Wednesday: Hili dialogue

March 6, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Araw ng umbok” in Filipino), Wednesday, March 6, 2024, and National Oreo Day.  Live and learn: Wikipedia notes this:

Oreos are an imitation of the Hydrox chocolate cream-centered cookie introduced in 1908 [Oreos were introduced in 1912], but it outstripped Hydrox in popularity so largely that many believe Hydrox is an imitation of Oreo. Oreo has been the highest-selling cookie brand in the world since 2014

. . .  In the early 1990s, health concerns prompted Nabisco to replace the lard in the crème filling with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. This also made it possible for the bakery to become kosher-certified, a lengthy and expensive process for Nabisco.

Here’s how the world’s best-selling cookie is made:

It’s also Alamo Day, memorializing the last day of the Battle of the Alamo (March 6, 1836), National Frozen Food Day, National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day,European Day of the Righteous, commemorates those who have stood up against crimes against humanity and totalitarianism with their own moral responsibility”, and National Dentist’s Day, with the misplaced apostrophe suggesting that only one dentist is being celebrated. So I’ll nominate mine, Dr. Russell Baer, the official dentist of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team.  He goes to every game, as there’s a frightening amount of tooth loss among hockey players, and there’s even a dental clinic in the stadium.  

Here’s a picture of the Alamo I took in 2021 on my first post-pandemic trip: a BBQ trip to Texas:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the March 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Donald Tr*mp won the Republican primary in all 14 states, as expected. Poor Nikki Haley, with only Washington D. C. to her credit, is expected to announce this morning that she will withdraw as a GOP Presidential candidate. It’s now a Trump/Biden contest, and Ceiling Cat help us all if the Orange Man wins.

*Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat turned independent, announced she’ll not be running for re-election this year. How this will affect the balance of votes in the Senate is unclear.

Independent U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said on Tuesday that she will not run for reelection in the highly competitive state, which will be critical to her former Democratic Party’s chances of maintaining its narrow majority.

Sinema’s decision clears the way for an expected head-to-head contest in the November 2024 election between Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego, a former Marine veteran who served in Iraq, and Kari Lake, a far-right Republican who lost a bid for Arizona governor in 2022.

I’m betting on Gallego, which means the Senate will likely gain a full Democrat instead of a faux one.

*Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty! According to the NYT, the UN has finally, after 150 days, concluded that there are “reasonable grounds” to support the claims that some of the victims of Hamas’s October 7 butchery were women who experienced sexual violence, and that some hostages experienced similar violence.

A United Nations report released on Monday found signs that sexual violence was committed in multiple locations during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and said that some hostages being held in the Gaza Strip had also been subjected to rape and sexual torture.

From late January to early February, the United Nations deployed a team of experts to Israel and the West Bank led by Pramila Patten, the secretary general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

In their full report, the experts said they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas-led incursion into Israel, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations: the Nova music festival site and the area around it, as well as Road 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.

“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses,” a U.N. news release about the report said.

But get a load of the next paragraph (my bolding):

The U.N. report, which also cited allegations that Palestinians detained by Israel have also been sexually abused, was issued three months after The New York Times published an extensive report on sexual violence during the Hamas–led attacks, including several incidents along Road 232. Hamas leaders denied the accusations, and the U.N. report, noting the array of fighters who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks, said its experts could not determine who was responsible for the sexual assaults.

First, there is no evidence at all, except perhaps from a few comments by Hamas lovers, that any member of the IDF committed sexual assault, and there was never any before Gaza, either. Second, I’m not sure what kind of doubt the UN is casting on the situation by saying that “its experts could not determine who was responsible for the sexual assaults.” They surely can’t mean Israelis, but whether it was a Gazan civilian, a member of Hamas, or a terrorist from another group, it’s irrelevant: Palestinians sexually assaulted residents of Israel and visitors to the Nova Festival. If you want evidence about rape of Israelis, evidence that’s been around for a while, see the link above, but be warned that it’s horribly gruesome.

As the Elder of Ziyon notes about MSM and UN reports of rape (link above):

For Israel, they are quick to deny and reluctant to confirm. Extensive forensic evidence is required to verify the testimony of Jews who cannot be trusted on their own.

For Palestinians, allegations with zero evidence are published in detail and considered important enough to be included in future reports. Not a shred of skepticism is seen with the Palestinian slanders. No hint of corroborating evidence is requested or even expected.

It seems clear that if Palestinians are accused of a crime, then the UN requires  “balance” by uncirtically reporting whatever they make up.

This UN investigation does everything it can to minimize Hamas crimes, only publishing what cannot possibly be denied. But when it comes to wild accusations against the IDF, no evidence is sought or required.

*While Biden is still implying that a ceasefire deal may be in the offing, Israel says it won’t even come to the table until Hamas presents a list of all the hostages they have, living or dead. And the Times of Israel  adds that while the Hamas team remains in Cairo for negotiations (Israeli representatives have bailed), the talks appear to have “stalled.”

