Tuesday: Hili dialogue

41 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. Well well well:

   Northamptonshire police: “Arif Ali Rafiq, a British-born Asian man … has been charged with attempted arson with intent to endanger life. The charge relates to an incident … when an attempt was made to set fire to the front door of the mosque.”

   In the similar (and more publicised) incident in Sussex (where the video appears to show the culprits speaking Urdu) there has also been an arrest but the police have not given any identity (which is itself revealling).

   1. “but the police have not given any identity (which is itself revealling).”

      Isn’t it though, Coel? We have a similar situation here. It is surprising, and depressing in an open society. We shouldn’t have to squint, calculate, adjust for priors, speculate – especially in police or journalism which we pay for.

      best,
      D.A.
      NYC

      1. And it provides fuel for various race-based conspiracy theories.

2. October 7: am yisrael chai.

   1. Indeed Kurt.
      regards,
      D.A.
      NYC

3. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
   An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate (7 Oct 1885-1962)

4. Nobel Prize in physics announced a couple of hours ago. Video should be at

5. Fred Ramsdell :

   LIKE A BOSS

6. “The new CBS executive isn’t exactly MAGA. But her polite Trumpism will still help destroy America as we know it.”

   https://newrepublic.com/article/201401/bari-weiss-cbs-news-conservatism-maga-lite?utm_source=Bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR

7. A few years ago Huff Post wanted to republish my column (they saw at TheModerateVoice.com)… and even pay me!
   Told ’em …. nup. (And I’m a lefty!)

   D.A.
   NYC

   1. Re: Bari Weiss

      The same, anti-cancel culture advocate who tried, continually, to have her professor(s) at Columbia cancelled?

8. “‘Globalise the intifada,’ they cried – does that mean killing Jews in Manchester?”

   Um, yes, that’s exactly what it means. Among the many other horrors of islam.

9. You should see parts of Brooklyn with all the little sukkot “tents” on the balconies. Cute, even for an atheist like me. 🙂

   From google earth street view – in (orthodox) Mea Shearim in Jerusalem many cheap, concrete Med style apartment blocks have balconies – unusual in such low rent housing, for this sukkot tent purpose. A lot of Israel looks a bit like Lebanon (where I’ve spent some time) architecturally. I call it East Med Concrete Cheap.

   D.A.
   NYC
   @DavidandersonJd

10. “Crank” is an under-used word. The American critic Louis Kronenberger defined it this way:

    We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crack as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down for others.

    Bari Weiss can hardly be considered a crank, although her championing journalistic standards probably qualifies her as an eccentric these days.

11. It’s early innings on the National Guard issue. I think we would do better to ask, Why are places like California, Oregon, and Illinois so dead set on protecting illegal aliens from the operation of US law? This can’t be a due-process issue for they want them at liberty regardless of the law.

    1. Come on Dr., you know that’s not the reason. The states are objecting because they are being targeted. Now it may be true that their immigration policies don’t align with the Orange Toddler’s, but his use of federal power, including troops, for retributive reasons IS something to object to, no matter where you live. This is a union of soverign states and that has to mean something.

       Surely you see THAT, Dr Brydon,

       and now I’ve reached my commenting limit.

       1. States’ Rights, I guess, is what it means.

          Do you really think that States’ Rights extends to having their own immigration policies that they can legally enforce, though? Their own education policies, which do fall within State jurisdiction, were repudiated by Brown v. Board of Education. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to the streets of Little Rock to show the Governor who was boss when his Guard wouldn’t uphold the Constitution in Arkansas. But that was in a Good Cause. (Yes Ike invoked the Insurrection Act to make it legal.)

          I guess, as with Brown, we’ll just have to wait to see how the Supreme Court weighs in. Somehow I find it hard to take seriously an argument that refers to a head of government as “Orange Toddler”, just as when Canadian commenters referred to our previous prime minister as “Turdope.”

          I don’t mean to tempt you into over-commenting but I was brought up short by the idea of a individual State having its own immigration policy.

