Monday: Hili dialogue

May 6, 2024 • 6:15 am

Although I have several sets of Readers’ Wildlife photos, I’ll hold off for a day as there is local news to report, and I’m pressed for time. Meanwhile, keep those pictures coming in!

Welcome to the top o’ the week: Monday, May 6, 2024, and National Crêpes Suzette Day, described by Wikipedia as “a French dessert consisting of crêpes with beurre Suzette (pronounced [bœʁ syzɛt]), a sauce of caramelized sugar and butter, tangerine or orange juice, zest, and Grand Marnier, triple sec or orange Curaçao liqueur on top, flambéed tableside.”  They are good, but insubstantial as a dessert. Here’s one:

Missvain, CC BY 4.0. via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Great Lakes Awareness Day, National Beverage Day, National Nurses Day, and International No Diet Day. Knock yourself out!

Today’s Google Doodle (click Doodle to see the links) celebrates Teachers’ Day at the beginning of U. S. Teacher Appreciation Week. Why the froggies? The Google site says this:

This year’s Google Doodle honors Teacher Appreciation Week, and shows how teaching is many small actions that come together to nurture our students’ success.

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

Da Nooz:

Today’s news is mostly about campus protests and the war in Gaza, which are of course related and also dominate the MSM.

*The AP reports that the latest round of cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel have met with failure, and so the invasion of Rafah is just a metter of time.

The latest round of Gaza cease-fire talks ended in Cairo after “in-depth and serious discussions,” the Hamas militant group said Sunday, reiterating key demands that Israel again rejected. After signs of progress, the outlook appeared to dim.

Israel closed its main crossing point for delivering badly needed humanitarian aid for Gaza after Hamas attacked it. The defense minister claimed Hamas wasn’t serious about a deal and warned of “a powerful operation in the very near future in Rafah and other places across all of Gaza.”

Israel didn’t send a delegation to the talks mediated by Egypt and Qatar, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that “we see signs that Hamas does not intend to go to any agreement.” Egyptian state media reported that the Hamas delegation went for discussions in Qatar, where the group has a political office, and will return to Cairo for further negotiations on Tuesday.

. . .  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from hard-liners in his government, continued to lower expectations for a cease-fire deal, calling the key Hamas demands “extreme” — including the withdrawal of Israel forces from Gaza and an end to the war. That would equal surrender after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that triggered the fighting, Netanyahu said.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a statement earlier said the militant group was serious and positive about the negotiations and that stopping Israeli aggression in Gaza is the main priority.

But Israel’s government again vowed to press on with a military operation in Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city on the border with Egypt where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents now seek shelter from Israeli attacks. Rafah is a key entry point for aid.

The call to “stop Israeli aggression” and calls for a permanent cease fire are, of course, also calls for Israel to lose the war. But it’s hard for me to believe that Americans who call for these things really know that if they took place, in the long run Israel’s existence would be doubtful. But perhaps that’s what they want in the first place. Certainly that’s what the bawling protestors sitting in the Quad want.

UPDATE: This morning the NYT reports that the “Israeli military warns thousands in Rafah to evacuate.”

The Israeli military on Monday said it was asking tens of thousands of Gazans sheltering in eastern Rafah to temporarily evacuate to what it described as a humanitarian zone, a sign that Israel was inching closer to invading the city in defiance of international pressure.

By 9 a.m. local time, the military had begun dropping leaflets in eastern Rafah ordering people to evacuate. The Israeli military said it would also use text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic to warn residents of Rafah to leave.

They provide a map of where civilians are to go; as I suspected, it’s around Khan Younis, but the “humanitarian area” have been enlarged.  This provides the refuge that the United States asked for before any Rafah invasion.

(From the NYT): Source: Israeli military announcemen. tBy The New York Times

*In an uncharacteristic act of stupidity, Hamas launched rockets from near Rafah to a border crossing in northern Israel through which aid enters Gaza. (Talk about a war crime!) For the time being, the crossing is closed so that no humanitarian aid can enter.

