Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, March 26 2024 and National Nougat Day. Nougat is described at the link as “a mixture of sucrose and corn syrup with a whipping agent to create its fluffy texture.” In other words, it’s whipped sugar. Here’s a better form: Spanish nougat or turrón made with honey, sugar, toasted nuts, and egg whites.
More important, it’s NATIONAL SCIENCE APPRECIATION DAY, with this aim:
National Science Appreciation Day (NSAD) is a day celebrating how science has benefited human outcomes, unleashed human potential, and transformed our quality of life.
The day also observes a call to action for telling stories of how scientific advances have improved and/or saved lives.
Marked annually on March 26th, NSAD is one of the most important days of the year to:
- Celebrate scientific achievements
- Give thanks to workers in every field of science and medicine
- Raise awareness of the importance of critical thinking
- Lobby for science in public policy
As its Wikipedia page notes, “The date has been chosen to commemorate the 1953 announcement by Jonas Salk of the first successful clinical trials of first polio vaccine.” It also seems to be Richard Dawkins’s birthday.
It’s also Neighbor Day (won’t you be my neighbor?), Purple Day (raising awareness of epilepsy), National Spinach Day (one of the few veggies I like), and, in Hawaii, Prince Kūhiō Day. As Wikipedia notes,
Prince Kūhiō Day is one of only two holidays in the United States dedicated to royalty, the other being Hawaiʻi’s King Kamehameha Day on June 11.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Early this morning, an important bridge in Baltimore, the Key Bridge, collapsed after a ship hit it:
A major bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being struck by a cargo ship early Tuesday, setting off an emergency response, the Coast Guard and the local authorities said.
It was not immediately clear how many people were on the span — the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is part of Interstate 695 — when the cargo ship struck. Baltimore’s fire chief, James Wallace, told a news conference that officials were searching for at least seven people and that two others had been pulled from the water. One of them was in serious condition.
Mr. Wallace said the fire department had used sonar to detect vehicles that fell into the water. He said he did not know exactly how many had been on the bridge when it collapsed.
Here’s a tweet of the bridge collapsing after a ship hit it (h/t: Matthew):
A bridge collapsed in the US state of Maryland after a ship collided with it
The 3 km long Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland collapsed into the water overnight after a cargo ship collided with it, Fox Baltimore reported on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/d6xqmEFbXN
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 26, 2024
*Trump got a smallish victory today, just when he was going to have to pay millions of dollars in a civil fine or risk losing his property. An appellate court judge ruled that he can pay less, and an amount that he actually seems to have.
Donald Trump needs to pay just $175 million to put his $454 million civil fraud judgment on hold during his appeal, a New York court ruled Monday, alleviating some of the financial pressure on the former president.
But Trump still faces legal headwinds on many fronts: On Monday, a judge overseeing a separate, criminal case involving a hush-money payment to a porn star ordered the trial to start on April 15.
While Trump only needs to pay a fraction of the civil judgment for now, he could still be on the hook for the full amount if he loses his appeal.
The last-minute reprieve came on the day that New York Attorney General Letitia James could start enforcing the judgment. James, a Democrat, had brought the case against Trump, accusing him of falsely valuing parts of his real estate empire.
Trump’s legal team had said it was virtually impossible to secure a bond to cover the whole amount. He said Monday in a post on his social-media site Truth Social that he would either post a bond or pay cash to cover the $175 million. He has 10 days to pony up the money.
. . . The former president’s net worth has been estimated at $3 billion, but much of it is tied up in real estate. While Trump has a potential windfall coming after investors approved a plan to take his social-media company public, he likely won’t be able to tap in to those funds for six months.
The April 15 trial, not a civil but a criminal case, might well, if he’s convicted erode some of Trump’s support. It involves his covering up the hush money he paid pornstar Stormy Daniels to keep his liaison with her secret. And Trump might be convicted well before the election. One attorney guessed, based on comparable cases, he’s facing between one and four years in jail.
*The UN actually passed a cease-fire resolution. (Resolution 2728, text here) with the U.S. abstaining. It’s a blow to U.S. relationships with Israel, but I don’t think Israel (and certainly not Hamas) will abide by it:
The United Nations Security Council on Monday passed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza for the month of Ramadan, breaking a five-month impasse during which the United States vetoed several calls for ending the war, while the humanitarian toll of Israel’s military offensive climbed higher.
The resolution passed with 14 votes in favor. The United States abstained, allowing the resolution to pass. The chamber broke into applause after the vote.
“Finally, finally, the Security Council is shouldering its responsibility,” said Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N., Amar Bendjama, the only Arab member of the Council. “It is finally responding to the calls of the international community.”
Israel immediately criticized the United States for allowing the resolution to pass. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel’s office called the move “a retreat from the consistent American position since the beginning of the war,” and said the U.S. abstention “harms the war effort as well as the effort to liberate the hostages.”
In response, Mr. Netanyahu said he would not send an Israeli delegation to Washington to hold high-level talks with U.S. officials on a planned operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah — a public rebuke to President Biden, who had asked for the meetings.
. . .While Security Council resolutions are legally binding and carry significant political and legal weight, the Council does not have the means to enforce them. The Council can take punitive measures, such as sanctions against violators, but even those actions can run into obstacles if a veto-holding member opposes them. Israel is currently in violation of a 2016 resolution that demands it stop expanding settlements in the West Bank.
. . .The resolution adopted on Monday demands the unconditional and immediate release of all hostages but it does not make its demands for a cease-fire conditional on hostage release — one of Israel’s stated objections to the measure.
The U.S. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the adopted resolution fell in line with diplomatic efforts by the United States, Qatar and Egypt to broker a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages held in Gaza. She said the U.S. abstained because it did not agree with everything in the resolution, including its failure to condemn Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
The cease-fire appears to be only for the month of Ramadan, and according to the Times of Israel, is nonbinding:
Resolution 2728 is understood to be non-binding and is not expected to have an immediate impact on the ongoing fighting in Gaza, as has been the case with previous Security Council resolutions that have been adopted in other conflicts that were subsequently ignored.
