Monday: Hili dialogue

February 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

That dreaded day is here again: it’s the top o’ the work week: Monday February 26, 2024, and National Pistachio Day, one of the Big Three of Nuts (cashew, macademia, and pistachio), and I happen to have a bag right here!

It’s also Levi Strauss Day, honoring the man born on this day in 1829. Note that Strauss was Jewish, so every goy wearing blue jeans is guilty of cultural appropriation. It’s also Thermos Bottle Day (why I don’t know), and, in Azerbaijan, the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Khojaly Massacre, a slaughter that took place in 1992.

Here are the world’s oldest known Levis (in mint condition) and worth about $80,000. Moreover, the owner is known. Watch the short video:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In another “dog bites man” story, Trump has put his metatarsals further down his gullet with a remark about his black supporters, which probably won’t hurt him because he doesn’t have many anyway.

Donald Trump’s comments asserting that Black voters were more drawn to him after his multiple indictments on criminal charges drew sharp rebukes over the weekend from his Republican challenger for the presidential nomination, civil rights activists and others.

Trump on Friday likened his 91 criminal charges in four separate criminal cases to discrimination faced by Black Americans and said that they had come to “embrace” his mug shots. He was speaking to a Black conservative group in South Carolina before the state’s primary election, which he went on to win.

“And then I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump said. “They actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

Then Reuters can’t help but put a correction in the piece:

Trump’s legal challenges, including federal charges over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents, among other state charges and civil lawsuits, differ greatly from the historic inequities Black Americans have experienced in the criminal justice system.

“It’s disgusting,” former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who has been the target of racist comments from Trump and vowed to keep challenging him for the Republican nomination, told reporters on Saturday.

She reiterated her argument that Trump will again lose the 2024 general election against U.S. President Joe Biden if he secures the party’s nomination. “This is a huge warning sign,” she said.

I’m not so sure that Trump was comparing his travails with those of black Americans as opposed to insinuating that the more “criminal” he appears, the more that would resonate with blacks. And that’s about as racist as you can get.  But it doesn’t matter, does it? There’s nothing he can do save experience an infarction or aneurysm to lose the Presidency. (At least that what I tell myself when I’m depressed about the election.)

*In a spectacularly misguided editorial from the entire NYT editorial board, the paper is calling for a “humanitarian cease-fire” in Gaza, by which it means a total and permanent cessation of hostilities. They completely leave out the fact that Hamas has to surrender, that Hamas is demanding the release of thousands of terrorists from Israeli jails, that the Israeli people don’t want a cease-fire,  that a revamped Palestinian Authority will still be a corrupt Palestinian authority, that most Palestinians support the aims and actions of Hamas, and that Netanyahu has no support among Israelis. Their claim is that the main obstacle to peace is Netanyahu, when in fact he’s conducting the war and making peace on the advice of his war cabinet (two of the three, excluding Bibi, are left wing), and of course the IDF has considerable input into the conduct of the war.

Since the war began, the two million people who live in Gaza have been pounded by Israeli bombardment. More than 29,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian figures; more than half of Gaza’s homes and buildings have been destroyed, and the United Nations has raised the alarm that, cut off from supplies of food, Gazans are at risk of starvation. The death toll could soon rise sharply if Israel carries out a ground invasion of Rafah, a city in the far south of Gaza, where the military believes 10,000 Hamas fighters remain, and to which a million civilians have fled.

Yet every U.S. effort to rein in the Israeli assault has been rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or blocked by unacceptable demands from Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu, in particular, has been more concerned about satisfying the far-right and religious coalition partners who keep him in power. On Friday he released a position paper for postwar Gaza that allows for indefinite military control by Israel, playing to his base of supporters while angering Palestinians.