Three IDF soldiers were killed and at least three others were seriously wounded after Hamas fired ten rockets toward the Kerem Shalom area along the Israel-Gaza border on Sunday afternoon.

The three slain soldiers were identified as St.-Sgt. Ruben Marc Mordechai Assouline, 19, from Ra’anana; St.-Sgt. Ido Testa, 19, from Jerusalem; and St.-Sgt. Tal Shavit, 21, from Kfar Giladi. Assouline and Testa served in the Shaked Battalion in the Givati Brigade. Shavit served in the 931st Battalion in the Nahal Brigade.

Soroka Medical Center stated that it received 10 people wounded in the attack, including three in serious condition, two in moderate condition, and five in light condition.

Shortly after the attack, the IDF closed the Kerem Shalom crossing located in the area, halting the entry of humanitarian aid trucks through the crossing which serves as the main entry point for aid.

Hamas took responsibility for the rocket fire, saying their Al-Qassam Brigades targeted the Kerem Shalom area with 114 mm short-range “Rajoum” rockets.

The rockets were fired from only a couple hundred meters from the Rafah humanitarian crossing, one of the few areas where IDF soldiers still have not entered since the October 27 invasion of Gaza. The IDF said it had some generic intelligence warnings about intent to launch such attacks on IDF soldiers and that there was some kind of rocket alert warning in real-time.

Responding to the rocket attacks, the air force increased its attacks on Hamas command centers and other sites in Rafah, as well as against the locations of the rocket attacks themselves, which it appears came from underground attack platforms.

The only thing Hamas has to gain by this is more Jewish deaths. Less humanitarian aid can now enter Gaza, but what does Hamas care? They have the lion’s share of all the goods that are already there, many sold at inflated prices on the black market, so if Israel retaliates and some civilians die, what does Hamas care? They just want to fire rockets, even if they interrupt humanitarian aid to their own people.

*The NYT reports that the Chicago Police dismantled a new pro-Palestinian encampment at the Art Institute of Chicago downtown, and arrested many protestors. The next question is obvious: why can’t those same cops do the same to the University of Chicago?

The police forcibly dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday and arrested dozens of protesters, hours after demonstrators had gathered in a garden at the institute and set up tents.

Some of the demonstrators were students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is affiliated with the institute, the school said in a statement.

The Chicago police said on social media that officers had removed the protesters at the school’s request. A Chicago Police spokesman said Sunday that 68 people had been arrested and charged with trespassing.

The protesters set up the encampment in the North Garden, which is part of the Art Institute of Chicago museum, at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, the police said. While encampments at some other U.S. schools during the recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests have stood for days or even weeks before police action, in this case the police said that officers “immediately responded” to maintain the safety of the protesters and the public.

The People’s Art Institute, the organizers of the protest, said on social media that the demonstrators’ demands included that the institute formally condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, remove any programs that legitimize the “occupation of Palestine” and divest from any individuals or entities that support Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Photos that the group uploaded to social media showed a sign in the encampment that read “Hind’s Garden,” a reference to Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed this year in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza..

So why can’t they do that here? Clearly the Mayor is not preventing the dismantling of encampments, but of course ours is far larger than the Art Institute’s, so it would take a lot of cops.  The cops may also be afraid of getting hurt if they took down our Encampment, but I don’t think that’s a serious worry for cops in riot gear.  I hope they will act, and act soon.

*Well, I’ll be. Pope Francis has opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers, something that would seem to violate several dicta of the Catholic Church at once. He’s pretty liberal for a Pope, and I have to praise him for reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community (Popes cannot be woke by definition), for religions should surely be “inclusive.”

Sea gulls soared over St. Peter’s Square as Laura Esquivel, clad in tight leather pants, aimed herself toward the high walls of the Holy See. “It’s not too much? My makeup?” she asked, self-consciously touching a rouged cheek. “I don’t care what people think. But this is the pope.”

