Saturday: Hili dialogue

February 17, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to: CaturSaturday February 17, 2024, and today is shabbos for Jewish cats, who can’t turn on electrical appliances until sundown. Foodwise, it’s National Cafe au Lait day, and I suppose my morning cappuccino will serve as well. Here it is, with a sprinkling of cinnamon on top:

It’s also National Indian Pudding Day (one of my very favorite desserts), World Whale Day, National Cabbage Day, and World Pangolin Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*(see next story) First, the death of Aleksei Navalny, who was reported by Russia to have dropped dead Friday in an Arctic penal colony, has been confirmed. The weird circumstances of his death (he was okay the day before, filmed joking with his guards) demand an autopsy, as it sounds like either poison or, less neafariously, a heart attack.

Aleksei A. Navalny’s political allies on Saturday confirmed his death, saying that his mother had received an official notification of it.

Kira Yarmysh, Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, said in a statement on X that Russian investigators had transferred Mr. Navalny’s body from a penal colony in the Arctic to the nearby town of Salekhard, where it is being examined.

*This news hit me hard: Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny died in prison, or rather in the Arctic gulag. He was just 47. And remember, he’d already been nearly poisoned to death by Putin’s agents. Nevertheless, this brave man returned to Russia and his inevitable imprisonment. Death was nearly a certainty given his opposition to Putin.

President Biden said that there was “no doubt” that President Vladimir V. Putin’s government was behind the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken dissident who Russian authorities said had died at a remote Arctic prison on Friday.

“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Mr. Biden said at a White House news conference, while acknowledging that the United States still did not know details of what happened. “What has happened to Navalny is even more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled.”

Mr. Navalny’s death would leave the country without its most prominent opposition voice at a time when Mr. Putin has amassed near-total power, invaded neighboring Ukraine and drawn the sharpest divisions with U.S.-led Western allies since the end of the Cold War.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said in a statement that Mr. Navalny, 47, had lost consciousness and died after taking a walk on Friday in the Arctic prison where he was moved late last year. “All necessary resuscitation measures were taken, which did not lead to positive results,” the statement said.

The news shocked world leaders, although Western officials and many of Mr. Navalny’s supporters expressed skepticism about the Russian authorities’ statements. Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said in a live broadcast that his team could not immediately confirm his death but believed in all likelihood he was dead.

. . .Mr. Navalny had been serving multiple prison sentences — on what supporters said were fabricated charges — that would likely have kept him locked up until at least 2031. In December, he disappeared for three weeks as the Russian authorities transferred him to a remote penal colony in the Arctic. He was last seen publicly on Thursday, when he appeared via video link in a court hearing.

This is one of the bravest men I know, and he could have done a much better job than Putin. I agree with Biden that Putin’s government, and probably Putin, who I see as a serial murderer, is behind Navalny’s death. Even if they didn’t kill him directly, they put him in conditions that, given his poor post-poisoning health, would kill him.

*I wonder whether Navalny could have done more to reform Russia if he’d never returned. Malgorzata thinks that Russian dissidents always cause more reform when they’re martyrs, like Navalny, than if they operate outside of Russia. The Washington Post tells us why Navalny’s life and death were important.

Navalny was Russia’s best-known opposition leader — he had publicly criticized the Russian president and his government and called for political change.

Navalny had a large political network and led massive street protests in Russia. He was also able to harness social media to keep pressure on Putin and his allies, exposing alleged corruption in widely viewed YouTube videos. Putin still largely refuses to say his name, in a show of disdain.

Navalny won various international human rights awards, and for many years he faced court trials and house arrest, while Russian authorities seized his bank accounts. He was barred from running against Putin in presidential elections but continually found creative ways to resist Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule.

Navalny studied law and finance in Russian universities and entered politics in 1999, just as Putin first took up national leadership. He joined the liberal opposition party Yabloko before being expelled in 2007. He later formed a group known as the Anti-Corruption Foundation to open investigations that increasingly struck at the heart of the Kremlin elite.

In 2013, Navalny surprised many analysts when he won 27 percent of the vote against a key Kremlin ally in the Moscow mayoral election. He became an international figurehead of dissent against Putin when he was poisoned by the banned nerve agent Novichok while on a flight from Siberia, making global headlines in 2020.

Amid the poisoning incident in 2020, the airplane pilot made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where Navalny was rushed to a hospital and placed on a ventilator. He was evacuated to Germany to recover. He later blamed Russian security forces for the poisoning, as did the State Department and European authorities. Russian officials denied any role.

