Welcome to Sunday, the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Febriary 16, 2025, and it’s National Fast Food Day. Remember that other countries have fast food, too, and not just the colonialist McDonald’s: here is an example given by Wikipedia of fast food in the UK (eels are another item, but I eschew them):
It’s also International Day for Tolerance, National Button Day, and Have a Party with Your Bear Day. Par-teee!:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 16 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Who didn’t see this coming? Reuters reports it: “Hamas quietly reasserts control in Gaza as post-war talks grind on.” Crikey, those who think otherwise are simply ignorant:
From regulating the price of chicken to levying fees on cigarettes, Hamas is seeking to widen control over Gaza as U.S. plans for its future slowly take shape, Gazans say, adding to rivals’ doubts over whether it will cede authority as promised.
After a ceasefire began last month, Hamas swiftly reestablished its hold over areas from which Israel withdrew, killing dozens of Palestinians it accused of collaborating with Israel, theft or other crimes. Foreign powers demand the group disarm and leave government but have yet to agree who will replace them.
Now, a dozen Gazans say they are increasingly feeling Hamas control in other ways. Authorities monitor everything coming into areas of Gaza held by Hamas, levying fees on some privately imported goods including fuel as well as cigarettes and fining merchants seen to be overcharging for goods, according to 10 of the Gazans, three of them merchants with direct knowledge.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the media office of the Hamas government, said accounts of Hamas taxing cigarettes and fuel were inaccurate, denying the government was raising any taxes.
The authorities were only carrying out urgent humanitarian and administrative tasks whilst making “strenuous efforts” to control prices, Thawabta said. He reiterated Hamas’ readiness to hand over to a new technocratic administration, saying it aimed to avoid chaos in Gaza: “Our goal is for the transition to proceed smoothly”.
Mohammed Khalifa, shopping in central Gaza’s Nuseirat area, said prices were constantly changing despite attempts to regulate them. “It’s like a stock exchange,” he said.
“The prices are high. There’s no income, circumstances are difficult, life is hard, and winter is coming,” he said.
There’s your two-state solution already, though Hamas hasn’t yet started firing rockets at Israel. There’s more:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan secured a ceasefire on October 10 and the release of the last living hostages seized during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.
The plan calls for the establishment of a transitional authority, the deployment of a multinational security force, Hamas’ disarmament, and the start of reconstruction.
But Reuters, citing multiple sources, reported this week that Gaza’s de facto partition appeared increasingly likely, with Israeli forces still deployed in more than half the territory and efforts to advance the plan faltering.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2 million people live in areas controlled by Hamas, which seized control of the territory from President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) and his Fatah Movement in 2007.
Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think-tank, said Hamas’ actions aimed to show Gazans and foreign powers alike that it cannot be bypassed.
Asked for comment on Gazans’ accounts of Hamas levying fees on some goods, among other reported activities, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said: “This is why Hamas cannot and will not govern in Gaza”.
A new Gaza government can be formed once the United Nations approves Trump’s plan, the spokesperson said, adding that progress has been made towards forming the multinational force.
The PA is pressing for a say in Gaza’s new government, though Israel rejects the idea of it running Gaza again. Fatah and Hamas are at odds over how the new governing body should be formed.
Neither the PA [Palestinian Authority] nor Hamas should be running the postwar government. It’s obvious why Hamas can’t, but the PA can’t, either, as Gazans prefer Hamas and Hamas will kill member of the PA. Confecting a transitional government will be hard, but should be done soon because the more Hamas solidifie its hold on the populace, the less likely there can be a rational and non-terroristic interim government.
*Andrew Sullivan is, as you know, a conservative, but a centrist one and certainly no fan of Trump. In this week’s column he sees the wheels starting to fall off the Trump Bus.
But there are some signs that the entire MAGA operation is beginning to fray — as its manic transgressions, dumb overreach, and intensifying contradictions become harder to ignore.
Take immigration. It’s a big success if you look at the border. So why has Trump’s approval on this issue reversed itself almost entirely from 51 percent approval in February to 51 percent disapproval now? Or look at his other signature issue, trade: 56 percent disapprove, up 16 points since February. On inflation — critical to his re-election — over 60 percent now disapprove. On the economy, it’s 58 percent. Only 25 percent of Independents approved of Trump’s performance in an AP poll this week.
