Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 11, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 11, 2024, and National Corn on the Cob Day.  I used to have a picture of Matthew Cobb with a can of corn on his lap, which I called “Corn on the Cobb”, but I can’t find it.  This photo of elote, the tasty Mexican version, will have to do:

SimpleFoodie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Call Your Doctor Day, National German Chocolate Cake Day (not cultural appropriation!), Pizza Margherita Day, World Pet Memorial Day, and, in Hawaii, King Kamehameha Day,

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*On Sunday French President Emmanuel Macron experienced a humiliating defeat when, after the elections for the EU parliament, his own Renaissance party’s representatives were roundly defeated (31.4% to 14.6%) by Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally Party (it seems that all of Europe is moving sharply rightward). In respond, Macron made a gamble: he summarily dissolved one of the two houses of the French Parliament and called for new elections. From the NYT:

On the face of it, there is little logic in calling an election from a position of great weakness. But that is what President Emmanuel Macron has done by calling a snap parliamentary election in France on the back of a humiliation by the far right.

After the National Rally of Marine Le Pen and her popular protégé Jordan Bardella handed him a crushing defeat on Sunday in elections for the European Parliament, Mr. Macron might have done nothing. He might also have reshuffled his government, or simply altered course through stricter controls on immigration and by renouncing contested plans to tighten rules on unemployment benefits.

Instead, Mr. Macron, who became president at 39 in 2017 by being a risk taker, chose to gamble that France, having voted one way on Sunday, will vote another in a few weeks.

“I am astonished, like almost everyone else,” said Alain Duhamel, the prominent author of “Emmanuel the Bold,” a book about Mr. Macron. “It’s not madness, it’s not despair, but it is a huge risk from an impetuous man who prefers taking the initiative to being subjected to events.”

Shock coursed through France on Monday. The stock market plunged. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, a city that will host the Olympic Games in just over six weeks, said she was “stunned” by an “unsettling” decision. “A thunderbolt,” thundered Le Parisien, a daily newspaper, across its front page

The risk, of course, and it’s substantial, is that the National Rally Party would win the elections, national ones this time. From an earlier NYT article:

If the National Rally repeats its performance in national elections, the country could become nearly ungovernable, with Mr. Macron confronting a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in.

“It’s a serious, weighty decision,” he acknowledged. “But above all, it’s an act of trust” in French voters, he said.

French parliamentary elections take place in two rounds. The second round will be held on July 7, less than a month from now.

Given France’s important place at the heart of the European Union, the European election result was a significant sign of a strong rightward drift in Europe, driven mainly by concerns over uncontrolled immigration. The nationalist right has also been far more ambivalent than Mr. Macron and other Western leaders about supporting Ukraine.

. . . A National Rally triumph in the legislative elections that Mr. Macron just called would not topple him from office. But depending on the results, it could force him to appoint a prime minister from his political opposition — perhaps even from the National Rally.

And France would be in chaos. Why is Macron doing this? He didn’t have to dissolve Parliament; he decided to.  I don’t know enough about French politics to give an answer, and the NYT says just this:

“France is a country of the discontented, but Mr. Macron has provoked an acute form of personal resentment,” Mr. Duhamel said. “He has given many French people the feeling of being inferior, and they detest that.”

Such is the animus that Mr. Macron may have encountered, he might well have been forced to dissolve a Parliament where he does not have an absolute majority in the fall anyway.

I asked Matthew’s opinion, as he knows a lot about France, and here’s his answer:

[Macron] is trying to regain the initiative. His party has a fragile majority in parliament, and has been ruling by decree for the last year. This way he hopes he can oblige the right to unite around him, and the left to vote for his party in the second rpund of the elections where they face an RN candidate. That’s how he got elected President, twice, with the voters of the Left gritting their teeth and voting for him against the Le Pen. He has never had a majority of French people *for* him. But he has created such havoc and compromised with the politics of the RN (except on Europe and Ukraine) over the last 6 years that he may have used up that political capital. We will see….
He added this, too:

“Perhaps more significant in Macron’s eyes, and it seems to have worked: he has destroyed what remains of the old right wing party, which claims to be the inheritor of de Gaulle. They have just said they will stand in the election with the RN (the inheritors of Petain…) They will be shattered forever. (They are now called Les Républicains. Used to be called the RPR [Chirac’s party]. Macron’s project has always been to get rid of the old parties of right and left. )

*NBC News reports that the U.S. is contemplating cutting a side deal with Hamas (without the presence of Israeli representatives) to free the American hostages. (h/t: Bill)

Biden administration officials have discussed potentially negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage in Gaza if current cease-fire talks involving Israel fail, according to two current senior U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials.

Such negotiations would not include Israel and would be conducted through Qatari interlocutors, as current talks have been, said the officials, all of whom have been briefed on the discussions.

White House officials declined to comment.

The Biden administration has said it believes Hamas is holding five American hostages who were abducted during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. U.S. officials are also hoping to recover the remains of three additional U.S. citizens who are believed to have been killed on that day by Hamas, which then took their bodies into Gaza.

The officials did not know what the United States might give Hamas in exchange for the release of American hostages. But, the officials said, Hamas could have an incentive to cut a unilateral deal with Washington because doing so would likely further strain relations between the U.S. and Israel and put additional domestic political pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One of the former officials said the internal discussions have also taken place in the context of whether the possibility of the U.S. cutting a unilateral deal with Hamas might pressure Netanyahu to agree to a version of the current cease-fire proposal.

I haven’t thought at length about this, but it sounds to me like a bad idea. We are allies with Israel and should be solving this problem together, nor should the U.S. be helping Hamas (note: this isn’t Palestine they’re bargaining with) in any way. What could the U.S. give Hamas that wouldn’t help them?  On the other hand, I can see that it’s a way to give five human beings their freedom, and Biden’s real brief is to help Americans if he can.  On the other hand, it seems like an election-year stunt, and ideally the U.S. would be working with Israel to get ALL the hostages freed. (But we’re not in agreement on the negotiations.) On the third hand, Thailand did cut a side deal to get its hostages back by releasing Palestinian prisoners. (I am not sure how many Hamas members are in U.S. prisons, and whether Hamas would want them back badly enough.) This is a diplomatic and moral dilemma, and I can see both sides.  I just don’t think Biden should be helping Hamas, though if they’ll let Americans go in return for a handful of Arab terrorists being released from prison, perhaps it’s worth considering. Readers should weigh in.

*In light of the recuse of four Israeli hostages by the IDF, Hamas has now issued orders to any of its “operatives” to kill any hostages if the IDF shows up.

Hamas terrorist leaders have given standing orders to operatives who are holding hostages saying “that if they think Israeli forces are coming, the first thing they should do is shoot the captives,” according to Israeli officials quoted by The New York Times on Monday.

Two days after the Israel Defense Forces’ rescue of four hostages from Nuseirat in central Gaza, the newspaper reported that if other hostages were killed on Saturday, as Hamas has claimed, “it might have been at the hand of the [terrorists], not because of an Israeli airstrike.”

The IDF has directly rejected a Hamas claim that three hostages were killed by Israeli airstrikes, the report noted.

The two buildings where the four hostages were kept were about 200 meters apart, and a decision by security forces to go for both simultaneously on Saturday was due to the concern that Hamas may murder the hostages after identifying the rescue operation at the other location.

The Times also reported on Washington’s contributions to hostage-rescue efforts since almost immediately after Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, quoting US officials as saying that “the sheer numbers of American aircraft” gathering intelligence over Gaza have been able to surface information that Israeli drones missed.

“At least six MQ-9 Reapers controlled by Special Operations forces have been involved in flying missions to monitor for signs of life,” the officials were quoted as saying.