Last year, lawyers and associates of Navalny said he feared that Russian authorities may be slowly poisoning him in prison after he suffered acute stomach pains and seizures and lost significant weight.

*As always, I’m stealing three items from Nellie Bowles’s snarky but absorbing summary of the week’s news in The Free Press, this week called “TGIF: Mother Russia, Father Time.”

→ Trump struggles with the concept of military service: At a rally this week, Trump did some wondering about Nikki Haley’s husband. “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away! What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband! Where is he? He’s gone.” He sounds like a gossipy country club lady. Right. So. Michael Haley is a commissioned officer deployed in Africa with the South Carolina National Guard. It’s a strange concept to Bone Spur Trumpo, but to maintain American security, we have a military, and we send soldiers to do things, often with guns, frequently in shitholes. Then, in exchange for their bravery and selflessness, we as a society give them respect. No, we do not imply their wives are suspect because of their service. Someone get the spray bottle.

→ Petty little protests all over town this week: Pro-Palestine protesters (PPP) in Toronto decided to target a hospital because it is called Mount Sinai and Jewish donors’ names are featured on the front. Don’t be hysterical, it’s just anti-Zionism they say. The protesters climbed the rafters, banged on windows, called for Intifada, and flew a Palestinian flag from the second floor. A Jewish doctor was driving through, and they circled her car demanding she honk, not letting her drive until she did. Nearby cops refused to help her. In New York, protesters took over the Museum of Modern Art to protest that Jewish members of the board have various connections to Israel (index funds count, don’t think they don’t). And Students for Justice in Palestine were very clear this week that they don’t want any Jews left in the Middle East, chanting: “We don’t want two states—we want all of it.”

The Irish women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israel’s team, and there’s a movement to block Israel from competing in Eurovision. And Broadway Cares, the charity supposedly for theater workers, sent $400,000 to charities in Gaza, where the cash most assuredly is funneled to Hamas. Honestly, a pretty slow week.

→ Oh, that foreign aid doesn’t count: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Jake Tapper she will absolutely not support the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza. Why? Because of restrictions on UNRWA and “the complete lack of humanitarian aid” for Palestinians in the bill. Tapper corrects her: the bill would include $10 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza. AOC doesn’t flinch: foreign aid to Gaza only counts if it’s given through UNRWA. Now why would that be?

Here: see the box of rocks for yourself:

→ Medical school’s getting a little odd, no? The prestigious medical school at University of California, San Francisco invited local equity leader Dante King to speak to medical students in a lecture called “Diagnosing Whiteness and Anti-Blackness.” This needs little more from me, so Dante, take it away: “Whites are psychopaths, and their behavior represents an underlying biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in their evolutionary history. How many of you could see the proclivity that evolved deep within the evolutionary history of whiteness? By show of hands, how many of you could see it? Some people are sitting here, ‘oh, no, I don’t want to raise my hand.’ That’s called denial.”

*From Jez vis the Guardian: appalling new anti-Semitism stats at UK schools.  I have no idea why antisemitism seems to be increasing so rapidly in the UK compared to, say, the U.S. (where it’s also increasing):

The anonymous letter that landed on the desk of a headteacher of a Jewish school in Hertfordshire in November did not pull its punches.

“Beware,” it began. “Jihadi is being fought and you are going to have your throat slit by us.” Among the reasons it listed were “we see you like music which is unIslamic”; “you wear a tie and are western” and “you are a Jew lover”. It ended with the words: “From the river to the see [sic] we shall be free, you Zionist.”

The letter was sent a few weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October that left about 1,200 dead, triggered the war in Gaza – and unleashed a surge of anti-Jewish hatred in the UK. Incidents of antisemitism rose sharply after 7 October, the Community Security Trust (CST) reported this week – up by 589% compared with the same period in 2022.

Jewish pupils and teachers were among those targeted. The CST recorded 325 incidents in the schools sector in 2023, an increase of 232% on the year before. The vast majority of incidents, 70%, took place after 7 October.

Most involved abusive behaviour, but there were also 32 cases of assault and 10 of damage or desecration to property. Twenty-four of the incidents took place in mainstream (non-Jewish) primary schools.

. . . Since coming to the school three years ago, Dalziel – who is not Jewish – has been aware of a “background of antisemitic comments and gestures” directed at children, for example at sporting fixtures with other schools. It got significantly worse after 7 October, he said.