However loud the Fox News propaganda, this is not a political success. Trump’s overall disapproval rating took a sharp tick upward as he wantonly demolished the East Wing of the White House, in favor of a massive ballroom in the style of a Gilded Age brothel. Americans oppose it 2 to 1. Last night, after calling Republicans demanding the Epstein files “stupid,” he invited the heads of Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock to a private dinner at the White House. He’s going to Davos next year. Quite the populist.
. . . Trump has been rounding up hard-working illegal migrants at Home Depot and cutting off SNAP benefits for the poor while cavorting with the British royals and hosting a “Great Gatsby” party at Mar-a-Lago. His haughty dismissal of the “Epstein hoax” makes no sense either: if he has nothing to hide, why fight his base and refuse to release all the files? It’s beginning to break MAGA’s brain.
As for the “America First” policy, yes, Trump is doing some bad stuff, like threatening war with Venezuela, but sometime Sullivan sounds like a jingoist. There simply cannot be an America first that holds uniformly:
And let’s not forget Trump’s insane pardon machine, which is gutting the rule of law in a frenzy of partisanship and corruption. Many of those freed are already back to committing crimes, including child sexual assault and plotting to murder FBI agents. The woke right, in other words, could do to the GOP what the woke left did to the Dems.
The overreach aspect of the second term is best seen in trade. Trump’s core policy plank — a wave of protectionism — rests on an extremely weak constitutional foundation. With no real legislation — despite having both chambers under GOP control — and a cockamamie far-right theory of executive power, he could see his entire tariff regime collapse if SCOTUS does what it surely must.
His impulsive incoherence is also beginning to take a toll. How does an “America First” foreign policy include $12 billion to facilitate Israel’s razing of Gaza and a promised nation-building exercise there? That’s neocon crack. How does America First square with sending more weapons to Ukraine and a new naval war on Venezuela — with no Congressional authorization? How was bombing Iran’s nuclear program — something neither Obama nor Biden ever did — America First? Why, for that matter, is a president who was elected to take care of the home-front now bragging (ludicrously) of intervening in eight foreign conflicts in eight months? Or sending billions to bail out Argentina?
Sorry, but I think the U.S. has to help out Ukraine and Israel: democratic allies who are threatened. And bombing Iran served as a good warning to that country, and may have produced a serious setback in their plan for nukes. But I do agree with Sullivan in hoping the wheels come off the bus. But remember: we have three more years of The Great Dictator:
The GOP that Trump has remade entirely in his own image has an obvious vulnerability: what happens when the Supreme Leader passes from the scene? No one — certainly not JD Vance — will ever match Trump’s cray-cray, brazenness, or talent. No one will be able to put the lid back on.
So political gravity may be returning. And a future beyond this authoritarian madness foreseeable once again. I haven’t written this a lot lately, but I feel myself slightly emboldened this week.
Sullivan says “Know hope” (it should be “feel hope”). I’m a pessimist, but I do feel some optimism in the rising opprobrium towards Trump. I just don’t want the “progressives” to take over my party.
On Monday, a man named Jonathan Braun was sentenced to 27 months in prison. The charges against him included sexually assaulting the live-in nanny for his own children and attacking a nurse with an IV pole. He was also accused of assaulting a 3-year-old child.
In October, a man named Christopher Moynihan was arrested and charged with threatening via text to “eliminate” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, at a speaking engagement in New York City on Oct. 20.
In March, a federal jury convicted a man named Eliyahu Weinstein of defrauding investors of $41 million. As Bloomberg reported, he had falsely promised “to invest their money in Covid-19 masks, scarce baby formula and first-aid kits bound for Ukraine.”
. . . But the pardons just keep coming. On Sunday, Trump granted sweeping pardons to 77 people who helped him attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Last week, Trump pardoned Glen Casada, the Republican former speaker of the Tennessee House, and Casada’s former chief of staff, Cade Cothren. Both men had been convicted of charges including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
. . . . I mentioned one of the most brazen in my column two Sundays ago — the pardon of the crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao.
The pardon came after Zhao’s company, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, “took steps that catapulted the Trump family venture’s new stablecoin product, enhancing its credibility and pushing its market capitalization up from $127 million to over $2.1 billion.”
So what do all of these people have in common? It’s certainly not that they’re deserving of pardons. There isn’t a meaningful claim of actual innocence in the bunch, and in almost every case there’s no meaningful evidence of unusually harsh treatment or unjust sentencing. No, the thing they have in common is they are either allies of Trump and his associates or used connections to Trump or his family (or helped enrich Trump) to get relief from justice.
