Monday: Hili dialogue

May 26, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last Monday in May: Monday, May 26, 2025, and it’s Memorial Day, honor members of the U.S. armed forces who died serving their country.  Here’s a picture of only one of several cemeteries overseas where American soldiers are buried. These boys never made it home. Note the Jewish grave at lower left.

Bjarki Sigursveinsson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There’s a special Google Doodle in gray to mark the day; click on it to see where it goes:

News will be sparse today because, really, not much is happening in the world and I’m busy reading about academic freedom, which is a complex topic and the subject of many books and papers.

It’s also World Redhead Day (2% of the world’s population are so adorned), Sally Ride Day (the late astronaut was born on this day in 1951), National Blueberry Cheesecake Day, and National Cherry Dessert Day (cherries > blueberries on cheesecake).

Here’s Ride, the first American woman to go into space. She died at 61 of pancreatic cancer.

By NASA; retouched by Coffeeandcrumbs Public Domain/

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Russia launched a huge air attack on Ukraine yesterday, killing at least 12 people (article archived here).

Russia unleashed one of its largest drone and missile barrages of the war on Ukraine overnight, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens across the country in an hourslong assault that Ukrainian officials said showed Moscow had no interest in a truce.

It was the second large-scale attack in two nights and the third in just a week, part of a broader, recent escalation by Russia that has brought a spike in civilian casualties despite cease-fire negotiations. Ukraine has also stepped up its own air attacks on Russian territory, though on a smaller scale and with far fewer civilian deaths.

The overnight strikes underscored how months of diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire have failed to yield a breakthrough as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has dragged his feet on agreeing to any temporary truce, adding conditions that he knows Ukraine will not accept. And after threatening for weeks to walk away from the negotiations, President Trump now appears to be doing exactly that, telling President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.

Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia had launched 69 ballistic and cruise missiles along with 298 attack drones, adding that about two-thirds of the missiles and nearly all the drones were shot down. The air force spokesman, Yuriy Ihnat, said in an interview that it was the largest bombardment of the war in terms of the number of weapons used. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

It was the latest in a string of recent Russian attacks to involve swarms of more than 250 drones — a number unthinkable at the start of the war but now made possible by mass weapons production.

Attacks involving swarms of drones are often designed to overwhelm the enemy’s air defenses. Ukraine’s are already stretched, and each consecutive attack adds further strain. The latest barrage also hit western and southern regions of Ukraine which, unlike the capital, Kyiv, are poorly protected by air defenses, increasing the likelihood of fatalities.

There was hope in Ukraine that the cease-fire talks that Mr. Trump initiated in February would at least ease air attacks on civilian areas. Instead, the violence has intensified. Ukrainian civilian deaths have risen each month since February, according to the United Nations, reaching 209 in April — one of the highest monthly tolls in two years.

Two things here: first, clearly Trump was incapable of ending this war on “Day One” of his Presidency, as he promised (LOL), and he has no more interest in doing so.  Granted that Putin doesn’t want a cease-fire, Trump should still be plumping for the democratic Ukraine instead of just ignoring the conflict or, previously, trying to broker peace by giving another chunk of Ukraine to Russia.  Second, I’m not sure whether Russia would be satisfied with a chunk of Ukraine: perhaps it wants the whole country. On top of taking Crimea, the odious Putin isn’t facing near the opprobrium from the world that he should have.  How often do you hear democracies speaking up for Ukraine these days?

*The Jewish Insider reports that Kingsley Wilson, a woman with a history of antisemitic posts, has been promoted to the position of press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kingsley Wilson, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense who has come under fire from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish communal organizations for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, has been promoted to serve as the department’s press secretary, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

“Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President [Donald] Trump,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, posted on X on Friday.

When Wilson was named deputy press secretary in March, she faced widespread condemnation for dozens of tweets viewed as antisemitic and racist. On two different occasions, she attacked the Anti-Defamation League for sharing its origin story — the organization was founded after the lynching of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jew widely believed to have been wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a white child over a century ago.

“Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl,” Wilson wrote in 2023 in response to a post from the ADL, and repeated the claim a year later. “He also tried to frame a black man for his crime. The ADL is despicable.” (The tweet has not been deleted.)

Wilson has also called Confederate General Robert E. Lee “one of the greatest Americans to ever live” and regularly promoted the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory.”