Israel is not expected to abide by the resolution’s call for an immediate ceasefire and Hamas is not expected to follow the demand for an immediate and unconditional release of the 134 hostages, though only the former is a party to the UN charter and failure to abide by its resolutions could lead to calls for sanctions. But with the US stressing that the resolution is not binding, it is highly unlikely that Washington would allow the council to sanction Israel for failing to abide by the measure.
But to me the American abstention means that the U.S. doesn’t really care if Israel wipes out Hamas or not. And of course the world won’t go after Hamas if it fails to release hostages as the resolution specifies (the UN has still made no resolutions condemning Hamas’s October 7 attack). Such a stand would thus be hypocritical by holding only one side to account. At any rate, I am nearly certain that Israel will defy this resolution. The applause after the UN vote, of course, expresses joy, as the vote was seen as condemnation of Israel. In the meantime, Israel has canceled its diplomatic visit to the U.S., where our administration (including Kamala Harris, who is a tactical expert because she’s seen the maps), would tell the IDF how to take down Hamas without actually engaging them in Rafah.
*Also in the NYT, in a column called “What would you have Israel do to defend itself?“, David Brooks sees no good solution.
There seems to be a broad consensus atop the Democratic Party about the war in Gaza, structured around two propositions. First, after the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel has the right to defend itself and defeat Hamas. Second, the way Israel is doing this is “over the top,” in President Biden’s words. The vast numbers of dead and starving children are gut wrenching, the devastation is overwhelming, and it’s hard not to see it all as indiscriminate. [If you’re realistic, no, it is NOT indiscriminate.]
Which leads to an obvious question: If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what’s the alternative? Is there a better military strategy Israel can use to defeat Hamas without a civilian blood bath? In recent weeks, I’ve been talking with security and urban warfare experts and others studying Israel’s approach to the conflict and scouring foreign policy and security journals in search of such ideas.
He then admits this:
In other words, in this war, Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, and Hamas seeks to position civilians directly between them. As Barry Posen, a professor at the security studies program at M.I.T., has written, Hamas’s strategy could be “described as ‘human camouflage’ and more ruthlessly as ‘human ammunition.’” Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.
. . . John Spencer is the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current war to observe operations there. He told me that Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Spencer reports that Israel has warned civilians when and where it is about to begin operations and published an online map showing which areas to leave. It has sent out millions of pamphlets, texts and recorded calls warning civilians of coming operations. It has conducted four-hour daily pauses to allow civilians to leave combat areas. It has dropped speakers that blast out instructions about when to leave and where to go. These measures, Spencer told me, have telegraphed where the I.D.F. is going to move next and “have prolonged the war, to be honest.”
. . .So to step back: What do we make of the current Israeli strategy? Judged purely on a tactical level, there’s a strong argument that the I.D.F. has been remarkably effective against Hamas forces. I’ve learned to be suspicious of precise numbers tossed about in this war, but the I.D.F. claims to have killed over 13,000 of the roughly 30,000 Hamas troops. It has disrupted three-quarters of Hamas’s battalions so that they are no longer effective fighting units. It has also killed two of five brigade commanders and 19 of 24 battalion commanders. As of January, U.S. officials estimated that Israel had damaged or made inoperable 20 to 40 percent of the tunnels. Many Israelis believe the aggressive onslaught has begun to restore Israel’s deterrent power. (Readers should know that I have a son who served in the I.D.F. from 2014 to 2016; he’s been back home in the States since then.)
But on a larger political and strategic level, you’d have to conclude that the Israeli strategy has real problems. Global public opinion is moving decisively against Israel. The key shift is in Washington. Historically pro-Israeli Democrats like Biden and Senator Chuck Schumer are now pounding the current Israeli government with criticism. Biden wants Israel to call off its invasion of the final Hamas strongholds in the south. Israel is now risking a rupture with its closest ally and its only reliable friend on the U.N. Security Council. If Israel is going to defend itself from Iran, it needs strong alliances, and Israel is steadily losing those friends. Furthermore, Israeli tactics may be reducing Gaza to an ungovernable hellscape that will require further Israeli occupation and produce more terrorist groups for years.
Brooks concludes that there are no good methods to destroy Hamas besides invading Rafah according to plan, although, he says, the U.S. apparently just wants Israel to stop fighting—a position that the War Cabinet and Israelis see as untenable. So Brooks goes against both world opinion and the Biden Administration. But, adds Brooks, Israel is sorely deficient in its plans for after the war:
Israel also has to offer the world a vision for Gaza’s recovery, and it has to do it right now. Ross argues that after the war is over, the core logic of the peace has to be demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, he sketches out a comprehensive rebuilding effort, bringing in nations and agencies from all over the world, so Gaza doesn’t become a failed state or remain under Hamas control.
*The Elder of Zion, in a piece called “Finally, a mainstream newspaper looks at alternatives to invading Rafah, and can’t find any,” sees Brooks’s article as okay, noting that the man speaks truths that one rarely hears. But the EoZ also says he, the Elder, has the best solution, but I’m betting that one won’t fly, either, as the Palestinians won’t accept it:
David Brooks in the New York Times looks at the real military situation in Gaza, asking, “What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?”
He calls out what every military expert knows: Israel is doing the best job possible.
Brooks writes basic truths that are rarely seen in the media: “Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.”
. . . Brooks’ article, as good as it is, does not mention two important options.
One is that Egypt needs to be a partner in allowing Gazans to go there temporarily while Israel cleans out Rafah. Egypt’s response to this humanitarian crisis by building higher walls is fully accepted by the international community and this is hypocrisy of the highest order. Aid can get to the Sinai easily. Countless lives can be saved.And the other point is my plan to turn Gaza into a new emirate of the UAE. Professor Andrew Pessin recently summarized my plan. It solves every problem Brooks and others postulate. It would also mean that any potential future Palestinian state would only be on the West Bank, but that is a feature, not a bug: any alternative cuts Israel in half. Gazans can decide whether they prefer to live under corrupt Palestinian rule or as full citizens of the UAE.
Would the UAE sign on? They are the only Arab nation showing genuine concern for Gaza civilians. They can gain a great deal by having a presence on the Mediterranean and access to gas fields there. And they can really turn Gaza into the Singapore people rhapsodized about in the 2000s.This way there is no “occupation” – Arabs live under Arab rule, as they did under Jordanian and Egyptian rule without much complaint between 1948-1967. And in this case their rulers would actually care about them.
