Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 20, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, June 20, 2024, and SUMMER BEGINS TODAY; the Summer Solstice takes place at 3:50 in the afternoon, Chicago time (2051 GMT according to the Royal Observatory; I’m not sure about the one-minute discrepancy). As for food, it’s National Couign Amann Day. What is that? The link just before explains: (Wikipedia calls it Kouign-amann, and says it originated in Brittany)

National Kouign Amann Day on June 20 each year celebrates a round crusty cake, made with a yeast-raised dough. Bakers create the cake by folding layers of butter and sugar inward, similar in fashion to a puff pastry or croissants but with fewer layers. They then slowly bake the resulting cake until the butter puffs up the dough creating the layered aspect of it and the sugar caramelizes.

Here’s an individual one (I’ve never had this pastry):

Fuzheado, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also American Eagle Day, National Daylight Appreciation Day (see above), National Seashell Day, The Longest Day (see above), National Smoothie Day, Plain Yogurt Day, National Ice Cream Soda Day, National Vanilla Milkshake Day, World Tapas Day, World Humanist Day, West Virginia Day (in West Virginia, of course), and World Refugee Day.

There’s a Google Doodle today (click on it), celebrating the 2024 Copa America, a soccer match. Wikipedia explains:

The 2024 Copa América will be the 48th edition of the Copa América, the quadrennial international men’s soccer championship organized by South America’s football ruling body CONMEBOL. The tournament will be held in the United States and co-organized by CONCACAF

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first. Reader Ken Kukec died. He was a frequent and valuable contributor to this site, especially on legal issues. His big brother Joe left a comment on Hili yesterday:

Long-time WEIT contributor and my big brother Ken Kukec sailed off into the mystic yesterday. After a lengthy illness, he passed peacefully in his sleep. Ken had an uncanny knack for capturing the zeitgeist of the times, he was a hard determinist and a ‘science first’ guy, and I know that he truly valued the community he found here over the past decade or so. Thanks for the good vibes.

And Joe sent a picture: “Ken Kukec watching the Total Eclipse with his son Patrick, April 8, 2024, Eastlake OH”

*Is it any surprise that Putin and Kim Jong-Un have become BFFs? They just signed a mutual “defense against aggression” treaty.

Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have signed an agreement pledging that Russia and North Korea will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

The Russian president made the announcement following talks with Mr Kim during a lavish visit to Pyongyang, his first since 2000.

Mr Kim said it took their relationship to “a new, high level of alliance”.

The pact cements a rapidly blossoming partnership that has worried the West. It could also have significant ramifications for the world, say observers.

Any kind of mutual defence treaty could possibly see Moscow assisting Pyongyang in a future conflict on the Korean peninsula, while North Korea could openly help Russia in its war on Ukraine.

Mr Kim is already accused of supplying Russia with weapons, while Mr Putin is thought to be giving the North Koreans space technology that could aid their missile programme. The two last met in Russia in September.

On Wednesday they signed a “comprehensive partnership agreement” that included a clause where they agreed to provide “mutual assistance in the event of aggression” against either country, said Mr Putin. He did not spell out what would constitute aggression.

. . . Mr Putin has in recent months faced difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine, particularly with depleting weapons. During their last face-to-face meeting in September, when Mr Kim visited Russia, the two had discussed military cooperation and were suspected of striking an arms deal. Since then there has been growing evidence that Russia has been deploying North Korean missiles in Ukraine.

I’m actually surprised that North Korea has the wherewithal to make lots of missiles and ammo for other countries, but you know that if they do, the profits aren’t going to go to the people. (The DPRK is the world’s most authoritarian dictatorship, and the one that treats its people the worst.) But despite the brouhaha this treaty seems unimportant, since North Korea can’t help Russis if it were attacked, except with more armaments, and nobody is going to attack North Korea, though the whole damn place is paranoid about it.

*As the U.S. sticks its head in the sand, Iran is getting closer and closer to having nukes, and you know what that means. From the WaPo:

A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts.

