Welcome to a cold Monday in Chicago: it’s Monday, April 7, 2025 and National Beer Day, celebrating the end of Prohibition:
National Beer Day is celebrated on the anniversary of the date that beer once again began being served, in 1933, after over thirteen years of Prohibition. Franklin Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act on March 22, 1933, which said that beer with up to 3.2% alcohol content by weight could again be sold, as long as states passed their own laws allowing the selling of beer.
But if I could drink only one beer for the rest of my days, it would be a British ale—this one. It is a great pint, and won the title of Supreme Champion Beer of Britain four times. Make sure, if you get a hand-pumped pint, that the publican knows how to cellar a beer properly.
It’s also Metric System Day, Sweet Potato Day, National Coffee Cake Day, World Health Day, and International Beaver Day. Enjoy this adorable rescue beaver, Tulip (click on “Watch on YouTube”:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 7 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Breaking: the financial markets. Be poised for another meltdown today as Trump announced that his tariffs will stay, and he doesn’t care if he wrecks the world’s economy.
Stocks around the world plunged on Monday, and the S&P 500 was poised to drop again, as President Trump doubled down on global tariffs that have made investors increasingly pessimistic about the economy.
The main stock index in Hong Kong, where many mainland Chinese companies trade, plunged over 12 percent. In Taiwan, a hub for global technology, stocks were clobbered nearly 10 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index finished almost 8 percent lower, while benchmarks in South Korea tumbled more than 5 percent.
Stocks in Europe opened sharply lower. The FTSE 100 in London and the Stoxx Europe 600 were both down about 5 percent.
The moves reflected deepening concern that Mr. Trump’s significant new taxes on U.S. imports could disrupt global supply chains, cause inflation to accelerate and spark a severe economic downturn.
Wall Street, where financial titans spent the weekend surveying the damage of last week’s sell off, was bracing for more chaos on Monday. The S&P 500, which is already 17.4 percent below its February peak, was nearing a bear market, defined as a drop of 20 percent or more from a recent peak.
The benchmark U.S. index was set to open more than 4 percent lower on Monday, according to futures trading.
Mr. Trump on Sunday evening said that he would not ease tariffs on other countries “unless they pay us a lot of money.” He dismissed concerns that his steep new taxes on imports would lead to higher prices, calling them “a very beautiful thing.”
He is insane. He wants a lot of money. A lot. This will be the most beautiful recession in the history of the world
*This next news is shocking and, if true. horrific and depressing. The press (and of course Hamas) have reported that the IDF have killed Red Crescent medics in Gaza, and then issued an incorrect statement about what happened, saying that the medics were traveling at night in cars without obvious markings and without flashing lights. Yet a NYT video shows that that is wrong: the cars and individuals are clearly marked. Further, there are assertions that the individuals killed (some of which, says the IDF, were found in a mass grave, executed and with their hands tied behind their back. The IDF is now investigating. From the Times of Israel:
The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged on Saturday evening that it had been incorrect in its initial account of an incident in southern Gaza’s Rafah last month during which troops fired on Palestinian emergency vehicles, killing 14 or 15 medics whose bodies were later recovered from a mass grave.
On Saturday, the army detailed the initial findings from its investigation of the incident, which it said was ongoing. It asserted that at least six of those killed had been posthumously identified as Hamas operatives, denied that any of those killed had been executed, and said troops had not attempted to hide the incident but rather had informed the UN of the location of the grave.
After the incident came to light, the military, which accuses Hamas of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure, had initially said the vehicles were without headlights or emergency lights, were uncoordinated, and arrived on the scene shortly after a group of terror operatives. As such, the IDF said soldiers deemed them “suspicious” and opened fire.
On Saturday, however, The New York Times published a video that appeared to show the emergency vehicles were clearly marked and had their emergency lights on when the IDF opened fire.
UN officials have said that 15 medics were killed by Israeli fire, while the military said that 14 people were killed and one survived.
Palestinians have accused Israeli forces of attempting to cover up the incident by burying the bodies in a mass grave. Claims have also emerged that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were seemingly shot dead from close range.
Following the emergence of the video Saturday, the military said that Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor would be re-investigating the incident. The complete findings will be presented to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Sunday.
According to the military’s findings, the incident began on March 23 amid the resumption of fighting in Gaza, and a new offensive in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood.
Golani soldiers, who were operating under the 14th Armored Brigade, had set up an ambush on a road in Tel Sultan at around 4 a.m. At that time, the military said, several ambulances and civilians passed by without incident.