The war cabinet, with two leftists plus right-wing Bibi, is who is making the decisions about negotiating and the war. Note that onlly Netanyahu is mentioned. The mush goes on:

This complicates the work of the United States and moderate Arab states, which are trying to engineer a plan for “after Gaza” — a crucial step in making sure that Gaza has a chance at stability once the fighting stops. Though no details have been made public, the plan, which is not part of the proposed Security Council resolution, calls for international help in the reconstruction of the devastated Gaza Strip, the formation of a functional Hamas-free government in the West Bank and Gaza, the normalization of Israeli relations with Saudi Arabia, and a road map toward a demilitarized state for the Palestinians.

The U.S. wants a “revised” Palestinian Authority to be in charge. That’s a worthless idea. Better to create a new government from scratch than try to retool one that is manifestly terror-loving and corrupt.  But wait! There’s more!

[Biden] could make clear that Israelis face a stark choice — an endless war that would only create more Hamas-like militants and turn more Americans against Israel, or the plan for “after Gaza” proposed by the Americans and Arabs, one that includes international financing for the rehabilitation of Gaza and peace with Saudi Arabia.

Is there a strict deadline for the war? Notice that it’s an urban war with Hamas (no mention that they need to surrender!), and is there going to be a Palestinian state (with most Palestinians on the side of Hamas) rubbing up against an Israeli one? Will the NY Times favor the release of 9,000 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails? Will they favor the immediate release of ALL hostages? But a bit more:

Speaking directly to Israelis may prove to be more fruitful than speaking to Mr. Netanyahu, who has alienated himself from the Biden administration and has become an obstacle to any kind of lasting peace.

If Biden read this NYT op-ed to the Israelis, most of them would laugh in his face. They want Hamas to surrender in toto, they don’t want the PA to be in charge of Gaza, they want the butchers of Hamas prosecuted for war crimes, they want all the hostages freed now (not just a few dribbled out), they don’t want thousands of terrorists released from Israeli jails to start up their attacks again (notice that this, a demand from Hamas, isn’t mentioned in the article), and they don’t want Jew-hating Palestinians (most Palestinians) living right next door to them in a state that isn’t totally disarmed.  The whole op-ed reads as if it came from the addlepated Tom Friedman.

After perusing this garbage, one reader wrote me asking, “What the hell are they thinking?” My response: “They want the terrorists to take over Gaza.”

*Apparently Netanyahu isn’t listening to the sage advice of the Good Gray Times. The Wall Street Journal lays out what his plans are at the moment in a piece called “Israel’s Netanyahu won’t agree to hostage deal until Hamas backs down on demands.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he won’t agree to a deal to free the remaining hostages held in Gaza until Hamas yields on its demands, and that Israel will press ahead with a campaign to defeat the militant group’s remaining battalions in the southernmost reaches of the strip.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Netanyahu said Israel’s military would have to invade Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, regardless of any deal to free some of the 130 remaining hostages who were seized from Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7. Israel’s total victory over the group was in reach, he said, and once the operation there begins, the most intense phase of the war “would be weeks away from completion.”

Israel has come under intense pressure internationally to halt its plans to move into Rafah because of the large number of civilians who have sought shelter there under already difficult humanitarian conditions. Officials in President Biden’s administration have said they don’t want Israel’s military to begin operations before it establishes a clear plan to ensure the safety of civilians. Rafah now shelters more than a million displaced Palestinians.

Israeli, American, Qatari and Egyptian officials met in Paris on Saturday to create a new framework for a deal to release hostages, or their bodies, and establish a temporary cease-fire. The negotiators agreed to an outline of a hostage deal, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN.

An Israeli team began working on the technical details with Egyptian and Qatari officials in Doha on Sunday, according to Egyptian officials.

“We hope that in the coming days we can drive to a point where there is actually a firm and final agreement on this issue but we will have to wait and see,” Sullivan said. He added that Israel had yet to present the Biden administration with its plans for Rafah.

Rafah is the key to defeating Hamas, and there is a civilian exit route now. Those civilians staying there either want to or are impeded from leaving by Hamas, neither of which is Israel’s doing. Those who are desperate to keep Israel from taking Rafah are the same people who want Israel to lose the war.