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says Washington supports Israel’s demand that Hamas present a list of the living hostages it is prepared to release in order to move forward with the negotiations.

Hamas has said it doesn’t know where all the hostages are, but Miller is largely dismissive of the claim.

“They took these hostages, they continue to hold them. If they continue to hold them, they must know where they are,” Miller says during a press briefing.

“If you are Israel, and you are in discussions about an agreement where you would see the return of a certain number hostages, it is a fair question to Hamas to show you that they can actually deliver on that deal, show you who those hostages are and confirm that they are alive,” the spokesman continues.

“We think that is very much a legitimate request by the State of Israel.”

I’m glad the U.S. is with Israel on this one. No talks until Hamas can account for all the hostages it took!  If it can’t, and hostage release is crucial, as it seems to be for everyone, what is the point of further negotiating? Further, Hamas is still demanding that Israel release jailed Palestinian terrorists in return for the hostages. What chutzpah! But Israel will do it, as they want those hostages.

With talks for a hostage release and truce deal in Cairo seemingly bogged down, Hamas said on Tuesday that it was keeping negotiators in Egypt at the request of mediators.

“The delegation will remain in Cairo on Tuesday for more talks, they are expected to wrap up this round later today,” a Hamas official told Reuters.

Talks have been ongoing in Cairo for two days, though Israel declined to send a delegation after Hamas refused to address key demands.

You heard that prediction here first.

*From the Torygraph via Jez: The BBC has created a unit of of “radically transparent” journalism called “BBC Verify.” that seems to have turned into a vehicle not for open, honest, journalism, but for bigotry against Israel:

Last year, the BBC announced a major new journalistic initiative with much fanfare. BBC News CEO Deborah Turness said that BBC Verify would “pull back the curtain” on the work of the organisation, producing “radical transparency”.

Unfortunately, the curtain being pulled back on BBC Verify itself only serves to highlight the consistent and consequential failures of the BBC’s reporting on the Israel-Hamas war.

. . . It was claimed by staffers that BBC Verify would be a “new team of investigative journalists with years of experience in verification work and forensic journalism”. The reality appears to be that this new brand is instead a major contributor to the damage being done to the BBC’s reputation and its commitments to impartiality and accuracy. The most recent example of this is perhaps the most damning.

Last week the BBC published a Verify-branded report on the tragic circumstances that surrounded the deaths of Palestinians at an aid convoy in Gaza. The reporting was based partially on the account of Mahmoud Awadeyah, described by the BBC as a “journalist”.

Thanks to the work of researcher David Collier, we know a lot more about the source that the BBC relied on for its supposedly forensic reporting. Awadeyah reportedly works for the Tasnim News Agency, which is associated with Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In other words, it appears that the BBC’s source is on the payroll of a country committed to the genocidal destruction of the Jewish State, one that uses its media proxies to promote its murderous ambitions.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. Mahmoud Awadeyah’s social-media timeline is filled with pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic material. BBC Verify’s source appears to be a man who celebrates the deaths of Jews. Last year, as seven lay dead after a terror attack on a synagogue in East Jerusalem, Awadeyah took to Facebook to describe his feelings: “A state of rejoicing, exuberance and mosques filled with exuberance. Revenge for the fetus”. And this apparent glee at the violent deaths of Jewish people was not an isolated occurrence.

There are other examples of the Beeb taking the word of terrorist organizations as true, and slanting their stories on the war. But the Beeb has always been biased, something that perenially disappoints me about the UK’s most prestigious news service.

*This is a first for college sports: the men’s basketball team at Dartmouth University has voted overwhelmingly to unionize. Does this mean we’ll see strikes in college sports? Yes, now that they have the right to be paid legally, though no school athlete has yet been paid over the table. They’ll be clamoring to be paid and to have their practice hours reduced. (Dartmouth isn’t exactly a top-tier basketball team.)

When the ballots were counted Tuesday, Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team had voted to unionize, 13-2, in a historic election on campus in Hanover, N.H. And while this means a ton — for college sports, for athletes’ rights, for the NCAA’s limp grip on amateurism — the process is still far from over.

By voting to unionize, the basketball players are now represented by Service Employees International Union Local 560, which already represents some workers employed by the school. For now, with at least one appeal on the immediate horizon, this enables the players to collectively bargain with Dartmouth over pay, practice hours and other working conditions. All players are in the unit, even the two who voted against unionizing. The vote came a month after Laura A. Sacks, a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board, ruled the players are employees of Dartmouth under the National Labor Relations Act and could therefore hold an election.

The school now has five business days to file an objection to the election results. If an objection is filed, the regional director will decide whether to hold a hearing or dismiss it and certify the results. If no objections are filed, the union will be certified as the players’ bargaining representative. That would have nothing to do with Sacks deeming the players employees. This specific objection would come if Dartmouth felt — or felt it could prove — the local union tried to influence the election by intimidating players into voting yes.

. . . The initial appeal process is expected to take months.

. . . . There’s widespread belief that, not too far in the future, at least some athletes at some schools will be considered employees. How that might scale across the country, or how it might affect international athletes with student visas, are only two of the giant question marks.