At around 4:30 a.m., a Hamas police vehicle drove through the area, and the Golani soldiers exchanged fire with the operatives inside, killing one and capturing two others, the IDF said. The Hamas vehicle remained on the side of the road.
At around 6 a.m., a convoy of ambulances arrived in the area, and the IDF soldiers opened fire, perceiving them as a threat. Drone operators flying a UAV overhead had reported to the Golani soldiers that the vehicles were moving toward them in a suspicious manner.
The initial investigation claimed that the soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road, next to the abandoned Hamas vehicle, and by several “suspects” jumping out of the convoy and running. The soldiers were said to have been unaware that the suspects were, in fact, unarmed medics.
The IDF acknowledged that based on the video, its initial statement asserting that the ambulances had had their lights off appeared to be incorrect, noting that it was based on the testimony of soldiers involved in the incident.
The new IDF investigation is examining that discrepancy.
The military also said that at least six of the bodies were identified by intelligence officials as Hamas operatives. It was expected to detail the names of the six operatives once the probe was concluded.
Relatives mourn during the funeral procession for members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services who were killed a week earlier allegedly by Israeli forces, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Eyad Baba/AFP)The initial findings rejected claims that the soldiers had intentionally targeted the medics from close range, carried out executions, or tied up the hands of any of the medics.
The IDF also rejected the assertion that troops had buried the bodies in an unmarked mass grave without informing anyone.
Palestinian Red Crescent chief Dr. Younis Al-Khatib had said on Friday that the aid workers were “targeted from a very close range” and that Israel had “kept us for eight days in the dark” as to the whereabouts of the bodies.
According to the military’s initial probe, a deputy battalion commander in Golani and his troops collected the bodies in one spot, covered them with sand, and marked the burial spot.
An IDF Press Release from April 2 doesn’t clarify things much. The NYT video certainly shows lit-up trucks and workers with visible markings, though it also sounds like some of them were Hamas members. However, the burial of the dead people really bothers me, even though the IDF says it sometimes does that to keep vultures and other animals from destroying the bodies. I am not convinced, and I await a better explanation of what happened from the IDF. I am convinced that if the IDF finds out that its soldiers violated the rules of war, they will punish them. But the IDF’s initial explanation was wrong, and that is disturbing.
*The Free Press has launched a “Culture and Ideas” column by Suzy Weiss, who happens to be the sister of founder Bari Weiss. Now I don’t mind Nellie Bowles, Bari’s partner, writing her TGIF column, because Bowles was a journalist and her columns are terrific. But Suzy Weiss’s pop-culture column seems boring and anodyne to me (perhaps because of my incipient geezerhood). The latest, “Love on the spectrum, bitter pop queens, studio Ghibli, and more!” seems boring and anodyne—almost a ripoff of Nellie’s column but minus the panache and humor. In fact, it seems like nepotism. For example, I think Nellie could do a much better job than Suzy on this:
Everyone’s been talking about tariffs in the office this week. Apparently it’s the economic story of the moment. But discerning business journalists like me know that the real pressing issue is that Forever 21 is over. The fast-fashion store has gone bankrupt for the second time—and, it confirmed last week, will be liquidating its more than 350 stores across the U.S.
This is probably very good news for the planet. At Forever 21, clothes were sourced and slapped onto the rack as quickly and cheaply as possible to keep up with trends that cycle in and out of style as quickly as an Instagram feed refreshes. But the news made me feel almost nostalgic for when teenage girls actually left the house to go to the mall, instead of sitting online endlessly adding to cart.
Also, there’s yet another piece at TFP about the benefits of religion, an article called “Hallowed be Thy App“, about a Christian prayer app. The subtitle is “Since it was launched in 2018, the Christian prayer app been downloaded 23 million times. Is this the beginning of a religious revival?” As I wrote this on Sunday, the article is the main piece on the sites’s webpage. Here’s a short excerpt:
And the booming popularity of Hallow is part of a bigger trend, which is starting to look like a religious revival in the West. Though recent Pew data suggests Christianity’s decline may have stalled, among younger generations—especially men—it may even be in resurgence. On March 5, 2025, the first day of Lent, Catholics across the Western world reported unusually high turnout at Ash Wednesday services.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” wrote Robert George, a professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, on X. “Is something happening?”
Sarah has an answer, and it’s simple. There are many more people like her, she said, who are “starved for connection, for meaning.”
And people are beginning to realize that, really, they’re “starved for God.”
There’s that God-shaped hole again! Although there’s a bit of negativity, it’s only about dubious people like Russell Brand who have endorsed the app, in general, the article recounts many “stories of salvation.” This buttresses my view that The Free Press is soft on religion, for this isn’t the first article with this tenor. As long as we have that God-shaped hole (I looked, but I can’t find mine), there will be God-shaped stories to be written.