          1. ISTM that likeable Ike’s case involved an actual insurrection — a state’s refusal to obey a definitive Supreme Court ruling; but DJT’s cases have not yet had their final appeal. Also, ISTM there is a substantial difference between directly disobeying Federal law, and (absent a court ruling otherwise) just not voluntarily co-operating with the Feds in enforcing one. (IANAL, obviously.)

          2. Sorry, late for the comment. The “Orange Toddler” is just me being snarky. I don’t like the man, not as a president, not as a human and he has so demeaned the office of the president thjat I don’t…no….I won’t….extend him the usual salutations. I can discuss his policies seriously because they have serious consequences and try not to use aphorisms, But it when it come to the man, the one who thinking it’s ok to grab a women’s pussy and who makes fun in public of a reporter with cererbral palsy because he didn’t like the reporter’s question? Well “Orange Toddler” is the mildest and kindesdt monikor I can give him, and the only one he deserves. He may be president, but he has sullied that office so much, that it will never be seen by the world with respect again. It will for for,seeable future long after his stench is gone, be seen as the office of a very dangerous clown.

             As fot the state’s immigration policy, I was unclear. Of course the federal goverment has control of immingration policy; who is let in and who is not. But states have rights too, including the civil rights of people within thier state. They have a RIGHT to decide how law enforcement _even by the feds- is conducted in their state. These states arte objecting to the Orange Toddler’s use of his federal authnority to retaliate agianst political opponents. Something no one in the office of the president would do that I would have any repspect for.

             edit – sorry about typos. I don;t have the spoons to go back and corrcet them

       2. I think you are putting the cart before the horse. These States are pro-illegal immigration and that’s why the are being targeted. Not the other way around.

12. Two thoughts on Chiles, conversion therapy and the upcoming Supreme Court decision (from yesterday):

    1) You wrote “Yet they’re defending her right to push patients to become gay or trangender, which to me doesn’t jibe with the rest of their agenda,” but as far as I understand, Chiles is a Christian who wants to talk gays and trans persons out of their gayness and transness, not to push them to become gay or trans.

    2) I also see this kind of Christian (or otherwise religious) conversion therapy as more or less worthless and probably counter productive, but should it really be banned? As far as I understand the issue of religious freedom in the US, probably not. I mean, if exorcism is legal, then how can conversion therapy be illegal? And I’m sure that anyone here could think of plenty of religious beliefs, speech acts and behaviours that are quite a bit more outrageous than conversion therapy that are entirely legal.

    1. 💯

    2. Well put, Jared.

       What seems to be lacking in a lot of these issues is not only no sense of proportion, an inability to see nuance that substantially changes the premise of the issue at stake but most troubling is a cavalier approach to individual rights. Because some people don’t like what you’re doing, we’re going to make it illegal?

       Our problem is that we have politicians deciding things, and that never turns out good. For anyone. Like I told my wife just yesterday; “If everyone did exactly what I think they should do, the world would be a perfect place”. And that’s true.

       Prove me wrong.

       1. We also have empty-suit politicians who assiduously avoid deciding anything that might be politically damaging. One assumes there are also cases where politicians do non-self-serving things; please don’t ask me to provide examples.

    3. I think that conversation therapy is seen as a form of child abuse. Isn’t that sufficient to make it illegal? Especially if it includes isolation, beatings, forced prayer, and so on.

       1. The Colorado law doesn’t rely on defining conversion therapy as child abuse as sufficient to make it illegal. It just defines it as counseling a person under 18 to change his sexual attraction to the opposite sex or to change his gender identification back to match his birth sex. I think Jerry is right that psychotherapy should be non-prescriptive and non-directive — exploratory is the term I hear used — but I would prefer that this be a matter of professional self-regulation, not for the criminal law. At issue here is not the clearly abusive forms of old-time CT: isolation, beatings, forced prayer, electric shocks, etc. It’s all about what a therapist is permitted to say to a patient who is free to discontinue the therapy at any time if she doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear.