She hurried into the Vatican’s cavernous Paul VI Audience Hall and was ushered to the front row. Before her, a 23-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Jesus gazed down. Behind her, the faithful flashed curious looks.

It was the third papal meeting for Laura, 57, a saucy Paraguayan sex worker who, in her realest moments, described herself as “una travesti,” outdated Spanish slang for “a transgender woman.” She lived by a code: Tough girls don’t cry. But the first time Pope Francis had blessed her, she couldn’t suppress her tears. On their second meeting, they chatted over lunch. He came to know her well enough to ask about her health. On top of her longtime HIV, she’d had a recent cancer diagnosis. During treatment, the church sourced her a comfortable hotel room in the shadow of the Colosseum and provided food, money, medicine and tests.

The outreach reflected an unconventional pope in the most radical stage of his papacy. From his early days in 2013, when he famously declared, “Who am I to judge,” Francis has urged the Catholic Church to embrace all comers, including those living in conflict with its teachings. Now, his unprecedented opening to the LGBTQ+ community has reached its zenith — and ballooned into the most explosive issue of his tenure, fueling a bitter clash with senior conservative clerics, who have denounced him in remarkably harsh terms.

In recent months, Francis has given explicit approval for transgender godparents and blessings of same-sex couples. He penned a defense of secular civil unions — once described by his predecessor as “contrary to the common good.” His pronouncements have sometimes seemed contradictory or in tension — authorizing baptisms for transgender people one day, while warning of the moral risks of “sex-change intervention” on another. He has said “being homosexual is not a crime” but hasn’t altered church teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Nevertheless, as the 87-year-old pontiff moves to cement his legacy, he has been emphatic about his overarching vision: the open door.

Nothing made that point more vividly than his decision over the past two years to welcome nearly 100 transgender women, many of them sex workers, into the sacred spaces of the Vatican.

While I’m not down with regarding transgender people as somehow sacred, they certainly deserve the rights (and rites) of the Catholic Church.  But of course the church has historically been anti-gay and anti-woman, not to mention anti-sex worker.  Why any of these people even want to be Catholic is beyond me. That said, Pope Francis is showing an unusual degree of tolerance, and I admire that. Pity that he still has to reinforce other oppressive doctrines of the church.

*The WSJ reports that “Baby Boomer professors join student protests, risking arrest and violence.”  I’m one of the BB professors, but not joining the protests. Does that make me bad?  An excerpt:

More university professors are joining the demonstrations roiling college campuses, both to voice support for Gazans and to defend their students’ right to protest.

Faculty, many of whom are in their 60s and 70s and came of age during the era of Vietnam War protests, are pushing back against university presidents, accusing the leaders of heavy-handed and inconsistent crackdowns on free speech, and warning against a wave of authoritarianism some say has been creeping onto campuses for years. Professors in leadership positions are guiding calls for votes of no-confidence, spearheading classroom walkouts and visiting encampments alongside students. Many are facing punishment from police and their employers.

In recent days, police have arrested professors during demonstrations at schools including Washington University in St. Louis, Emory University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

At Indiana University, more than 3,000 faculty, graduate workers, students, staff and alumni have called for the resignation of President Pamela Whitten, saying she escalated confrontations between demonstrators and police last week by changing the rules of engagement for protesters at an encampment without adequately informing the campus.

In a statement, Whitten emphasized the school’s commitment to free speech and defended her actions, saying, “Antisemitic episodes have been linked to this national encampment campaign” and have “become magnets for those making threats of violence.”

At the University of Texas at Austin, more than 700 faculty signed a letter pushing for the school’s president, Jay Hartzell, to resign. The letter says he needlessly put students, staff and faculty in danger by calling in law enforcement to campus.