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed new construction activity inside the Fordow enrichment plant, just days after Tehran formally notified the nuclear watchdog of plans for a substantial upgrade at the underground facility built inside a mountain in north-central Iran.

Iran also disclosed plans for expanding production at its main enrichment plant near the city of Natanz. Both moves are certain to escalate tensions with Western governments and spur fears that Tehran is moving briskly toward becoming a threshold nuclear power, capable of making nuclear bombs rapidly if its leaders decide to do so.

At Fordow alone, the expansion could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs’ worth of nuclear fuel every month, according to a technical analysis provided to The Washington Post. Though it is the smaller of Iran’s two uranium enrichment facilities, Fordow is regarded as particularly significant because its subterranean setting makes it nearly invulnerable to airstrikes.

. . . Iran already possesses a stockpile of about 300 pounds of highly enriched uranium that could be further refined intoweapons-grade fuel for nuclear bombs within weeks, or perhaps days, U.S. intelligence officials say. Iran also is believed to have accumulated most of the technical know-how for a simple nuclear device, although it would probably take another two years to build a nuclear warhead that could be fitted onto a missile, according to intelligence officials and weapons experts.

And if you believe the excerpt below (the U.S. appears to), you’re nuts:

Iran says it has no plans to make nuclear weapons.

Remember when Iran sent a ton of missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted. Well, if those were larger tactical nuclear weapons, only one would have to get through to do major damage to Israel. Israel, of course, would retaliate, and they have big nukes.  But the proliferation of nukes to Iran, which of course is deeply invested in making them, and simply lying when it denies it, worries me.

*The Wall Street Journal describes how cigarette smuggling in Gaza has become a serious problem for the delivery of humanitarian aid:

A group of Palestinian men approached a United Nations warehouse in central Gaza last week and demanded access to aid stored inside. The gang wasn’t interested in food, fuel or medicine. It wanted something it considered far more valuable: contraband cigarettes hidden in the humanitarian cargo.

The incident, described by a U.N. official, is emblematic of a significant new impediment to aid deliveries in the enclave. Rampant cigarette smuggling—fueled by high prices for tobacco—has become the latest manifestation of a breakdown in law and order that is slowing the delivery of lifesaving assistance.

Aid trucks and storage depots have become targets for Palestinian smugglers seeking to retrieve illicit smokes stashed inside shipments by their accomplices, say U.N. and Israeli officials. Other local criminals are also attacking vehicles they suspect have cigarettes hidden somewhere on board, they say.

Cigarettes sell for as much as $25 apiece in isolated Gaza, so getting hold of even a pack can be enormously profitable.

$25 each!!!! You have to be pretty desperate for a smoke to pay that, especially in Gaza.

. . .Trade in cigarettes managed to continue for months, with smokes surreptitiously making it through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which Hamas-backed authorities controlled. But when Israeli forces seized control of that crossing on May 6, the door was slammed shut on cigarette deliveries. Cigarette smugglers found another route through the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza but were unable to pull trucks aside to unload their contraband, as they had at Rafah.

Criminal attacks on aid convoys have become so severe that over a thousand truckloads of aid have been left sitting on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel. Even a daily Israeli pause in fighting along a critical supply route hasn’t been enough to get aid groups to move shipments

The curious thing about this article is that it doesn’t mention whether or not Hamas are the people hijacking trucks or looting warehouses. If it wasn’t Hamas, they should have mentioned that, too. Maybe they don’t know, but it’s surely criminals with weapons, and of course Hamas is well known for these activities.

*Glenn Kannon, a lecturer at the Stanford Business School, explains why we need immigrants in a NYT op-ed, “What my cancer surgery taught me about immigration” (link is archived here), that didn’t need to be written. It came from the contribution that immigrants or their descendants made towards his surgery for prostate cancer.