Well, I’m delighted that the U.S. is sticking with Israel and helping it gather intelligence. My question is what Hamas has to gain by shooting hostages if the IDF shows up.  It loses bargaining chips, for one thing.  Their response might be that there’s no surviving an encounter with the IDF, and why give up hostages that Israel wants if you’re going to die. Another thought I had was, “Just surrender if the IDF shows up. You may have to give up your hostages, but you don’t die.” Then I remembered that true Muslims want to die, as you get eternal benefits in heaven from martyrdom.   I asked Malgozata earlier, and she, like me, didn’t have a cut-and-dried answer. A half hour later she sent me this:

The answer to your question of why Hamas they kill hostages when the IDF shows up came to me after we finished talking. They keep hostages alive only as long as they need them to extract some benefits from Israel. Otherwise, why let those infidels live? Killing infidels is pleasing to Allah. Then we went for a walk and I told Andrzej about your question. He reminded me about the Nazis in the last weeks of the war. They needed men and fuel for fighting but they still used a substantial portion of both to kill Jews. Their aim was to kill all Jews on Earth and they tried to kill as many as possible even when they could see Russian tanks on the horizon. And this was pure, earthly ideology, no heavenly rewards were promised. So pure hate can achieve such an outcome.

Readers are of course invited to weigh in on this issue.

*The Washington Post has an op-ed called “A scientific controversy at the Supreme Court“, which of course got my antennae waving. It turns out that while nearly all studies show that the abortion drug mifepristone is safe, a couple of studied highlighted problems. Recently those papers showing problems were retracted by the publisher.  Remember, the whole basis for banning the drug in Texas came from those who say the FDA ignored problems with the drug!

In March, the Supreme Court heard a case about access to mifepristone, one of two pills used for a medication abortion. Just weeks before that, though, a scientific controversy roiled the debate: Some of the scientific studies underlying the legal challenge to the abortion pill were retracted by Sage, the academic publishing company, over methodological and ethical concerns. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in a matter of days or weeks.

This is a big deal. Removing a published article from a scientific journal doesn’t happen because of some small error. It’s unusual for a paper to be retracted (about 1 in 500), but the rate is increasing — and misconduct accounts for the majority of such instances. A retraction can be decided by the authors (after realizing a huge error) or by the publisher (over fraud, plagiarism, ethics, etc.).

The legal challenge was set off by a group of antiabortion doctors who argued that the Food and Drug Administration ignored safety concerns when it eased restrictions on mifepristone’s availability. They relied on scientific studies claiming the medication is dangerous, citing the number of emergency room visits after mifepristone use. After publication, though, other scientists voiced major concerns about the statistical methods and thus questioned the conclusions.

The article mentions some of the other errors in the papers, and I assume the review was conducted objectively. There is more:

The experts identified major ethical issues and scientific errors, including: A peer reviewer knew at least one of the authors of all three studies, and several are members of the same pro-life advocacy organizations, despite declaring no conflicts of interest in the study. The Sage review also concluded there were “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors” and “misleading presentations” of data that “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and invalidate the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.”

Then there’s this:

Clinical guidance and policy are (ideally) built on decades of research and consideration of the totality of evidence. In the case of mifepristone, more than 100 studies show it’s safe — in fact, safer than Tylenol — with only a few discordant studies. However, big mistakes can make it past the peer-review process, and, in some rare cases, “mistakes” are intentional and egregious. Even if studies are retracted, they can do a lot of harm. (Just look at the Wakefield study on autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.)

If that’s the case, then the Supremes should say the drug is safe. We don’t want judges deciding what sound science is; we want them to defer to the scientific consensus, as they do when ruling against creationism as a subject in public schools.  If the Supreme Court starts judging the safety of drugs, we’re in trouble.

*Finally, Hunter Biden’s case has gone to the jury:

Jurors in Hunter Biden’s gun trial began deliberating Monday to decide whether the president’s son is guilty of federal firearms charges over a revolver he bought when prosecutors say he was addicted to crack cocaine.

He is charged with three felonies in the case that has laid bare some of the darkest moments of his drug-fueled past. Prosecutors have used testimony from former romantic partners, personal text messages and photos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia or partially clothed to make the case that he broke the law.

“No one is above the law,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument as first lady Jill Biden watched from the front row of the Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the courthouse for the day. Deliberations were to resume Tuesday morning.