I’m all in favor, of course, of professors joining protestors and promulgating free speech. I’m not in favor of them joining illegal demonstrations, but if they do so for purposes of moral suasion, they take the risk of punishment—part of civil disobedience. But what puzzles me is that these professors aren’t really on the side of peace but on the side of war: a war against the West instantiated in globalizing the intifada. And surely many of them want Israel gone, so Palestine can extend from the river (the Jordan river, for those who don’t know) to the sea (the Mediterranean sea, of course). I wonder if any college professors got fired for opposing demonstrations against the Vietnam war, which of course was during the Boomer era. But that was a protest against war and was not aimed at erasing any specific group—like the Jews.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Editor Hili is monitoring the staff’s sleep habits:

Hili: Don’t you think it’s time to go to bed?
A: Give me just another half an hour.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy nie sądzisz, że można już iść spać?
Ja: Jeszcze tylko pół godziny.

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

From The Dodo Pet (I may have posted it before):

From The 2024 Darwin Awards/Epic Fails:

From Pradeep; I like “science is a way of thinking”:

 

From Masih; more harassment of Iranian women for not dressing like the theocracy wants them to. “If you live here, you should dress appropriately.”

From Luana; Kendi has a new product:

From Barry, who says “sound up.” This frog sounds like a cow!

From Orli; the termites are dining well:

From Malcolm; cats at play:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a four-year-old girl gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Professor Cobb. First, Heinrich Matthei, who produced a polyuracil UUUUUUUUUUUUUU. . . .  RNA in 1961 and showed that it coded for a protein containing only phenylalanine. Ergo, “UUU” is the code for that amino acid.  It was the first decoding of the genetic code, and he should have won the Nobel Prize for it (but he didn’t).

Retweeted by Matthew. I’ve added one post from the thread about the eyes:

28 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. In an uncharacteristic act of stupidity, Hamas launched rockets from near Rafah …

    Surely a typo, with an extraneous “un”!

    1. Ha! But maybe not so stupid as it kills Jews; closes down humanitarian aid, an act for which Israel will be blamed; and moves an IDF attack on Rafah closer, again where blame goes to Israel. Looks like a win-win-win for Hamas.

      1. Oops. Yes. I agree, and mentioned the same in my comment below (before I saw this.)

  2. “Why can’t they do that here?”: Maybe your president has not asked them?

    1. Yes, I was going to say, I am sure the CPD will do nothing without the University’s nod. Town and gown.

      Hard to get information about the Art Institute protest, especially to see where the protestors were, and if they were on city property. Undoubtedly, though, the Art Institute asked for the police to remove them. I would expect that, given the damage and thefts at Portland State library (reportedly display cases were smashed and rare books and comics were stolen), the Art Institute was highly concerned about being “occupied.”

    2. To avoid humiliation, the University must refrain from making a request that it knows will be denied. The occupiers are watching.

  3. 1. “[U.S.] Teacher Appreciation Week, and shows how teaching is many small actions that come together to nurture our students’ success.”

    Protect and rescue pre-K-12 teachers from ideological remoulding. It works :

    “The turn to critical Marxist thought is a defining moment in the past 40 years of educational scholarship, especially for educational scholars who identify as part of the political left. It introduced the ideas and vocabulary that continue to frame most conversations in the field about social justice, such as hegemony, ideology, consciousness, praxis, and most importantly, the word ‘critical’ itself, which has become ubiquitous as a descriptor for left educational scholarship.”

    Isaac Gottesman
    The Critical Turn in Education – From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race
    Routledge
    2016

    “There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.”
[…]
“When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, […] denunciation is impossible […] and there is no transformation without action.”

    -Paulo Freire

    Pedagogy of the Oppressed

    1968 (Spanish, Original)
    Ch. 3, p. 87 of 2018 edition (50th ann.)

    2. “Pope Francis’ […] unprecedented opening to the LGBTQ+ community has reached its zenith”

    Woke Transubstantiation for Revolution. I guess the Pope forgot the “wise as serpents” counterpart to “kind as doves”.