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s atrocity and Israel’s military response, attendance at many Jewish schools dropped dramatically as parents kept their children at home for fear of attacks. Jewish children were advised to remove yarmulkes and Star of David jewellery on their way to and from school. Security stepped up, with increased patrols and reinforced barriers. Some schools received death threats, or threats to bomb their buildings.

. . . .“Among all the staggering statistics about the rise in anti-Jewish hatred last year, the fact that incidents in schools tripled to a record high is perhaps the most alarming,” said a CST spokesperson.

“It is profoundly troubling that some Jewish children are being bullied and socially ostracised, often in the context of simplistic and divisive political activism related to the Middle East that should have no place in schools.”

*In his new Weekly Dish column, “Neoracism, finally on defense,” Andrew Sullivan highlights the King-ian message of Coleman Hughes’s brand-new book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. An excerpt:

The poignancy of Coleman Hughes’ new book, The End of Race Politics, lies therefore in the tenacity of his faith in the spirit of 1964. “Color-blindness” is not the best description of this, because of course we continue to see others’ race, just as we will always see someone’s sex. No, as Hughes explains: “To advocate colorblindness is to endorse an ethical principle: we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and private lives.”

That’s a principle the vast majority of Americans, black and white and everything else, support. It was the core principle for Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King Jr, and Bayard Rustin. “If I have advocated the cause of the colored people, it is not because I am a negro, but because I am a man,” insisted Douglass. Henry Highland Garnet — the first African-American to speak in Congress after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment — even apologized for speaking of various different races, “when in fact there is but one race, as there was but one Adam.”

Fast forward to 2015, when the University of California called the phrase “There is only one race, the human race” a “micro-aggression”; or 2020, when the phrase “All Lives Matter” was deemed evidence of “anti-blackness”. The 21st Century, the brief era of color-blindness behind us, reached back to the 19th to insist that race defines us at our core, can never be overcome, and marks us all either an oppressor or a victim. The left, including the Democratic Party, has now adopted this worldview, along with a legal regime to actively discriminate against some races and not others: “equity”. That’s why Hughes cuts to the chase and calls these reactionaries in progressive clothing “neoracists”. They are. What else would one call them?

They are race-obsessed. They view any human interaction as a racial power-struggle, and compound it with any number of further “intersectional” power-struggles. They do not see two unique individuals with unique life experiences interacting in a free society. They see group identity as determinative everywhere; and therefore want to intervene everywhere, to discriminate against whites and successful non-whites in favor of unsuccessful non-whites. Individual rights? They come second to group identity.

. . . But the implosion of bad ideas is not the same as the resuscitation of good ones. What Hughes has done in this book is remind us what we already knew: that racism and neoracism are two sides of the same collectivist coin, and that treating everyone regardless of race is the only feasible way forward for a multiracial America, just as it is the only morally defensible regime that can actually counter and erode racial hatred. The proof is in our past progress. But the potential for multi-racial individualism is as unknowable as it is exhilarating.

Good writing. And Coleman is a man to watch.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried about Szaron’s proxmity

Hili: Take away that paw.
Szaron: How does it disturb you?
Hili: Just the knowledge that it’s there.
In Polish:
Hili: Zabierz tę łapę.
Szaron: Co ci przeszkadza?
Hili: Świadomość, że tam jest.

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

Some different stuff today. First, videos made entirely from AI descriptions (I don’t know how this is done.). h/t Thomas.

Then Israeli actress and now activist Noa Tishby decries the pro-Palestinian invasion of the Mount Sinai Hospital (a Jewish hospital) in Toronto. This shows that it’s not the Israeli government that these people are after, but simply Jews!:

And from  reader Ant:

Masih retweeted this, and she and Kasparov are deeply shocked (but not that surprised) by Navalny’s death:

And great news! UNC Charlotte has followed UNC Chapel Hill in adopting institutional neutrality. That makes a total of five schools (mine, UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, and, perhaps, Columbia University)

From Gravelinspector:

From reader Craig: applying for a ceasefire:

Two from my feed: a cat helps make a pot:

A star is born! Note how it instinctively and immediately goes up for air!

From the Auschwitz Memorial: a Catholic priest was arrested on this day in 1941, and later died after volunteering to take the place of another prisoner sentenced to death by starvation. After several prisoners died, Kolbe was executed by an injection of carbolic acid. Read more about this self-sacrificing man here.

A tweet from Dr. Cobb, who’s finally back home in Manchester.  The village is pissed, and rightly so!