*A few days ago I reported on how the Supreme Court had okayed a Northern Virginia magnet school’s procedure for diversifying its student body. Now the WaPo describes how, as I predicted, the same policy could be used to increase racial diversity in colleges.

When the Supreme Court allowed an elite magnet school in Northern Virginia to continue using a new system for admissions aimed at diversifying its student body last week, other schools were watching.

Across the country, districts have been unsettled by the makeup of their top academic programs, especially scant numbers of Black and Hispanic students, and many have implemented new admissions systems. But a question loomed: Would this be legal given the Supreme Court’s decisions, including its ruling last year outlawing affirmative action for higher education?

Now schools may have something of a road map: Taking race into account is verboten, but consideration of neighborhood, socioeconomics and other factors might be all right.

“It’s a huge relief,” said Halley Potter, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which advocates for school integration policies. “It means that districts around the country can continue to use a full set of tools around socioeconomics to create diverse school environments.”

This approach also may represent the future for colleges and universities, as they hunt alternative routes to building diverse classes following the high court affirmative action ruling.

But this seems a bit problematic, as well as deeply dubious:

“If you’re going to have a true meritocracy — finding the most talented students — you have to consider not only their test scores and academic achievement, but also what hurdles they’ve had to overcome in life,” said Kahlenberg, an expert witness on behalf of the group that successfully challenged race-based affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. “It’s more meritocratic to consider socioeconomics than to simply ignore the realities of the way economic class impacts opportunity.”

What I said on Wednesday was this:

This is the future of American secondary and higher education, using proxies for race without considering race. And it’s perfectly legal according to the Supreme Court. The issue that remains is the certainty that “T.J.”, as we used to call the school, will undoubtedly decline in average student performance, which is why parents opposed it. If you don’t care whether there should be “elite” schools—and many people don’t—then you have no reason to oppose such changes.

You read it here first!

“All those universities, they want to promote diversity, but they also don’t want to be the defendant in that future case,” said Sonja Starr, a law professor at the University of Chicago who closely followed the Virginia case.

*The Harvard Crimson reports that that once-august university is now considering a policy of institutional neutrality, similar to Chicago’s Kalven Principles.

Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 is expected to announce a working group that will consider a policy of institutional neutrality, a move that comes just months after the University became embroiled in controversy over its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

A formal stance of neutrality, in which Harvard would refrain from making political statements as an institution, would be a marked shift from the University’s current approach to politics. It would also, in theory, help the University avoid the pressure it’s faced in the past to take political positions on contentious issues — such as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Eric S. Maskin ’72, a University Professor, told The Crimson that Garber intends to release a public statement about institutional neutrality. Former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier and another person familiar with the decision both confirmed the announcement would entail the creation of a working group on the policy.

Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain confirmed the University’s plans in a statement to The Crimson.

“Having heard growing discussion and interest across the community, the University is planning a process to engage community members on their views and considerations related to institutional neutrality,” Swain wrote.

Though no formal announcement has been made yet, Flier suggested it had been in the works for some time.

But even the policy’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that its implementation would require a significant conceptual lift — one that Harvard’s upcoming working group will have to consider.

Institutional neutrality requires serious consideration of where Harvard should choose to set its own boundaries: When Harvard is itself implicated in politics, how should it weigh in? Where does it draw the line between condemning harmful and hateful speech — like an antisemitic image posted by two student groups — and taking a stance of its own?

Well, good for Harvard; they really do need this, and it was one of the “ways” in Steve Pinker’s “Fivefold Way” to cure Harvard. (This would make only half a dozen American universities that have adopted institutional neutrality.) But really, it isn’t that hard to implement that stand: just do what the University of Chicago does. You just have to ensure that the University takes no official stands on political, ideological, or moral issues save those connected closely to the university’s mission.  It’s easy to put an enforcement procedure in place.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  Hili’s kvetching because she didn’t get enough beef.

Hili: This is sadism.
A: What is sadism?
Hili: To give a cat such a tiny piece of fresh beef.
In Polish:
Hili: To jest sadyzm.
Ja: Co jest sadyzmem?
Hili: Dawanie kotu tak małego kawałka świeżej wołowiny.

