Friday: Hili dialogue

44 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

1. On this day:
   1614 – In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.

   1621 – The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England.

   1792 – United States President George Washington exercises his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power is used in the United States.

   1902 – A stand box collapses at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland, which led to the deaths of 25 and injuries to more than 500 supporters during an international association football match between Scotland and England. [Another larger disaster occurred at Ibrox in 1971, when 66 people were killed in a crush as supporters tried to leave the stadium.]

   1922 – The American Birth Control League, forerunner of Planned Parenthood, is incorporated.

   1938 – Spanish Civil War: Two days after the Nationalist army occupied the Catalan city of Lleida, dictator Francisco Franco decrees the abolition of the Generalitat (the autonomous government of Catalonia), the self-government granted by the Republic, and the official status of the Catalan language.

   1949 – A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois, kills 77 people and leads to nationwide fire code improvements in the United States.

   1951 – Cold War: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.

   1991 – The Space shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-37 to deploy the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

   1992 – Peace protesters Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sučić are killed on the Vrbanja Bridge in Sarajevo, becoming the first casualties of the Bosnian War.

   1998 – In Japan, the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opens to traffic, becoming the longest bridge span in the world.

   1999 – Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 are handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.

   2018 – Agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid a slaughterhouse in Tennessee, detaining nearly 100 undocumented Hispanic workers in one of the largest workplace raids in the history of the United States.

   Births:
   1588 – Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (d. 1679).

   1649 – Elihu Yale, American-English merchant and philanthropist (d. 1721).

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

   1777 – Marie Jules César Savigny, French zoologist (d. 1851). [He published descriptions of numerous taxa and was among the first to propose that the mouth-parts of insects are derived from the jointed legs of segmented arthropods.]

   1827 – Joseph Lister, English surgeon and academic (d. 1912).

   1837 – Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic (d. 1909).

   1856 – Booker T. Washington, African-American educator, essayist and historian (d. 1915).

   1872 – Samuel Cate Prescott, American microbiologist and chemist (d. 1962). [Involved in the development of food safety, food science, public health, and industrial microbiology.]

   1898 – Solange d’Ayen, French noblewoman, Duchess of Ayen and journalist (d. 1976). [The fashion editor of French Vogue magazine from the 1920s until the 1940s, she also wrote for the American Vogue.]

   1900 – Spencer Tracy, American actor (d. 1967).

   1908 – Bette Davis, American actress (d. 1989).

   1909 – Albert R. Broccoli, American film producer, co-founded Eon Productions (d. 1996).

   1912 – John Le Mesurier, English actor (d. 1983).

   1916 – Gregory Peck, American actor, political activist, and producer (d. 2003).

   1917 – Robert Bloch, American author (d. 1994).

   1925 – Janet Rowley, American human geneticist (d. 2013).

   1926 – Roger Corman, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

   1929 – Nigel Hawthorne, English actor and producer (d. 2001).

   1933 – Barbara Holland, American author (d. 2010). [Wrote in defense of such modern-day vices as cursing, drinking, eating fatty food and smoking cigarettes.]

   1934 – John Carey, English author and critic.

   1935 – Peter Grant, English talent manager (d. 1995).

   1937 – Colin Powell, American general and politician, 65th United States Secretary of State (d. 2021).

   1941 – Dave Swarbrick, English singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2016).

   1942 – Peter Greenaway, Welsh director and screenwriter.

   1946 – Jane Asher, English actress.

   1949 – Judith Resnik, American engineer and astronaut (d. 1986). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1950 – Agnetha Fältskog, Swedish singer-songwriter and producer. [She first achieved success in Sweden with the release of her 1968 self-titled debut album and rose to international stardom in the 1970s as a member of ABBA.]

   1955 – Anthony Horowitz, English author and screenwriter.

   1973 – Pharrell Williams, American singer, songwriter and rapper. [“Happy” birthday, Pharrell!]

   1975 – Caitlin Moran, English journalist, author, and critic.

   1989 – Lily James, English actress.

