   2002 – Waylon Jennings, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1937).

   2012 – Louise Cochrane, American-English screenwriter and producer (b. 1918).

   2016 – Antonin Scalia, American lawyer and judge, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (b. 1936).

   2017 – Aileen Hernandez, American union organizer and activist (b. 1926).

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

      Eliza Acton (born 17 April 1799, died on this day in 1859) was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain’s first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called “Christmas pudding”; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together.

      Acton was born in 1799 in Sussex. She was raised in Suffolk where she ran a girls’ boarding school before spending time in France. On her return to England in 1826 she published a collection of poetry and released her cookery book in 1845, aimed at middle class families. Written in an engaging prose, the book was well received by reviewers. It was reprinted within the year and several editions followed until 1918, when Longman, the book’s publisher, took the decision not to reprint. In 1857 Acton published The English Bread-Book for Domestic Use, a more academic and studious work than Modern Cookery. The work consisted of a history of bread-making in England, a study of European methods of baking and numerous recipes.

      In the later years of its publication, Modern Cookery was eclipsed by the success of Isabella Beeton’s bestselling Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management(1861), which included several recipes plagiarised from Acton’s work. [Isabella Beeton’s biographer Kathryn Hughes gives as examples one third of Beeton’s soup dishes and a quarter of her fish recipes, which are all taken from Acton.]

      Although Modern Cookery was not reprinted in full until 1994, the book has been admired by English cooks in the second part of the 20th century, and influenced many of them, including Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Delia Smith, and Rick Stein.

      There is humour in Acton’s work, particularly when reporting on a recipe going wrong. Her recipe for Publisher’s Pudding, which contains cognac, macaroons, cream and almonds, “can scarcely be made too rich”, while the Poor Author’s Pudding is made with milk, bread, eggs and sugar, and is a more simple dish. Similarly, in her recipe for Superior Pine-Apple Marmalade, she writes that if the mixture is placed onto a direct heat it “will often convert what would otherwise be excellent preserve, into a strange sort of compound, for which it is difficult to find a name”.

      Acton, who suffered from poor health for much of her life, died at home on 13 February 1859, at the age of 59.

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

   2. Kevin Rudd historic apology is bafflingly celebrated in some quarters but the reality for many Aboriginals is dire.

      Personally I loathe these performative apologies as they change absolutely nothing except for the apologiser who now thinks he/she is a paragon of virtue.

      Rant over 🤔. Apologies to those who think these things are important.

      1. I’m with you on the meaningless performative apologies, Kelcey.

6. It’s also a dodge that the headline attribution is to “Gazan Officials,” whoever they are (probably Hamas).

7. Just a heads up that the American College of Pediatricians is a right wing gaggle that pretty much opposes positions of the broader mainstream American Academy of Peds. H/t for parsing this to my very knowledgeable, retired RN wife!

   1. The name clicked with me. I can’t remember though: are the the anti-vax maniacs?
      There’s an org out there with a very official medical name that smuggles some really deranged stuff. Is it them?

      That said, I’m utterly against the “Affirmation” model personally.
      I see it as a HUGE misstep along the lines of FGM or lobotomy.

      See the recent, Colorado, conference genspect https://genspect.org/
      for more.
      D.A.
      NYC

      1. My wife says yes; they are anti vax, anti LQGBT….etc. the academy is the historically legit organization.

   2. Thanks, that’s good to know, Jim.

8. Re cats with OCD, our late cat Marcus Clawrelius was scrupulous about walking on the stepping stones across the lawn.

9. The full list of candidates in the Rochdale by-election: https://twitter.com/VPointon/status/1757339132412432631

   1. Glad to see we have the Official Monster Raving Loony Party still campaigning. UK by-elections wouldn’t be the same without them.

      1. Agreed! Screaming Lord Sutch’s political legacy is almost up their with his musical one:

         He holds the record for contesting the most Parliamentary elections: 39 between 1963-97. As a singer, he variously worked with Keith Moon, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Charlie Watts, John Bonham, Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell and Nicky Hopkins…

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

10. The medical society that congregates the pediatricians in the US is the American Academy of Pediatrics.
    The American College of Pediatricians is a right-wing organization that has already been accused of misusing or mischaracterizing scientific papers to foster its own agenda.
    I would read those papers carefully to be sure they really say what the American College of Pediatricians says they say.

    1. I have read them and they do. The ACP’s statement is a fair representation of the direction European countries are moving in response to the evidence. Nowhere but in the United States and Canada is this controversial or even news.

       1. I read some, not all. Their reference number 8 is a paper funded by a Christian advocacy group and published on the journal of the Catholic Medical Association. I wonder why they couldn’t get it published in a mainstream medical journal. Reference 43 is a report by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. This report is severely biased, and ignored many relevant studies (more on that on https://medicine.yale.edu/lgbtqi/research/gender-affirming-care/florida%20report%20final%20july%208%202022%20accessible_443048_284_55174_v3.pdf).
          Reference 57 refers to the Swedish guidelines for care of children with gender dysphoria. The web page of the ACP says that the Swedish report concluded that the risk of hormonal interventions for gender dysphoric youth outweigh the potential benefits. I could not find that conclusion in the report. What I found was that “puberty-suppressing treatment can in some cases be considered to be of great benefit”.
          It seems that the ACP is very selective, to say the least, of the evidence they choose to present. They have an agenda and make a great effort to push it.