49 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I have no idea why antisemitism seems to be increasing so rapidly in the UK compared to, say, the U.S. (where it’s also increasing)

    It is mass migration from Muslim countries. In the UK, Muslims are now up to ~ 7% of the population, whereas in the US it is only ~ 1.1%. (Mass migration to the US had tended to be from central and south America, which is Christian rather than Muslim; recent mass migration to Europe has been predominantly Muslim.)

    Further, Muslim migrants to the US have tended to come from the more secular and educated sectors of the Muslim world, whereas migrants to the UK have tended to come from poorer, less-educated and more-religious populations.

    … and of course there are big taboos on discussing whether the UK benefits from mass migration.

    Reply

    1. No it isn’t. It is because reported antisemitism was practically zero in the UK last year (in a population of 60 million) and now it’s some, mostly because of October 7th.

      Reply

      1. You’re right that there has been a massive increase since Oct 7, but it was a growing problem long before that (and your explanation would not explain any difference between the US and the UK, which is what Jerry asked about).

        Since well before Oct 7 it had become standard, in the UK, for Jewish schools and synagogues to have private security guards. E.g. this is from 2020: “The Home Office has granted the Community Security Trust (CST) £14 million for security measures … The grant will cover protective security for the next financial year at Jewish institutions such as schools and synagogues.”

        And, yes, it is indeed British Muslims who are overwhelmingly the culprits (though the media, of course, instead tries to blame the tiny and largely-mythical “far right”).

        Reply

        1. PS Here is a pretty gob-smacking article from Quillette saying that, in Germany, any antisemitic crime that was unsolved was, by default, recorded as being perpetrated by the “far right”.

          Hence, government statistics, routinely trotted out by the media, gave the entirely false impression that antisemitism came mostly from the “far right” when the reality is that it came largely from Muslim immigrants.

          [Sorry, I’m likely violating Da Roolz, I’ll fall silent …]

          Reply

          1. Can’t Islamist extremists be labeled “far-right”? They share many of the same traits: fundamentalism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, etc. I don’t know how else to label them on the left to right spectrum.

      2. [raises hand diffidently, looks around nervously, checks over shoulder before speaking]: “Erm…, Sir, how can October 7 be the cause of ‘some’ spark in antisemitism in Britain? Unless you mean that the failure of the Freedom Fighters to reach Tel Aviv was down to the perfidious Jews who fought back instead of converting or dying or whatever Allah meant for them to do?”

        Reply

        1. Leslie, good day, from snow covered Nova Scotia.
          I think the antisemitism has always been present in the Uk, lots of it! My father was rabidly antisemitic before I realised what he was referring to, too young to understand. We argued considerably throughout his life and he never changed and never ever explained to my satisfaction his reasoning for his belief that the Jews were responsible for “everything” It could have been a generation thing and very strange as we had strong Jewish family connections.
          Needless to say I have never ever been antisemitic and always admired Israel as a true beacon of civilisation and they turned the desert green!

          Reply

    2. COEL. You are absolutely correct. I have been preaching for years about the influx of this fifth column and few want to either accept the problem exists let alone address it. It is further compounded by idiots like Justin Welby (Archbishop of Canterbury) and Charlie the third who think that all faith is good.
      Islam is not good, any of its sects and I reiterate, I am Islamophobic, the fear is real!

      Reply

      1. ‘Islamphobic’ is a cunningly calibrated made up term intended to smear valid criticism of a belief system and way of life antithetical to Western values. It is terrifying to see how rapidly Islam has grown in Europe. It is a fifth column, a clear and present danger granted an apparent free pass from the majority of politicians and media. I am not optimistic, the fear is not only real, it is justified.

        Reply

  2. On this day:
    1600 – On his way to be burned at the stake for heresy, at Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, the philosopher Giordano Bruno has a wooden vise put on his tongue to prevent him continuing to speak.

    1753 – In Sweden February 17 is followed by March 1 as the country moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

    1801 – United States presidential election: A tie in the Electoral College between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

    1863 – A group of citizens of Geneva found an International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which later became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

    1864 – American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

    1867 – The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.

    1913 – The Armory Show opens in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.

    1919 – The Ukrainian People’s Republic asks the Entente and the United States for help fighting the Bolsheviks.

    1949 – Chaim Weizmann begins his term as the first President of Israel.

    1959 – Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2: The first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

    1964 – In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.

    1965 – Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the crewed Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the “Sea of Tranquility” would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

    1969 – American aquanaut Berry L. Cannon dies of carbon dioxide poisoning while attempting to repair a leak in the SEALAB III underwater habitat. The SEALAB project was subsequently abandoned.