   He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived (Franz Kafka):
   1612 – Diana Scultori, Italian engraver (b. 1547). [One of the earliest known women printmakers, making mostly reproductive engravings of well-known paintings or drawings, especially those of Raphael and Giulio Romano, or ancient Roman sculptures.]

   1866 – Thomas Hodgkin, British physician (b. 1798). [One of the most prominent pathologists of his time and a pioneer in preventive medicine. He is now best known for the first account of Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphoma and blood disease, in 1832. Hodgkin’s work marked the beginning of times when a pathologist was actively involved in the clinical process.]The

   1902 – Hans Ernst August Buchner, German bacteriologist (b. 1850). [A pioneer in the field of immunology, he was the first to discover a substance in blood serum that was capable of destroying bacteria. He called the substance “alexin”, which was later named “complement” by Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915).]

   1921 – Sophie Elkan, Swedish writer and translator (b. 1853).

   1938 – Helena Westermarck, Finnish artist and writer (b. 1857).

   1964 – Douglas MacArthur, American general (b. 1880).

   1967 – Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1890).

   1970 – Louisa Bolus, South African botanist and taxonomist (b. 1877).

   1970 – Alfred Sturtevant, American geneticist and academic (b. 1891).

   1975 – Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese general and politician, 1st President of the Republic of China (b. 1887).

   1976 – Howard Hughes, American pilot, engineer, and director (b. 1905).

   1991 – Sonny Carter, American soccer player, physician, and astronaut (b. 1947). [Killed in a plane crash in Brunswick, Georgia, along with the 22 others on board, including Sen. John Tower.]

   1992 – Sam Walton, American businessman, founded Walmart and Sam’s Club (b. 1918).

   1994 – Kurt Cobain, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1967).

   1997 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet (b. 1926).

   1998 – Cozy Powell, English drummer (b. 1947).

   2005 – Saul Bellow, Canadian-American novelist, essayist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915).

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

   2008 – Charlton Heston, American actor, director, and political activist (b. 1923).

   2009 – I. J. Good, British mathematician (b. 1916).

   2011 – Baruch Samuel Blumberg, American physician and geneticist (b. 1925). [Co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH and at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.]

   2012 – Jim Marshall, English businessman, founded Marshall Amplification (b. 1923).

   2019 – Sydney Brenner, South African biologist (b. 1927)[58]
   [Made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, United States.]

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

      Judith Arlene Resnik (born on this day in 1949, died January 28, 1986) was an American electrical engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer, pilot and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. She was the fourth woman, the second American woman and the first Jewish woman of any nationality to fly in space, logging 145 hours in orbit.

      Recognized while still a child for her intellectual brilliance, Resnik was accepted at Carnegie Institute of Technology after becoming only the sixteenth woman in the history of the United States to have attained a perfect score on the SAT exam. She graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon before attaining a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland.

      Resnik worked for RCA as an engineer on Navy missile and radar projects, as a senior systems engineer for Xerox Corporation, and published research on special-purpose integrated circuitry. She was also a pilot and made research contributions to biomedical engineering as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health.

      At age 28, Resnik was selected by NASA as a mission specialist. She was part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group to include women. While training on the astronaut program, she developed software and operating procedures for NASA missions. Her first space flight was the STS-41-D mission in August and September 1984, the twelfth Space Shuttle flight, and the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Discovery, where her duties included operating its robotic arm. Her second Shuttle mission was STS-51-L in January 1986 aboard Space Shuttle Challenger. She died when the orbiter broke up shortly after liftoff and crashed into the ocean.

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

      1. Jez. Thank you for recognizing Judy Resnik today.

         1. You’re very welcome, Jim.

            Missing from the April 5 list on Wikipedia, but mentioned on today’s main page:

            1944 – Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from Auschwitz with the aid of an SS officer who opposed the Holocaust.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Lederer%27s_escape_from_Auschwitz

            1. I also should have mentioned that she was one of the first six women chosen for astronaut by nasa. Her class was the first in ten years as nasa had few missions requiring an astronaut after the Apollo 17. Her class was chosen with two categories: in addition to pilots, there was now a mission specialist category. The mission requirements for shuttle and future space station crews were different and broader than the early mercury-apollo requirements. However i guess my point is that with a huge net cast for candidates, the 35 chosen from over 8,000 applicants did NOT compromise on merit. I am continually amazed at the qualifications of our astronaut corps. Btw, it is my understanding that opening up the application process was the subject of much argument in the NASA A-suite in the 70’s but eventually goodness prevailed!