You know what is going to happen next. Every college team in America, barring successful legal challenges by universities, will also unionize, because if they demand pay and don’t get it, they’ll strike. I have a feeling that, if the unionization is successful, the nature of college sports will change drastically.

*The Houthis have sunk a British-owned ship full of fertilizer, and although nobody died, it’s going to cause severe pollution in the Red Sea.  The WSJ tells the story dramatically, bnt I’ll just give the details.

It was a few minutes before 11 p.m. on Feb. 18, and the Rubymar’s crew would have barely three hours to decide whether and how to save their 563-foot-long ship. Their decisions would determine whether they would live or die and if the Rubymar, slowly sinking on what was once one of the world’s busiest sea lanes—and now its most dangerous—could be saved. If it went under, it would become the first civilian ship sunk in conflict since the “tanker war” of the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq traded missiles at approaching merchant vessels.

Flying the Belizean flag, Rubymar had been en route from Saudi Arabia to Bulgaria. It numbered among the few daredevils still sailing within missile range of Houthi rebels who, from their bases on the shore of Yemen, had vowed to disrupt sea traffic unless Israel halted its military campaign in Gaza. In the months before, they had fired dozens of ballistic missiles designed by their chief ally and benefactor, Iran. But they had only critically damaged one ship: the Marlin Luanda, which had quickly been towed to safety.

The Rubymar was their best shot yet.

And they sank it:

it is the waters off Yemen where war has most imperiled the cargo ship crews whose labor consumers on every continent take for granted.

Some 80% of the world’s goods travel on the high seas, the U.N. says. The freedom for ships of all nations to carry those wares across the open oceans allowed the global economy of the 20th century to emerge, with America at its helm. In peacetime, a third of all containerships pass through the Suez Canal, connecting Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.

Along the way, they must clear the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb—“the Gate of Grief,” just 17 miles wide at its narrowest point—between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. It is that chokepoint entering the Red Sea that is the target of the Houthi movement, using hobby radars from the backs of Toyota pickups to guide cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and bombs strapped onto cheap, swarming sea drones that analysts estimate cost as low as a few thousand dollars apiece.

In return, the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian has a modern-day flotilla of warships that aim to secure the Red Sea. The U.S. has launched scores of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, each valued at several million dollars, from Ohio-class submarines or from the guided missile cruiser and destroyers alongside the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its F/A-18-led fighter jet squadrons. The British Royal Air Force has dropped laser-guided bombs from Typhoon jets at what it said were command sites outside Yemen’s principal international airport. The U.S. has also dispatched Navy helicopters into the skies above Yemen, alongside MQ-9 reaper drones, one of which the Houthis shot down with a surface-to-air missile.

That display of American firepower has run down the Navy’s missile supply. In a single day this year, it shot more Tomahawks at what it believed to be Houthi munitions depots and launch sites than it procured in all of 2023.

I don’t think we’re actually defeating ther Houthis, and if we don’t, then shipping will be imperiled for a long time. Here’s a diagram of the “Gate of Grief” from Wikipedia:

Skilla1st, CC BY-SA 4.0, , via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is gladly seeing signs of Spring:

A: What are you observing?
Hili: A ladybird who thinks it’s spring already.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Biedronce, która myśli, że to już wiosna.
And a photo of Baby Kulka:

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

From The Dodo Pet:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, who notes that the results of the new Iranian elections were the lowest since 1979: people who disliked the regime boycotted the elections.  The proportion of eligible people voting, from other sources, could have been as low as 4%.

From a mysterious tweeter, a deeply politically incorrect (but factually correct; see above) assessment of two institutions:

From Jez, three tweets showing the ex-President (not President) of the United Method church drawing a swastika on a carton of soda (seltzer) belonging to a Jewish woman. Caught in the act by a camera, he denies having done it. He can’t even draw a swastika properly!

From Malcolm (second tweet), who says, “Good analogy but not nice to the d*g.” Oy, my most hated food: Brussels sprouts!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, something I retweeted with a comment:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. Matthew says to try listening to the first one with your eyes closed:

. . . and a Geoffrey’s Cat in the wild on a trailcam:

57 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Poor Nikki Haley, with only Washington D. C. to her credit, is expected to announce this morning that she will withdraw as a GOP Presidential candidate.

    Some commenters on WEIT suggested that her strategy was to remain an understudy to Trump. Is that still possible?

      2. I’m glad she has stayed in the race. Her participation has revealed that Support for Trump among RP voters has declined pretty significantly. If you look at his Super Tuesday results he only beat Haley by 30 to 40 points in all but one state, significantly worse than both his previous performance and the typical performance of incumbents. By contrast Biden has been doing quite well. So far he has beaten Obama’s incumbent performance in nearly all states, mostly with margins of 70 to 80 percent.

        Also, a number of exit polls of Haley voters indicate an average of about 35% of them say they will not guarantee they will vote for Trump in the general election.