. . .Before the case went to the jury, the prosecutor urged jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and pay no mind to members of the president’s family sitting in the courtroom.

“All of this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”

I’m guessing that the verdict will be “guilty”.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the bad news has put Andrzej in a bad mood:

Hili: You have been reading the news again.
A: Is it visible?
Hili: Yes, You look as if you wanted to say something unpleasant to somebody.
In Polish:
Hili: Znowu czytałeś wiadomości.
Ja: A to widać?
Hili: Tak, wyglądasz jakbyś chciał komuś powiedzieć coś przykrego.

And a photo of Baby Kulka cavorting outdoors:

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From Unique Birds and Animals and Instagram:

 

From Science Humor:

A good question from a reader:

From Masih, kudos from another famous dissident:

Some hypocrisy sent by Malgorzata:

Albanese is an odious person. Look at the language she uses:

Is this really a great commercial? It’s certainly an unusual one!

GUESS!

From Malcolm: two angles on a volcano, both photographed from space:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/817401286906592

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

 

Two tweets from Dr. Cornonthe Cobb. How do people SKI like this!

Matthew simply says “Outrageous!” in response to this product. I agree with him!

35 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. We make enough errors with scientists ‘doing science.’ If we let politicians and judges decide scientific questions we are screwed.

  2. I think there is a much simpler explanation for why Hamas now publicly threatens to kill hostages during a rescue. They want to keep Israel from attempting more rescues. By implementing this policy they move the risk threshold of such operations, thus reducing the number of rescue operations that will be attempted. This is a rational strategy which increases the chances of holding on to these hostages for a longer period of time.

    1. They also use dead bodies to trade for terrorists. Israel still gives up prisoners for dead hostages. So it reduces their costs of monitoring, but does not eliminate the value of the bodies.

    4. I think this is a standard position in any hostage-taking situation, whatever the circumstances or nationalities.

  3. Regarding Matthew’s knowledge of France: I can recommend two of his non-technical books: “The Resistance” and “Eleven Days in August” as good and informative reads.

    1. In France, the dissolution of the National Assembly leaves the choice between 1/ an alliance of political parties (ecologist, socialist, communist) with Mr. Mélenchon’s partie the (so called) ”France Insoumise” which is openly anti-Semitic, 2/ a very minority right-wing party rallied to a far-right (racist but not openly racist) party that came out on top in the last elections and 3/ a center that brings together the last supporters of a President whose policies in seven years have led to this situation. I’m french and it’s not the Olympic Games I’m worried about.

  4. Regarding a felon as soldier vs. President, the reason is that qualifications for President are set by the Constitution and it does not list ‘not a felon’ as one of them. The rules governing military service are set by Congress. Frankly, given the Biden Administration’s push to treat illegal immigrants as a privileged class, I’d expect them to remove that restriction on military service.

  5. The “Cullman Liquidation” advert would fit perfectly in an episode of “Young Sheldon”. When Robert (?) Lee mentions his misfortunes at the hands of a bouncer in Birmingham and “… muh wife’s beaufriend”, I had the fleeting thought, ” Why in tarnation would anybody?..” but was relieved when he sealed it up with “…wouldn’t hurt my feelin’s” and closed it off with “…git yourself a home… or don’t… I don’t care.” Also, the sound effects of wolf howl (delivery crew) and snarling cougar (sales lady) are reminiscent of a couple of ” low-budget-yet-good” ads with a similar themes I’ve seen before (Jungle Law, for example).

  6. Neither the US nor Israel should negotiate with terrorists, period. Terrorists have to learn that taking hostages gets them nothing. It was a terrible mistake for Israel to release 1027 prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier; it led directly to the problem they have now. And every time they trade prisoners for hostages, it increases the incentive for others to take more Israeli hostages in the future.

    1. It’s an crass example of when the common good and individual goods collide. The world over and all through history, the families of victims of kidnappers/extortion gangs (for example, in the Sahel) practically always choose to pay even though it keeps the gangs in business. Employers also do it (in cases of kidnapping of ship crews by “pirates”). States shouldn’t. Ideally, nobody else should, either, but tell that to the families.