*Skeptic Magazine, founded by Michael Shermer, has a new article called “Unfashionable but true: sex is binary“; the author is Robert O. Deaner, a professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University. It defends the sex binary from the point of view of a psychologist. For example:
Ideas also vary in their popularity and prestige across cultures and times. These days, mindfulness, sustainability, plant-based diets, and pet parenting are fashionable, while eugenics, homophobia, hierarchical work environments, and colonialism are not.
Perhaps the most fashionable current idea is that the binary distinction of females and males—and girls and boys, and women and men—is scientifically incorrect and harmful. Instead, leading social scientists, activists, and even professional journals and organizations, have adopted the view that sex should be considered a nonbinary variable, either a continuous spectrum or something with more than two categories.
Yet, the traditional, binary view of sex, despite being unpopular, is basically correct. Crucially, I am confident that holding this view is in no way at odds with being fully respectful to individuals who are transgender or intersex. Here are eight reasons for affirming that biological sex is binary.
Let’s review each of them in more detail.
Four of these are
People in all societies define sex based on reproductive traits, another binary framework. This framework builds on the gametes definition and is far more practical.
and
Third genders are nonbinary, but they do not challenge the biological sex binary, reproductive traits framework.
and
Intersex individuals challenge the binary, reproduticve traits framework, but they don’t invalidate it because they don’t reproduce in a third way.
and
No better nonbinary definition has been offered.
Here’s one quote:
What about the nonbinary definitions of sex? Because these have become influential, one might assume that they are better than the binary definitions. I want to note that there is apparently no nonbinary definition of sex that has been recognized as being the best. Nevertheless, a good place to start is with a review article by Hyde and colleagues entitled, “The Future of Sex and Gender in Psychology: Five Challenges to the Gender Binary.”25 This article was published in 2019 in the American Psychologist, a leading journal of the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological society in the world. Hyde is one of the most influential sex and gender scholars, and this article has already been cited more than 1,100 times—a very high number for any academic article, particularly one published so recently. Hyde et al. offer this definition of sex: “The term sex is used here to refer to biological systems involving the X and Y chromosomes, pre- and postnatal sexual differentiation, and hormones that influence sexual differentiation of the external genitals, which, in turn, serve as the basis for sex assignment at birth.”
This is a terrible definition, on several counts.
I leave it to the readers to think of why this definition is “terrible.” I bet you can think of one way already (hint: turtles).
*Speaking of turtles, the Philadelphia Zoo has hatched four Galapágos tortoises, a first in zoo history. They’re considered critically endangered (h/t Norman):
The hatchlings’ parents, female Mommy and male Abrazzo, are the Zoo’s two oldest residents, each estimated to be around 100 years old. Additionally, Mommy is considered one of the most genetically valuable Galapagos tortoises in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Species Survival Plan (SSP). She is also the oldest first-time mom of her species. The hatchlings, currently behind-the-scenes inside the Reptile and Amphibian House, are eating and growing appropriately, weighing between 70-80 grams (about the weight of a chicken egg). The first one hatched on February 27 and the animal care team is still monitoring eggs that could hatch in the coming weeks. The hatchlings will make their public debut on Wednesday, April 23, which is the 93rd anniversary of Mommy’s arrival at the Zoo. Stay tuned for details on their debut and for the chance to help the Zoo name them!
The babies are part of the AZA SSP breeding program to ensure the survival of this species and maintain a genetically diverse population. Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with threats including human-wildlife conflict, the introduction of invasive species, and habitat loss. The last clutch of Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises to hatch in an AZA accredited zoo was in 2019 at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in South Carolina. Other zoos with breeding pairs of this species include San Diego Zoo, Zoo Miami and Honolulu Zoo.
There’s only one species of this giant tortoise, (Chelonoidis niger), though there have been arguments about it since some species are on different islands and do not meet. Even if they can produce fertile hybrids in zoos, that doesn’t mean they would even mate in the wild.
“The Galapagos Tortoise SSP program is thrilled to help Philadelphia Zoo welcome Mommy’s offspring,” said Galapagos Tortoise SSP Coordinator and Studbook Keeper Ashley Ortega at Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas. “This feat is even more incredible considering that Mommy is the oldest first-time producing female of her species in any U.S. zoo. Prior to the hatchlings, there were only 44 individual Western Santa Cruz Giant tortoises in all U.S. zoos combined, so these newest additions represent a new genetic lineage and some much-needed help to the species’ population. We are excited to learn more about how we can replicate this success at other accredited zoos since the team in Philly has accomplished something that was seemingly impossible.”