        The actual results in the primaries so far are also making all the polling showing Trump in a strong position look bad. And the media that have run front page headline after headline about Trump being in the lead over Biden. I’m looking at you NYT.

        FiveThirtyEight is a good example, considering their reputation as among the best. Their final averages for Trump for every primary, but one, to date have been significantly off of actual results. Off by 10 points on the low side and 34 points on the high side.

        1. Six of the super Tuesday states have open primaries. If my state had open primaries, I’d vote for Haley even though I’m not a Republican. I don’t know how numerically significant such protest votes are but the potential gives me pause when looking at Haley’s vote share.

          1. That is certainly possible, but I haven’t come across any information that suggests any significant number of DP voters are voting for Haley. It seems likely there would be a hint of that somewhere, exit polls or anomalies in percentage of eligible / registered voters vs actual election numbers, or ??.

            Also, in most primaries so far DP turnout is higher than typical while RP turnout is lower than typical, and Biden’s numbers have been very strong, with the exception of American Samoa.

            Of course, we won’t know how it really turns out until it happens.

        2. There hasn’t been an accurate poll for years it seems. It’s elections that have meaning, not polls, and for the last 4 years or so, Democrats have outperformed every poll (I’m talking every single poll). Especially since the Dobbs decision. Republicans are still in denial about how the Dobbs decision was a complete disaster for their party; fine by me. And making IVF illegal just adds to the anger.
          And regarding the large amount of support Haley received, it would be smart if Trump reached out to those people. Instead he continues to bash Haley. The guy is a political idiot. And the dumber than dumb MSM still talks about Trump “pivoting.” They don’t understand, after 8 years of covering Trump, that he cannot pivot; it’s simply not a part of his personality.

          1. Yeah. Journalism in the US these days is in a really poor state. It has long since failed its mandate. Most news outlets now are in the business of making news rather than reporting news. This is very bad in a society based on the idea of government by the people and for the people, which requires the people to be well informed to a certain minimum degree in order to work well.

  2. On this day:
    632 – The Farewell Sermon (Khutbah, Khutbatul Wada’) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

    845 – The 42 Martyrs of Amorium are killed after refusing to convert to Islam.

    1665 – The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the world’s longest-running scientific journal.

    1788 – The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.

    1820 – The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

    1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo: After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

    1857 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules 7–2 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that the Constitution does not confer citizenship on black people.

    1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

    1899 – Bayer registers “Aspirin” as a trademark.

    1943 – Goebbels in his capacity as the Gauleiter of Berlin orders all of the people imprisoned at Rosenstrasse 2-4 to be released, writing “I will commission the security police not to continue the Jewish evacuations in a systematic manner during such a critical time [a reference to the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad].” [The women protesters who achieved this decision are today’s Women of the Day, see next post below.]

    1943 – Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.

    1945 – World War II: Cologne is captured by American troops. On the same day, Operation Spring Awakening, the last major German offensive of the war, begins.

    1951 – Cold War: The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.

    1964 – Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

    1967 – Cold War: Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.

    1970 – An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.

    1975 – For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.

    1984 – In the United Kingdom, a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow signals the start of a strike that lasted almost a year and involved the majority of the country’s miners.

    1987 – The British ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes in about 90 seconds, killing 193.

    1988 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in Operation Flavius.

    2018 – Forbes names Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person, for the first time, at $112 billion net worth.

    Births:
    1475 – Michelangelo, Italian painter and sculptor (d. 1564).

    1619 – Cyrano de Bergerac, French author and playwright (d. 1655).

    1806 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English-Italian poet and translator (d. 1861).

    1826 – Annie Feray Mutrie, British painter (d. 1893).

    1834 – George du Maurier, French-English author and illustrator (d. 1896).

    1849 – Georg Luger, Austrian gun designer, designed the Luger pistol (d. 1923).

    1893 – Ella P. Stewart, pioneering Black American pharmacist (d. 1987).

    1906 – Lou Costello, American actor and comedian (d. 1959).

    1917 – Frankie Howerd, English comedian (d. 1992). [Titter ye not!]

    1921 – Leo Bretholz, Austrian-American holocaust survivor and author (d. 2014).

    1923 – Wes Montgomery, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 1968).

    1924 – Sarah Caldwell, American opera director, impresario, and stage director (d. 2006).

    1926 – Alan Greenspan, American economist and politician.

    1927 – Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2014).

    1944 – Kiri Te Kanawa, New Zealand soprano and actress.

    1944 – Mary Wilson, American singer (d. 2021).

    1946 – David Gilmour, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1947 – Dick Fosbury, American high jumper (d. 2023).

    1947 – Rob Reiner, American actor, director, producer, and activist.

    1947 – Jean Seaton, English historian and academic. [She wrote the woeful sixth volume of the official history of the BBC. Private Eye noted ‘According to this […], Blue Peter celebrated its 15th anniversary in 1979 (it was the 21st anniversary), the IRA hunger strikes took place in 1982 (1981) […] while the controversial 1980 documentary Death of a Princess is called a “Channel 4 programme” (it was ITV – Channel 4 did not exist until 1982).’]