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

From Cole and Marmalade. It’s also elsewhere, but I don’t know if it’s real.  Whaddya think?

From Facebook, a clever idea except that these are adult chickens, not humans:

From Merilee:

Masih addresses both Iranian and Ukrainian dissidents:

Google Gemini is intolerably woke:

From my feed. I love crows and other corvids!

From Cate: an answer by Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf to the question posed:

From Malcolm; a leopard spotted (pardon the pun) by a bush pilot:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a mass shooting of Sonderkommando from Auschwitz. Read about this doomed group of Jews here.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a bizarre flower (the genus is parasitic):

. . . and The Impossible Swallow!

32 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. AI:

    The new thing is to query AI (in particular Gemini) in a “who is worse” battle using Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc.

    Check out eXtwitter. Nate Silver confirmed a result with Elon Musk v. Hitler ; Abigail Shrier has a v. Mao.

    Hilarity ensues!

    (… that’s old TV Guide-style dark humor, in case… never mind.)

    1. I just asked Windows Copilot (which has a heading that says “Ask me anything”) who was worse, Elon Musk or Adolph Hitler. It responded, “I’m sorry, but I can’t engage in this conversation.”

      Boo!

      1. Well played, Muckrosoft – well played.

        … I accidentally misspelled Microsoft but figured “meh”.

        1. HA!

          The heading should read, “Ask me lots of things, but not just anything, ‘cuz there’s just some things my masters won’t let me virtually chat about.”

    2. Try the following prompts to gemini:
      Create a picture of a random person.
      Create a picture of a goat eating a tin can.
      or even Create a picture of a goat eating a candy bar
      or Create a picture of a hawk attacking a rabbit.
      on the other hand, “Create a picture of a hawk attacking a tomato” yields an actual set of pictures.

  2. On this day:
    747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the epoch (origin) of the Nabonassar Era began at noon on this date. Historians use this to establish the modern BC chronology for dating historic events.

    1606 – The Janszoon voyage of 1605–06 becomes the first European expedition to set foot on Australia, although it is mistaken as a part of New Guinea.

    1616 – Galileo Galilei is formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

    1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from exile on the island of Elba.

    1909 – Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

    1914 – HMHS Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

    1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of Congress establishing the Grand Canyon National Park. [Ten years later on this day, President Calvin Coolidge signs legislation establishing the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.]

    1935 – Adolf Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to be re-formed, violating the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

    1935 – Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of radar in the United Kingdom.

    1936 – In the February 26 Incident, young nationalist Japanese military officers assassinate multiple cabinet statesmen and start a rebellion in downtown Tokyo, which is ended 3 days later.

    1952 – Vincent Massey is sworn in as the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada.

    1966 – Apollo program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket.

    1971 – U.N. Secretary-General U Thant signs United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day.

    1980 – Egypt and Israel establish full diplomatic relations.

    1993 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injuring over a thousand people.

    1995 – The UK’s oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a rogue securities broker Nick Leeson loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

    2008 – The New York Philharmonic performs in Pyongyang, North Korea; this is the first event of its kind to take place in North Korea.

    2012 – Seventeen-year-old African-American student Trayvon Martin is shot to death by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman in an altercation in Sanford, Florida.

    2021 – A total of 279 female students aged between 10 and 17 are kidnapped by bandits in the Zamfara kidnapping in Zamfara State, Nigeria.

    Births:
    1564 – Christopher Marlowe, English playwright, poet and translator (d. 1593).

    1802 – Victor Hugo, French author, poet, and playwright (d. 1885).

    1829 – Levi Strauss, German-American fashion designer, founded Levi Strauss & Co. (d. 1902).

    1846 – Buffalo Bill, American soldier and hunter (d. 1917).

    1852 – John Harvey Kellogg, American surgeon, co-created Corn flakes (d. 1943).

    1854 – Catherine Osler, British social reformer and suffragist (d. 1924). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1893 – Wallace Fard Muhammad, American religious leader, founded the Nation of Islam (disappeared 1934).