Her appointment in March drew bipartisan criticism. “Obviously I don’t agree with her comments. I trust the Pentagon will address this,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider at the time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for her firing.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

And from NPR:

Mother Jones and Jewish Insider first reported many of Wilson’s comments, including her stated belief in the “great replacement theory,” which the Anti-Defamation League describes as a “racist conspiracy theory” amplified by white nationalist groups. The “great replacement theory” poses that societal elites, often cast as Jewish leaders, are orchestrating mass migration to the United States in order to displace white people and seize power.

Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer told Politico that Wilson’s comments were “horrible” and “just not appropriate.”

A relevant tweet is below.  Wilson’s speech may have been free speech, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to be appointed a press secretary in the government, for you have no right to a job. And what rational person is going to trust her objectivity—indeed, her sanity—when she says stuff like that?

*Speaking of semites, the Jerusalem Post notes that the National Security Council of Israel has issued a travel warning for Jews and Israelis traveling to CANADA, for crying out loud, upping the threat one notch for those individuals.. (h/t Malgorzata).

Israel’s National Security Council raised the travel warning for Canada from Level 1 to Level 2 on Sunday, citing “an increasing threat from terrorist elements against Israelis and Jews in Canada.”

The National Security Council called on the Israeli public in the country to exercise extreme caution, especially in anticipation of anti-Israel demonstrations expected to take place in Toronto and Waterloo.

Leaders of Canada, Britain, and France recently warned of sanctions against Israel if the country didn’t lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and end the military offensive in Gaza.

“We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank. We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions,” the countries said in a joint statement.

During last month’s elections, many Jews reported concerns about safety and antisemitism influencing their decisions.

The Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, has received criticism for rising antisemitism under its watch, making antisemitism an election issue. Antisemitism escalated following the October 7 massacre, as did anti-Israel protests and pushes for pro-Palestinian policy, leading to debates about  Israel-Canada ties.

I wouldn’t be afraid to travel in Canada, though I do recognize an unusually high level of anti-Semitism in our friendly northern neighbor. But really, what solution to the war do Canada, Britain, France, and other countries that condemn Israel suggest?  Two states, with Palestine ruled by Hamas? Do they think ahead about what that would entail? For that’s what would happen—if Palestinians even wants a state. The carnage in Palestine—and I do mourn every dead civilian—can be laid directly at the door of Hamas, who wants more dead Gazan civilians since it furthers their cause.  Nobody can deny that the IDF has tried, more than any other army, to avoid killing civilians, but Hamas embeds itself among them to increase the carnage. It is a great frustration that nobody (not even many Israelis) seems to recognize these facts.  Those who want a “two-state solution” right now are asking for more attacks on Israel, and forgetting that Palestinians rejected this solution at least five times.

*The Chicago site for NPR discusses Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, and has a short  Q&A session with Tapper giving “interview highlights”.

CNN’s Jake Tapper calls his new book a tragedy. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which Tapper co-authored with Axios’ Alex Thompson, describes two Joe Bidens.

“The first one is the one that everybody got to know during his vice presidency,” Tapper says. “And the second one was kind of a non-functioning Joe Biden. … And that non-functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly starting in, like, 2019, 2020. And then, as his term went on, more and more behind the scenes.”

The book describes a president who failed to recognize longtime political allies, lost his train of thought in important conversations and forgot important dates, including the death of his son, Beau: “We in the public would see some of it in front of the cameras … but we had no idea how bad it was,” Tapper says.

Tapper says one source described a president that was being propped up by aides: “One person told us that the presidency was, at best, a five-person board with Joe Biden as chairman of the board.”

Looking back now, Tapper says he regrets not covering Biden’s decline more aggressively. “I can point to times where I asked him this or I asked them that … but knowing what I know now, I barely scratched the surface,” he says. “I need to run more towards the discomfort of questions about health because they’re so important and they’re so under-covered in Washington.”

It’s a pity that Biden was just diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, because the book comes out at an inopportune time. Still, it needed to be written and I’m going to read it.  Two of Tapper’s interview highlights:

On the Democratic Party’s reaction to Biden’s debate performance

Democrats were shocked. They were just absolutely stunned. And I think there were really two camps. There was the Biden camp, which was, “OK, how do we get out of this? How do we crawl back?” Because Joe Biden, as I said earlier, as a compliment, he cannot be defeated. That’s his great attitude. He’s not going to be defeated by brain aneurysms, by this tragedy, by that tragedy. …

You don’t need to be a genius political consultant to know that the obvious remedy to fixing what he had just done was to go out and do 15 interviews and 20 town halls and five press conferences and just show people that he was as sharp as a tack as they had been saying. And the problem was he couldn’t do that, and that’s why his pollsters ultimately concluded there was just no way to get out of it. This was a disaster and it was going to keep getting worse and worse until election day.