    1966 – Alan Davies, English comedian, actor and screenwriter.

    1967 – Glenn Greenwald, American journalist and author.

    1972 – Shaquille O’Neal, American basketball player, actor, businessman, sportscaster, and rapper.

    1974 – Guy Garvey, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death. (Pearl S. Buck):
    1888 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist and poet (b. 1832).

    1895 – Camilla Collett, Norwegian novelist and activist (b. 1813).

    1900 – Gottlieb Daimler, German engineer and businessman, co-founded Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (b. 1834).

    1932 – John Philip Sousa, American conductor and composer (b. 1854).

    1935 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., American colonel, lawyer, and jurist (b. 1841).

    1948 – Alice Woodby McKane, First Black woman doctor in Savannah, Georgia (b. 1865).

    1951 – Ivor Novello, Welsh singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1893).

    1961 – George Formby, English singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1904).

    1967 – Nelson Eddy, American actor and singer (b. 1901).

    1973 – Pearl S. Buck, American novelist, essayist, short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892).

    1982 – Ayn Rand, Russian-American philosopher, author, and playwright (b. 1905).

    1984 – Martin Niemöller, German pastor and theologian (b. 1892). [Best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem “First they came …”. The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”]

    1986 – Georgia O’Keeffe, American painter (b. 1887).

    2005 – Tommy Vance, English radio host (b. 1943). [One of the first radio hosts in the United Kingdom to broadcast hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans, The Friday Rock Show. His voice was heard by millions around the world announcing the Wembley Stadium acts at Live Aid in 1985.]

    2013 – Alvin Lee, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1944).

    2016 – Nancy Reagan, American actress, 42nd First Lady of the United States (b. 1921).

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

      Women of the Day are the 67 German women who achieved something quite remarkable OTD 1943 in Berlin when they forced Goebbels to release nearly 1,800 Jewish men held by the Gestapo pending deportation to forced labour camps or death camps.

      Have you ever heard of the Rosenstrasse Protest? I hadn’t, but it was a seven day protest that began on 27 February 1943 on Rosenstraße (Rose Street) in Berlin when 67 German women who were not Jewish ignited the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews.

      The women were married to Jewish men. Their husbands had been arrested along with over 1,700 others by the Gestapo, and in the words of the German Foreign Minister, “There were demonstrations, public protests against random arrests, – first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of women, who demanded in unison ‘Give us back our men!’”

      The furious women kept up their noisy protest for a whole week in icy weather in the middle of Berlin, ignoring the Gestapo’s threats and refusing to give in unless the Nazi regime retreated. Can you imagine how terrifying that must have been?

      The German government aimed to classify intermarried Jews the same as those of the “full-Jew” status defined by the Nuremberg Laws, and murder them. It had already put severe pressure on the women to divorce their husbands – in fact, divorcing a Jew was deliberately made as easy as possible – but these women had already stood their ground and refused. About 27,744 couples were in this predicament.

      The defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad had escalated plans to implement the so-called Final Solution quickly, hence the decision of the Gestapo to arrest nearly 1,800 Jewish men who had German wives and hold them temporarily at Rosenstraße 2–4, a welfare office for the Jewish community located in central Berlin.

      Mordecai Paldiel, Holocaust survivor and former Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations programme at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust authority, said, “The Rosenstrasse protest embraced hundreds of women at the site where most of the Jewish men were interned, before being processed to the camps… who gathered every day, and facing armed SS soldiers, shouted: “Give us our husbands back!””

      Goebbels had imposed a media blackout but even he couldn’t conceal the fact that every day, hundreds and sometimes thousands of women stood outside the internment site and shouted at the top of their lungs. The Gestapo threatened to shoot them – in fact it wanted to shoot them but Goebbels held them back because he feared it would cause a loss of popular support for the Third Reich as well as drawing attention to the Final Solution – but the women simply scattered whenever they were threatened…and then came back and started shouting again.

      Elsa Holzer, one of the protesters, said: “We expected that our husbands would return home and that they wouldn’t be sent to the camps. We acted from the heart, and look what happened. If you had to calculate whether you would do any good by protesting, you wouldn’t have gone. But we acted from the heart. We wanted to show that we weren’t willing to let them go. What one is capable of doing when there is danger can never be repeated. I’m not a fighter by nature. Only when I have to be. I did what was given me to do. When my husband need my protection, I protected him…And there was always a flood of people there. It wasn’t organised or instigated. Everyone was simply there. Exactly like me. That’s what is so wonderful about it”.

      The RAF bombed Berlin on the night of 1 March 1943, briefly pausing the protest, but the women spotted that the SS and the Gestapo ran to the cellars for cover, leaving the Jewish men exposed.

      Ursula Braun, a fiancée of one of the interred men, said: “On the one hand were fury and hate against the Nazis, who deserved the attack, and on the other side there was terrible misery all around each of us – the screaming people, the hellish fires”.