    1893 – Dorothy Whipple, English novelist (d. 1966). [Described as the “Jane Austen of the 20th Century” by J. B. Priestley, her work enjoyed a period of great popularity between the wars.]

    1908 – Tex Avery, American animator, producer, and voice actor (d. 1980).

    1909 – Fanny Cradock, English chef, author, and critic (d. 1994). [An early TV chef, she frequently appeared with her fourth husband, Major Johnnie Cradock, who played the part of a slightly bumbling hen-pecked husband. Cradock was legally married twice; two later marriages were bigamous.]

    1914 – Robert Alda, American actor, singer, and director (d. 1986).

    1916 – Jackie Gleason, American actor and singer (d. 1987). [His first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each.]

    1922 – Margaret Leighton, English actress (d. 1976).

    1928 – Fats Domino, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2017).

    1928 – Ariel Sharon, Israeli general and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Israel (d. 2014).

    1932 – Johnny Cash, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 2003).

    1933 – James Goldsmith, French-British businessman and politician (d. 1997). [His Referendum Party paved the way for Brexit.]

    1947 – Sandie Shaw, English singer and psychotherapist.

    1950 – Helen Clark, New Zealand academic and politician, 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand.

    1954 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkish politician, 12th President of Turkey.

    1956 – Michel Houellebecq, French author, poet, screenwriter, and director.

    1958 – Susan Helms, American general, engineer, and astronaut.

    1979 – Corinne Bailey Rae, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear… What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away… We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities. (Umberto Eco):
    1548 – Lorenzino de’ Medici, Italian writer and assassin (b. 1514).

    1839 – Sybil Ludington, American figure of the American Revolutionary War (b. 1761).

    1887 – Anandi Gopal Joshi, First Indian women physician (b. 1865).

    1930 – Mary Whiton Calkins, American philosopher and psychologist (b. 1863).

    1931 – Otto Wallach, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1847).

    1951 – Sabiha Kasimati, Albanian ichthyologist (b. 1912) executed [without trial] with 21 other intellectuals.

    1994 – Bill Hicks, American comedian (b. 1961).

    2009 – Wendy Richard, English actress (b. 1943).

    2014 – Phyllis Krasilovsky, American author and academic (b. 1927).

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

      Woman of the Day suffragist Catherine Osler born OTD 1854 in Bridgwater, Somerset, [died 16 December 1924] who continued to campaign for universal suffrage after just a small proportion of women were granted the vote in February 1918.

      When the Women’s Liberal Federation held a conference in Birmingham in 1888, Catherine was asked to preside over it. Four years later, she chaired a session for the Women’s Emancipation Union in which she spoke of her ambition of getting women involved in local government and in 1903, she became the President of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society.

      It was in her blood. All of Catherine’s family were committed to the cause of votes for women. Her mother was a founding member of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society, her daughters Nellie and Dorothy were members of Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and her son Julian joined the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.

      It was of such importance to her that she put principle over party. Despite being president of the Birmingham Women’s Liberal Association, she contributed generously to the NUWSS’s Election Fighting Fund established to support Labour candidates after the Labour Party passed a resolution at its annual party conference in January 1912 to support votes for women.

      Catherine did not approve of the militant tactics adopted by the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union – some very serious crimes had been carried out in Birmingham from 1909 onwards including the destruction of Northfield Library by arson, church disturbances, window smashing and the slashing of a painting – but she deplored the state-sanctioned mistreatment of suffragettes in prison even more.

      The first cases of forcible feeding of suffragettes took place at Winson Green Gaol in September 1909 after a number of women were arrested for their protest during a visit to the city by Prime Minister Asquith, leader of the Liberal Party. Catherine resigned as President of the Birmingham Women’s Liberal Association because “Some, indeed…have endured gross insult, maltreatment, torture, death itself, in the determination to draw the world’s attention to women’s wrong… the startling campaign of the militant section…has now become as a nightmare memory, but one which will survive in history.”