I owe a debt of gratitude to President Lyndon Johnson and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Why? Without that legislation, the surgeon who operated on me probably wouldn’t be here. Nor might the doctor who pioneered the procedure. Nor the philanthropist who financed the research. Nor many workers at the company that makes these robots or those at a different company that designed the chips that enable the robot.

As my ordeal with cancer shows, immigration has become critical to our health. Immigrants account for more than a quarter of physicians, surgeons and personal care aides and about a fifth of nursing assistants.

I’m not sure we realize that immigrants help keep us alive: Just look at West Virginia, a state hostile to immigration where aging residents have died before getting off the wait list for home health aides.

. . . .I came to know immigrants with remarkable skills, like Dr. Mani Menon, who pioneered the robotic removal of the prostate that is now used in hundreds of thousands of surgeries worldwide annually. He emigrated from southern India in 1972 in part because his wife was Muslim and he was Hindu “and it was uncomfortable for us socially, so we decided to go somewhere where we could be comfortable,” he told me.

Dr. Menon could not have pioneered the robotic prostatectomy without someone to finance his research: another Indian immigrant, Raj Vattikuti. A decade after the 1965 act, Mr. Vattikuti went to Detroit as a computer engineering student. After building a successful business, he, with his wife, Padma, donated $40 million for research on prostate cancer and breast cancer. The Vattikuti Urology Institute at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit is where Dr. Menon pioneered the use of robots in urologic procedures.

And the urologist who performed my surgery, Dr. Vipul Patel, told me he is the grandson of Indians, was raised in Britain and moved to Los Angeles in 1984 for high school and college.

Indeed, but many of these were skilled immigrants, or even the grandchildren of immigrants—who don’t count as immigrants. Since we are all immigrants (I’m the grandchild of immigrants), it’s clear that they’ve been essential in building America. But Kannon is eliding the problem of mass immigration of unskilled people, often entering illegally. He alludes only one time to this:

I understand that many Americans call illegal immigration their top concern. And they think that businesses sometimes hire immigrants — in the country legally or illegally — instead of American workers because they can pay them less. I recognize the need to rationalize our immigration process. But in an election year when immigration is a partisan issue, we should also remember the profound difference immigrants have made in our lives.

He “understands”, though the phrase “rationalize our immigration process” is an ambiguous euphemism. Does he want open borders? And who would take issue with his final sentence?

*Reader Robert found this Times of Israel article which explains why so many IDF soldiers are getting killed in Rafah. It involves a sophisticated method used by Hamas to booby-trap houses and tunnels.

. . . The Hamas fighter with an RPG was a relatively rare sight for the troops fighting in Rafah. Unlike in other areas of Gaza, the terror group largely abandoned its posts, with very few operatives attempting to engage Israeli forces in close quarters.

Instead, Betito said, Hamas operatives have booby-trapped a vast number of homes in Rafah, and wait in tunnels for his troops to arrive. Hamas has used difficult-to-spot car backup cameras to identify when troops arrive at a booby-trapped building and detonate the explosives.

In one such an incident last week, five soldiers of the brigade’s reconnaissance unit were killed after a booby-trapped home exploded and part of the building collapsed on the troops.

“Hamas took an approach here where it avoided fighting with terrorists at the front, but instead chose to booby-trap [buildings]. And it booby-trapped loads of buildings. I haven’t seen this many booby-trapped buildings before,” Betito, whose brigade has been operating in Gaza since the beginning of the war, told The Times of Israel.

“Our challenge is trying to locate them ahead of time,” he said.

Yep, eliminating Hamas is going to be tough, for Israel’s policy of trying to avoid civilian deaths leads to more deaths of IDF soldiers. And there’s this:

. . . Still, as the IDF began its operation in Rafah, the military assessed that only 2,000 terror operatives remained in the city, meaning that many had fled with the estimated 1.2 million civilians to an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” further north.

It’s even harder since Hamas terrorists often wear civilian clothes instead of uniforms, a move that, I believe, is a war crime.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is baffled:

A: What are you looking for?
Hili: Yesterday there was the shadow of your tree here.
In Polish:
Ja: Czego szukasz?
Hili: Wczoraj tu był cień tego twojego drzewa.