   2. Thanks, JezGrove, for your daily posts of notable events.

      The entry about the 1991 plane crash that killed Sonny Clark revived a sad memory for me. Two of the other victims of that crash were a very young brother and sister who were traveling on their own to visit their grandparents. Though I never met any of them, they and their parents lived very close to me. By chance I was driving past the church where their funeral was held just at the time they were unloading the children’s coffins from the back of a hearse. I had two young children of my own at the time and seeing those two small coffins absolutely gutted me.

      1. Thanks – that’s a very moving anecdote, Brooke.

         I’m probably in violation of Da Roolz, but since I’m commenting again I’ll just note that The Attagirls chose a different Woman of the Day, the amazing human geneticist Janet Rowley: https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1776135560203014385

         1. She was here, and I knew her slightly. And yes, she was a jewel in our crown of biologists.

   3. I did not know of Gregory Peck’s political activism. Thanks.

      Agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid a slaughterhouse…

      I thought one had to prove that one is allowed to work in the US to get a proper job — for example, a job with a US company. Does ‘undocumented’ mean that their papers were forged? Or did the employer knowingly hire them?

      1949 – A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois, ….

      The place used to be called Broughton; then it was renamed, unfortunately 🙂

2. Chocolate, exercise and travel are excellent specifics for le chien noir.

   1. I always assumed the sable canine came from Churchill, and no doubt the exact association has changed with time, but looking it up out of curiosity it seems that Samuel Johnson used and popularised the expression, and that one can go all the way back to Horace, whose niger canis conveys much the same meaning.

      Meanwhile I’ll start with the chocolate.

3. The huge metal ball in Taipei 101 is worth the elevator ride. It’s an interesting piece of technology to look at. Just glad it wasn’t swaying around while I was there. The building also has a truly great dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung, in the basement.

4. That doesn’t of course excuse the stupid mistake that killed 7, and I suspect the IDF pilot who did that will be fired

   The BBC is reporting that two senior officers have been fired by the IDF. A BBC journalist who has seen the aerial footage used by the IDF has confirmed that a gunman arrived at the depot with the convoy and that a fourth vehicle, with four gunmen on board, then left at the same time as the three vehicles that were targeted, but headed in a different direction. It wasn’t hit, because it was in close proximity to an aid facility.

   Interestingly, the BBC journalist also confirmed that the World Central Kitchen logos on the roofs of the convoy weren’t visible in the footage because it was dark. He said that the BBC has been aware of this problem for 25 years and attaches a special tape to the roofs of its press vehicles to circumvent the difficulty. He confirmed that no such tape had been used on the roofs of the convoy vehicles.

   All that said, there were serious communication errors and the IDF failed to follow its own procedures – presumably the reason for the sackings.

   1. I notice immediately that the first articles I read about the attack mentioned both that the attack happened in the dark and that the vehicles had markings on their roofs.
      But they never made the connection that painted logos are not useful in the dark.

      Also, in Hamas we are dealing with people who use ambulances to move terrorists around and who hides arms and ammo in hospitals.

      For the aid groups, driving around in convoys in the middle of the night in combat zones is a terrible idea. It is hard enough to tell friend from foe in daylight.

5. That damper is astounding!

6. I’ve seen that Wile E Coyote sticker on a bump on a car in our neighbourhood. Hilarious!

   Jeremy Eichler’s book Time’s Echo is about 4 composers and how they were affected by the Holocaust and Alma’s story is part of it.

7. PCC asks:

   “But why does Israel get all the criticism when Hamas goes uncriticized for not only trying to get its own people killed, but killing them with misfired rockets.”

   It seems clear to me that the reason is that the world expects more of Israel than it does of Hamas. No?