      Charlotte Israel said: “I always had such fear about the air raids. But on that night I thought, that serves them right! I was so enraged. I was together with a few others who got down on their knees and prayed. I could have laughed in scorn! But then I thought of my husband who was locked up at Rosenstrasse. I knew they would not be able to leave the building”.

      In the end, Goebbels conceded and ordered that the men be released.

      In fact, the women who protested at Rosenstrasse also saved the lives of other Jews. Adolf Eichman’s deputy in Paris decided that French Jews married to French Gentiles could not be deported until the “question” of the German Jews was “clarified”. The men imprisoned in the Rosenstrasse survived the Holocaust.

      https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1765279712337645936

      1. If you had to calculate whether you would do any good by protesting, you wouldn’t have gone. But we acted from the heart.

        Damn heroic. And to think they’d be “helped” by Goebbels being afraid of the bad press just shooting them all would bring.

        1. Absolutely! I’d like to think that I would have that kind of bravery, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t. Kudos to those incredible women.

    3. 1665…First edition of Philosophical Transactions…. Reminds me of when in the early 80’s my daughter came home from middle school and announced that her teacher told her that their science book had a wrong date about something Newton did: it was 1667 and not 1665 or something similar. Now I did not know why it was important for sixth graders to know an exact year about something that happened ~400years ago, but I was curious. Which led Inter Library Loan to send me to my local Mariners Museum Library in Newport News, VA where they have an incredible selection of old ships’ logs and scientific journals. They had in their stacks a complete collection of original Philosophical Transactions back to the 1660’s! I cannot adequately describe how it felt to hold a book that survived from Newton’s time and even may have been held by him. I am not, by nature, a very spiritual person, but this moment was much like what I once felt on a Sunday morning in London sitting in sight of the great philosophers’ tombs as herald trumpets called.

  3. “…college sports will change drastically”. Hopefully! and that would be for the best. Get rid of all money in college athletics and let kids who want to compete do so as pure amateurs in club play. Or let’s make U.S. colleges and university athletics, as Matthew once described play in the U.K. To me: “Recreational, not reputational”.

    Now if colleges want to run separate profit centers of sports, where players are hired, promoted, and fired under the university brand, but without any commitment as students or to coursework, that would be fine. These teams would pay for use of the university’s name and logo, build, rent, or buy facilities geographically close to the school, but be totally independent of the school other than the financial arrangement to use the school’s name and logo.

    Any takers?

    1. College sports should and will change, but what’s going on at Dartmouth will not be a major impetus. The Ivy League, including Dartmouth, does not give athletic scholarships, so the claim that its basketball players are “employees” is ludicrous. The decision by a National Labor Relations Board regional official will almost certainly be overturned by the NLRB. Dartmouth’s appeal of that decision is before the Board now.

      GCM

        1. Jim– Some games are televised (ESPN, etc.), and I can remember years ago seeing Cornell football on TV when Ed Marinaro played for them; I would assume the schools get some money for this.

          The only college football players I can think of who are truly employees are those at the military academies. The academies have no athletic scholarships (all students are on full scholarship), but all students do draw small salaries as officer-candidates. The military is, of course, not subject to the NLRB.

          GCM

          1. Thanks. It’s gotten really crazy the past couple of years with boys college wrestling and girls college gymnastics televised on espns. In the 90’s, I think, when the late Tom Hearn was president of Wake Forest, he made a serious attempt to organize his fellow presidents to wrest control of college football back from the athletic directors. He had to retire due to illness before he had time to complete the job. But do not know if he really could have or if he had, would it have been stable through the recent big dollar onslaught.

    2. My proposal is to simply acknowledge what is actually happening – college football and basketball and to some extent baseball are the AAA teams for the major league sports. Thus, each major should affiliate with a college and pay for everything from players salaries to facilities. There are many regional affiliations that make sense – e.g. CU with the Nuggets, Broncos and Rockies.

  4. Trying to find the extent of env damage from the sunk fertilizer – too soon I guess but this from AP: A vibrant fishing industry, some of the world’s largest coral reefs, desalination plants supplying millions with drinking water. They’re all at risk from large amounts of fertilizer and oil spilled into the Red Sea…

  5. So Mark Nakagawa simultaneously showed himself to be both a racist anti semite and an idiot. How hard is it to draw a Swastika properly?

  6. Mmmmmm sprouts. Mind you, that was broccoli, but you have still made me want some sprouts…. I guess you and I have a different sprout gene allele. Good news though, at least for you and your ilk, the plant breeders are hard at work ruining the flavour to make them more palatable humanity in general.

    1. I’m curious: do you know if people who dislike Brussel sprouts tend to also dislike other cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli, in this case)? Or is there something about the taste of sprouts, in particular, that makes them the object of particular hate?

      Certainly, I hear people express loathing for sprouts far more than for any other vegetable. (As for me, personally, I love all the cruciferous vegetables. In fact, the only veggies I truly loathe are lima beans. Yuck.)