While Biden and Clinton both pardoned their relatives, it’s the sheer scale of Trump’s self-serving pardons dwarfs all of what previous Presidents have done. And there’s nothing we can do about it, save impeach the man. And this was anticipated by at least one founder:
Acting just like a corrupt king, Trump is transforming the American system of justice into his personal plaything. Friends of the crown break the law with impunity. Enemies of the crown experience the sharp end of the law, whether they deserve it or not.
We can’t say we weren’t warned. If there was one element of the American Constitution that set off the most urgent alarm during the founding era, it was the pardon power — Article II’s grant of absolute, unchecked power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
For example, at the Virginia ratification convention, George Mason, a founding father and delegate to the Constitutional Convention, was recorded as saying that the president “ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself” — a situation that eerily forecasts Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons.
Mason was concerned that the president’s pardon power was so great that it could be fatal to the United States. “It may happen, at some future day,” Mason said, “that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic.”
French’s solution: “Amend Article II so that it states that the president “shall have Power, with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That’s eminently sensible, but remember that amending the Constitution requires a vote of 2/3 of both the Senate and House and then ratification of three-quarters of the states. This is hard, requires a consensus that probably doesn’t exist (remember, the GOP is afraid of Trump’s retributions, though they’re getting braver), and is time-consuming. Remember, the Equal Rights Amendment didn’t even make it through.
*Speaking of a Republican getting braver, remember when everyone made fun of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green because she was a Trump boot-licker? Well, she’s opposed him at least twice recently, and of course Trump is ditching her:
A spokesperson for Greene pointed to a statement on the social media platform X, in which Greene claimed that Trump had turned on her over Greene’s support for the release of more files held by the Justice Department regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.“President Trump just attacked me and lied about me,” Greene wrote in her social media post, adding, “I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money.x
“But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump,” she added. “I worship God, Jesus is my savior, and I serve my district GA14 and the American people.”
Trump further criticized Greene online Saturday, calling her a “Republican In Name Only.” “Just another Fake politician, no different than Rand Paul Jr. (Thomas Massie), who got caught being a full fledged Republican In Name Only (RINO)!” Trump posted on social media.
Greene was one of four Republicans who joined with Democrats in signing a discharge petitionto compel a House vote to release more Epstein files. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said he plans to hold a vote next week. The other Republicans were Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Nancy Mace (South Carolina) and Thomas Massie (Kentucky).
Greene also criticized the Republican Speaker of the House, blaming him for the government shutdown, which is also not a congenial move for our “President.” But Greene still puts God and Jesus above Trump, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.
*This headline from the UK’s Standard simply must be clicked on: “Sheep go on ‘psychotic rampage’ through Welsh village after eating cannabis plants“, even though it’s nine years old (h/t Ginger K).
Stoned sheep went on the rampage in a Welsh village after eating a pile of cannabis dumped on the side of the road.
One of the animals caused havoc when it got inside a bungalow in sleepy Rhydypandy in the Swansea Valley, reports said.
County councillor Ioan Richard told the Telegraph: “There is already a flock of sheep roaming the village causing a nuisance.
“They are getting in people’s gardens and one even entered a bungalow and left a mess in the bedroom.
“We could have an outbreak out of psychotic sheep rampaging through the village.”
A Swansea Council spokesman said the cannabis remains were removed but could not confirm if the sheep had eaten the plants
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej reveals a striking fact (August is the son of a friend of Malgorzata and Andrzej, a friend who translated one of my books into Polish):
Hili: He often uses me as a pillow.
August: I’ll never believe that.
In Polish:
Hili: On mnie często używa jako poduszki.
August: Nigdy w to nie uwierzę.
I asked Andrzej what happened to Szaron, and he said that the cat was still around, and “very cuddly.” He sent a photo, too, and I’m putting it here as we haven’t seen Szaron in a while:
*******************
From Stacy:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Wholesome Memes:
Masih keeps posting the same stuff again and again, and I’m getting tired of it (she’s promoting her Liberty Congress and her own participation in it. Here’s a tweet reposted by J. K. Rowling:
The reasons why women want single-sex spaces should make men ashamed. Instead, women are shamed for wanting single-sex spaces. https://t.co/J0lnKNyM4F
— Victoria Smith (@glosswitch) November 14, 2025
From Luana;
A transgender influencer was beaten by a group of Islamists in Brussels, Belgium.
The influencer is shocked, saying “I have always supported palestine. I don’t understand why they’d attack me.”