*Reuters reports on a new study that seems to answer the question, “Where did ‘modern’ Homo sapiens go when its members left Africa?”
Our species emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, with a migration out of the continent 60,000 to 70,000 years ago heralding the start of the global spread of Homo sapiens. But where did these pioneers go after leaving Africa?
After years of debate, a new study offers an answer. These bands of hunter-gatherers appear to have lingered for thousands of years as a homogeneous population in a geographic hub that spanned Iran, southeast Iraq and northeast Saudi Arabia before going on to settle all of Asia and Europe starting roughly 45,000 years ago, scientists said on Monday.
Their findings were based on genomic datasets drawn from ancient DNA and modern gene pools, combined with paleoecological evidence that showed that this region would have represented an ideal habitat. The researchers called this region, part of what is called the Persian Plateau, a “hub” for these people – who numbered perhaps only in the thousands – before they continued onward millennia later to more distant locales.
“Our results provide the first full picture of the whereabouts of the ancestors of all present-day non-Africans in the early phases on the colonization of Eurasia,” said molecular anthropologist Luca Pagani of the University of Padova in Italy, senior author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Now we can add to our “We are all Africans” tee shirts another one that says, “We are all Persians.”
Horror film Late Night With the Devil takes $666,666 on Sunday in the US
Late Night With the Devil, a found footage horror about a 1977 live television broadcast which accidentally unleashes evil into America’s living rooms, took $666,666 on Sunday in the US.
As Variety reports, the verified takings for the film contributed to an overall $2.8m weekend take – a slightly less satanic figure.
While Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire topped the charts with $45m in the US – and $61m globally – horror also drummed up good business elsewhere, with Sydney Sweeney’s nun frightener Immaculate debuting at number four with $5.3m.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, who hates Kulka, is forced to confront her. She makes a judicious move:
Hili: Even a war sometimes forces one to ignore the enemy.A: Thats true, but in a real war it can be costly.
Hili: Nawet wojna zmusza czasem do ignorowania wroga.Ja: To prawda, ale w prawdziwej wojnie to może być kosztowne.
*******************
From The Dodo Pet (with a superfluous comma):
Posted on FB by Claire Lehmann. The snark is strong here:
From The Dodo Pet:
From Masih, some brave women who were blinded in one eye during political protests in Iran. (The police love to blind women.) Sound up, as there are English subtitles:
I was speechless when I met these brave women who were shot in their eyes by security forces during “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran. They lost their eyes or arms but not hope. They all have a common dream and they want to be heard.
We believe one day we will get rid of… pic.twitter.com/xiVo7fSy4r— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 25, 2024
From Thomas, a dog chew toy that shows you that slaughterhouses use every part of a cow:
100% beef
…always check the ingredients pic.twitter.com/94KxpoTds5
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) March 17, 2024
GeoBee is the International Geography Bee, sort of like a spelling bee but with geography questions. It’s now been discontinued because the winners, though of the highest merit, are the Wrong Kind of People. See for yourself:
National Geographic "permanently discontinued" its GeoBee competition in order to replace it with "more equitable participation," adding that its "increased focus on racial injustice challenge us to find new… ways to engage young people."
The top 10 at the last GeoBee. pic.twitter.com/2jyAo3VpA9
— i/o (@eyeslasho) March 25, 2024
I’m not sure why she adopted a lynx. It’s adorable and all, but shouldn’t it be in the wild?
Woman adopts a Siberian lynx pic.twitter.com/OfGcfjqOoT
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 25, 2024
From Malcolm: a kitten and a mirror:
Lovely cat 💞 pic.twitter.com/S3B2BgW7tS
— cutest cats (@cutestscats) March 24, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial a woman who died in the camp, probably at age 37:
26 March 1906 | A Czech Jewish woman, Markéta Kafková, was born.
She was deported to #Auschwitz from the #Theresienstadt ghetto on 6 September 1943. She did not survive. pic.twitter.com/ZaJ5RBbaNW
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 26, 2024
Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First a raccoon standing on its hands. WHY DO THEY DO THIS?
Here's the handstand raccoon from the water bowl camera.
After researching online, it appears to be a thing they do. In over 15 years of constant camera trapping this is only the second time I have this behaviour recorded. pic.twitter.com/pMf5iTkbbR
— Sue (@CameraTrapSue) March 25, 2024
Some snark from Biden’s Twitter team:
Congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment. pic.twitter.com/nyDivqPwoI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 25, 2024
He who shall not be named will never pay one cent of his own money, nor spend even one minute in the slammer. The charade continues.
I am very surprised at the Key Bridge accident since I am pretty sure that in the harbor, river, and down the Chesapeake Bay through the capes (Charles and Henry), these ships are steered by licensed Maryland or Virginia Pilots who are incredibly good.
Video shows that the ship suffered a power failure (it blacks out) and presumably that caused an engine failure. It seems like it wasn’t under control when it hit the bridge.
That is my understanding; not much a pilot could do. It’s also being reported that a Mayday signal was sent before the impact, and that this probably saved lives.
Yes, the Mayday did save lives as it caused officials to halt bridge traffic. Supposedly, there were 9 people working on infrastructure, filling potholes and such, and these were the ones who fell with the bridge and are currently missing (I think they have recovered a few).
The idiot GOP has blamed this on the “open border” because it might be terrorists and “Biden’s infrastructure bill.” Another blamed it on Covid lockdowns and workers being addled by drugs. Huh? It’s truly amazing how any tragedy that befalls America is somehow Biden’s fault in the fever swamp of MAGA. What is wrong with the thinking of these fools? It’s truly amazing how twisted they’ve become.
Worse is how so many people believe them, to one degree or another. Even those on the more liberal side.
My wife woke me up to see the coverage of this on the news, and I listened to the parade of supposed experts, who were not helpful.
Here are my observations. When a ship is entering or exiting port, there are a couple of guys on the bow, and the anchors are set up for immediate dropping. The point of that is that if there is a serious control issue, they can drop the anchors and stop the ship.
Or try to stop it. It is a slow and dangerous process to stop a ship moving at the speed the Dali was in the video. It would be an emergency procedure, and likely to break some stuff, even if successful.