          1. I’ve read McNamara et al., which you provided. Thanks.

             I’ll stick to their positive review of Tordoff et al. (2022)* because it has been widely cited and is interesting intellectually. This study was represented as a comparison of GAC vs. no GAC in disturbed teenagers referred to a gender clinic. (GAC = gender-affirming care, i.e., puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.) But it wasn’t. It was all one cohort, the members of which started GAC at the discretion of the treating doctors (not the researchers) at various times after enrolling. Some started immediately (seven had actually started before the first clinic visit), others started after a period of observation of 3 to 12 months, some never started. About a third dropped out during the study and their outcomes are unknown. A handful remained in the study at the end of the year but had never been judged fit to start on GAC. (That is worth noting: not everyone got GAC on demand.)

             The authors found there was no improvement with time in measures of mental health (including suicidal thinking) in the patients who took GAC. With no longitudinal improvement in mental health seen in the treated patients during follow-up to a year, the authors then compared the average (and unchanged) mental health of that group with the mental health of the ever-shrinking group who never became fit to start it. This group had, on average, worsening mental health measures than the group who had been deemed fit to start GAC. The authors claimed this as evidence for benefit of GAC. But this is just a reverse survivor effect. They compared a group who never became mentally fit enough to get GAC with a group who did. The unfit group became enriched for unfitness as its healthier members “graduated” and crossed over to the GAC group, leaving the recalcitrant cases behind. Whatever the clinic was doing, it was helping some patients (not all) improve mentally enough to start GAC, but this improvement all occurred before the puberty blockers or hormones started.

             We also don’t know why so many patients dropped out. Perhaps they had improved enough, with or without GAC, that they didn’t need the services of a gender clinic anymore. But heavy loss to follow-up is a severe threat to the interpretability of a study.

             This is not to take issue with the over-all thrust of McNamara et al. It’s just to point out that there is more to many studies than meets the eye.
             ——————–
             * https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789423

11. Wrt the ‘bladder issue’, I read somewhere that it’s just UTI, urinary tract infection.

    1. That’s what I would suppose.

    2. UTI in men who’ve just had prostate surgery is not “just” the trivial nuisance that most women think of when they hear “bladder infection.”

       I have no idea what’s wrong with Secretary Austen. All I know is I definitely do not want to get prostate cancer. (Although if I live long enough I probably will.)

       1. Indeed, although more men die “with” it than “of” it.

    3. (Leslie beat me to it).
       Yes, but it’s likely more than “just” UTI. There are many possible issues in the aftermath of his first procedure (I would guess a “radical” prostatectomy, via robotic laparoscopy, a complex procedure with many potential complications.) If he had infection but was unable to void, he’s at risk for sepsis (perhaps his prior issue?). If he still had indwelling catheter (mine was in for 9 unpleasant days post-op, and I had to demonstrate that I could empty my bladder before it was removed),or had it replaced due to inability to void, that adds risk for infection. The prostatic urethra has to be removed initially, and the free ends re-joined. If there’s leakage of infected urine into the surgical bed (where there would be old blood and fluid), that could cause major infection. Etc., etc.
       I won’t go into longer term issues. Many men choose to go with Radiation Therapy as primary treatment (depends on multiple factors), as outcomes through ~10 yrs are similar (or so I was told 10 yrs ago), and that’s way less traumatic. Not sure about longer. I was only 62 at diagnosis, so was thinking in terms of 30 years outcome, my tolerance for surgery at that time, and various other considerations.

       1. You’re right. I should have omitted the word ‘just’. I meant to write that the article I read didn’t mention more cancer.

12. Just about all of the major news outlets I read reported the Israeli hostage rescue but felt compelled to offset it by telling us how many Palestinians were killed in the process. Only one country is held to such a standard and, of course, it’s quite likely that many of those killed in the process were terrorists.

    Israel needs to liberate Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas and win the war.

13. From the news last night: Trump (if elected) will support Putin if NATO doesn’t
    pay up. Sounds like a flimsy excuse to me. He’ll probably send weapons to his
    Kremlin buddy asap. Europe (especially in the east) should start preparing for
    another war. Poland’s next.

    1. Yeah, I heard about that. Trump shows again what a dangerous idiot he is and doesn’t understand that NATO is paid for by 2% of a country’s GDP. Some countries don’t have much GDP and so it appears some aren’t “paying up.” Either way, it shows us again that he is Putin’s puppet. It seems many on the right are not in denial anymore about Trump being Putin’s lapdog- now they just think that it’s a good thing.

       1. Several NATO members for many years did not meet that commitment to fund their armed forces at (or above) 2% of their GDP.

          It’s not the sum paid, it’s that they were failing to meet their treaty obligations.

          (Also, that 2% is for their own armed forces. It doesn’t pay for NATO.)

14. The Kelsey/Swift relationship makes me laugh in regards to all the right-wing conspiracy theories that have sprung up- mostly about the relationship being a plot to tip the presidential election in Biden’s favor. “The SB was rigged by her and the left” “she’s being used as a Pentagon psy-op” “She was going to endorse Biden by wearing a t-shirt” “the couple is artificially culturally propped-up for a major presidential endorsement”…blah, blah, blah. Trump’s been bashing her as well, which I doubt is a smart thing for him to do…as if he’s a smart politician.

    Another right winger said “the left has Taylor Swift, but we have Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and John Voight!” 🤣🤣🤣

    I did an edit and it turned my laughing emojis into gobbledygook. Interesting. 🤣🤣🤣 I tried again to see…

    Yep, emojis get turned into code via the edit function.

15. Apropos the furore over the appalling comments by the (now disowned) Labour Party candidate in the Rochdale by-election, it’s worth remembering that whoever wins on Thursday will only be the MP for a matter of months, possibly only for weeks, as a general election is going to be called some time this year. It’s to be hoped that the Labour Party will do a better job of screening their next candidate more thoroughly for anti-Semitic opinions.

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