Tuesday: Hili dialogue

November 19, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 19, 2024, and National Carbonated Beverage With Caffeine Day (to me that means Coca-Cola).  But the Coke company says the caffeine is less than we think—less than a quarter of the caffeine in coffee. Best stick to coffee for a wake-up aid!

It’s also International Men’s Day, World Toilet Day, and National Macchiato Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Gail Collins and Bret Stephens have their weekly discussion in the op-ed columns of the NYT, this time considering Trump’s execrable cabinet nominations. Stephens, you may recall, is a conservative who voted for Harris:

Gail Collins: OK, Bret. Who’s your pick for the worst Trump nomination? I know there’s a lot to choose from — but I’ve got dibs on Matt Gaetz.

Bret Stephens: None. I love them all. #MAGA.

Gail: Very funny.

Bret: I’m pulling your leg. But I wonder if the choice of people like Gaetz for attorney general or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for secretary of health and human services or Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence or Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense amounts to a Big Trump Troll — “troll” in the sense of a deliberate effort to elicit a furious reaction. And the worst response to being trolled by Trump is to react the way he wants us to: by rending our garments and gnashing our teeth.

So my attitude toward these people is: Great! Brilliant choices, Mr. President-elect! Now, some staffer in Congress: Please leak the Ethics Committee report on Gaetz, and let’s replay the clips of Gabbard cozying up to Bashar al-Assad, the genocidal Syrian dictator. Is that the wrong response?

Gail: Well, there’s a pretty good chance that House Ethics report will be leaked. Or some other witnesses will volunteer info on Gaetz’s … behavior.

Bret: In a normal political era that would make Gaetz unconfirmable in the Senate after he’s resigned from the House — which would be a win for everyone. But this isn’t a normal presidency, and Trump is talking about bypassing the Senate entirely by installing his people through recess appointments. Which really would put us on the road to a constitutional crisis, if the incoming Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, rolls over for that one.

Gail: I’m kinda wondering if Trump threw Gaetz out there to distract us from his other dreadful picks. You know, the Senate Republicans probably can’t revolt more than once. Actually, is there anybody that you like on his list so far?

Bret: Sure. Marco Rubio is a reasonable Republican pick as secretary of state. Mike Waltz is fine as national security adviser. Doug Burgum at the Department of the Interior and Lee Zeldin at the Environmental Protection Agency? OK. And if Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk can sensibly cut the size and reach of the federal government — a much harder task than either of them probably imagines — it could make the United States more competitive, efficient and financially solvent. I’m also looking forward to watching Elise Stefanik take a hammer to the Organization of Antisemites and Other Useless People, generally known as the United Nations.

But the rest go from bad to worse in my book. Who worries you most?

Gail: Gonna refrain from arguing with you about Elise Stefanik and the U.N. Really, we’ve got years.

My Scariest Pick goes to Pete Hegseth, who would, I believe, become the first secretary of defense whose major work experience was as a Fox News host. Yes, he’s a veteran, but we are talking about a job managing a few million people who have their hands on tons of killer weaponry. And a man who believes women shouldn’t qualify for combat jobs. Who bragged that he hadn’t washed his hands in years. I could go on.

Gaetz seems to me the most unqualified, but RFK Jr. the one most likely to reduce the well being of Americans. I hope the Senate has enough sense not to confirm them or DoD Secretary Hegseth. All we need is a couple more leaks, and for people to realize that RFK Jr. could wind up, though his misguided beliefs, causing the deaths of many Americans.

*The WaPo reports that Pope Francis, God’s choice for Pontiff, has called for an investigation of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Pope Francis has said that Israel’s attacks in Gaza should be investigated to determine if they meet the legal definition of genocide, according to excerpts from a forthcoming book based on interviews with the pontiff.

Francis has privately used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, according to people who have interacted with him, The Washington Post has reported. But his comments to the journalist Hernán Reyes Alcaide, excerpted Sunday in the Italian newspaper La Stampa, are the first time he has publicly called for an investigation.