A bit of digging around on the internet has led me to conclude that turtles and tortoises are not evolutionarily distinct groups; that is, each group is paraphyletic. That means that some animals called “turtles” are more closely related to some animals called “tortoises” than they are to other animals called turtles. Apparently, “tortoises” are said to be land-dwellers and “turtles” aquatic or semi-aquatic. But that’s a matter of ecology, not evolutionary relatedness. Here’s a video of the newborns from the Philadelphia zoo; aren’t they cute?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili faces The Cat’s Dilemma:
Andrzej: Come to the garden.Hili: I have to consider all arguments for and against.
Ja: Chodź do ogrodu.Hili: Muszę rozważyć wszystkie za i przeciw.
And reader Reese Vaughan’s cat Razz (short for “Raspberry”). Caption: “Excuse me! I’m bathing here!”
Reese adds, “She was a survivor of Hurricane Harvey as a kitten in 2017 and also survived a recent illness, needing emergency hospitalization, which is why I refer to her as The World’s Most Expensive Cat. So maybe 7 lives to go for her.”
*******************
From Irena. The penguins are UPSET with what Trump did, and are allying with Bernie.
From The Dodo Pet:
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
Masih is quiet today, but we have this from Luana. Britain really has a problem with what in America is considered free speech. Again, I don’t agree with the sentiments, but that’s when you need free speech!
UK: After learning of the murder of three young British girls Lucy Connolly wrote, “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f’ing hotels full of the b’ds for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing… pic.twitter.com/eibfqpkaEi
— @amuse (@amuse) April 5, 2025
From Malcolm; cats vs. d*gs:
cat vs dog pic.twitter.com/a5YXvLPJ54
— Abim (@underect) March 28, 2025
Three from my feed:
Shoebill stork! Sound up! (This may be the world’s weirdest bird.)
I’m so fascinated by these birds. They’re real, but prehistoric and animatronic all at once. pic.twitter.com/ZOEo8HgJTp
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 6, 2025
Bat!
SKY PUPPY EAR WIGGLES pic.twitter.com/3oOWfsKzpV
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 5, 2025
And from my Bluesky feed:
🪲 This Beetle is all dressed up and ready to party! 🎉 🎊 RafaelGlassArt.Etsy.com…#glass #artlover #artcollector #glassart #artist #art #borosilicate #flameworking #glasssculpture #sculpture #glassfigurines #animallovers #gift #handmade #craft #fire #flame #insects #beetle #dichroic
— Rafael Glass (@rafael-glass.bsky.social) 2025-04-06T17:46:57.174Z
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
A three-year-old Yugoslavian girl, Jewish, was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She would have been 84 yesterday had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-07T10:07:23.517Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Obama goes after Trump:
“Imagine if I had done any of this.”— former president Obama, at Hamilton College this week
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-04-05T17:46:37.058Z
I need to read this as I once worked on fly migration (Drosophila pseudoobscura and D. melanogaster can go quite far!)
It's published! The largest research work I've ever undertaken:Lords of the flies: dipteran migrants are diverse, abundant & ecologically importantPublished in Biological Reviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10….Thanks so much to co-authors @koralwotton.bsky.social & Myles Menz1/x
— Dr Will Leo Hawkes (@willleohawkes.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T06:39:41.558Z
A heads up for space geeks: there is a launch scheduled in Russia for 1:47edt Tuesday morning,( just after midnight tonight,) of a Soyuz carrying three fresh astronauts (1 American, 2 Russian) to the ISS. While we are no longer allowed to note the diversity of our astronaut corps, I find it worth mentioning that the American, Johnny Kim is a first gen Korean American, his parents emigrated from South Korea, ran a Grocery store, and he succeeded with pluck and perseverance through US public schools, signing up to the Navy Seals, completing officer training and med school, using scholarships and awards that he found and qualified for. I love these stories and think that it is still important to wmphasize them. Space.com article at https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/soyuz-rocket-launch-ms-27-astronaut-mission-iss-webcast
Also, I am glad to see Jerry’s piece on Bari’s sister Suzy’s column. I have come close to dropping my paid subscription to TFP a couple of times lately as Bari has given oxygen to two-per center ideas, but never pulled the trigger because there are things I like with Nellie at the top of the list. But Suzy’s new column weighs heavily toward a divestment from me.
They also published a piece defending Trump’s tariffs.
Their readership is heavily MAGA and this is influencing what they publish.