   1. It’s plainly a war of civilization vs. barbarism, and Israel is fighting for civilization.

      The real question is why so many people are supporting barbarism?

      1. Because many have never known barbarism close up and real, they are closeted in their bubbles of safety and think this gives them absolute rights to criticism unbounded! Plus of course stupidity is a factor.

   2. That cuts two ways. If the world expects more of Israel, why is it mostly supporting the side it expects less of? Or does “expecting more” just mean that it wants to hobble Israel so her enemies are less inconvenienced in their efforts to kill Jews?

      1. Not sure what you mean by “why is it mostly supporting the side it expects less of”. In what way? In providing weapons and financial support? I know that there are people supporting Hamas, and it surely hurts to hear that. But I don’t think you can say that the world is mostly supporting Hamas. What I think the world (whatever we mean by that) is supporting is an end to the war. And no, that is not easy, and yes Israel is determined to exterminate Hamas, but I believe the world is trying to remind Israel that it should not do that by “any means necessary”.
         It is not my goal here to provoke. I just hope that we can engage in productive ways that may somehow bring some hope of an end to this war.

         1. All the time there was snabb and easy way to end this war: Force Qatar (not so difficult with U.S. base guarding Qatar on Qatari soil) to arrest all Hamas’s leaders who live there in luxury and safety. Press Egypt to take (temporarily) refugees from Gaza. Stop all weapon smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. Stop at least fuel delivery to Gaza (fuel delivered now as “humanitarian help” is mostly used by Hamas to be able to hide in tunnels which now have light and air thanks to this fuel). The war would be over in a few weeks and Israeli hostages would return home. As it is now, all the demonstrations all over the world, all calls for “ceasefire now”, all “humanitarian help” which helps Hamas leaders survive underground, only prolongs the war.

            1. Hear, hear! And while the UN Human Rights Council has passed a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel where the hell is a resolution calling on Iran, and other like-minded nations, to stop arming Hamas, Hezbollah and the Youthis?
               The barbarians are no longer at the gates; they’re inside and running demonstrations and marches in support of the population that bred Hamas, and our foolish politicians are running scared of this nonsense and seem only interested in supporting terrorism, if one takes a longer view. Shame!!

            2. I agree with you 100%, I struggle with the USA and its relationship with Qatar which is a diabolical terrorist infested state but of course money talks.
               One only has to view the Qatari cash slushing around in many countries, USA included big time. They were recently blocked from buying two UK newspapers but only at the last minute, a deal brokered by previous senior UK politicians, money changing hands!
               If the US really cared they would ditch Qatar but I don’t think they do care and lecturing Israel about “friendly fire” is just unbelievable particularly as you so accurately stated recently their record is one of the worst of countries usually when carrying out the internationally illegal activity of “administration change”
               Unbelievable!

         2. There are times in history when the only humane way to end a war is for the civilized side to win it. This is one of those times.

         3. If your enemy pledges to stop at nothing to kill you, then yes you must destroy him by any means necessary.* For Israel this is not an optional war, where yes it would be nice to have a woke liberal elected private-property government in Vietnam or Iraq or Serbia but not an existential necessity to the United States that it be achieved. America could therefore impose strict rules of engagement on its own troops, lines that you would not (usually) cross, and impose the same strict rules on the military forces of the government it was assisting because even if the ally (pawn) thought it was engaged in an existential conflict, its patron the U.S. didn’t really care, existentially, who prevailed in the end. It could say, “We’d like you to win, but not by any means necessary, even if our common enemy is more barbaric. If you have to match him to win, we’ll conspire to make you lose so it doesn’t make us look bad.”

            Canada’s Government, also not in an existential conflict—if it were, it would just capitulate— has been finding any excuse to take shots at Israel ever since the war started. The Liberal Party has thrown in its electoral lot with its Muslim base, who support Hamas to the extent they are legally allowed to say so. (It is a designated terrorist organization in Canada.). The view here is, “Those goddamn Jews think they are so virtuous and moral. Let’s exploit any mistake they make in the hope that what support the world does give them will erode further. Then we win. A bonus would be if the Israelis really are stooping to our tactics. Gets our job done faster.”
            ————————
            * For purpose of argument let’s accept the unevidenced assumption that Israel regarded targeting aid workers as helping the existential war effort enough to justify expending at least three guided missiles on them, and then did so. Remember Israel doesn’t have to shoot at aid vehicles to starve Gaza. It can simply close the border crossings and shut off the water and electricity.