          The criminal law gets involved because LGB(T) people are especially fragile flowers and the state must use extra muscle to make sure their feelings aren’t hurt. That was the Canadian Liberal Government’s explicit rationale for our law against CT. You’re not allowed even to “promote” CT, much less carry it out. And you specifically can’t counsel a patient about becoming comfortable or resigned to living in the only sexed body he will ever have. If the patient persists in magical thinking you have to affirm it.

          The irony about these CT bans as applied to gender-questioning adolescents is that many of them would desist on their own and come out as homosexual if no one gets to them with puberty blockers to set them on the irreversible lifelong path of medical and surgical transition. That’s why bans on puberty blockers and hormones in adolescents are so important.

          1. Amen.

          2. +1

          3. Yes Leslie.

13. Michael Oren is right. There is a risk that President Trump will give in to negotiating away some of the benefits to Israel embodied in the current plan. But the Israelis have a role here, too, and I don’t think that the Israelis will accept a plan where their withdrawal comes before the release of the hostages. It may agree to a temporary cease fire to enable the hostages to be assembled for release, which would be fine and perhaps even necessary. (I worry deeply about what kind of condition they are in.)

    The deal is a good one in my view, particularly if a Hamas agrees in some form to end its military and civilian governance. But even if their response to those criteria isn’t ideal—that they are vague or equivocal—Hamas has been degraded almost to the point of incoherence (I have read) and can be eliminated utterly if it breaks the agreement in the future. Even after an agreement is reached, Israel should remain fully mobilized in case they need to go back in to Gaza—which they probably will. It’s a drain on the. Israeli economy to remain mobilized—Israeli forces are mostly reserves—but the first order of Israeli governance is security of the State of Israel.

    1. “…the justification for delivering the coup de grace”….what would that look like? Also Oren does not mention that this is pure gaza without even a mention of the West Bank.

14. As an immunologist – a T cell biologist- working on immune tolerance and autoimmunity, I am thrilled about the Nobel! The work they did was fundmental and has resulted in not only better understanding of how our immune system works, but it has led to some fantastically successful immuno therapies including CAR T cell therapy and bone marrow transplants.

    This is a Nobel prize worthy of the reputation the prize has. Unlike the Peace prize, which (if you ask me …. and no one has) is pretty much a joke, and one I do not take seriously.

    But this one. Well, like PCC(e) sometimes says; I’m chuffed!

    1. 💯

15. An excellent analysis of the Israeli-Gaza war–clear-eyed and concise–

    https://open.substack.com/pub/edbuckner/p/clinton-tankersley-gaza-and-israel?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

16. Totally random – “deputizing the National Guard ” I read this as “deputzing the National Guard.” 🙂

    1. I read it as deputinizing and wondered what sort of Russian spy activities were in play.

       1. Oh, that’s a good one too! For anyone not familiar with putz, “In Yiddish, the word “putz” (pronounced to rhyme with “cuts”) can refer to a person who lacks good judgment, a fool, or a blowhard. It also has a more offensive meaning as the foreskin, making it a mildly obscene term that is stronger than “schmuck”. Additionally, a “putz” can be a person who is incompetent or unable to do anything right, while the verb “to putz around” means to waste time or do nothing productive.”

17. The Apple camera tip swipe left and use volume control to take pictures is a great tip. I never knew that. It works on both my IPhone SE and IPAD. This will make photography easier. Thank you Jerry. This is why I love your site because I learn something new everyday.

18. The settlement between Trump and CBS, is that about that one interview Kamala did where she came across like a complete fool and a new version was cut and pasted to make it appear as though she had a brain? That was sick! Trump should not be pushing the media around and he doesn’t deserve to enrich himself from that, but that was scandalous. They (CBS) were so in the tank with her. Man, do I hold msm in low regard.

19. Islamonazi barbarians celebrating the Oct. 7 atrocities around the world, including in the UK and Australia. Shame on the Western countries that let in hordes of barbarian savages through the gates in the name of “multiculturalism” and to import more votes for left-wing parties.

20. Worth reminding people that Rebecca Watson – the talentless fraud who saw sexism everywhere in the atheist/skeptic movement – put out a video claiming any suggestion Hamas committed sexual violence or rape on 10/7, was “propaganda”.

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