Interesting. I first was attracted to Bari’s recent writings when she wrote her “How to Fight Antisemitism” explaining the antisemitic left and Islam along with the traditional right. That was also when she left nyt, and she did a number of interviews such as with Einat Wilf that were favorable to Israel. So I may have to do a reset and try to take an objective look without confirmation bias.
“They also published a piece defending Trump’s tariffs.”
They’ve also published articles against the tariffs.
That’s not the point. The tariffs are indefensible.
But in order to arrive at the conclusion that “the tariffs are indefensible”, isn’t it useful to consider a best-attempt at a defense?
Coel: sometimes something is so bad it’s not worth trying to defend them. All it does is feed MAGA talking points.
Trump is not simply another politician. He’s actually dangerous and should be resisted.
And she has these people without any balancing questions or queries. I found her recent extremely sympathetic interviews on MAHA and of jay bhattacharya to be inexcusable. She has dissed both drs fauci and francis collins and implies that the biden administration’s actions on covid were both wrong and duplicitous. I had thought at first that she was just getting too big at TFP to manage things well. But I guess I just need to reconsider. I do not need to hear only what I agree with but I do need to see a respect for science vs ideology.
That’s a rather extreme position to take on an arcane industrial policy and global trade tool, Fr. Katz. Canada’s position seems to be that tariffs are indefensible only when other countries impose them on us. Tariffs that Canada imposes are part of sound industrial strategy to protect Canadian agricultural cartels and union jobs in Canadian industries, especially Green ones. The revenue from what the Prime Minister calls “border adjustments” on imports whose manufacture emitted a lot of CO2 will be used to subsidize otherwise uneconomic renewable energy boondoggles. I guess tariffs in a good cause are OK. But how is a 100% tariff on cheap electric vehicles from China good for global warming?
Leslie: aren’t you aware that Canada signed a trade agreement with Trump himself in his first term?
Now he wants to tear it up.
There’s a few items on both sides that still have tariffs but the vast majority of trade was tariff free.
Particularly bad is him disregarding the Auto Pact, that dates from the 1960s. GM, Ford and Chrysler moved a fraction of their manufacturing to Canada. In return these firms’ cars were tariff free in Canada.
The Auto Pact was win-win: Canada got jobs, America sold cars. Now that’s history. Trump is a total idiot.
I’ve heard what proponents of the tariffs have said and I too find them to be against everything that I have ever learned or believe. I’m predicting at least 2 years of depressed economic activity in the US and globally, with an end result of far less revenue brought in than expected.
I’ve come to look on it as a real-life experiment: maybe everything that I’ve come to know by reading Sowell, Friedman, Cowen, and others is going to be found to be false. Maybe Lutnik and Cass are right. If so, I’ll admit I’m wrong, and look at it as a learning experience.
I do hope that I’m wrong and that the economy prospers as a result; regardless of the decision makers, my strong preference is for the highest level of economic growth and opportunity as possible. I can’t get onboard with friends who are salivating at the chance of a big recession so that they get a Dem for our next president. I’d rather be wrong in my economic theory and have a booming economy even it leads to a President Vance.
On a side note, the market has wiped out more wealth held by billionaires and millionaires than anything else over the past several years, so I’m sure the far-left will be celebrating!
OK, if your “indefensible” argument comes from your opinion that he is breaching a sacred covenant with Canada known as a trade deal, I’ll just reply that he hasn’t, yet. His wanting to rip it up, or saying he does, is not the same as doing it. But even if he has, hurt feelings in foreigners are probably of less general interest than whether tariffs are a rational economic policy for the United States. If they are, he should abrogate trade deals that seem to say he can’t impose them. No sovereign will honour an agreement that is not any longer in its public interest. This is what I think Darryl R is referring to. In that sense intellectual curiosity requires an open mind about tariffs. Predictions aren’t facts until they happen.
In deference to the rule against to-and-fro I’ll stop here.
Leslie: he has applied tariffs on autos and auto parts. I read an article about it the other day. A plant in Windsor has closed for two weeks as they evaluate the situation.
There’s other new tariffs according to an article I read in the Atlantic. It involved a farmer living near the Canadian border whose animal feed (I think that’s what it was) had increased in price due to the tariff. He had been ordering from a Canadian source and was now looking for another source.
It’s nothing to do with “hurt feelings” and everything to do with economics.
If the tariffs are so indefensible then why has Europe had them for so long?
Mike: the EU has low tariffs on US goods, average 1%.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_25_541
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. -William Wordsworth, poet (7 Apr 1770-1850)
My wife and I were out and about last week so we stopped for lunch at a pub we used to frequent before we moved from the area, mainly because they still have a great reputation for food, but most of all because their pumps are mostly Timothy Taylor. Sadly, they had been cleaned out of Landlord, which I failed to notice when I ordered because they only had the “sold out” sign on one of the pumps… disaster. I can report that Boltmaker is also an acceptable TT pint, should you feel like a 4% ABV pint instead of 4.3% 🙂
For those of us who haven’t had the pleasure: is the guy in the red shirt on the label Tim himself? or the landlord?