    1972 – Cumulative sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceed those of the Ford Model T.

    1974 – Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House in a stolen helicopter.

    1980 – First winter ascent of Mount Everest by Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy.

    1996 – In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

    1996 – NASA’s Discovery Program begins as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifts off on the first mission ever to orbit and land on an asteroid, 433 Eros.

    2008 – Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.

    2011 – Arab Spring: Libyan protests against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime begin.

    Births:
    1758 – John Pinkerton, Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist and historian (d. 1826).

    1781 – René Laennec, French physician, invented the stethoscope (d. 1826).

    1821 – Lola Montez, Irish-American actress and dancer (d. 1861).

    1848 – Louisa Lawson, Australian poet and publisher (d. 1920).

    1864 – Banjo Paterson, Australian journalist, author, and poet (d. 1941).

    1877 – Isabelle Eberhardt, Swiss explorer and author (d. 1904).

    1877 – André Maginot, French sergeant and politician (d. 1932).

    1879 – Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American educational reformer, social activist and author (d. 1958). [She strongly supported women’s rights, racial equality, and lifelong education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in the United States.]

    1881 – Mary Carson Breckinridge, American nurse midwife, founded Frontier Nursing Service (d. 1965).

    1888 – Otto Stern, German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1969).

    1890 – Ronald Fisher, English-Australian statistician, biologist, and geneticist (d. 1962).

    1905 – Rózsa Péter, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1977). [Best known as the “founding mother of recursion theory”.]

    1918 – Jacqueline Ferrand, French mathematician (d. 2014).

    1920 – Annie Castor, American disability and communication disorder advocate (d. 2020).

    1921 – Duane Gish, American biochemist and academic (d. 2013). [His best-known work, Evolution: The Fossils Say No!, published in 1972, has been widely accepted by creationists as an authoritative reference. LOL!]

    1923 – Rena Stewart, British translator, journalist, and BBC World Service senior duty editor (d. 2023). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1929 – Patricia Routledge, English actress and singer.

    1930 – Ruth Rendell, English author (d. 2015).

    1934 – Sir Alan Bates, English actor (d. 2003). [While playing Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew with the RSC in the ’70s he broke the 4th wall to tell a noisy couple in the audiences to “shut up or fuck off!” The cast was very divided on his actions.]

    1934 – Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage), Australian comedian, actor, and author. [Dad had a memorable taxi ride around London with Humphries in character as (the then Auntie) Edna during the filming of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.]

    1940 – Gene Pitney, American singer-songwriter (d. 2006).

    1942 – Huey P. Newton, American activist, co-founded the Black Panther Party (d. 1989).

    1962 – Lou Diamond Phillips, American actor and director.

    1963 – Larry the Cable Guy, American comedian and voice actor.

    1963 – Alison Hargreaves, English mountaineer (d. 1995).

    1963 – Michael Jordan, American basketball player, executive, and businessman.

    1965 – Michael Bay, American director and producer.

    1972 – Billie Joe Armstrong, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, and producer.

    1972 – Taylor Hawkins, American singer-songwriter and drummer (d. 2022).

    1978 – Rory Kinnear, English actor and playwright.

    1989 – Rebecca Adlington, English swimmer.

    1991 – Ed Sheeran, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

    A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow. (Ovid):
    1673 – Molière, French actor and playwright (b. 1622).

    1680 – Jan Swammerdam, Dutch biologist, zoologist, and entomologist (b. 1637).

    1841 – Ferdinando Carulli, Italian guitarist and composer (b. 1770).

    1849 – María de las Mercedes Barbudo, Puerto Rican political activist, the first woman Independentista in the island (b. 1773).

    1856 – Heinrich Heine, German journalist and poet (b. 1797). [Best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.]

    1909 – Geronimo, American tribal leader (b. 1829).

    1912 – Edgar Evans, Welsh sailor and explorer (b. 1876). [A member of the “Polar Party” in Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole in 1911–1912.]

    1970 – Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Ukrainian-Israeli novelist, short story writer, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888).

    1982 – Thelonious Monk, American pianist and composer (b. 1917).

    1982 – Lee Strasberg, American actor and director (b. 1901).

    2009 – Conchita Cintrón, Chilean bullfighter and journalist (b. 1922). [Orson Welles said, “Her record stands as a rebuke to every man of us who has ever maintained that a woman must lose something of her femininity if she seeks to compete with men”.]

    2012 – Michael Davis, American singer-songwriter and bass player (b. 1943). [Best known as a member of the MC5.]