On the public’s lack of trust in legacy media 

The news media is in a crisis. … Reporters in general, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, all of us, people don’t trust us. One of the reasons they don’t trust us is what just happened with Joe Biden and his acuity and the fact that we in the media were pretty late to the story. I should [say], we in the legacy media were late to that story, because conservative media was not late to it. And I think that we are in an existential fight for a free press. Not that it’s gonna be taken away, but it certainly runs the risk of not thriving as it has. And that just calls on us to be as good and professional as possible.

*The Washington Post reports that a young bear cub rescued alone in the woods is being raised by humans dressed like bears (h/t Barry). I have a video below, and you can see more pictures at the archived article.

A tiny black bear cub was crying alone in the California woods, his mother nowhere in sight. He was less than two months old and weighed about three pounds.

Campers in Los Padres National Forest found the baby bear on April 12 and the camp grounds host reported him to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Initially, biologists monitored the environment, with the hope that the cub’s mother would return — but she did not. The cub couldn’t survive on his own in the wild, so he was brought to San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.

. . . . . Now, though, just over five weeks since he was rescued, the cub is thriving. He has gained nearly 10 pounds and has reached several developmental milestones — including learning to climb. The cub is the youngest black bear cub San Diego Humane Society has cared for.

. . . . When staff interact with the cub, they are usually garbed head-to-toe in a bear costume. They wear a bear mask and an oversize fur coat, as well as leather gloves. They also rub black-bear-scented hay they got from a local sanctuary all over.

“We don’t want him touching our skin at all,” Welch said, explaining that they are trying to prevent the cub from forming bonds with humans, which would disrupt his natural instincts and make it more difficult for him to survive in the wild. “He never sees us as humans.”

. . .  .“We’re dedicated to doing whatever we have to do to keep him wild,” she said.

Indeed, beyond their bear costumes, staff have also created two habitats for the cub — one inside and one enclosed outside — that mimic the wilderness. They’ve built climbing structures made from natural trees, and they’ve covered the environments with leaf litter, dirt and branches. They also place stuffed bears around the habitat. The cub often cuddles up with the large one.

“It’s his surrogate mama,” Welch said. “He would lay with her instead of laying out in the open and being exposed.”

Now that’s the way to rescue a bear cub!  What great, dedicated people. Here’s a video so you can see the baby and the bear costumes (there’s another video here):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sad thinking of her old d*g pal Cyrus, who has crossed the Rainbow Bridge:

Hili: I’m constantly thinking about them.
Andrzej: About whom?
Hili: About those who are no longer with us.
In Polish:
Hili: Ciągle o nich myślę.
Ja: O kim?
Hili: O tych, których już z nami nie ma.
Here’s an old picture of Cyrus and Hili.

 

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

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Things With Faces, an apple guy:

From Meow:

Masih is still resting, so here’s some words from another advocate for women. Read the whole tweet:

From Luana, a big fan of AI. I sort of agree with Singal here, but I think AI spells doom for universities:

From Malcolm: a realistic mask (I’ve shown this one before) followed by BatCat:

Two from my feed.  Speaking of baby bears:

Free speech in the UK is all but extinct:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as his train arrived at Auschwitz. He was four, and would have been 86 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-26T09:19:38.149Z

Matthew, feeling better, is in Cambridge visiting his daughter. Fortuitously, he visited “the Golden Helix,” the home where Francis Crick lived, clearly marked as such. Matthew says, “It was bought in 1986 by friends of the Cricks, Nigel and Janet Unwin.”

Another from Matthew: An Antarctic brittle star cleans itself off!

Interesting video showing off the Antarctic brittle star Ophionotus cleaning itself off! #echinoday youtube.com/shorts/9cBOk…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2025-05-23T19:38:23.048Z

25 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Free speech in the UK is all but extinct:

    Sadly, this is true. The problem is that politicians of all stripes have decided that it’s a good idea to admit millions and millions of Muslim migrants into the country. (They claim it’s needed “for the economy”, but this is not true, since while it does boost GDP — more people, more money changing hands — it does not boost GDP-per-capita, indeed third-world migrants are a net financial drain, costing more in benefits than they pay in taxes.)