And Baby Kulka looking outside:

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

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih; the Google translaiton of this tweet:

In my homeland, Iran, the government of the Islamic Republic commits the crime of gender apartheid. Today, we Iranian women stand hand in hand with Afghan women against the gender apartheid crime of the Taliban We have made an alliance with the Islamic Republic and we are bringing the voice of this crime to the ears of the free world. #unitedagainstgenderapartheid

You know how she lost her eye.

From my feed. Is this a mongoose? Whatever it is, it’s brave!

From Dom (and others). Dom says this: “A very disturbing tweet about Hamas punishing starving people for ‘stealing’ food – shared on X by Simon Sebag Montefiore. You may not want to see it – no blood – but terror… depressing.”  YOU MAY NOT WANT TO WATCH THIS, as there is terror and then a guy gets shot. Nor can I vouch for its veracity, but I did see it somewhere else. That doesn’t mean it depicts what it says it does, but perhaps it does. The tweeter, Hamza, is a Palestinian.

From UNICEF; the educational barriers women face in Afghanistan appears to be eroding their mental health:

You can always count on J. K. Rowling for a few snarky laughs; she turns the hate that rains on her into fun:

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

x

Two tweets from Professor Cobb.  This one is funny, but I sort of agree with Harrison:

Look at those paws!

37 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Thanks for the above the fold recognition and photo of Ken Kukec. His thoughts and commentary were very important to so many (as witnessed by how many readers commented in Hili yesterday) and will be missed. Condolences to his family.

    1. Thanks, Jerry and Jim and all. Ken had a brilliant mind and a heart of gold, and was both literally and figuratively a ‘child of the 60’s’. Very glad that he found this blog with so many like-minded folks, and forever grateful for this.

      1. I’m sorry to hear about your brother (I’m new here and don’t remember him).

      1. My heart is a little bit broken seeing the picture of Ken with his son Patrick. He used to tease me in the comments about my being a “good Catholic girl” which always made me laugh. The world is a poorer place without Ken Kukec in it.

        2. Yes, thinking of how so many people here admired him just from his comments alone, the loss of the “real” person felt by his family and friends must be enormous.

          I will admit this: I had a mental image of Ken that is peculiarly similar to the photo. That usually never happens.

          Edit: I also liked that he called PCC(E), “boss.” 🙂

    4. The news of Ken’s passing is very sad. I enjoyed engaging with him here, and I think we will be diminished without him.

  2. I’m still shocked by Mr. Kukec’s death – I express condolences, and had been already missing his strong yet witty commentary for a long time. I regularly found myself thinking over what he’d write here during my day-to-day off-line (in a productive way!).

    here is what I wrote yesterday :

    “I’m shocked – I was hoping he’d chime in with some Goodfellas quotes. Always loved his personality. Was wondering if he ditched the site.

    Sorry for the haste – condolences. I’m very unsettled by this terrible news.”

    [PS – I’m the user Ken would’ve recognized as the pseudonym “ThyroidPlanet” – or “TP” for short – before settling into my true name.]

  3. Looks the wrong shape and proportions for a mongoose. My immediate instincts were honey badger – a black ratel?

    1. The honey badger is grey up top. But the critter does look like a badger of some sort.

    3. My guess is a black-footed mongoose. The tail looks way too long for a honey badger. I like how the first lion (a very young male?) needs reassurance from the second lion (mom?).

  4. Deepest condolences to Ken’s family, friends and acquaintances.

    The news has come as a shock, even though we were all wondering why he hadn’t been posting his usual wise words and barbed humour here. He’ll be sorely missed.

    1. He did pop in a few weeks ago to say he was taking a break, after someone had asked about him.

  5. So sad about Ken K. I learned so much from him; he was always there to answer my IANAL questions.

    Condolences to his family.