It looked to me like the starboard anchor caught, and that is what pulled the ship so suddenly to the right.
The ship would have had a docking pilot and a harbor pilot aboard. The pilot does not actually steer the ship. He calls out rudder angles and headings to the helmsman. The pilot needs to be able to move around, look from the bridge wings, and talk on the radio.
It looks like they lost the generator, which is a thing that sometimes happens. The emergency generator is supposed to kick in automatically in such situations, and it looks like perhaps it came on and failed.
The ship was moving pretty fast for having just left the dock, but that might have been necessary for control due to current or whatever.
Thanks for providing your expertise to this tragedy. I was shocked how fast the entire bridge collapsed.
The fall of the entire bridge was dismayingly predictable once struck.
I once had aspirations to build a model railroad. I got ahead of myself and bought a definitive book on building scale railroad bridges from scratch. It included enough information on bridge engineering to understand why real bridges look the way they do, so as not to make howler mistakes when modeling them. (Arches rock.) I built a few which I still have but never got much of a railroad built — birth of my son ended that :-).
One thing I learned is how fragile modern long bridges are to loads imposed in any dimension beyond what the bridge was designed for.* Very strong in the vertical dimension but they will resist only wind loads from the side. All the load in any direction is of course carried down to the piers (and outward if it’s a true arch.) The bridge’s structure it designed so that all those side loads are converted to vertical (or outward) loads before they reach the piers. The piers are already loaded to their design limits by the weight of the bridge and its traffic (with a reserve factor of course) and aren’t meant to take a 100,000-tonne ship crashing into them. (I don’t know what exactly failed. Even if the pier didn’t collapse, the necessarily somewhat flexible joint between the bridge and the top of the pier could have broken from the lateral shock. That would be enough to make it fall.)
The Key Bridge, like many long bridges that have to clear a shipping channel without a lot of piers (as a full viaduct does), is (was) a structure called a “continuous bridge”. The entire main span (what we think of as “the bridge”) between the two viaduct approaches is a single unit that rests on the two main piers and the last viaduct pier at each end. There is no part that can remain standing if any part fails. Down goes the whole thing. Even the landward portions that might appear to be supported between a main pier and the last viaduct pier in this type of bridge are not independent of the continuous structure and will be torn apart by the force of collapse and will fall too.
—————-
* There is no reason for any home modeler ever to build a long bridge like the Key, or even the Québec Bridge, which is the longest single-span railway bridge in the world (also a continuous bridge.) My source discussed design of these bridges just because all bridges are interesting, even a log thrown across a stream, and the design concepts change fundamentally as the span increases.
Interesting information, thanks. Perhaps when they rebuild they can created some type of buffer around the piers so a ship won’t hit them. I wonder how long it will take to rebuild…years, I imagine.
This was very helpful. Thanks Max.
Shortly after I wrote that, I was watching a news person asking why they did not just drop the anchor.
I wanted to ask him what he thinks happens when you drop an anchor.
The answer is that at first the chain runs out faster and faster, with much clattering and clouds of rust.
It is really the weight of the chain on the bottom that does most of the stopping, so once you judge that a sufficient amount has been let out, you need to stop it running out. There are brake bands, much like drum brakes on a car, that slow or stop the cylinder that the chain runs on.
If you do not slow the chain, it will just run out faster and faster until it reaches the end and perhaps breaks.
If the anchor actually catches on something, instead of skipping along the bottom, stopping the ship is like stopping a truck out of control going down a hill. You slow it a little at a time, trying to not burn out the brake bands.
Even in slower, non emergency situations, it is pretty easy to set the brakes on fire.
Anyway, it is not a quick process, and very touchy. A ship traveling at 10 knots or so has enough inertia that if the anchor catches, it can rip the winches right off the deck.
So the answer to the question about the anchor is more or less the same as asking why a 200 car freight train does not just put on the brakes when a truck drives onto the tracks right in front of them.
But they did put at least the port anchor out, as it is shown in the pictures with the chain leading out and aft. I believe the starboard chain is out, because of the way the ship lurched in that direction.
Also, they may well have had the engines in reverse. You can’t tell from the video. Even so, it would take a few minutes before you would notice slowing. The lights are powered by a series of generators, not the engine. A general power outage would affect the steering. There are multiple alternate ways to move the rudder, but it takes a few minutes to get that going.
If they were backing, that would seriously affect the steering as well.
One last thing- going full astern could also cause the bow to swing right, even as the vessel continues forward.
Everyone here explaining the bridge collapse theories is very helpful for me, as The Media always has an instantly answer, and it’s usually just wrong guesses. So I always wait and come here for the expertise.
This fellow is pretty good. He had a good video on the Houthi interdiction of the Red Sea.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbUXewlQDk
This was from yesterday. He updated this morning.
When I first heard about the collapse, those around me were saying “Was the pilot drunk?” or “It was a terrorist attack.”
I’ve learned to wait for more information, just because the world doesn’t need one more person spreading wrong information quickly.
It was a very well-explained video, so thank you!
On the topic of male/female ability at chess, I stumbled across this plot on Twitter, showing the male/female ratio as a function of rating.
This shows that, the higher the rating, the more male-skewed it becomes. This can’t be explained simply by saying that more men play than women (they would then have the same distribution, just with different normalisations). Hence the explanation would seem to be biological (presumably a mixture of competitive drive and single-minded focus being male traits, and likely differences in ability in these highly esoteric skills at the high-end tail).
Yep, and it is easy to lose track of how chess is taught – e.g. in the family unit, e.g. the Polgárs – this is significant. The social environment.
A reader commented on this, how they were teaching their daughters, and it didn’t really take off. Who is doing the teaching, and how does that work? László Polgár is male, taught his daughters. How did that work?
I’m sure László intends to keep it a trade secret, but who knows if it would work on any given student even if it could be codified.
Coel’s plot that shows more males the higher the rating does seem to eliminate the argument that male dominance in chess is explainable by a lack of female players.