    Communist operational strategy:
    1. Infiltrate
    2. Agitate
    3. Desecrate
    4. Confiscate

    That was an easy 1-2-3. Just no. 4 left to Make It Like 1917 Russia Again.

    #Hermetic alchemy
    #Cults in our Midst (Singer, 1995)

    … OK, to cheer myself up, :

    3. “Heinrich Matthei, who produced a polyuracil UUUUUUUUUUUUUU. . . . RNA in 1961 and showed that it coded for a protein containing only phenylalanine.”

    I love that. LOVE! Need it. Happy Birthday!

  4. Interesting that the google doodle portrays the teacher and students as frogs. Frogs, I believe, are considered one of the trans movements poster species.

    1. Just frogs? Haven’t the trans activists appropriated at least a dozen or more?

      1. I usually go on a tear over this stuff, but I must say I haven’t seen frogs.

        But Mushrooms – especially long ones. Snails, axlotls, … yes.

        And queer writers use the term “sprouts” in their “children’s /young adult literature”. What would that imply? Hmmm. Clever – like using the rainbow, or teddy bears (Linda Zamer does this). Look, I’m not doing anything wrong!

        See

        A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities
        Mady G, J.R. Zuckerberg (no full names?)
        Limerence Press
        Portland, OR
        ISBN 978-1-62010-586-3
        2019

        And more like that too with nothing to be concerned about, we aren’t using bad words or dirty pictures, we are loving and kind!

  5. Whatever the Catholic Church wants to do about rites for people who call themselves trans is up to them, no business of mine. However I submit it is a mistake to call for rights for trans people. Trans people, like everyone else, already enjoy the usual civil liberties that restrict state power against them and it is already as illegal to beat one up or cheat one as it is anyone else.

    So what is meant by “equal rights”? The concept of civil rights gives the state the power to punish people who discriminate in employment, public accommodation, and sometimes speech against people who fit into one of the designated protected classes. Once your group identity becomes a protected class, you gain the right to sic the government on someone who offends you. If I won’t hire a man in makeup and a dress to be a Girl Scout leader because I want only women, for safeguarding, he can sue me if trans people get civil rights as trans people.

    For an identity group that exists only in the imagination of its adherents and flies in the face of biology, this is perverse. But that aside, we should be wary and skeptical about adding to the already long list of grounds under which the state can punish us, as each addition diminishes our freedom rather than enhancing it.

    1. Communists always invert values and apply them against wherever they come from.

      “Rights” and “justice”, “love”, “liberty”, and so on. The words sit in thought on their own as magic spells.

      Communists are generally “holistic” – so, expressing an idea with lots more words – except when trying to conceal the agenda in the bailey with the easily defensible motte.

      I think individual word play like this is supposed to make it easy for the Outer School to take up recruits or simply gain support. Fewer words but big effects because of the esoteric meanings only the cult adepts apply – from the secret knowledge

  6. …for religions should surely be…

    I don’t think they *should*. They make up their own rules about whom to let in like a club would. If the rules of a particular religion does not allow a specific group of people, then that’s how it is. Religions change often under external influences and somehow reconcile the changes with their interpretations of tradition and scripture. There is no principle (apart, for example, from the laws of the country) by which I can say that religions should be this or that. They make up most of their principles (stories) anyway. This sort of fakery is a marked characteristic of religion.

    Catholics make up all kinds of reasons to keep women out of the priesthood; it sounds silly to me, but from what I gather many Catholics do not want women priests. I could say that I would like them to change — I won’t because I think it is a silly thing for women to be as stupid as the men 🙂 — but there need not be a principle, among their made up-rules, from which to infer that they should let women become priests. They might (probably will) change when the pressure gets to them.

    The Anglican churches (some of them, at least) are far more liberal (good for them!).