Sadly not. From their website:
“The label for Landlord was another in-house initiative, thanks to Philip Taylor’s daughter Roberta, an art student who devised an eye-catching “jovial landlord” image to attract the attention of customers.”
Edit: If you get the chance it is well worth trying despite this 1950s marketing ploy! From a well kept cellar it is a superb pint and unlike so many it does bottle well, though the flavour is definitely affected. I keep meaning to send the boss some for Coynezaa to see what he thinks of the bottles.
But doesn’t “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f’ing hotels full of the b’ds for all I care” cross an important line, i.e. calling for specific violent action against a group of people? What if she had called for setting fire to synagogues because some individual Jew had committed a murder? Free speech?
In the United States what are called “true threats” are not considered to be speech protected by the First Amendment. To give an idea of how narrowly that exception is construed in this country, there’s the 1969 Supreme Court case of Watts v. United States. A young man at a public rally said:
“…I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ.”
He was arrested on charges of threatening the President of the United States, and was convicted–but the Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction, on the grounds that the words in question were “political hyperbole” and not a true threat or a call to “imminent lawless action” (emphasis here on the word “imminent”).
Thank you for the clarification in US law. Like Jared I read the rant as an incitement to arson and murder, which it is here in the UK.
Except that the offence she was actually convicted of was “stirring up racial hatred”, which means the Crown didn’t think it could prove she had committed incitement to arson and murder. She is going to jail explicitly for a pure speech offence, not for incitement.
That a random citizen might “read it” as incitement to arson and murder isn’t relevant because that’s not what the Crown charged her with.
Remember also that she made these comments at a time when there were rioting mobs on the streets of some British cities, fuelled by the racist rhetoric of a handful of far-right politicians. Some of the rioters actually attempted to set fire to an hotel containing refugees. Thankfully they failed, but people could have been killed. This was the same kind of mob violence that occurred in Washington, DC on 6 January 2021.
OK, but for wider context: the riots were a response a knife attack on a class of young girls that killed 3 of them and injured 7; despite the fact that the police arrested the attacker at the scene, they said very little about his identity, and this led to various online rumours, some of them false. For example, one rumour was that it was a a Muslim who was a recently arrived asylum seeker; again, the police did not quash this by giving correct information, as they could have (he was a black 17-yr-old born in Wales to parents who had migrated from Rwanda). In the absence of proper information, people tended to believe the rumours (the Tweet by Connolly was in this context). All of this led to some rioting.
Actually, the number and scale of the riots was exaggerated. Left-wing activist Nick Lowles falsly claimed that a Muslim woman had been attacked with acid during riots, helping to inflame passions.
Nick Lowles also invented and spread a completely spurious list of supposed planned “far right” riots. The media spread his message. When these riots didn’t happen Lowles said “Yes, the list was a hoax, but just look at the front pages of today’s papers.” Needless to say, Nick Lowles was not prosecuted for anything.
But, there were fairly draconian prosecutions of people involved in the riots or who sounded off on Twitter.
And during the BLM riots.
Apparently enforcement is very selective, according to one comment by a “Peter Hague— It’s quite selective. Nobody has been sent to prison for repeatedly demanding the violent ethnic cleansing of Israel at large protests week after week.”
Left-wing threats, vandalism, and violence seems to be more tolerated than the same from the right.
Note: Trump’s pardons of the J6 rioters is an obvious exception to this statement. However, very few if any politicians or media on the right were in support of the J6 idiots vs the support from mainstream politicians and media in support or avoidance of criticism for the BLM riots / “mostly peaceful protests” that resulted in far more damage over a longer period of time.
Also, political violence targeting Trump and Musk is becoming more normalized. “The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,”: https://networkcontagion.us/reports/4-7-25-ncri-assassination-culture-brief/
I don’t recall anywhere near the same discussion on the right calling for assassination of Biden or Obama or any of their advisors or for vandalizing businesses of people who supported their policies.
One way to test this is a thought experiment that I thought of after reading Sue’s note: imagine two groups of protesters shouting to eliminate Israel by any means necessary, vandalizing buildings, and spray painting swastikas: one group a bunch of young white males wearing armbands and another group of multi-ethnic students wearing keffiyehs. Same behavior, but one group would get front page news with instant condemnation, and the other gets celebrated by college professors and is only mildly reported. Both are reprehensible but the result is different.