The Polgars are unique in chess, afaik. The father’s teaching of the three girls (Judit, Susan, and Sofia) resembles a Skinnerian attempt to mold his daughters brains. I doubt his “secret” would work on every student, as there must be a certain amount of brain power needed to become that good in chess. I suspect that for the Polgars it was a combination (chess pun) of intense training coupled with their innate intelligence and, for Judit and Susan at least, competitive drive (whether innate or acquired). Some said that Sofia, who became a strong player but not as good as her sisters, was actually the most talented of the three when she was young.
László Polgár wrote about this in his book Nevelj zsenit! (lit. ’Raise a Genius!’).
https://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/genius.pdf
+1
That argument is just attributing a particular conclusion to a graph showing that the strongest chess players are mostly male. Some important things about that graph include that the sample size gets a lot smaller to the right. Looking at the variation bars on the right these vary a lot where the occasional female player shows up at a high rating. This demonstrates a plausible alternative that the chart just levels off from about the 2000 mark with increasing error on the measurements from there. This indicates that the rating bands should be tuned wider producing smooth indication of the sample variance inside each rating band.
Even this would be insufficient to demonstrate the point which minimum needs to incorporate that elite chess skill takes about 10 years regular practice to develop in relation to the increase in female participation over that time period.
Even that doesn’t demonstrate that there is any intrinsic difference in potential male/female peak chess skill, but only that in practice for some reason the best males demonstrate higher skill in practice. Those reasons could still be 100% sociological.
Science, enlightenment values, empiricism – and, especially, restraint – resistance of gnostic temptation – valuable things all.
Natural sciences are not a religion – even though they developed in a milieu of esotericism, mysticism, etc. (e.g. Isaac Newton’s alchemical interests). It is important to keep them separated if natural sciences are to remain valuable – because one of them won’t go away any time soon.
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;Washington, D.C.
Therefore, the so-called “anti-naturalistic fallacy” does more harm than good to science. This is the reaction of the left when it discovers that its ideology is inconsistent with nature – that what is natural is bad, and if science proves that women or black people are not suitable for certain occupations, then we must still ignore the scientific findings (this can be summed up in one sentence -what we discover in nature does nothing to improve morality) and to perfect equality as much as possible (even if it means harming society), which can easily lead to the idea that biology is either morally useless or harmful, and gave moral supremacy to attacks on biology. This was established almost gradually after the 1960s, and many people, including some leftist biologists, are responsible for this.
It’s curious that you single out black people and women as “not being suitable for certain occupations”? What about differences in suitability for other groups?
I’m going to wade into this and offer that a reason for singling out women and black people could be that these are the two groups who have most loudly demanded to be singled out as beneficiaries of efforts to promote diversity and equity over merit….at the expense of other identifiable groups. Their advocates therefore have the most to answer for.
This could be accurate even if both groups are still being discriminated against unjustly today. The treatment is simply the wrong one for the diagnosis and therefore doesn’t work, like giving antibiotics for virus infections just because the doctor means well.
I think all groups have occupations that are relatively suitable or unsuitable. This is one of the reasons why statistics are “uneven.” Of course, this does not mean that certain occupations must be restricted to only a single group.
The “uneven phenomenon” has cultural and even biological factors. The reason for emphasizing vulnerable groups is that studies or inferences related to vulnerable groups are more likely to trigger hysteria.
Remember when I responded like these when you said I supported the Vietnamese Communist Party during that war?
Please read the Roolz before you comment again.
Voegelin has a six-point summary of the “gnostic attitude”, which is worth checking out (in the Ersatz Religion essay.
Voegelin cites numinous concepts such as “evil”, “salvation”… and the idea that the world needs reorganization to remove the evil.
Could more fashionable modern language can stand-in for those numinous concepts? The pomo writers IMHO are doing that. Science needs defense from subversion (e.g. by Luana Maroja, Anna Krylov, and other scientists we read about here).
It is worth a read, is all I can really say at this point.
Oh also a quote would be fitting :
“The line dividing good and evil cuts not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either— but right through the heart of every human being.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
1958-1968
May I say it is important to note that Newton never published any papers on his alchemical interests as he knew they were worth diddly squat to science.
Just so we don’t encourage those woo-ish types and getting them excited.
Sure.
You know Newton translated The Emerald Tablet for himself?
I also saw a graphic on eXtwitter that tallied Newton’s literature – most of it was religious/esoteric.
The account was Fermat something – and I have no idea of veracity.
Hasty edit:
By “literature” I mean all the books and stuff he collected on his bookshelves.
On this day:
1344 – The Siege of Algeciras, one of the first European military engagements where gunpowder was used, comes to an end.
1484 – William Caxton prints his translation of Aesop’s Fables.
1636 – Utrecht University is founded in the Netherlands.
1812 – A political cartoon in the Boston Gazette coins the term “gerrymander” to describe oddly shaped electoral districts designed to help incumbents win reelection.
1830 – The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York.
1896 – An explosion at the Brunner Mine near Greymouth, New Zealand kills 65 coal miners in the country’s worst industrial accident.
1934 – The United Kingdom driving test is introduced.
1939 – Spanish Civil War: Nationalists begin their final offensive of the war.
1942 – World War II: The first female prisoners arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.
1945 – World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ends as the island is officially secured by American forces.
1971 – East Pakistan declares its independence from Pakistan to form Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Liberation War begins.
1975 – The Biological Weapons Convention comes into force.
1979 – Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in Washington, D.C.
1982 – A groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, D.C.
1997 – Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides.
1998 – During the Algerian Civil War, the Oued Bouaicha massacre sees fifty-two people, mostly infants, killed with axes and knives.
2017 – Russia-wide anti-corruption protests in 99 cities. The Levada Center survey showed that 38% of surveyed Russians supported protests and that 67 percent held Putin personally responsible for high-level corruption.
Births:
1516 – Conrad Gessner, Swiss botanist and zoologist (d. 1565).
1633 – Mary Beale, British artist (d. 1699). [Part of a small band of female professional artists working in London, Beale became the main financial provider for her family through her professional work – a career she maintained from 1670/71 to the 1690s. Her prose Discourse on Friendship of 1666 presents a scholarly, uniquely female take on the subject. Her 1663 manuscript Observations, on the materials and techniques employed “in her painting of Apricots”, though not printed, is the earliest known instructional text in English written by a female painter.]