      1. Speaking merely from personal experience / recollection, it seems to me that it is fairly common for people that hate sprouts to dislike other cruciferous vegetables as well.

        My guess for why sprouts are so hated by so many is, one, because the bitterness and special funk that cruciferous vegetables share is most strongly concentrated in sprouts and, two, because sprouts are very commonly prepared in a way that renders them truly horrible to eat (boiled into mush).

        I’m not a sprout hater, but they aren’t a favorite either. IMO the only way to make them a pleasure to eat is to roast them or pan fry them until you get some char/brown on them, with a fat like olive oil or bacon fat, seasoned with salt and pepper, and something acidic like lemon juice, apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar. But the real key is the roasting or pan frying.

        1. So is it the sprouts cooked this way which you enjoy or all the extras used in their cooking?

          I ask this because some years ago when PCC expressed his dislike of broccoli, I defended it when served with sweet chilli sauce, but afterwards realised that it was actually the sauce I truly liked, despite being contaminated by broccoli. Likewise broccoli in Chinese dishes – 2.5 cheers for the black bean sauce, 0.5 of a cheer for the broccoli.

          1. I’d give more weight to the cooking method rather than the seasonings. You could put whatever seasonings you like best on frozen sprouts that have been boiled into mush and they’d never be edible.

    2. Actually that was calabrese, a mis-named and pathetic imitation of proper broccoli, which was developed to grow much faster than the ten months needed by the real stuff, and which is therefore tasteless.

    3. The look on the dog’s face when it realized the depths of its betrayal was priceless.

    4. I can only imagine that sprouts taste to some the way cilantro tastes to me: like soap or hornet spray.

      I usually eat 3-5 servings of cruciferous vegetables daily, with brussels four or five times a week. Always roasted, as Darrell says. Same with cauliflower. Kale and broccoli always lightly steamed. A bit of olive oil on all, a dash of salt, maybe some pepper.

      If you boil vegetables into a mush, then you need to either throw them away or move to the U.S. Deep South and live with the other vegetable killers.

  7. For some reason I can’t comment on your Alamo Facebook post and I accidentally liked Prof. Hillis’ comment when I tried to comment. To insist Alamo defenders were Mexicans and Texicans obscures the fact that most were American ex-pats.

  8. When I was in high school, I participated in a model U.N. program for students. Each student or team of students represented a country, and we debated the issues of the day (as we understood them, which was not very well). I represented the People’s Republic of China, and the participants actually went to the U.N. in New York to see the U.N. and to participate in the program. Those were heady times when I respected the U.N. and sincerely believed that it was part of the pathway to eventual world peace.

    I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that the U.N. has become a such a potent mechanism for promoting Israel hatred and antisemitism. I doubt that it can ever be fixed.

    1. +1 Norman. When I taught high school in the early 70’s I was a faculty sponsor of our 60-some student Model U.N. Club that competed at the old Shoreham-Americana in Washington DC each year. Kids on the International Court of Justice were awakened in the middle of the night for an “emergency meeting”. I was certainly “all in”. Were we naive or was the U.N. better for western interests back closer to the end of WW2?

      1. The U.N. General Assembly operates on one-country one-vote with majority rule. Since most of the world’s countries today are not civilized, its pronouncements are pretty much what one would expect. The original United Nations was the band of brothers co-operating to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. This group was not only better for Western interests back then; it pretty much was the West.

        The admittance of the countries who had sat out the Second World War, (the “non-aligned nations”), as full partners with the same voice as those who had done the heavy lifting, followed by the flood of corrupt incompetent Marxist military dictatorships emerging from the former colonies of Europe, made the U.N. quickly irrelevant. (Some of its agencies that foster necessary co-operation between countries who otherwise hate each other in things like health and aviation have done good scientifically based work in the past.) Fortunately its governing structure and the conventions of national supreme sovereignty keep it from doing much actual damage. Countries that ratify its absurd majority-rule conventions can do serious damage to themselves, though, if they actually follow through with them domestically.

        1. Thank you both for your comments. It does seem that today’s U.N.—with all the non-aligned nations participating—creates wild dysfunction. I do hope that the science-based public health and aid groups are doing some good. But even programs ostensibly designed to aid civilians displaced by conflict are far from immune to politics, UNRWA being perhaps the most egregious example. To a baby boomer idealist like me, I’m deeply saddened by what the U.N. has become. My wife feels the same way. In 1970, she participated in a high-school essay competition that awarded her a trip from Seattle to, guess where, U.N. headquarters in New York. Sad.

          1. Again friends – and I say this a lot. Like people, institutions change over time.
            Some get better – some worse. Like the once grand now idiotic BBC, even Al Jazeera a few years ago was merely biased, not insane.

            Pan Am, Time magazine, the AP, etc. all things of the past now.
            D.A.
            NYC

    1. I never heard of Femke Bol before, so I looked up some of her race videos. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I still get a thrill out of seeing stellar athletic performances. And wow. She’s awesome.