What are “b’ds”?
Those whose parents were not married at the time of their birth.
Ah, yes, that must be it.
Bastards?!?! Wait, she was fine with saying that innocent people should be burned alive but she chose to censor the word bastards lest she cause offense? I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an abbreviation employed to speed the delivery of her damaged thoughts to the wider world. Either way, from this side of the pond a prison sentence does not seem justified.
I was also wondering about that. I suspect perhaps “bads,” i.e. “bad guys,” but I really don’t know.
Mr. Miller I have to respectfully disagree. Without endorsing her ill advised tweet, it is clearly just a cre de ceur (sp? – Cry from the heart) of a frustrated person.
For a real, actionable threat that should get police involvement there is much more specificity – in time and place – needed. Were I a judge she’d walk.
Same with your eg. – the antisemite would walk free from my court.
D.A. (J.D.)
NYC
And if 10 people echo the sentiment “burn down the hotels/synagogues!”? Or 50 people? Or 100?
And if they do so with signs or posters out in the street in addition to on their twitter accounts? Or they do so out in front of the hotel/synagogue? Where should the line be drawn?
To me, the distinction is the wording of the law, not the conduct. A country can define incitement to violence however its lawmakers and judges want to. In the U.S. it’s often said that the people you are inciting have to have the means to violence at hand, such as torches and a can of kerosene, for incitement to arson to be provable. Other countries might demand merely that the mob have cigarette lighters, or the money to nip round the corner to buy some. Perhaps 100 people physically gathered outside a building listening to someone with a megaphone calling for it to be set on fire, could be sufficient to prove incitement to arson in the country it occurred in.
The point is that the Crown should have to prove incitement under a law that defines and prohibits it. In this British case the Crown proved only that she stirred up racial hatred, which ought not to be illegal anywhere. If the police thought her social media statements constituted incitement, let the Crown try to prove it. It shouldn’t be easy to send someone to jail for political speech. Criminalizing racial hatred makes it too easy….especially since Muslims aren’t a race. They are a cult she regards as political undesirables. This is where Britain, like Canada, seems to be going off the rails in policing political speech in the effort to enforce social harmony with dangerous people whom the authorities are afraid of.
“… stirr(ing) up racial hatred, which ought not to be illegal anywhere.” Thank you for making yourself clear.
In fact, the crown didn’t prove anything — she pled guilty, as did a lot of those prosecuted over this incident. That would have been under legal advice, and what legal advice she was got is unclear.
A standard principle is that those pleading guilty get more lenient treatment, but in these instances a guilty plea seems to have been taken as licence to make an example of them and impose harsh sentences.
Presumably, those giving her legal advice thought she had no chance of a not-guilty verdict, but that is unclear. For starters, the words “… for all I care” are significant. The phrase: “set fire to the hotels for all I care” is not the same as “set fire to the hotels”. A few people who did plead not guilty for similar stuff were indeed acquitted. Connolly got a 31-month sentence.
Anyhow, for those interested, The Telegraph has just published this account: I heard the full story of the woman jailed for two years for a tweet. Her injustice shames Britain. (Possible paywall, not sure of there is.)
I accept with good grace your ad hominem as my cost of paying the freight for free-speech absolutism. Lots of people have paid far more.
Not the slightest hint of an ad hominem.
I simply said you had made yourself perfectly clear, that you think that stirring up racial hatred ought not to be illegal anywhere.
I believe the words “for all I care” make this not an incitement to violence.
I agree.
“you can…for all I care” is not calling for violent action. She’s speaking of her feelings about a hypothetical: if you did X, I would not care.
LadyM, I’m reiterating just because the concept of hate speech is (properly) alien to Americans: you can go to jail in England (and in Canada) for speech that does not incite violence. No one in officialdom claimed Mrs. Connolly’s did. All one has to do is say something in public that the police believe is likely to arouse intense dislike for what the police believe counts as an oppressed racial group. To get a conviction, or in this case frighten the defendant into a guilty plea, the Crown need prove only that the speech was uttered and that it is reasonable for the Court to believe that other unspecified people were likely to hate the group more, as a result, than they already do. There doesn’t have to be any evidence of a rise in racial disharmony in society as a result of the speech, only that the speech was deemed likely to do so if it weren’t nipped in the bud.
Violence past present or future doesn’t even enter into it. If as a result of someone’s speech the Court thinks someone else might be more likely to hate the group in question, “not to care”, say, if they all burned to death in a fire of accidental causes or drowned in a storm that swamped all their small boats in the English Channel, that is hate speech. It doesn’t matter if the Crown can’t find anyone who was was so negatively moved by her speech, only that it was not unreasonable to think that someone might be.