1824 – Julie-Victoire Daubié, French journalist (d. 1874). [The first woman to have graduated from a French university when she obtained a licentiate degree in Lyon in 1871.]
1850 – Edward Bellamy, American author, socialist, and utopian visionary (d. 1898).
1859 – A. E. Housman, English poet and scholar (d. 1936).
1866 – Fred Karno, English producer and manager (d. 1941). [As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in-the-face gag. During the 1890s, in order to circumvent stage censorship, Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue.]
1873 – Dorothea Bleek, South African-German anthropologist and philologist (d. 1948).
1874 – Robert Frost, American poet and playwright (d. 1963).
1876 – Kate Richards O’Hare, American Socialist Party activist and editor (d. 1948).
1881 – Guccio Gucci, Italian fashion designer, founded Gucci (d. 1953).
1898 – Rudolf Dassler, German businessman, founded Puma SE (d. 1974). [His brother founded rival sports shoe company Adidas.]
1900 – Angela Maria Autsch, German nun, died in Auschwitz helping Jewish prisoners (d. 1941). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1905 – Mona Williams, American novelist, short story writer and poet (d. 1991).
1906 – H. Radclyffe Roberts, American entomologist and museum administrator (d. 1982).
1911 – Bernard Katz, German-English biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2003).
1911 – Tennessee Williams, American playwright, and poet (d. 1983).
1925 – Pierre Boulez, French pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2016).
1930 – Sandra Day O’Connor, American lawyer and jurist.
1931 – Leonard Nimoy, American actor (d. 2015).
1934 – Alan Arkin, American actor.
1940 – Nancy Pelosi, American lawyer and politician, 52nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
1941 – Richard Dawkins, Kenyan-English ethologist, biologist, and academic.
1942 – Erica Jong, American novelist and poet.
1943 – Bob Woodward, American journalist and author.
1944 – Diana Ross, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress.
1948 – Steven Tyler, American singer-songwriter and actor.
1950 – Teddy Pendergrass, American singer-songwriter (d. 2010).
1950 – Martin Short, Canadian-American actor, screenwriter, and producer.
1960 – Jennifer Grey, American actress and dancer.
1962 – Richard Coles, English pianist, saxophonist, and priest. [A member of both Bronski Beat and the Communards, and a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live until last year.]
1973 – Larry Page, American computer scientist and businessman, co-founder of Google.
The meaning of life is that it stops. (Franz Kafka):
1326 – Alessandra Giliani, anatomist (b. c. 1307). [Thought to be an Italian natural historian, best known as the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practising anatomy and pathology. However, the historical evidence for her existence is limited. Some scholars consider her to be a fiction invented by Alessandro Machiavelli (1693–1766) whilst others hold that the participation of a woman in anatomy at that time was so shocking that she has been edited out of history.]
1726 – John Vanbrugh, English playwright and architect, designed Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard (b. 1664). [Castle Howard was used as the location for the fictional “Brideshead”, both in Granada Television’s 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and in a two-hour 2008 adaptation for cinema.]
1797 – James Hutton, Scottish geologist and physician (b. 1726). [Often referred to as the “Father of Modern Geology,” he played a key role in establishing geology as a modern science.]
1814 – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French physician and politician (b. 1738). [Proposed the use of a device to carry out death penalties as a less painful method of execution than existing methods. Although he did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for it.]
1827 – Ludwig van Beethoven, German pianist and composer (b. 1770).
1885 – Anson Stager, American general and businessman, co-founded Western Union (b. 1825).
1892 – Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, and journalist (b. 1819).
1923 – Sarah Bernhardt, French actress and screenwriter (b. 1844).
1932 – Henry M. Leland, American machinist, inventor, engineer, automotive entrepreneur and founder of Cadillac and Lincoln (b. 1843).
1942 – Carolyn Wells, American novelist and poet (b. 1862).
1959 – Raymond Chandler, American crime novelist and screenwriter (b. 1888).
1969 – John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (b. 1937). [Tragically, he killed him before his genius was recognised. His tenacious mother succeeded in getting his brilliant A Confederacy of Dunces published posthumously.]
1973 – Noël Coward, English playwright, actor, and composer (b. 1899).
1980 – Roland Barthes, French linguist and critic (b. 1915). [His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism.]
1983 – Anthony Blunt, English historian and spy (b. 1907).
1996 – David Packard, American engineer and businessman, co-founded Hewlett-Packard (b. 1912).
2000 – Alex Comfort, English physician and author (b. 1920).
2015 – Friedrich L. Bauer, German mathematician, computer scientist, and academic (b. 1924). [A member of the committees that developed the imperative computer programming languages ALGOL 58, and its successor ALGOL 60, important predecessors to all modern imperative programming languages.]
2016 – Jim Harrison, American novelist, essayist, and poet (b. 1937).
2023 – Jacob Ziv, Israeli electrical engineer, developed the LZ family of compression algorithms (b. 1931). [Besides their academic influence, these algorithms formed the basis of several ubiquitous compression schemes, including GIF and the DEFLATE algorithm used in PNG and ZIP.]
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Angela Maria Autsch, baptized as Maria Cecilia Autsch, religious name Angela Maria of the Heart of Jesus, (born on this day in 1900, died 23 December 1944), was a German Trinitarian Sister of Valencia. Her beatfication process was opened in 1992.
Maria Cecilia Autsch was born in Röllecken, part of Attendorn in the Olpe district of (Westphalia), German Empire on 26 March 1900. She was a member of a modest working-class family (her father was a quarry worker) that regularly practised the Catholic faith. She went to school in the village of Bamenohl. The terrible economic situation in the Weimar Republic meant that she had to go out to work in the clothing store Bischoff & Broegger in Finnentrop, where she was popular amongst both fellow workers and customers
Maria was thirty-three years old when she joined the Trinitarian Sisters of Valence in Mötz, Austria. She began the novitiate and was given the name Angela Maria of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The novitiate ended with the first profession of vows on 16 August 1934. Her final profession took place on 28 September 1938, the year Hitler annexed Austria.
When the Nazi party tried to expropriate the Mötzer monastery, Angela Autsch succeeded in saving it by arguing that the Tyrolean monastery was Spanish property.