    1. Pope Francis seems concerned about gays—which is fine with me—but is still holding onto prohibitions about birth control and abortion. He does not seem as interested in women’s problems.

  7. As I mentioned the other day, Hamas is quite adept at adapting to circumstances. Last week a deal was seemingly in Hamas’s interests—hence the frenzied negotiations and the Hamas statement that there were no remaining obstacles to a deal. This week, the deal seems to be off.

    Why? My guess is that there are two factors. The first is that the Netanyahu government made it quite clear that the war will continue even if a deal is reached. Hamas wants the deal to lead to a permanent ceasefire, and Israel made clear that a permanent ceasefire is not in the cards. The second is that Hamas leadership thinks that having Israel enter Rafah—which it is actively preparing to do—will draw the ire of the rest of the world, particularly the United States, and that goading Israel to attack Rafah will generate more support for the Palestinians and more outrage at Israel. Hence, another reason to nix the deal. Hamas will continue to adjust on the fly—deal one day, no deal the next—as long as it suits their aims.

    And why did Hamas attack the crossing where aid to Gaza is coming in? It could be just a stupid error of judgment. But, knowing that Israel would close the crossing if attacked, Hamas could be calculating that people—and the press—will soon forget the attack but will long remember the fact that Israel is “yet again” preventing aid from getting to innocent civilians. So, I’m not so sure it was a mistake.

    1. Hamas is conducting the war in the press. Plus they have no real interest in the Gazans.

      Thus more dead or suffering Gazans is a plus for them.

  8. Surely that “table” of sex+gender symbols also needs a “truth table” of the outcomes of the “and” operation for all possible combinations of gender identity+sex with gender identity+sex.
    I also note they’re leaving out the “asexual” gender, for some reason of “exclusion” or “inclusion” – I can’t bring myself to care which. They should be in the “truth table”, even if their mating is theoretically impossible. No outcome, obviously.

  9. How many of the Baby Boomer professors would be supporting the “right to protest” if students were using identical tactics as now but doing so to protest left-wing causes? Encampments against DEI? Against trans rights? Protestors waving “Proud Boy” banners? Wearing MAGA hats? We all know the answer. We also know that the university administrators would not be negotiating with the protestors or dithering about removing them from campus.

    And this is why the campus protest wave concerns people outside of campus. It is the selective application of rules, laws, and procedures—the ethos of Lenin’s “Who, whom?” overwhelming that of equal treatment. Many of us are concerned that this selective application of process, procedure, and justice will not remain confined to campus. One could argue that it has—like much of campus ideology—already migrated. The stakes are much higher than about what happens in Harvard Yard this week or next.

    1. Good point. The profs are only interested in what are considered “progressive” causes.

    2. Yes. I agree with you wholeheartedly. As Jerry has pointed out numerous times, the missing ingredient is neutrality on the part of the institutions. They (the administrators), for the most part, have chosen sides. It’s all the worse because of the blarantly, anti-Jewish aspect. You want to protest war? Fine. You start attacking individuals, personally? That’s where I part ways with you. If I were a Jewish student today, I would feel horribly betrayed by those in charge. Similarly so by the faculty holding classes outside in support of the pro-Palestinians. Surely, those professors have Jewish students in their classes. That’s just mean spirited and small-minded on their part. If professors want to protest they need to do it off campus. I’ve lost so much respect for academics as a whole. Bad behavior all around.

      1. Anti-intellectual attitudes are rampant and, unfortunately, the extreme woke professors & administrators are just making things worse.

  10. About the male frogs who moo. Dat ain’t nuttin’. I didn’t hear any of them when I was in the dry Chaco in the vicinity of Filadelfia, Boqueron two weeks ago. On my three previous visits (’92, ’93 and ’96) i heard many “meow” frogs calling. The males’ cry is meeeeow! descending nearly an octave. Once heard, hard to forget. I have no idea which species they were.

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