The pope spoke to his fellow Argentine for “Hope Never Disappoints: Pilgrims Toward a Better World,” a book to be released in Italy on Tuesday to mark the 2025 jubilee, when millions of Catholics are expected to visit Rome.

“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” Francis said. “We should investigate carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.”

Yaron Sideman, the designated Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, rejected the charge. “There was a genocidal massacre on 7 October 2023 of Israeli citizens, and since then, Israel has exercised its right of self-defense against attempts from seven different fronts to kill its citizens,” he wrote on X in response, referencing Hamas’s attack on Israel over a year ago that killed at least 1,200 people.’

. . . Prior to his comments last year in St. Peter’s Square, Francis met separately with groups of Palestinians and family members of Israeli hostages. During his session with the Palestinians, an attendee said the pope used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s response. At the time, a Vatican spokesman had said he did not think the pope had used the word, though he could not categorically rule it out.

The Pope, who apparently has a pipeline to God, simply needs a good dictionary before he starts throwing out the word “genocide”. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition:

The deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of people from a particular group identified as having a shared ethnicity, nationality, etc., with the intention of partially or wholly destroying that group,

There is no evidence that the IDF is out to exterminate all Palestinians; in fact, it avoids killing as many civilians as it can and still fulfill its military mission. It’s curious that the Pope (and others who toss that word around) don’t ever seem to apply it to Hamas or Hezbollah, whose avowed mission is the genocide of the Jews. So it goes. The accusation that Israel is committing genocide is one of the Big Lies of the war, and the ignoring of the actual genocide of Islamist terrorists bespeaks moral obtuseness.

*A while back I floated a rumor that Qatar was going to kick Hamas out of their country. But both Qatar and Hamas denied this, so I never took it seriously. Now, however, it seems to be true. The Times of Israel the Jewish News Service, and Jihad Watch, report that senior Hamas leaders, previously living in Doha, Qatar, are hightailing it to Turkey. From the ToI:

Senior members of Hamas’s abroad leadership left Qatar last week for Turkey, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel on Sunday, after Doha said it was walking away from efforts to mediate an end to the war in Gaza.

The Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, downplayed the significance of the move for the terror group, stressing that Hamas’s leadership abroad already spends much of its time in Turkey when they are not holding meetings in Qatar.

The departure of Hamas’s senior politburo from Doha was first reported by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

On November 8, the US revealed that it had asked Qatar to oust Hamas officials from Doha, which has hosted an office for the terror group since 2012, reportedly at Washington’s urging. The US said it made the request after Hamas rejected repeated hostage deal proposals and executed six captives, including an American citizen.

The next day, Qatar said it had halted its mediation efforts and a diplomat familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Doha had asked Hamas leaders in late October to leave the country, though no timeline was mentioned.

Doha stressed at the time that its decision wasn’t necessarily permanent and that it would be prepared to resume mediation efforts if the sides were willing to negotiate in good faith toward a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement.

According to the diplomat who spoke at the time, Qatar decided to push out Hamas’s senior leaders on its own after determining that neither side had been willing to engage seriously in negotiations.

Now Turkey is a member of NATO, which makes it an ally of the U.S., and yet they’re hosting a gang of terrorists who are fighting an ally of the U.S.  This cannot end well, and Erdogan had best roust those thugs out of his country. Let them wander the world, like the fabled Wandering Jew, until they find someone to take them in. Good luck! I’d try Iran. . .

A tweet:

*Oy! A small gaggle of neo-Nazis marched, shouting racial slurs, in Columbus, Ohio, of all places. Their goal, which they achieved, was to get social-media attention:

Officials in Columbus, Ohio, and across the nation condemned a small group of people who marched through a part of the city on Saturday carrying Nazi flags and shouting racial slurs and expressions of white power.

The marchers appeared to number only about a dozen people, but the invective they yelled and the large swastika symbols they bore seemed to achieve their goal of rattling not just people in Columbus, but a wider audience online.