    L

  6. “the Summer Solstice takes place at 3:50 in the afternoon, Chicago time (2051 GMT according to the Royal Observatory; I’m not sure about the one-minute discrepancy)”

    The most likely explanation is that the two sources rounded towards the nearest minute in different directions, when the precise time of the solstice was 20:50 and 30 seconds.

  7. The business of the cigarettes reminds me of the classic paper “The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp” by R. A. Radford, which we read in Common Core Social Science at UC. The paper discusses how cigarettes became currency in prison camps. Given the disruption in Gaza, I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar was happening.

    1. Non-smokers: Don’t underestimate how deeply satisfying nicotine is to those with the nicotine receptors in their brains which are lit by it (about 1/3rd of people).

      Happily… now we have almost harmless vapes. A game changer and boon to public health.
      The inventor of vapes (a Chinese scientist whose Dad died of lung cancer in about 2005) should get huge prizes and fame for saving millions of human life years.

      Oh. Don’t lecture me on “THE HARMS OF VAPES!”…. or “the kiddies”. I refer you to the work of Dr. Sally Satel, friend of both WEIT and Steven Pinker who talks about this a lot.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. As someone hooked on vapes for nearly a year now, your comment should reduce my feelings of guilt. Sadly, it doesn’t. What’s a gal supposed to do?

  8. I’m going to miss Ken’s incisive commentary— when I saw his name I knew whatever he wrote would be well worth reading. My condolences to his family.

    1. Indeed. I always went a bit slower as I absorbed Ken’s latest point. Since his absence I’ve been patiently waiting for his return. Alas, that is not to be. When I mentioned this to my wife she commented that I looked quite distraught. I am.

      Condolences to Ken’s family and friends.

  9. Thank you, thank you. I happened to buy Coign Amman (at a north Toronto patisserie) over a year ago. I’ve been trying to remember the name for that whole time, because it was ambrosial.

    1. If you haven’t tried a Kouign Amman, you really should! A local bakery makes them, and puts in a bit of jam in the center (I don’t know if this is standard or not). Absolutely wonderful, my new favorite pastry.

  10. Wonder how they’re going to square praise of immigration with the decolonization movement 🙂

  11. (David laughs, putting down his vape for a moment here….)
    The price of cigs in Gaza is no surprise at all. The purest of market economies flourish with drugs of addiction. (This is why our own drug policy is deeply stupid).

    That Hamas is a mafia…. is no news. That Gazans and other humans require nicotine is also no news.
    But funny.

    Now….. where’d I put that vape?

    D.A.
    NYC
    Latest on Middle East: https://democracychronicles.org/the-coming-war-in-lebanon/ (reposted here)

    1. I was thinking a good weapon here would be to air drop tons of cases of cigarettes everywhere. Let the coercive value crash down.

      1. Yes, indeed.

        But now the thought strikes me: would the American university campus pro-Hamas protesters accuse whoever dropped them of corrupting the morals of Palestinian youth? (They would experience some major cognitive dissonance were cannabis cigarettes dropped instead of tobacco.)

  12. The picture of Ken watching the eclipse with his son (who has his hand placed lovingly on his father’s back) is so reminiscent to me of a similar back porch picture of my brother a few months before his passing. If you’ve watched “it” from the “outside” you recognize it immediately. I’m so glad he had family around him. My heart goes out to all who survive him. As I said to reader Mark yesterday who also recently lost his brother, damn death!

  14. Jerry you need to go out and fix your Kouign Amman problem right now! It’s IMHO the world’s greatest pastry. I had a quick Google, and you can find them in Chicago at:

    Verzênay Chicago
    Hendrickx Belgian Bread Crafter
    La Boulangerie & Co Logan
    Aya Pastry
    Good Ambler

    …among others.

  15. Condolences to Ken’s family. I will miss his music comments, posts, usually of the nostalgic, humorous, quirky variety…
    shared a few laugh lines with him via his comments.

  16. Kouign Amann is very overrated, probably because very few people have ever had one and those who have want to brag.

Comments are closed.