      2. +1 The Canadian Government would “capitulatie” even if they did not with the state of their armed forces Canada would not last long. I think most of them are still working from home because of Covid, either that or they would seriously trip over the long hair and bushy beards and obesity would account for many. I have never seen so many overweight service personnel. Must be something in the water.

   3. Much of the world also evinces more anger at the accidental killing of seven aid workers than it does at the slaughter of over a 1000 Jews and the taking and keeping of hundreds of hostages.

      1. Apparently there is now more food flowing to Gaza then there was before October 7.

         Hamas is also deliberately starving the hostages to death.

         1. Surely not? The UN and just about every country worldwide states categorically that “Gazans are starving to death” seems to be taking an inordinate time though and the news pictures don’t show any thin people!

            1. Here is my source (20-22 minute mark):

               https://youtu.be/v0GJhsmMx8o?si=5Tpjop0kpxce9ls2

      2. +100%

   4. Indeed. And all of this whilst the world ignores the horrendous humanitarian crisis caused by the so-called “civil war” in Yemen – or at least has not raised it to the same political level – which is now in its tenth year. The double standards are unbelievable.

   5. Yes, of course that’s true, but it’s worse than you say, for the world refuses to condemn Hamas for anything it does, and damns Israel for good thing it does, like warning civilians before an airstrike. And then ask yourself, “WHY do people expect more of Israel than of Hamas?” That’s clearly true, but given that people keep implying that the two people are of equal moral worth, then why aren’t our expectations of them the same?

8. I am seriously questioning whether I can in good conscience vote for Biden/Harris this coming November. Their management of the crisis in Gaza tells me that their primary concern is re-election and that their support for Israel is secondary. That selfish motivation guides Biden’s actions in Israel tells me that the same motivations are in play regarding other policy matters as well. I am well aware that political self-preservation and opportunism play a role in (perhaps) all actions taken by political leaders; nonetheless I am deeply perplexed that Biden would let self-preservation put an ally’s very existence at risk.

   1. There is a better than even chance that Bidens “ self preservation” could be embalming fluid before much longer. I find it really hard to understand that the USA has two really old “geezers” running for the Presidency. Where are the good younger politicians?

   2. Norman, you are wrong in claiming that “Biden … let[s] self-preservation put an ally’s very existence at risk.”

      Israel’s existence is not at stake – it does not matter how many times Jerry repeats this. It is categorcially false. And i say that while supporting Israel trying to eradicate Hamas from Gaza).

      Let’s hear it again from a University oif Chicago colleague of Jerry, who has been studying war and peace for a living for more than 30 years:

      John Mearsheimer interviewed by UnHerd: There is no two-state solution. Dec 11, 2023, 49 mins (the first 29 mins of the video cover the conflict in Gaza)
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Rj5LibR1o

      25:05 Can Israel survive without US support? Are you serious? Do you really believe that Hamas is an existential threat to Israel? Israel is a remarkably powerful state. In my opinion, it is militarily the most powerful state in the region. It is the only state that has nuclear weapons. Hamas doesn’t even have a state. It occupies Gaza. It’s remarkably weak. This is the kind of threat inflation that you get in the West, in the US and the UK, all designed to justify what Israel is doing. If Israel faces the second coming of the Third Reich, if Hamas fighters are the new Nazis, then you can argue that killing huge number of Palestinians serves to avoid another holocaust. That’s not what’s going on here. Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel.