    2013 – Richard Briers, English actor (b. 1934).

    2021 – Rush Limbaugh, American talk show host and author (b. 1951).

    Reply

    1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from the excellent The Attagirls on X/Twitter]

      Rena Stewart (born on this day in 1923, died 11 November, 2023) was an Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) sergeant at Bletchley Park, translator of Hitler’s will and later, the first woman to become a senior duty editor for the BBC World Service.

      Graduating from St Andrew’s in 1943 where she had studied French and German, Rena was desperate not to become a teacher – she said she’d rather scrub floors – so she volunteered for war service with the ATS, the women’s branch of the British Army. Her language skills made her an obvious choice for Bletchley Park.

      After training described as tedious, Rena was assigned to a unit called The German Book Room. She was promoted to lance corporal on arrival – privates were not allowed to handle secret documents – and sergeant soon after, working long shifts typing decrypts in German from Morse code and turning them into little booklets for the Intelligence Corps to analyse.

      “We were never told where our work went after us and we didn’t ask because we knew we wouldn’t be told. We did sense at the time how important Bletchley was to Britain winning the war. That was drummed into us; that if we spilt the beans in any way we were endangering people’s lives.”

      Living conditions at Bletchley Park were spartan and the women were supervised by Senior Commander Kemp, a woman who put them through military exercises, made them scrub floors and founded ‘the Purity Patrol’, to prevent any, erm, entanglements with male colleagues on the dark road leading up to the camp.

      Rena didn’t lack male attention but turned down a proposal. “He was very keen on getting married but I was too ambitious. I thought I could do rather better in the newsroom than as a housewife. In the 1940s and 1950s, it was dreadful being a housewife. Hardly anybody had a washing machine. That wasn’t for me, so I broke it off.”

      After VE Day, Rena was sent with the Intelligence Corps to Bad Nenndorf in Germany, a British-run POW camp with an 8ft barbed wire fence, where she translated the statements made by captured Nazi intelligence officers. In January 1946, she and her colleague Margery were given a top-secret task: to translate Hitler’s will. This had been spirited out of the bunker where he committed suicide.

      Returning to the UK, Rena had difficulty finding a job. She wanted to work for the BBC as a journalist but her Bletchley Park work was an official secret and “There was this idea that you couldn’t have a woman writing about disasters — earthquakes etc. What rubbish! The idea that I couldn’t write about disasters without bursting into tears? Nonsense!” Eventually, she was able to find a post as a clerk at the BBC World Service. She went on to help the service to broadcast Shakespeare to East Germany and Ibsen to West Germany, and to monitor Soviet propaganda from Radio Moscow.

      Eventually Rena became the first woman senior duty editor at the BBC World Service. Reaction was mixed. The only woman present at one meeting in the editor’s office, she recalled the editor saying: “Good morning, gentlemen.” She replied, “Ken, I’m not a gentleman”, so he said: “Good morning, gentle­men and Rena.”

      Rena died on 11 November, 2023, aged 100. She reflected: “My greatest achievement has been getting people to recognise that a woman can be as good a journalist as a man. I’d like to be remembered as a good journalist.”

      https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1758755658688524440

      Reply

      2. Never even occurred to me that Hitler would have a will. Or that it a Brittish woman would end up translating it. Now I’m wondering what was in it…

        Reply

  3. Something I don’t understand: Why did Putin treat Tucker C poorly when he was only there to make him look good?

    Reply

    1. We can accept that Putin was telling the truth: The man does like to spar. He may have wanted an unscripted, long-form debate to demonstrate his verbal facility, memory, and quick thinking. Can you imagine either Biden or Trump coming off well in such a setting? One knock against him from the West is the claim that his long appearances are all staged. They are, to a degree. But the man is much quicker on his feet and does have a better grasp on history than either of his US counterparts, and he wanted to show that. We can take exception to his version of history—particularly the lessons he draws from it—but much of that history was widely accepted in Russia long before Putin, and core elements can be found even in Cold War-era Western texts.

      Of course, we can be cynical and say “He wants us to believe that he wanted . . .” The times that Carlson interrupted him did not suggest an interlocuter who wanted to be challenged, but he also could have disrespected Carlson for backing down. My own take: Putin’s forthcoming about much that he says—the problem is in sorting that out from the times he lies and deceives. Disbelieving everything he says is not as bad as trusting everything, but each is a mistake. Distinguishing the two is what makes diplomacy both interesting and difficult.