    2. As a track & field fan, and the running events in particular, I’d like to see Mickey Mouse try to keep up with Bol for 400 meters. 🙂

      1. Extrapolating from other sports, there are probably 200 men who can outrun her. Since we were talking about the UN, … if the World Health Organization gets its way with the committee it has struck to entrench transgender rights in the national laws of member states, however many of those men who choose to do so will be running against her in a future Olympics.

  11. Nakagawa, the Methodist miscreant in LA, is not the United Methodist Church’s President or ex-President. He’s a retired pastor who held the position of “superintendent” of a sub-sub-division of the Church. He’s lower-ranking than a bishop (which many churches, including Methodists, have). For those familiar with Catholicism, he might be akin to a “monsignor”. This of course does not expiate his bigotry, but it does mean that he is not a major figure in the leadership of the Methodist church.

    GCM

  12. Whenever I read about BBC initiatives like “BBC Vision” I think of “BBC Me” and Hugh Bonneville and “W1A”. And I expect “BBC Vision” to be just as hapless and just as tragically funny. Among the best television I’ve ever seen.

  13. Regarding “Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs” from yesterday’s Hili dialog:

    “Kansas City welcomes 25 million visitors anally.”

    I have some amateur experience with typography, graphics, and photography. I thought this sign reflected an honest mistake because it “looked” real to me, and because I thought it would have been difficult to fake, especially by an amateur. Also, why would a professional bother?

    My wife has extensive experience as a credentialed school psychologist, and she thought the sign was a digital fake. (The sign would have needed approval from too many people to not be noticed.)

    Silly me. She was right. Snopes:
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-welcome-sign-kansas-city-typo/

    I will now treat all funny signs as just funny, and I will discount any suggestions that they’re actually “real” unless they come with compelling and corroborating evidence for that.

    I think I will also post this on yesterday’s Hili dialog so that it pairs with the original sign.

    Next up: funny videos.

    1. I was wondering about that sign. Surely someone would have noticed, I thought. Thanks for checking.

  14. The swastika-doodling reverend would be at home on any number of campuses. For those who are not aware, the United Methodist Church has been in a multiyear meltdown, with most of its conservative congregations choosing to leave as the progressives at prayer are largely taking over and increasingly trying to impose their range of social views.

    This miscreant reverend was from the California-Pacific Conference of the UMC, hardly a conservative stronghold. I looked at their website and found, among the laundry list of identity-related ministries to various ethnicities, women, and the disabled, a few activities that wouldn’t be out of place on campus: the Eco-Justice Strategy Group, the LGBTQIA+ Strategy Group, the Museum of Social Justice, and the Holy Land Strategy Group.

    The last caught my attention. What does this group do? Well, in 2023 it released a statement on Identifying and Opposing Apartheid in the Holy Land. That document contains such jewels as:

    – Whereas Israeli authorities have demonstrated a clear intent to maintain domination over Palestinians . . . and enforce systematic oppression of Palestinians, which is the essence of an apartheid system . . .

    – Whereas apartheid is named as a “crime against humanity” under international law, [features of which include] establishing laws and policies designed to suppress opposition to the regime and enforcing domination through arbitrary imprisonment, torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, and other violations of human rights . . .

    – Whereas Israel has blatantly codified a racist governing principle . . .

    – Whereas many authoritative scholars and organizations have conducted in-depth investigations and issued reports regarding Israeli apartheid . . .

    – Whereas [various] commissions, legal scholars, and human rights organizations have all come to the same unavoidable conclusion: that the Israeli government is committing the crime against humanity known as apartheid . . .

    Authoritative scholars and organizations. All reach the same conclusion. Well, in that case. As I said, the progressive party at prayer. There is nothing about this subgroup of the UMC that is harboring the ancient Christ killer mentality. Their antisemitism is thoroughly modernized.

    1. That’s exactly what the United Church of Canada is like.

      Once the largest Protestant denomination in the country it is 1920s merger of the Presbyterians and Methodists.

      It’s completely woke, including recently stating that Israel is committing genocide.

  15. The subject of the IDF committing rapes.
    The one thing for me IS the FACT the the IDF have female soldiers and probably some will be officers and ranked personal makes imo the claim of rape against the IDF hard to stick.
    Again imo, I just can’t see IDF females allowing that to happen in the main while holding that this is war and there is always going to be exceptions of criminal behaviour.
    The difference between IDF and Hamas when spot lighting these claims? I don’t even think it warrants an explanation but… Hamas Charter! Hamas on the ground are overall, ideological extremist males.

    2. I have worked in joint operations with the IDF. They are a thoroughly professional organization, and most of the allegations I hear about them seem absurd to me.

      This seems to be the sort of garbage meant for misinformed people who already believe lots of untrue things about the Jews.

  16. “Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty!”

    Careful there sir, you may soon find yourself joining the ranks of the Scot Squad 😉

    The Chief Apologises | Scot Squad | BBC Scotland Comedy

  17. I am Japanese. Many Japanese people call the swastika “Hakenkreuz” in German. And Japanese people really hate “Nazism.”

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