  7. Regarding the American hostages, I don’t think we should make a unilateral deal with Hamas for their release. We should involve Israel in resolving this situation to avoid providing Hamas with material that could strengthen their position on the battlefield and potentially prolong the war, which has taken a terrible toll on the hostages as well as the civilian population in Gaza.

    1. I (think I) agree that the U.S. shouldn’t cut a side deal. It is possible—and judging by events, not crazy—to think that the U.S. is floating this idea out there to pressure Israel into supporting “the deal.” Israel doesn’t want the U.S. to make concessions to Hamas that could be harm Israel, so will feel pressure to soften its position if it thinks that the U.S. is going it alone. Additionally, a side deal by the U.S. would make Israel look like it’s being belligerent and would isolate it even further with the international community. It could be real—after all, the U.S. *does* have an obligation to extract its hostages—but it could also be a tactic to strongarm Israel.

      I put “the deal” in quotations because of all the vagueness around it. The U.S. claims that it’s Israel’s deal, but Israel seems not to be so sure. It’ll get sorted out eventually.

      And, regarding why Hamas has issued orders to kill hostages when the IDF shows up, part of this is very real, as you, Malgozata, and Andrzej note above. But part of it is for rhetorical effect. Publicizing the existence of this order has the effect of pressuring Israel to reach a deal. If Israeli leadership thinks that the hostages are in imminent danger due to IDF actions, Israel is incentivized to cut a deal sooner rather than later. Hamas fights the propaganda war as well as anyone.

    2. I think it is reasonable for nations to negotiate for the benefit of their own citizens.

      On the other hand, the current administration is so set on appeasing Iran that they might well make a deal that is bad for us, for Israel, and even for the hostages.

  8. The UK, in its normal contrarian fashion, may once again be in the minority in Europe, moving to the left this year. Looks like Larry the Cat will be getting a new litter box monitor!

    1. These things are relative. Labour is no longer the left as I know it. It shifted to the right of centre under Blair and shows no signs of returning. Labour is now conservative in all but the name, and as a Labour supporter since the ’70s I cannot begin to describe how depressing that is.

      1. Labour shifted to the left under Corbyn and that was an unmitigated disaster.

        In fact, there are only two periods I can think of since the beginning of the 70’s when Labour was really out there on the left and that was under Michael Foot and under Jeremy Corbyn. In both cases, they failed to oust a rightish wing Conservative government (Corbyn twice).

        In the latter case, that caused serious damage to this country and I can’t forgive the Labour supporters who elected and re-elected a man so obviously unsuited to be prime minister – or even the leader of the opposition.

    2. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that the Polish right-wing Law and Justice Party lost power to the centrist Civic Coalition in elections last December; and also that the Hungarian Fidesz party, led by the obnoxious Viktor Orban, did badly in the European Parliamentary elections. So it’s not all bad news then!

  9. Francesca Albanese should resign as she is unfit to hold the position she does holding the views she does. UNWRA should be disbanded and the UN should pass a resolution condemning war crimes committed by proscribed terrorist groups. Unfortunately none of these are likely to happen.

  10. The UK, in its normal contrarian fashion, may once again be in the minority in Europe, moving to the left this year. Looks like Larry the Cat will be getting a new litter box monitor!

    Yet there is a surge in support from the right as evidenced by the demonstration led by right-winger Tommy Robinson in London on June 1st which was almost entirely ignored by mainstream news outlets in the UK in a blatant act of censorship.

    1. On one occasion in the UK elections for the European Parliament, a right-wing (a term I dislike, but I use it for convenience) party, the name of which I have forgotten, got the most votes. In the subsequent national election it failed to get a single seat in parliament. The EU vote was a symptom of the uselessness of the European Parliament, which served as a convenient receptacle for protest votes.

      1. The only party to get the most votes in an EU election in the UK then fail to win any seats in Parliament is the Brexit Party.