Even if the white British community disavowed her speech, with an outpouring of loving support for the beleaguered African Muslims showing them that Britons “aren’t like that”, hers would still be hate speech. Indeed the police might feel safer if an angry mob of white Labourites had gathered outside her home expressing revulsion against her remarks and calling for them to charge her. Let’s pile on! Serves her right!
I do understand, Leslie–having followed the TERF wars in the UK for the past several years, I’m well aware of their illiberal laws regarding speech!
But your clarification is welcome. And I should have made clear that I was responding to Jared Miller’s original comment, specifically, this:
But doesn’t “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f’ing hotels full of the b’ds for all I care” cross an important line, i.e. calling for specific violent action against a group of people?
That article about the tortoises totally made assumptions about their gender identities, how rude. They could identify as nonbinary or transtortoises!
Re: Skeptic Magazine article ends with a caution: “Beware of scams on Facebook. Facebook transferred full control of the Skeptic magazine and Michael Shermer pages to scammers. We are no longer on the platform and pursuing legal action against its parent company, Meta. Stay vigilant.”
I just checked it. It’s basically a tabloid site.
What do you mean? There’s no link given. What site is a tabloid site?
I mean it’s posting a bunch of sensationalist stories about political figures like Adam Schiff and Elon Musk and no stories with skeptical or scientific content. You can go see for yourself on Facebook.
I realized it meant Facebook after I left the comment. I checked it out.
Awful.
Dr. Coyne wrote: “I am convinced that if the IDF finds out that its soldiers violated the rules of war, they will punish them. But the IDF’s initial explanation was wrong, and that is disturbing.”
Yes, deeply disturbing. I support Israel against terrorists. And war is always hell. But we must maintain our integrity even in the darkest moments. We cannot become the hell.
The other day reading WEIT I decided a giant anteater would be a great pet for Manhattan.
Now I want that shoebill bird. Its insane machine gun noises and stare of menace would stop traffic on 8th Ave in a heartbeat. Sublime.
That shoebill dinosaur is one of the coolest animals I’ve ever seen!
D.A.
NYC
For fellow fans of the Hitler bunker “Downfall” series of new parodies, today’s is about the tariffs and is very funny. (via Mat Ridley)
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1909071459378414079
(3-4 minutes)
D.A.
NYC
The best!!
🎯. Thank you.
The very best Downfall riff I’ve seen. I nearly fell off my chair at the “Mr. President …” line, not to mention “Remove your head …”.
Hmmm. Would “very best” be “tripleplusgood” In Newspeak?
And, I just came across an Oxford economist Ian Goldin, who impresses me greatly. Here’s a BBC podcast that is directly on point re Trump’s tariffs. IG is no Casandra-come-lately; this podcast is 2 years old.
https://iangoldin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Analysis-20230227-TheDeathOfGlobalisation.mp3
Enjoy.
That is funny. And Hitler’s blaming of his senior officers for getting him into this mess nails it better than many of the parodies do. You can almost transpose the conversation into the Oval Office and hear it.
But it might be better to wait to see if Steiner rallies and forms up his front before saying “Alles kaput!”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
Ceiling Cat:
I must know. I mean I really MUST know your thoughts on the claims that they’ve brought back dire wolves:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/the-dire-wolf-is-back?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_Paid_040725&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=67c75ebe323d04d7b7079368&cndid=87788365&hasha=2364a37f049ef63070b1cd707ffdb5f4&hashb=ed5eee7ab5f4e5b7d3f7c094926fac382c6c91ae&hashc=eb560f5a050acc3fb446d039586137824914dbfd3ab14a4cd15240ad92497420&esrc=bx_reggate2&mbid=CRMNYR012019
Read these tweets: it is a gray wolf with 15 genes edited to be like dire wolf genes:
https://bsky.app/profile/asherelbein.bsky.social/post/3lma5ynfgxk2p
https://bsky.app/profile/carlzimmer.com/post/3lmafii4ss22v
Like all these things, it is basically a regular animal modified to look superficially like an extinct animal (viz the “woolly mouse”.
Thanks!
😉
Regarding god-shaped holes, one would think that the bigger the hole the more gods would be needed to fill it, so why aren’t people converting to Hinduism?
Well, there are plenty of gods in Christianity et al., the dude himself, jesus, holy spirit, angels, saints, devils, demons, etc. 🙂
Or turning to the Greek or Norse gods?
If the female tortoise in the Philadelphia Zoo has never given birth before, why on earth is she named Mommy?