Videos of the neo-Nazi marchers in the Short North neighborhood, known for its arts district of restaurants and galleries, spread quickly on social media, and drew swift denunciations from city and state officials and the White House.

“Neo-Nazis — their faces hidden behind red masks — roamed streets in Columbus today, carrying Nazi flags and spewing vile and racist speech against people of color and Jews,” Gov. Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement posted on social media. “There is no place in this state for hate, bigotry, antisemitism or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it.”

The Anti-Defamation League said that the Columbus event fit a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents, hundreds of which have taken place across the country over the past 18 months.

The marches tend to be small, unannounced so as to avoid attracting counterprotesters, and tailor-made for social media, said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.

“At the end of day, they want to create fear and anxiety in communities and get a photo op,” Mr. Segal said in an interview on Sunday.

Well, the proper response to this kind of mishigass is to ignore it completely, so that the goose-stepping loons are stymied and frustrated. Don’t people know enough to not pay attention.  After all, it was only about a dozen performers, and if nobody even mentions them they will probably stop these demonstrations. And yes, you could say that those reacting with horror were determined to do so by the laws of physics, but I’m saying that our own input to their brains, which I’ve done in this item, may rewire them so that they ignore Nazis.

*The Guardian reports that the culprit in multiple instances of Japanese shoe theft has finally been tracked down.  It was a mustelid! (h/t Jez)

Police and staff were initially flummoxed when shoes started disappearing from a kindergarten in south-west Japan, not least because the “thefts” were of single shoes, not pairs.

Unable to get to the bottom of two incidents reported earlier this month, police installed three security cameras in the hope the thief would strike again, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

Then, when a single shoe went missing from Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in Koga, Fukuoka prefecture, on the night of 11 November, investigators sifted through camera footage, believing they had finally caught their footwear-filching suspect in the act.

The culprit, however, turned out to have four legs, a coat of orangey-brown fur and sharp claws.

Camera footage revealed that a weasel had appeared from behind a wall the previous evening before approaching cubbyholes storing children’s indoor shoes and making off with a single white shoe in its mouth – all in the space of about 10 seconds.

But WHY?  Here’s one theory:

The newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying that, to his knowledge, the mystery of the missing shoes was the first of its kind.

Prof Hiroshi Sasaki at Chikushi Jogakuen University said the shoe-stealing weasel had probably just given birth and, given the animal’s sensitivity to the cold, was using the shoes to line its nest for the winter.

The shoes’ whereabouts remain unknown, however, and the childcare centre is hoping to prevent a repeat of the incidents by covering the cubbyholes with nets at night in what it described as a “crime prevention measure”.

Matthew sent me this link, and I told him that if they covered the shoes, they were obligated to put out some nice nesting material for the weasel.

Here’s a video of the thieving mustelid:

Oh, and there’s one bit of Japanese argot.

Japanese-language references to the weasel have similarly negative connotations to those found in English. According to the late Japan-based naturalist CW Nicol, the musky scent of the Japanese weasel gave rise to the saying itachi no saigo-pei. That literally translates as “the weasel’s final fart”, but is used to refer to the last word or act of an unpopular or dislikable person.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili senses a coming dearth of food:

Hili: We have to buy more groceries.
A: Why?
Hili: Winter is coming.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy kupić więcej żywności.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Zima idzie.

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

From Susan:

From a friend:

And from FB. Cats will be cats!

Lagniappe from Meow:

An Iranian activist sewed his lips shut to protest “the dictatorship and tyranny of the regime.” He was arrested nonetheless

Rifts among the Democrats? AOC, whom I’ve always maintained is antisemitic, calls AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbery group, a “special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats. . ”  Yeah, we pushy Jews are alienating Democratic voters!

Titania makes a rare tweet pointing out the insanity of the British approach to free speech and the law:

Rowling on John Oliver’s missteps. She liked the guy, too.