        They stood down candidates that would’ve prevented Johnson’s Conservative Party winning that election, as he promised to (and did) deliver on Brexit.

        The Brexit Party was also not right-wing – many of the people voting for it would normally vote for a left-of-centre party in elections.

  11. ‘US Election Night 1980 NBC’ (live coverage) playing in the background while reading Jerry’s always stellar news analysis.

    Tom Brokaw:

    “In modern elections, it is not enough to tell you who won, but why they won, and how some of the issues cut across the lines. Since the polls opened earlier this morning… voters were asked a series of questions that had to do with issues of the day such as the holding of the hostages in Iran, the state of the economy, and the character and integrity of the candidates. In other words, the most important issues of the day.”

    It is almost incomprehensible that Americans put such a premium on hostages 44 years ago. Most can’t name the five Americans held today by Hamas:

    Edan Alexander
    Sagui Dekel-Chen
    Hersh Goldberg-Polin
    Omer Neutra
    Keith Siegel

    I bet they could in 1980.

    2. I think that the Netanyahu government, too, isn’t putting the same prime on saving the hostages and returning them home as Israeli governments did in the past. The prime objective is to destroy Hamas, whatever it takes. The hostages are a secondary consideration that is dealt with only if it doesn’t hurt the first objective. Which is why so many supporters and families of the hostages have been demonstrating.

  12. “I don’t know enough about French politics to give an answer”

    Might I paraphrase the sage political philosopher J. Steinbeck and say: No one does

    Maybe it is time for France to bring back a king?

  13. I am not at all sure that Israeli soldiers in the heat of a risky rescue operation will take the time and the risk to let Hamas personell surrender instead of shooting at them (if the Hamas guards were taken prisoner in past rescue operations, I stand corrected).
    Remember that time that three unarmed half naked Israeli hostages waving a white flag were shot by Israeli soldiers who did not take the time to think.

    Regarding Andrzej’s thoughts about the last weeks of Nazi rule in death camps and such, I am not sure this was generally true. The murder of the Hungarian Jews happened exactly for the reason Andrzej said, but that was in 1944. During the last weeks, a lot of time and energy was spent on trying to camouflage the evidence of the crimes in the death camps. Jews and other prisoners were taken on marches to the next working train station to transport them to Germany, because some criminal high up (Himmler? I don’t remember) had ordered that. Many of these emaciated people died on the long walks to the train stations, as they were shot by the guards when they fell down and could no longer walk, but if killing was the purpose of the death marches, they were an inefficient way of doing it. Many of the prisoners of Auschwitz ended up in Dachau. Lots of people in Auschwitz who from the outset were to weak to walk were simply left behind (more than 8000 of them). My grandfather, who was prisoner in a work camp within Germany, said when the American troops came closer, the prisoners were told they were going to be “evacuated” to Dachau via train, but in the end that did not happen, as the British had bombed the train tracks (according to my grandfather). In some areas of Germany, “evacuated” Jews forced to march under SS supervision were subject to harassment by the local population. Rarely did anyone offer food or drink to the prisoners.

  14. Don’t make deals with Hamas!
    What could the U.S. give Hamas that wouldn’t help them? In a nightmare scenario, Biden makes a deal with Hamas to cut back on some weapons shipped to Israel. He might do this if he thought it would help with far left voters. It’s not clear that he would have to reveal what was in the deal. I’m voting for Biden, but he seems far too willing to do anything to get elected.

  15. That substitute for tea bags looks disgusting, but tea bags in turn make a poor substitute for tea made with bulk tea leaves.

  16. Cool that the Israeli gvt has the valuable input of NBC, the Dpt of State and rando foreign retarded leftists to dictate the policies of how they survive.
    “And the forests will echo with laughter.” LZ
    ——————————————————————–
    Onwards Israeli heroes. Leave no stone unturned, no terrorist alive, to fight this civilizational battle of our times.

    D.A.
    NYC

  18. “there is an air of faggotness in the Vatican,”
    the Pope is perhaps showing the true colour of reforms… murky with shadowy anti undertone.

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