      Engaged for many years in educational and philanthropic work in Birmingham and one of a number of women social reformers who for years delivered free lectures on hygiene and sanitation in the poorer parts of the city, Catherine regarded the 1918 decision to grant the vote to women over thirty who met the property qualification as “Not all that could be desired – far from it! They do not fulfil the original and unaltered demand of suffragists for ‘the vote on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men’. It leaves still unrepresented classes of women who are among the worthiest, most indispensable workers for their country and for their fellows.”

      A member of the executive committee of the NUWSS, Catherine is one of the 58 women named on the plinth of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.

      “Henceforth we may go forward, shoulder to shoulder.”

      https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1762017148958830934

  3. Our local bookstore sported a copy of the Skeptical Inquirer and spotted Jerry’s name in there.

    I used to really enjoy CSICOP in the 90’s and glad they are still operating – I wrote them an email once concerning a newspaper article touting a local business selling quack auto accessories (magnetic fuel efficiency booster that some schools actually purchased for the fleet of buses).

  4. Main thing I wonder with eliminating Hamas is how to tell who is Hamas or not.

    Also wonder to what extent Israel has or had any informants embedded in Gaza.

  5. Re: Trump’s popularity vs Biden’s among POC and young Americans.

    “President Joe Biden heads into the election year showing alarming weakness among stalwarts of the Democratic base, with Donald Trump leading among Hispanic voters and young people. One in 5 Black voters now say they’ll support a third-party candidate in November.

    …..

    Biden now claims the support of just 63% of Black voters, a precipitous decline from the 87% he carried in 2020, according to the Roper Center. He trails among Hispanic voters by 5 percentage points, 39%-34%; in 2020 he had swamped Trump among that demographic group 2 to 1, 65%-32%.”

    And:

    “Donald Trump may win more Black votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in history in the upcoming presidential election.”

    Excerpts are from:
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/01/biden-trump-poll-odds-black-hispanic-young-voters/72072111007/

    and

    https://www.newsweek.com/trump-black-votes-presidential-election-republicans-1857699

  6. I just want to repeat a recommendation from a reader a few days ago to listen to Sam Harris’ “five myths” podcast. The full 45 minutes is free to all listeners and brings some of his general thinking that we have heard earlier in his moderated discussion with Maajid Nawaz and read in their co-authored 2015 book “Islam” to specific focus on the current atrocities from Hamas in Israel. The url is

    1. If you are really pressed for time and do not have 45 minutes, the first nine (9) minute preamble is very instructive by itself before he gets to the first myth.

  7. CBS ran a piece yesterday on its weekly program, 60 Minutes, focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It had me yelling at the TV, yet again. You can watch the report here: https://www.cbsnews.com/60-minutes/

    The piece interviewed a soft-spoken health care worker lamenting how she has no resources to take care of patients. It showed the obligatory bombed out buildings in northern Gaza, implying that they were destroyed by indiscriminate shelling. (Thank you Joe Biden for introducing “indiscriminate” to the lexicon. Now that word is used any time someone wants to defame Israel.) It showed hospitals damaged by IDF actions with ill patients being carried on stretchers, as if Israel were attacking hospitals full of innocents, when we all know that some of the doctors are Hamas operatives and that the hospitals are nodes in the Hamas tunnel network. And, it featured a UNRWA worker from the U.S.—who is probably clueless about UNRWA’s complicity with Hamas—talking about how bad the situation in Gaza has become.

    Was there anything in the report about Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the atrocities it perpetrated on Israeli civilians and on civilians from other nation? Yes. It was mentioned briefly at the beginning but only barely mentioned again. The entire report portrayed Israel as a powerful monster aimed at destroying a population of innocents. Not once did the CBS reporter explicitly mention Hamas’s responsibility for the Israeli response. And not once did the reporter mention that the war would come to an end if Hamas would surrender and release the hostages.

    The media attack on Israel continues.