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) November 14, 2025
From Simon; presumably you get it:
https://t.co/pjrTfIBXEw pic.twitter.com/9ALzrVQukM
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) November 13, 2025
From Malcolm; cat on a cool glass roof:
Cats on a glass roof.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/qXBLrxuF6m
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 14, 2025
One from my feed; Afghanistan has returned to the bad old days:
This is the current state of Afghanistan.
Absolutely horrific. pic.twitter.com/adDN8wzsg5
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) November 14, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was ten. Had he lived, he’d be 94 today. https://t.co/RCwFEgRQxp
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 16, 2025
Two from the famous Dr. Cobb:. First, raccoons are apparently evolving morphologically as they get more domesticated: they’re getting shorter snouts, part of the “domestication syndrome” that has been seen in other mammals.
This is supercool, a real-world validation of the Belyayev Russian Fox experiments. But also the raccoons at my house seem to be getting more and more thuggish, so I dunno. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/racc…
— Adam Rogers (@jetjocko.bsky.social) 2025-11-15T03:22:41.015Z
As The Onion reports, DNA sequencing has revealed that Hitler was a type of fern:
DNA Sequencing Reveals Hitler Was Type Of Fern
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It has always seemed to me that the test of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. -Chinua Achebe, writer and professor (16 Nov 1930-2013)
Ahhh. A lovely Hili group photo from Dobrzyn and it is nice to see Szaron again. Balances my heart and mind after trudging through the trumpology of da Nooz this morning.
+1
The tiktok of Afghanistan is Islam in its purest form. No authority could say “That doesn’t represent Islam.”
Like Gaza – where, even 7 years ago women were forbidden from walking unescorted outside the home.
Gaza is an embarrassing wound on the side of humanity and there is no “cure” despite what naive westerners who don’t understand the Third World or Islam think.
And there are NO civilians there – consider an entire society built on one overarching, obsessive, murderous goal. It isn’t “land” at all: almost none have ever stood on Israel proper. It is about “curing” the Islamosphere of the insulting, (successful) Jewish stain on it. Allah demands.
D.A.
NYC
Gaza is like a mass of fungal mycelium out of which at any point can spring conidiophores that give rise to fully differentiated conidiospores armed with AKs and RPGs.
As for the Onion story, that’s a pretty good moustache on young Adolph for someone with Kallman syndrome. Testosterone didn’t become available as a drug until 1935. Was it a stick-on? Was he eating raw testicles or getting injectable extracts during the Beer Hall Putsch?
Well, David have you not received the memo to the effect that true Islam is a feminist religion? What’s practiced in Afghanistan and in Gaza is not true Islam, which is peaceful and feminist! And don’t say no true Scotsman fallacy. That would be Islamophobic.
And pro-trans!
hehehehe
best regards and salaams!
D.A.
NYC
Who is on Jesus’s immediate right? Looks like a woman to me.
That’s John. According to legend, he was the youngest apostle, which is why he is shown beardless. John’s Gospel says that he was on Jesus’s right, and when Jesus announced that he would be betrayed by one of his apostles, Peter told him to ask Jesus the name of the traitor. That is the moment depicted in the painting.
That John is, at most, the only one with a book deal. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were not apostles and lived much later. Maybe John the Apostle is the author of the Gospel of John. But the John who wrote the three epistles was probably a different John, as was the John who wrote revelation.
According to the bible, M & M were indeed apostles and contemporaries of JC. Luke was not.
His wife Mary 🙂
Which Mary? 😀
Thanks to all of you. Given the peculiar circumstances of his birth, I could not bring myself to ask which Mary 😀.
Having a peculiar origin story is one of the essentials for a superhero.
There are worse things than being attacked by stoned sheep. Back in the 90s I read about India’s problems with a herd of alcoholic elephants. Apparently there are natural sources of ethyl alcohol available to elephants. I forget the details, but rain falls on certain plants, fermentation happens, and the elephants get drunk.
A herd of elephants learned that human habitations have alcohol. So the herd invaded a town and attacked the local liquor store. The elephants knocked down the walls of the liquor store, smashed all the bottles of liquor, wine, and beer and drank up all the booze.
A few months later, the same herd of elephants attacked an Indian army base. Apparently the elephants had been attracted by the smell of discarded beer bottles. When they came under attack, the Indian soldiers contacted their higher-ups asking for permission to kill the elephants. Permission was denied and the soldiers were ordered to retreat.
It must feel humiliating for self-respecting soldiers to be ordered to retreat. The Indian press had fun reporting on the event. They published headlines such as, “Pakis were bad enough, but now it’s pachyderms” and “You think it’s bad now, just wait till they discover cocaine” and etc.