On the morning of 10 August 1940, Sr Angela went to buy some milk. She happened to meet some women she knew at the dairy and, conversing with them, she related that the Allies had sunk a German ship off Norway and many had died in that disaster. She ended saying Hitler is a calamity for Europe. One of the women, a known Nazi sympathizer, related to her son, also a Nazi sympathizer, what she had heard from Sr. Angela. He reported the fact to the chief of the Gestapo.
The Gestapo opened a file on Sr. Angela and arrested her on 12 August 1940. She was jailed for seventeen days in Innsbruck before becoming prisoner no. 4651 in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück on 31 August 1940. There she was a light of hope and courage to her fellow inmates. She was frequently beaten by her captors but her contagious good humour was “a ray of sunshine in deepest Hell”. Some prisoners who might have killed themselves were inspired by her, they said afterwards, even those who had no idea that she was a nun.
The Nazis sent Sr. Angela to Auschwitz concentration camp where she befriended a Jewish woman doctor from Slovakia, Margarita Schwalbova. Feeling depressed and less than human, she was deeply moved when the nun went up to her and gently stroked her hair. Although Schwalbova was an atheist, she and Sister Angela became friends, with the latter acting in a way that earned her the title Angel of Auschwitz. When Schwalbova was sick, she told her stories about the lives and miracles of the saints, and shared her meager rations with her and others even though this was strictly forbidden. In March 1943, Sister Angela was transferred to Birkenau, another camp, where she worked in the kitchen and infirmary, caring equally for inmates and persecutors. She died of a heart attack on 23 December 1944, during an Allied air raid, just a month before the Allies liberated the camp.
Her cause for beatification was introduced by the Conference of Austrian Bishops on 26 March 1992. She was declared venerable by Pope Francis on 19 May 2018, upon the confirmation of her heroic virtue practiced during her life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Maria_Autsch
err… I don’t think so, that’s not a part of a cow.
Ha! Good point. It’s part of a beef.
True, but it is a load of bull.
I listened to Dan Senor’s interview of Rod Dermer, recommended here a few days ago.
Quite good as others have also said. I was particularly listening for things about other Arab states quietly supporting Israel’s effort. The one thing that particularly surprised me was that the Saudi’s have been going after the madrassas for some time. Good! Maybe there’s some hope for changing the mindset.
Also how defeating Hamas can destabilize Iran – wouldn’t that be nice?
The Saudi state-owned channel Al Arabiya (English) interviewed Robert Kennedy last month and spent nearly a quarter of the interview talking to him about Israel. He pulled no punches; I don’t know whether they ran the interview on the Arab language channel. Still, it was an interesting decision for them to run it at all.
For those interested, the interviewer Riz Khan asks Kennedy a question about wars, in general (on video from 12:25-15.38). Given Kennedy’s generally dovish stance on war and peace, Khan then asks him whether there is a contradiction between that and Kennedy’s refusal to support a ceasefire in Gaza, where events have turned into what some call a “genocide.” Kennedy promptly responds, “Well, it’s not genocide; it’s a war” and he then continues for the next eight minutes, sometimes excitably so, defending Israeli actions (15:38-23:45).
I’m not stumping here for RFK Jr, so anyone so inclined can spare me any statements about vaccines or any of his other quirks. For all I know, he’ll demonstrate abysmal judgment when he announces his VP candidate today. But this post is about Israel. Judge for yourself whether you agree with him on that issue, and then ask why neither of our two primary candidates can bring themselves to be so direct.
https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2024/02/16/US-2024-elections-Riz-Khan-sits-down-for-interview-with-Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr
I hear you. Of course I can’t vote but I do get the point you’re making, Doug.
I love the lynx! Until 40 years ago we had lynx in the part of mainland Nova Scotia (Cobequid mountains) where I lived, but now they are confined to the Cape Breton highlands. There’s a healthy population next door in New Brunswick, and since I moved to the border between the two provinces, I hope one will cross the Tantramar marsh and visit. We have plenty of bobcats, but they aren’t as attractive as the lynx. Officially, the cougar is extirpated here, but where my parents used to live, bang in the middle of NS where there is a huge area with no roads or development, people say otherwise….
I find the continuing series of brave Iranian women blinded in one eye–other injuries are seldom mentioned–puzzling. Are the police really such sharpshooters?
Being shot in the eye with a bullet is more than likely going to result in death as the bullet would likely continue through the eye socket into the brain cavity. I would assume that the police carry out the blinding at close range with a pellet- or BB- firing air gun as a specific form of punishment.
I think these injuries are from “less than lethal” police weapons, like bean bag or rubber bullet guns, and the reason they are able to pretty accurately target a persons eye is because they are being shot at very close range.
Note to self: research, THEN comment (or not).
https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/03/21/more-than-120-protesters-blinded-by-iranian-agents-probe-confirms
+1
“While Security Council resolutions are legally binding and carry significant political and legal weight, the Council does not have the means to enforce them. ”
According to my understanding, Security Council Resolutions are NOT “legally-binding” and don’t carry “legal weight”, because the UN does not have the power to make law. Even SC Section 7 Resolutions, and this Resolution does not appear to be one, are only binding as far as any country wishes to be in compliance with the UN, risking sanctions if they are not.
Under certain circumstances, as I understand it and I am no expert, Section 7 SC Resolutions can activate the presence of UN troops into a UN-participating nation. One only has to look to the futility of UN troops in Lebanon to stop the actions of Hezbollah to see the impotence of the power of the UN.
The UN has political power, nothing more.
Re. the bull’s penis dog treat: it used to be fairly common in the UK for cattle farmers to remove the penis from a dead bull and have it made into a walking stick known as a pizzle* stick. They still turn up at auctions and in antique shops and are quite collectable.
* pizzle is a Middle English word for penis and was still in common use in rural areas until the early 20th. Century.
What the media and the Biden administration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza seem not to understand is that the best way to get humanitarian aid to innocents in Gaza is to defeat Hamas in Rafah. Once defeated, a matter of weeks probably, aid will get into Gaza unimpeded. The people calling for ceasefire now seem either naive or insincere in their call for a ceasefire as a mechanism for ending the humanitarian crisis.