    1. I have a far-Left (even by Canadian standards) acquaintance who says, “Not in our name!” She eats this stuff up. She worries that it is 1938 all over again for the Jews yet she thinks the out-pouring of antisemitism that (sensibly) alarms her is stoked by far-right neo-Nazis who equally have it in for Muslims. And Netanyahu is in there somewhere, too.

      One of us is losing our mind.

      We don’t speak.

      1. It’s sad that you don’t speak.

        Most of my friends are left-leaning or even further, and their humanistic sensibilities lead them to want a cease-fire in order to end the deaths of innocents. They are, of course, heavily influenced by the media coverage in the U.S. and by today’s zeitgeist, so they find it easy to side with the left’s call for cease fire. There’s no friction.

        At least one of my friends, too, wants to blame the antisemitism on the far right. While there is antisemitism on the right, I think she’s quite wrong about the degree to which antisemitism has infiltrated and is perpetrated by the left. She’s on the left, so she comforts herself by blaming the right.

        I, too, want the dying to stop. But a unilateral cease fire will not stop it. Longer term, it will have the opposite effect.

        I’m stopping here so I don’t violate the Roolz.

        1. Norman, You might point them to the first nine minutes preamble in Sam Harris’ “five myths” podcast that I gave the link to in comment #5 above. The listener may need some preconditioning from the harris/nawaz book or video discussion, but hopefully sam’s nine minutes stands on its own.

          1. On your recommendation, Jim, I’ve cued up the Sam Harris piece for tomorrow’s trip to the gym.

        2. Quillette has a YouTube video 2/13/24 titled Left-Wing anti-Semitism Has Soviet Roots featuring Isabella Tabrovsky.

    2. Did we hear the Allies in WW2 saying, “We won’t bomb or try to take Berlin because of the civilians.”

  8. I suspect that Trump was saying, in his typically ham-fisted way, that he is being railroaded by the legal system and that black Americans can relate to that, as they, too, often have charge upon charge piled upon minor to nonexistent offenses. It’s an assertion that the system has it in for him—just like it does for black Americans.

    It matters not in the least whether you or I believe any part of this. The question is whether working-class blacks will agree. And on that part, I suspect that Trump is closer to their sensibilities about themselves than are any people gasping at his latest words. The question is whether the black working class will see a parallel with him. A gamble? Of course. But that is what he does. If it doesn’t gain traction, then he will quickly pivot.

    1. I was just in a small medical office that had a TV running, and Orange Julius was on, spouting the above. I was reading a piece in the New Yorker which someone had thankfully left there, trying to ignore him. There was a couple there, too, who didn’t seem to be impressed but weren’t saying anything either. Then the lady at the desk, who was black, came out and switched the channel, saying in so many words that she didn’t think that we should have to listen to that crap.

      So based on an N of 2, since I have a black friend who is a mason and who I know can’t stand him either, the black community is not buying that crap.

  10. At the end of WWII, nobody favored the idea of turning Germany over to a “revised” Nazi Party. The idea of turning Gaza over to a “revised” Palestinian Authority reflects a lazy worship of existing institutions, whatever they are. Reminiscent of the way the governments of John Major and George H.W. Bush kept insisting that a “revised” Yugoslavia should be propped up, somehow, even as the Yugoslav state disintegrated in the early 1990s. But the Clinton administration learned to understand the new situation in the post-Yugoslav republics, showing that US officialdom is capable of grasping changed realities, eventually. If Israel can find some opponents of Hamas in Gaza to form a local administration, perhaps the Tom Friedmans and even the Biden government will be able to take in this concept.

    1. And yet, the gears grind ahead anyway. The entire government of the Palestinian Authority and the PA’s prime minister (separately, apparently) have now resigned, presumably to clear the slate for the PA “revitalization.”

  11. Before you get all enthused over Harvard’s adoption of institutional neutrality, consider my prediction: Violations by those espousing woke views will be ignored; violations by those espousing non-woke views will be promptly condemned and penalized.

    1. Yes because the woke view will be deemed central to the university’s very mission …and non-woke views antithetical to it, like calling for the demolition of the university itself. They really can’t see it otherwise.

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