      26:52 What about threats from the countries surrounding Israel? What country is going to invade Israel and threaten its survival? Jordan? I don’t think so. Egypt? I don’t think so. Syria? I don’t think so. Iraq? I don’t think so. Lebanon? No. Hezbollah? No. Hezbollah has lots of rockets and missiles, and it could do huge amounts of damage inside Israel if it launched these about 150,000 rockets and missiles. Sure. But it does not have the capability to invade Israel and conquer any territory, and hold onto it. Nor does Hamas have this capability. Israel might face an existential threat in the future if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Iran and Israel have hostile relations, bitter relations. A conflict between the two of them could escalate to the nuclear level. There is no military threat that Iran could invade and conquer Israel. Let’s not forget that Israel has nuclear weapons. They are the ultimate deterrent. I have yet to see a country with nuclear weapons to disappear from the face of the earth. I don’t think that Israel will be the first country that fits the bill on that score.

      1. Mearsheimer is a well known hater of Israel, and has been so all his life, so I don’t care if he’s my “University of Chicago colleague.” And if Hezbollah attacks from the north and Iran from the east, then Israel’s existence may well be at stake. Iran will soon have nuclear weapons, and only one or two of those fired at Israel will obliterate the country.

         As for this:

         Israel’s existence is not at stake – it does not matter how many times Jerry repeats this. It is categorcially false. And i say that while supporting Israel trying to eradicate Hamas from Gaza).

         It’s an assertion that you cannot make with certainty. Nor is it civil.

         1. What would happen if Israel were to be attacked now from the North by Hezbollah and from the East by Iran (by means of air strikes, I suppose, since Iran does not have a border with Israel)? The US would come to Israel’s aid, and together they would rout the attackers.
            Have you ever wondered why Hezbollah hasn’t already tried to invade Israel (given that Israel is fighting in Gaza)? (The same question applies to Iran.) The answer is: It would be disastrous for Hezbollah. The US would certainly come to Israel’s help.

            Jerry, to defend Israel’s current attempt to eradicate Hamas from Gaza, it is not necessary to argue that Israel’s existence is at stake. All one has to point out is that Hamas will never make peace with Israel and has threatened to try to repeat Oct 7-style massacres. In other words, even if Israel agreed to a permanent ceasefire now, Hamas would break it at its own convenience. After all, there was a ceasefire on Oct 6, 2023.

            After Oct 7, any normal person (including several Arab rulers) realizes that if one wants to have peace in the Middle East, then Hamas needs to be eliminated. Of course, there are lots of people whose hatred of the Jews or whose ignorance or stupidity/wokeness (think of the lesbian Jew Judith Butler) blinds them to this fact.

            If (or when) Iran acquires nuclear weapons, firing one at Israel would be suicidal to the Iranian clerics. They know that. Putin has a large nuclear arsenal. Why hasn’t he used it against Ukraine? Or to claim back other parts of the former Soviet empire? North Korea has nuclear weapons. Why have its rulers not used them against South Korea (or that Satan, the USA) or to boss around other East Asian countries? The answer is always the same: You use nuclear weapons, and the consequences for you will be absolutely dire. Nuclear deterrence worked against the Soviet Union. You would need to make an argument that it won’t work against Iran (instead of implying or simply asserting it).

            If you really believed that Iran cannot be deterred, I don’t see how you can avoid arguing that Israel should nuke Iran now (while the latter is still unable to retaliate in kind).

9. Sorry I’m getting random deletes in the auto fill of my name on some of these comments, which usually executes without my having to think about it.

10. They were talking about Gaza when the earth quaked: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68744775

    🙂

11. As a resident of Idaho, the incident of racial harassment near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is not surprising. The area just north of the city, very rural woodlands, is home to a large population of racists and anarchists. They have been segregating themselves there for many years. In addition, many of the type are migrating to the state as a whole based on it’s reputation as a very red state surrounded by liberal ones. The African American population of Idaho is 1.5%.

    1. Part of the problem is the lack of historical knowledge. Cour d’Alene and the suburb of Hayden Lake were known to be the home of the “Patriot Front” and any number of other far right hate groups, including the infamous “Christian Posse Comitatus”. In its better days, the SPLC was a major player in helping to eliminate many of these groups by destroying them financially through lawsuits and using the courts. However, there are still vestiges of these old groups as well as white supremacists in that part of Idaho. Team management should have known better.

12. Didn’t know there was stuffed pizza other than Nancy’s…

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