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      1. It may be like you say but as a Plan A for coming across well, I don’t see why you would play three-dimensional ju jitsu instead of simply playing along with the sympathetic Carlson. He seems not to have cared how he came across to Americans – republicans – who TC was targeting (who can kill support for Ukraine).

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        1. As Putin has delivered the same message and material to Russian audiences, I think you are correct in that he didn’t care how the message came across to Americans. It wasn’t packaged to please. I take it that the man largely believes what he is saying, aside from the “denazification” part.

          I’m not in the Carlson-bashing crowd on this interview, as I believe it important for Americans to know what adversaries are thinking, and hearing it straight from Putin rather than laundered through the press has value. For those who only want to hear from the like-minded, we have plenty of universities and media outlets in which they can make their comfortable homes.

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  4. The news shocked world leaders, although Western officials and many of Mr. Navalny’s supporters expressed skepticism about the Russian authorities’ statements.

    One person who has said not a word about the death of Alexei Navalny is Donald Trump, despite requests for comment from the major news outlets. I guess Trump prefers to express his congratulations on Navalny’s death to Vladimir Putin in private — like the mafiosi congratulating Barzini at the funeral of don Vito Corleone.

    Navalny was cut from the same cloth as Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. His death is a great loss to Russia and to the world. His outliving Putin was the best hope Russia had of escaping its current fate as a kleptocratic autocracy.

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    1. Everything that I’ve heard about Navalny illustrates that he was a very decent and good man. How different things would be if he rose to power!

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    2. I was wondering the same thing. And there has hitherto been absolutely NADA that he hadn’t shot off his big orange gob about🙈

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  5. Shortly before Navalny died there was video of him laughing and joking. Even the prosecutor was smiling. They had done everything to him and still he was unbroken. The powers that be could not allow that to continue.

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  6. In comments on the AOC video clip, it’s claimed — I haven’t checked — that the bill does _not_ in fact provide for $10B of humanitarian aid to Gaza: it provides for $10B of humanitarian aid in total, mentions Ukraine and Gaza as examples of places it could go, and says nothing about how much is to go where or how it should get there.

    If that’s right, then I think AOC is at least kinda right about this. UNRWA may be full of Hamas sympathizers (I don’t know what the current state of the evidence is on just how full) but it is also, at the moment, the main way of getting aid to Palestinians who are in sore need of it. A bill that says “no aid via UNRWA” and doesn’t have specific provisions for getting aid to Gaza by other means is, in fact, leaving Palestinians in a pretty terrible situation.

    (Whether that means that not voting for the bill is a good idea is a different question. Maybe something that does better isn’t politically possible right now, and those Palestinians are just screwed, and by refusing to vote for the bill AOC will just ensure that Ukrainians get screwed too. And of course maybe the people saying the bill doesn’t give $10B of aid to Gaza are wrong. But _if_ what they’re saying is right, then I think the criticism along the lines of “AOC just wants us to send money to Hamas” is unfair.)

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  7. “Um, I’d like to apply for a ceasefire…”

    When in doubt, mockery works like a charm. I usually bristle at “wrong side of history”, but in this case, what else would it be called?

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    1. I sent the link in an email to my wife’s family with this comment: “If Saturday Night Live were to parody supporters of Hamas…” — “Hilarious. But right on the mark.”

      Though they’re pretty liberal, the family tends not to get into political discussions. But I think they’ll find it hard to resist the subject line, “Hello. I’d like to apply for a ceasefire.”

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      1. I’d restrain from follow up but I’m just getting into Carl Schmitt’s writing in the past few months, and just today in fact found The Concept of the Political (which I just started):

        Schmitt develops ideas such as “political” as being related to defending a way of life from “enemy”. Whose way of life? Individuals who identify as “friend”. Or:

        The friend/enemy distinction

        How do these groups avoid or resolve conflict? That is the big question, and is the arena of political warfare. Readers here guided by PCC(E) usually understand the idea is to effectively debate and weigh all impersonally and let the chips fall where they may.

        Lurking in that process is a sorting of friend from enemy – this is clear to me, but just wanted to highlight that as – IMHO – the origin of serious problems.

        Cheers

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        1. I’m probably not as well read about politics as you are, but to me “politics” is everything people do in groups. It’s not just about voting in elections, or writing to one’s representatives, or about discussing what this or that politician has said or done. And it’s not just about local or global governance. To me it’s about living, which includes cooperating, competing, and compromising with our fellow human beings.