    The problem is that politicians now need to pander to Muslims to get their vote, and Islamic culture is strongly against free speech. Hence Labour avoids any negative comment at all about Islam, and slaps the labels “racist” and “Islamophobe” on anyone who does.

    Even that is not working, as Muslims in the UK are increasingly voting for independent Islamist candidates who are against British values entirely. Given Labour’s unpopularity it is desperate to stop that drift, so is pandering more and more to the Muslim vote.

    1. And all those “benefits” — the I understand to be the British expression for welfare payments, (which includes expenditures on the NHS even if not so referred-to in ordinary conversation) — increase the GDP because that money changes hands too. The catch is that money taken in taxes to pay for those welfare benefits is not available to invest in things that would increase the GDP more. Hence GDP per capita stagnates, or falls as Canada’s has. And much of the nominal GDP rise in Canada resulted from houses in crowded metro areas trading at ever higher prices driven by scarcity. That seems likely to be true for Britain also.

      1. Agreed. Suppose it were true that mass immigration did increase GDP-per-capita (I don’t think it does, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument), and let’s suppose that that means a worker gets a real-terms increase of £2000 extra pay per year (say £1400 after tax).

        How is that supposed to benefit them if the cost of a house has (owing to 10 million migrants) gone up by £70,000? That’s 50 years-worth of their increased pay!

        I’ve never seen a politician even attempt to address this. They merely trot out the mantra “boosts the economy!” (by which they mean merely GDP), and the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media echo “boosts the economy!”.

        1. In Australia, mass immigration in recent years under the Labor government boosted overall GDP while per capita GDP declined, cost of living went up and there is a housing crisis.

          The Labor government was recently re-elected in a landslide – go figure.

        2. To be fair, I suppose a lot of the native-born won’t produce more than the government benefits they consume, either, especially when everyone who hangs on long enough gets the dole, a government pension, and free medical care even if they never worked a day in their lives. So the correct question is how much worse or better are immigrants at paying their way and then some, compared to the native-born? Maybe the best we can hope for is that immigrants will be more productive up front, and then collect their old-age benefits in discounted dollars decades later. And their home countries have already paid for their schooling.

          This is rather bleak vision for immigration, and for our society at large, isn’t it though? Immigrants with their more vigorous “animal spirits” compared to their cousins who stayed put, and compared to the native-born who didn’t have to choose one way or the other, are supposed to revitalize society as in the United States.

          1. The argument I try to not get into with my ex who is an immigrant from the Middle East and has been collecting one or another form of government handouts since I divorced him when he was only 27 years old and perfectly able-bodied (he hooked up with another Middle Easterner who coached him and does the same thing) is that they fail to recognize how very fortunate they are to have had the mobility to even escape the shitty countries they came from. They have siblings ruining Denmark, Australia, Canada, the US, Britain, etc. They fly between Qatar and Turkey, regularly. I’ve been to Toronto and Tijuana. Do I sound bitter?

    2. Frankly, the weakness expressed by Europeans peoples is very disheartening to me.

      I fear that pandering is what politicians do best. I have a good deal of disdain for democracy as practiced in some of the world – allowing those who don’t contribute (but who could) to vote; allowing “no-nothings” to not only vote, but to hold office; et al. Watch the clip below 1) if you are an American citizen and want to be embarrassed, or 2) if you want to see the types of individuals who represent the US.

      It is a shame when the dominant culture allows its own rules to be used against it; it is a shame that some cultures are allowed to be proud, but others are branded as “racists” when they are proud and when they want to preserve their culture (“racist” / ”racism” are terms which hold little meaning to me anymore, due to they way in which they are tossed about, and due to the fact that many who do so are themselves flaming racists). It is pathetic that many Europeans are not proud, when they have every right to be.

      Most of my ancestors have been here for generations, the last having left Birmingham, England in the mid-1800’s. My guess is that my grandfather would not recognise the city he left, as many contemporary residents of Birmingham are not from Albion.

      1. That was painful to watch, even with a G&T in hand.

        A little research shows that the area of Guam is about nine times that of Manhattan. I speculate that the population of Guam (and the utilities load) is at least nine times smaller than that of Manhattan.