Stoned sheep and drunk elephants!
Hilarious.
When I was young I often went spear fishing in a bay at Ft Wetherill in Jamestown RI. Some times yachts would moor there to avoid the expensive fees at nearby Newport.
One morning while we were preparing for a dive, we watched a group of otters gathered on a rock not far from a yacht in the little bay. They appeared to be waiting for something. Soon, the people on the yacht got into a dinghy, rowed ashore, climbed into a Volvo (naturally), and drove off. The otters, one by one, slipped into the water, swam over to the yacht and climbed aboard.
For a minute or two there was silence. Then the curtains in the cabin windows were suddenly torn down in a continous rip going aft. All hell broke loose. We could hear all glass smashing, and crashing, and mayhem going on. Then one of them appeared on deck, chased by others, with a big can with its top off that must have had flour in it because as he ran around the deck great plumes of white powder spread over him, the ones chasing him, and the boat.
It wasn’t long before that Volvo came back, tearing down the roadway. As soon as the folks got in the dinghy, one of the otters must have called the alarm, because they all dove off, one at a time.
I swear they were laughing as they went over.
“So why has Trump’s approval on this issue reversed itself almost entirely from 51 percent approval in February to 51 percent disapproval now?”
Um, something’s wrong there. That’s just a two-point shift as written.
But otherwise ref. to Sullivan & French’s summaries, those who have been accused of Tr*mp Derangement Syndrome are owed a huge apology.
Almost for sure it was an Approve / Meh / Disapprove question. I expect there are a significant number of Mehs.
French sees a problem with pardons now? As a journalist, or whatever he is, he is undoubtedly aware of the state of evidence on Biden’s pardons relating to Biden’s ignorance of some autopen pardons. As for a Constitutional Amendment, that is a good idea. People forget that that’s how to clean up issues. But requiring a two-thirds vote for a pardon means that a politically motivated prosecution or a highly controversial crime could never be pardoned.
“Febriary” already? How time flies 🙂
George Mason should have been listened to. Danger of president becoming a king.
Yet if I could talk to him now, I’d ask how he’d word an Article that would stop future generations from turning a republic of sovereign individuals into a Leviathan “social democracy” (Marxism) with false money, fake debts, and fake victims.
In George Mason’s day, only men who owned property could vote in elections. That’s how the people, with sovereign skin in the game, keep their republic. (Today we would allow women who owned property in their own right to vote, too. Only fair.) Universal suffrage leads inevitably to Leviathan because the politicians become afraid the envious landless classes will vote then out of office,
Leslie, It’s great to hear from someone who champions that “skin in the game” principle as do I. There are creative ways to increase civil participation as teens grow to adults and begin producing value.
I agree that leveling up legally for women was a triumph, and my hero Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for that specifically. She considered it more important than getting the vote.
Here’s another idea for which we should have listened to George Mason …
One month prior to Jefferson writing his draft, Geoge Mason wrote the VA Declaration of Independence, as follows …
“That all Men are created equally free & independent, & have certain inherent natural Rights, of which when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
No god, and property explicitly stated. The “when they enter into a state of society” phrase speaks to requiring skin in the game.
Jefferson should have copied/pasted. And changed “created” in the first sentence to “born.”
P.S. Israel lost the war.
That is premature.
No, except on the international PR front, where it was disastrous. Otherwise, Israel won as much as it could win without actually killing all 2 million Gazans (which would have endangered its existence far more than Hamas can).
A new poll says only 31 % of Gazans support armed resistance now, which is a new low. Half would be ready to relocate if given a chance. Israel controls lots of the strip and can essentially do what it likes there. What happens with the rest, we’ll see. “Resistance fighters” can never be completely rooted out, there will always be people willing to fight. But lessons were learned regarding border security & hopefully any international financing for Gaza now will come with strings attached.
I agree:
The mirage of statehood
Palestine is unrecognisable on the ground. The Economist, Sept 18, 2025
The UN stands up a state that is disappearing from view
https://archive.ph/X5bMj
Excerpt:
The devastation of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has taught most Palestinians the futility of armed resistance. Despite the relentless pressure in the West Bank, the appetite for confrontation with Israel’s army and settlers seems limited. Support for Hamas, which rose in the wake of its October 2023 attacks, has subsided. In recent elections for doctors’ and lawyers’ unions, Fatah trounced Hamas in most of the West Bank.