Short, but good analysis of the “ceasefire” resolution:
From FDD (The Foundation Defending Democracies)
“Bring them home . . . or not — Biden just sold out Israeli hostages at the United Nations”
==================
“President Biden cleared the way Monday for the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding Israel suspend its counterterrorism operations in Gaza without conditioning any cease-fire on the release of Israeli hostages.
Combined with a pressure campaign to deter Israel from dismantling Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza, Biden’s signal to the terror group is clear: Keep terrorizing and holding hostages because America is pressing Israel to stop the war.
The United States is a permanent Security Council member and, as such, can veto any resolution with which it disagrees.
China and Russia used their own veto powers Friday to block an American-proposed resolution that condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization along with the Oct. 7 massacre, denounced Houthi attacks on the Red Sea and endorsed a temporary cease-fire in Gaza “in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”
Beijing and Moscow didn’t care that the Biden administration’s proposed resolution was already hostile toward Israel — opposing military action in Rafah, where hostages are being held and Hamas is preparing to make its last stand.
Neither could tolerate a resolution that condemned a terror proxy of Iran, and nothing short of a pathway to Hamas survival would ever win their support.
Rather than waging political warfare on China and Russia for defending Hamas — with an understanding that the Security Council is a venue to undermine our enemies on the world stage, not a place to compromise core American values just for the sake of winning Chinese and Russian votes — the Biden administration internalized a misguided self-perception of US isolation.
And its desperation to pressure Israel into a cease-fire grew stronger.
Over the weekend, with Hamas refusing to compromise in hostage negotiations, America pressed Israel to make more concessions — increasing the number of convicted Palestinian terrorists Jerusalem would be willing to trade for every Israeli hostage Hamas released during a six-week cease-fire.
Coming into Monday’s Security Council meeting, Hamas had not responded to Israel’s latest offer.
Against the backdrop of a hostage negotiation in which Hamas remains maximalist in demands and the arrival of Israel’s defense minister in Washington to meet with senior White House officials, the United States needed to veto any Security Council resolution that could further embolden the terrorist group.
Biden chose a different path: abstaining on a resolution that decoupled a demand for a cease-fire from a demand for the release of hostages, thus severely undercutting Israel at the hostage-negotiating table.
The resolution had other severe flaws that demanded a US veto.
It made no mention of Oct. 7 or Hamas, let alone note Hamas is a terrorist organization, as if the world woke up one day in a vacuum outraged to find Israel at war in Gaza and Palestinian civilians in distress.
Why Israel is at war, who Israel is targeting and who is to blame for civilian suffering are unimportant questions for a resolution that simply says Israel must lay down its arms and hope a terrorist group that savaged 1,200 people and took 250 hostages will care what the Security Council demands.
These outrageous omissions, however, were no longer automatic triggers for a US veto.
During his recent State of the Union address, the president pledged to the families of Hamas-held hostages, which include American citizens, that “we will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.”
Apparently that vow did not include vetoing resolutions that disconnect demands for hostage releases from any potential cease-fire — reducing the odds of bringing them home.
The State Department claimed Monday the resolution reflected the administration’s “principled position that any ceasefire text must be paired with text on the release of the hostages.”
But that explanation itself reflects how far Biden policy has shifted. No longer must a cease-fire be conditioned on the release of hostages; the two demands must only appear next to each other for optics.
On a policy level, the two demands now exist independently — meaning America supports a cease-fire even without the release of hostages.
Israeli strength backed by American political support is needed to bring hostages home, defeat Hamas in Gaza and deter Iranian threats throughout the Middle East.
To counter the perception of an Israel crumbling under American pressure, Jerusalem must respond with reaffirmed determination to destroy Hamas on the battlefield.
And members of Congress should reaffirm their support for that objective, including a potential operation in Rafah.
Hamas scored a political victory with Biden’s help.
Israel must now fight that much harder to reverse the damage — with or without Biden’s approval.”
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2024/03/25/bring-them-home-or-not-biden-just-sold-out-israeli-hostages-at-the-united-nations/
Thank you for that, Rosemary.
And so, alone.
The only bright spot is that it reassures us that the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations is not backed up by any important political, legal, or military power to do harm. Israel can just ignore it. Anyone who bleats, “But the UN resolution…!” can just be scoffed at. Can you imagine the mess we’d be in if the UN had any power as a world government, such as dreamers used to talk about in the 1960s?
+1 👏🏾
Israel should plan (and probably is planning) for a. continued lack of commitment from the US.
The UN is (largely) a confederacy of dunces.
Leslie I’m not onboard with bagging dreamers, I’m one and I can’t help it… with these notable dreamers Martin Luther King Jr and John Lennon amongst others for company.
‘Now we can add to our “We are all Africans” tee shirts another one that says, “We are all Persians.”’
Apart from (most) Africans?
Still I will continue to identify only as human. But some aging friends now have impressive amounts of mechanical/artificial body parts, and are now human hybrids.
These “Allies of Palestine” from all quarters:
Will there be a time, you think, when they take a deep look at the history, the context, the morals, the Koran, Arab media, Islam by its own terms, the help from the USSR to the Pal cause in the 1960s, and say….
“Ohh… boy! Did we fuck up on the wrong side of that or what? Did we take the side of ISIS, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezb., Russia, the damn HOUTIS, without knowing the slightest thing about any of the above? Why? Did we see some political-demo-march titties and get struck dumb? Were we stupid enough to base our agenda and TAKE A BIG POSITION of our own cred by siding with the murderers, the generational genocidaires? Did we march for religious fundamentalists? Had we even READ the Koran or Hamas’ charter at all? Shit.
Did we fuck up back then in 2024?”
Will that day come?
Or will these “allies” go to their graves thinking: “Yep, we were right”… and (hands in ear-holes) go: “LALALALALA WE WERE RIGHT!”
I wonder….
D.A.
NYC
Will that day come?
When it comes to religious conflicts, everyone asks the wrong questions since god doesn’t exist and the parties involved don’t believe in their enemy’s gods. It’s difficult to get on the superficial level that millions take as God exists and where to go from way back then. A strange state of thought, respect and politics intermixed with rage, violence and NOW changes. As always, in humans, religion is poison and it’s too bad it’s so addictive and easily propagated.