        Surely (?) Representative Johnson has sufficient cognition to know and understand that the U.S. Navy has enough logistical experience to know to factor in the increased utilities required to accommodate an increase in the number of military personnel and dependents on the island. The power rarely went off when I served on a USN supply ship home-ported there in The Ancient Days (mid-1980’s).

        If Representative Johnson was using “capsize” in a (quasi-) metaphorical sense, what locution would he have used had he actually meant capsizing? He spent too much time verbally reconnoitering and peregrinating around the perimeter of Guam for one to believe that he was merely metaphorizing. (Wouldn’t top-heavy Manhattan be just as if not more likely to capsize?)

        In his response the admiral had the circumspection and nuance of a Baptist minister resolved to keep on good terms with his congregation. (“We do not anticipate that.”)

  2. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly. -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, author (26 May 1689-1762)

  4. Call me when Jake Tapper admits that he didn’t just “miss” Biden’s decline, but actively covered it up.

    2. It’s infuriating. Shame on the “news” outlets that give him airtime to promote and profit from his phony confession.

      1. He did offer a minor mea culpa on Sam Harris’s podcast.

        Of the making of media personality-written books, conveniently drawn from the trough of politico imperfections, there is no end.

        1. Did you find it believable? I no longer subscribe to Making Sense — I do miss it…

  5. Who will be the Jake Tapper or Slex Thompson to Donald Trump? I hope someone is working on this book right now!

  6. One scary aspect of Russia’s massive attack on Ukraine is that the attack caused Poland to scramble fighter jets. Poland is a NATO country. An errant missile or a tactical blunder could bring NATO into the war. See here: https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/9766/Artykul/3528582,poland-scrambles-fighter-jets-as-russia-launches-air-attack-on-ukraine

    I knew about Kingsley Wilson‘s tweet regarding the Leo Frank case. What convinces me that her comment was antisemitic? The fact that the Leo Frank case, while notorious in its day, has for the most part been forgotten. I hadn’t known about it until a few years ago when I audited a college course on the history of the Jews in America. Only an antisemite would pull that one out of a hat.

    And, I was saddened to read that Israel’s National Security Council issued a travel warning for Canada. It’s hard to imagine, but here we are.

    1. I’m Canadian and it’s pretty discouraging. I wonder if the problem is all the Muslims Trudeau brought in during his massive immigration push.

      Some cities are now 10% Muslim.

      I detest Trudeau and don’t think Carney is much of an improvement.

  7. Crick’s house is like Down House but ______.

    I’m wondering what goes in that space … “for hippies” comes to mind because of that image of Crick in paisley – and contrasts with Darwin, but is inaccurate….

    It’d be a funny “meme” though…

  8. I liked the notice about Fat Fred at the vet’s:

    Yes, he is on a diet.
    No, it’s not working well.

    You don’t say!

  9. “Those who want a ‘two-state solution’ right now are asking for more attacks on Israel, and forgetting that Palestinians rejected this solution at least five times.”

    Exactly.
    Are they stupid, are they masochists, or are they antisemites? (ANSWER: All three!)

  10. Ms. Wilson shouldn’t be at DoD for believing in conspiracy theories period, let alone the antisemitism. MOST antisemitism is a conspiracy theory in itself.

    That said… I maintain the threat from the “anti-colonialist” pro-terrorist left is way more urgent and alarming than mythical* “White Supremacists” or real conspiracy mongers like this odd dumb-assed broad.

    D.A.
    NYC
    *Lots of replies to that assertion I predict – but do you know, know of or have you met any actual real live white supremacists? Let alone a bunch. Or any with any power? I wrote in an article once there are “probably a few in airy Idaho compounds but beyond that….”

    1. Thanks for that Jackie – v. interesting.

      Not many surprises, especially the (usual) over representation of South Asian females. They seem to be the vanguard of a LOT of far left activism, a phenomenon also noticed by Razib Khan and some others. I have no idea why but it doesn’t apply to East Asian women who (seem to) appear in rough proportion to their population.

      The silver spoon brigade is no surprise either given the school and real estate.

      From my experience as a defense atty and observing NYC lately unfortunately they won’t get the years in jail I’d give them were I the judge. 🙁
      best,

      D.A.
      NYC

Comments are closed.