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        2. Small typo – didn’t mean for italics to run the whole sentence – just “resolve” and “conflict” – it sounds like I’m dropping some profound insight, but was not.

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  9. The news of the day is awful, as usual.

    In Toronto: “A Jewish doctor was driving through, and they circled her car demanding she honk, not letting her drive until she did. Nearby cops refused to help her.”

    This is just one antisemitic incident among many, but it’s symptomatic of something truly frightening. When the police refuse to help, there is nothing to stop a pogrom from happening. My late maternal grandmother (1898-1967), born in Odessa, spoke little of “Russia” (she called it Russia, but it was Ukraine) except to say that one day, (most likely) in 1905 when she was seven years old, she and her mother emerged from their basement apartment to discover that “the snow was red with blood.” It was a pogrom, and the police were part of it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odessa_pogroms

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    1. I hadn’t seen this specific incident outside the hospital reported locally. The Toronto Police have been attentive to concerns about antisemitism, being thanked publicly by representatives of the Jewish community.

      I have asked around for more information.

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      1. I’d love to hear that this incident didn’t happen and that the police are doing their (difficult) job of protecting the public from mayhem.

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  10. You really have to see video of Dante King’s remarks, the smarmy tone of voice that makes his racism sound so, so, …decent. No H. Rapp Brown he.

    Pace our host, I’m not sure that in our goal to be colour-blind, we can’t get beyond seeing race, not like sex. We can’t not see sex. We are wired to consider whether any adult we meet is a potential mating prospect. For most of us, if it’s the same sex, the algorithm says No and goes down some other direction (like Friend, Foe, Trader, or Sexual Competitor). If the opposite, it has to do a different evaluation. In almost all modern situations, the response has to be to suppress instantly and fully any expression of sexual interest or one will get one’s ass fired and shamed on social media. But that is something we consciously have to do only in the company of the opposite sex. We don’t have to do it with the same sex. So we have to always “see” sex instantly, lest we make a fatal unguarded mistake. And, additionally, women always have to “see” men because men are the sex that rapes them.

    With race I don’t think we do. Sure there are some situations where race goes into the hopper along with other markers of menacing behaviour, in order to prime the flight response. But if there’s been any intermarriage, the race of a lot of people in a large city isn’t readily seeable anyway. Social cues may operate before race filters in. If I know someone is a DEI officer I’m agin’ her even before I find out she is black. If I page a surgeon on-call I don’t care if his voice on the phone has a West Indian lilt. After all, if I ran into Barack Obama or Kamala Harris on the subway, I’m not sure I’d see either of them as black. I accept they are because the Democratic Party says they are and ran them as candidates because they were and they say things that only black people would say. But I don’t really see them.

    Where it will be necessary to re-tune my antenna to see race more sharply will be if DEI is not quickly dislodged from safety-critical professions and the four stripes on the pilot’s shoulder boards no longer tell me he survived a brutally competitive merit process.

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    1. That was exactly the example that I was thinking of! I remember watching that TV programme when it was first broadcast – Cleese and Palin were so much better informed and reasonable than Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark (whose name has escaped me, if I ever knew it).

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    1. In that abbreviated one-on-one segment with Bill Maher, Coleman Hughes goes on to mention the people who cave to the heckling 5% of his audiences (like at his TED Talk).

      According to Hughes, they say that he makes them feel unsafe. Addressing Maher’s audience, Hughes calmly notes, “I don’t know how you are receiving me in this room, but I’m pretty mild.”

      His comment doesn’t refer to the contentious subject of racism and the substantial progress made against racism. It refers to his demeanor, which is extremely measured and thoughtful.

      If you don’t subscribe to Max (HBO), you can see more of Coleman Hughes in the “Overtime” segment on YouTube of that February 9th episode of Real Time with Bill Maher:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ntTzDmJ6Mk&list=PLABD1FBE909F66018&index=3

      (Maher often annoys me, but some of his guests can rarely, if ever, be seen on other platforms.)

      You can also hear an extended interview with Coleman Hughes on a recent Sam Harris podcast (February 11):
      https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/353-race-reason

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  13. Colourblind! when in the act of looking or observing is it not being aware of the pitfalls of the heuristic traps and bias conditioning, cultural or otherwise that can make a difference. Learning to recognize, if it is not a learned reasoned behaviour and to avoid silly intrapment to a lazy mind is where mistakes are made.
    As I’ve just been reminded, truth is sometimes not about being right but about trying to understand.
    Colour is a quality not a right or wrong but
    apologies required as I feel most of us know this.

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