Many Palestinians simply want out. Estate agents say the property market in Amman, the capital of Jordan, is awash with new money from West Bankers seeking the safety net of a second home. Others are looking to European countries that fast-track citizenship applications when you buy property. Those that remain are focused on daily survival not long-term solutions. They just want the terror of the bombs, soldiers and settlers to stop.
Working with the enemy
And so a greater threat to their vision of their own state may be the fact that some are looking for further accommodation with Israel. Mr Netanyahu’s advisers talk of establishing a Hebron emirate, a self-governing municipality dealing directly with Israel. It would prise the West Bank’s most populous city, main economic hub, and key source of taxation away from the PA. It could pave the way for the West Bank’s incorporation under the Israeli flag.
The idea has its local supporters. For now, at least, most Hebronites would remain on their land and could benefit from direct ties with Israel. They have little love for the pa. The clans and merchant families who hold sway in Hebron have always paid their taxes to the pa grudgingly. London has more Palestinian flags than Hebron. Direct ties with Israeli banks would lubricate business. Some traders have already opened Israeli bank accounts. Others even dream of applying for citizenship and enjoying the same relative privileges as Israel’s Palestinian citizens. “We’re on our way to getting Israeli passports,” a gold merchant in Bethlehem predicts. “We’ll be free of this prison. Tourists will return and we’ll be able to travel.”
Compared with the sacking of Gaza, subjugation under Israel seems a benign option. Were Palestinians to be asked in a referendum whether Israel should rule them directly, many might assent.
But Israel’s Jewish population is less inclined to integration than ever. A survey in May showed over half wanted to exile Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. Around 80% want to expel Palestinians from Gaza, almost double the rate of two decades ago, at the height of the second intifada. Many Palestinians fear that Israel could repeat in the West Bank what it has done in Gaza. The euphoria in New York has not reached Bethlehem. As one grocer there puts it: “We’ve learnt that the promise of change for the better always ends in change for the worse.”
Islamism lost this war, and will lose all its other coming wars with the civilized world. This despite all the useful fools and enemies within the gates of the civilized West.
Glad to see the photos of both Hili and Szaron. How about Kulka?
The longer it takes to set up new governance in Gaza, the more entrenched Hamas will become. The fact that it is levying taxes—which I read this week—tells me that they are still an economic and governing force. New governance needs to be established quickly or it will be too late. Maybe it’s already too late. I am worried that with a ceasefire in place the Trump administration has shifted attention to other issues and, without that leadership, a solid plan will not emerge or, if a plan emerges, it will not be driven to completion. All we’ll be left with is good intentions and Hamas back in the driver’s seat. The ball will then be back in Israel’s court.
But no hostages back in Hamas’s possession.
Does Mr. Sullivan know something we don’t know?
This is a bit of a reach. What does “extremely weak constitutional foundation” mean? What does “with no real legislation” mean? Is there legislation or is there not? Is there a constitutional distinction (weak or extremely weak) between real legislation and some other kind of legislation? “Virtual legislation”? Might be better for Mr. Sullivan to keep his powder dry and wait until the Supreme Court rules, imminently, about the actual constitutional foundation or lack of it. Then he can exult in the shambles that results rather than betting all on black.
Radio NZ news.
US tarriffs on beef, kiwifruit, others, have been dropped.
NZ economist John Ballingall:
“The [frequent] changes are making life very difficult for our businesses. When businesses are uncertain they tend not to invest or hire people, and the constant flip-flopping is certainly affecting businesses’ planning,” he said.
I would say US businesses and in other nations are in the same boat.
NZ export beef is top quality beef and consistency is the key. It has to be to remain competitive.
Americans supposedly devour 3 burgers a week (on average I take it) and that’s not good for Trump PR slide, as the burger gets expensive the taste gets bitter.
What a waste of time, resourses and energy, let alone the financial misery and uncertainty.
Re The Great Dictator, for those who haven’t seen Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 dark comedy classic I highly recommend it. Roger Ebert gives it 4 out of 4 stars; IMDB’s users’ rating is a very high 8.4/10. IMO Ebert’s review (linked to from IMDB) also gives useful context about 1930’s US isolationism and antisemitism.
Thank you for sharing the JKR retweet. I missed it as I’m trying to wean myself off twitter again. Michelle Shipworth’s evidence is harrowing, most women can identify with her fears, but the men pushing for men to access women’s spaces have no idea.
I don’t approve of violence, but I find it slightly amusing that the ‘transgender influencer’ got a life lesson. I don’t know any people in the ‘Gays for Palestine’ movement, the gay people I know are far too sensible for that.