From my feed:

Even though I did a sabbatical in Edinburgh, I never got up to the Highlands. I must do that some day:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Look at these brave chicks! (it’s a video)

Emperor penguin chicks leap off a 50-foot ice cliff to take their first swim!

— ashi (@ashi80.bsky.social) 2024-11-18T12:41:33.528Z

This CANNOT be true!

I only searched for this because I saw others sharing it and couldn’t believe it was true. It was true.

— Stuart Semmel (@semmiotic.bsky.social) 2024-11-18T04:10:03.171Z

31 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Just pirating WEIT first thing this morning to remind readers that SpaceX has the launch of its giant rocket flight 6 planned for a thirty minute launch window which begins at 5:00pm EST this afternoon. If all goes well this flight will look to the observer pretty much like the last one with a catch of the booster by the chopsticks back at the launchsite at Boca Chica, TX and the spaceplane payload doing a soft upright controlled water landing (splashdown?) in the Indian Ocean. We shall see if Musk’s Spacecadets can pull off two in a row with such close spacing. I get my updates and coverage from the Space.com website at https://www.space.com/

    Oh, and what a lovely and regal portrait of the Princess this morning!

  2. Agreed that the best approach to the Nazis would be to ignore them.

    Considering that this was one event, that the number of participants involved was small, and that there was a lack—to my knowledge—of physically destructive behaviour (i.e., burning, looting, et al.), it does seem that this, while deplorable, has received an undue amount of attention (White House, Governor, etc.), particularly considering the amount minimal attention from the same or similar dignitaries (please correct me if am I wrong about this) in regards to weeks and months of BLM and Antifa protests, which did involve burning and looting. Of course, I suspect this ties to the history of White supremacy, which is now used as a cudgel against those in the present who had no involvement in such, and to the en vogue narrative of Bad, Oppressive White vs. Poor, Poor Oppressed Victims.

    1. Given their cultural, financial and political power – which is zero – Neo Nazis are the least of our problems. A small bunch of misfit retards.

      Woke has the upper moral ground and has captured the heights of culture and finance and government. THIS is a real problem.

      D.A.
      NYC

  3. I expect the My Pillow guy as Commerce Secy.

    And there’s some august organization filled with lawyers that has redefined genocide so that, yes, Israel is committing it, but other than that…

    And where’s Kemal Atatürk when you need him?

    1. Mike Hukabee solved the issue: “There really is no such thing as a Palestinian.”

    2. It would be nice if the new prez saw Bill Nye “The Science Guy” as a possible hire. Or someone. There are other people on TV, too.

  4. I have no trouble believing that A.I. kosher pork thing. A.I. seems to have a bias towards providing positive answers to questions, even if it has to make them up. I’ve seen this at work, where ChatGPT said something was possible that was not, and even gave steps to perform the action involving buttons that don’t even exist in the application.

  5. Joe Biden should immediately declassify any intelligence or results of background checks on people like Tulsi Gabbard and the cast of misfits nominated for Cabinet positions. But, of course, he won’t. And I bet we’ll never see the results of the Matt Gaetz investigation conducted by the House.

    1. I don’t give a damn what orgies Gaetz runs. Or whatever above the age of consent hookers he … consorts with. His viagra crush-snort is NONE of our business.

      These issues pale next to Bonkers Tulsi and the Most Dangerous American, RFK.
      The latter two can do real damage to the system.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. “The latter two can do real damage to the system.”

        That is precisely why they were selected. The “system” needs to be damaged, but people can rightly worry about collateral effects.

    2. Well, obviously, there must be something negative in Gabbard’s background checks. How foolish of her to accept the DNI nomination. Otherwise, why would Quiet Skies air marshals possibly surveille her? Those two air marshal whistleblowers who were enraged by and revealed that surveillance are obviously, like Gabbard (per that breathless histrionic harridan Elizabeth Warren) Putin Puppets, Enablers, Traffickers in Conspiracy Theories and Traitors.

      Wouldn’t you also like to know what uppity-up neocon in the State Department ordered Quiet Skies surveillance of Gabbard? Are you also for Biden declassifying and releasing to the public Victoria Nuland’s background checks (like that phone call intercepted by the Russians between her and the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2014)?

      I contemplate Gabbard calling the neocons’ bluff and demanding that Biden declassify and release her (and of course Nuland’s, and Warren’s) background check to the public.

  6. Mr. Stephens calls the cabinet picks a ‘Trump Troll.’ To me, it’s sociopathic revenge: the man is seething with resentment, even perhaps hatred, against whom he perceives as his enemies–which in his paranoiac world means everyone but himself.

      1. Or, as Canadian Substackers Matt Gurney and Jen Gerson put it, sticking his thumbs into their eyeballs.

      2. Sorry to again impose the beneficent soul’s name, but somehow I’m reminded of
        noble Victoria Nuland ululating “Eff the EU!”

  7. Re. Trump’s picks: in German, there’s a saying, “den Bock zum Gärtner machen” – “appoint the billy goat as gardener”. It looks like this particular billy goat is trying to bring in his whole herd, including a couple rabid ones.

  8. Regarding the Neo-Nazis in Columbus… .

    Many years ago when I was a young professor at Virginia Tech, a group of Neo-Nazis obtained a legal permit to March through the city of Blacksburg (home of VA-Tech). The city couldn’t prevent the demonstration. In response, city officials and Virginia Tech administrators passed the word to the community that the best thing to do in the face of the March was to simply stay home. On the day of the March, some six Neo-Nazi nutcases marched down an empty Main Street, kept marching, and never came back. I was proud of the way that the townspeople, students, and university personnel acted that day.

    1. Admirable indeed — and unlikely to be repeated today when everyone has a cell phone to upload videos to social media. It’s not only the neo-Nazis who are seeking attention in petty ways.

    2. “…kept marching, and never came back”
      being a person with a small brain, this made me laugh.

  9. I’m not sure the Hamasniks will be kicked out of Qatar for real, but if they are they’ll surely end up Turkey. Recall they were thrown out of Syria (!) before Qatar. WHO gets thrown out of Syria? Jesus.

    The Turkey I visited 18 years or so ago is a different place now, sliding towards Islamism ever faster. And, no co-incidence – sliding towards total economic ruin.
    Islam will make you poor and probably at war.

    Do quote Jihadwatch, they recently started to syndicate my column:
    https://jihadwatch.org/author/david-anderson
    Which is more than I can say for WEIT. 😉

    with love and amusement,

    D.A.
    NYC

  10. I’ve been following the Trump pick news.

    I’m not impressed at all with Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr. But it’s amazing how much support there is for them in reader comments.

    Mostly RFK supporters share his concern about additives in foods and “ultra-processed foods.” Most don’t seem to be vaccine skeptics, although some are. Still, what other odd beliefs might he have?

    Some say Tulsi Gabbard is a “peace advocate.” They either overlook things like cozying up to Bashar Assad or claim it’s not true.

    I’m noticing a disturbing trend in some WSJ readers to simply not believe the reports. They argue that media hates Trump so they’re making stuff up. A bad trend.

    1. It’s projection. They are perfectly willing to lie and to believe and publicize lies. So their adversaries must be the same.

    2. RFK Jr’s idiotic belief that AIDS is caused by drug use and does not come from a virus is more evidence of his tendency to subscribe to utter lunacy that has no basis in scientific fact.

      1. I didn’t know about that one, although I have heard of it. RFK Jr is a nutcase, I definitely agree.

  11. “Dlaczego” surprisingly long and complicated word to use for “why.” But I guess that’s Polish for you.

    1. It comes from “for what” (dla czego) so maybe you can say that Polish doesn’t have a dedicated word for “why” but asks that question in a roundabout/explanatory way.
      (I’m not a linguist and not even a Polish speaker even though my first language is a Slavic one and I understand Polish a little, so take it with a pinch of salt.)

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