Welcome to Monday, December 15, 2025, and it’s Cat Herder’s Day. This gives me an excuse to show the best television commercial ever made (it’s for Electronic Data Systems), one that has its own Wikipedia page, which includes this:
Using a “giant Western metaphor”, it features “grizzled cowboys” herding thousands of cats across the Montana prairie, terminating in the satisfactory resolution “EDSolved”. The commercial was shown on 30 January 2000 at the Super Bowl XXXIV[3] and was cited by then-President Bill Clinton as his favorite commercial,
. . . Authentic cowboys were required, and a casting call was put out across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California. Some of the cast had never acted previously but others were SAG-accredited
. . . .Notwithstanding the listing of only two participants as stunt performers, many of the actors are skilled cowboy professionals, with credits as horse trainers, wranglers, doubles, trick-roper and also as stunt performers. A few operate ranches or rodeo or stunt performing services, as per the citations given above.
For the shoot, some actors wore their own clothes, but their faces were made up to look cat-scratched, tanned or weatherbeaten.
. . .Cat Herders was filmed during December 1999 at Tejon Ranch, about 70 miles north of Los Angeles. Established in 1843, it is, at nearly 270,000 acres, the largest continuous expanse of private land in California. The landscape features a “dramatic tapestry of rugged mountains, steep canyons, oak-covered rolling hills, and broad valleys” and cowboys on horseback still herd cattle along the open grazing land.[19]
Filming was accomplished over five days of wintry conditions, workers in goggles and full face masks battling through rain, snow, fog, sleet, blowing sand and fierce 40mph winds. As one worker recalls: “Shooting this spot was the most cold and miserable shooting days I’ve ever had. Out in the plains, freezing cold, wind so strong it would catch your car door and bend it back.”[21] On set, the cats were housed in individual cages in “trucks filled with movie cats”. At night, “interspecies bonding” occurred with crew members bringing cats back to their hotels.
There’s a lot more in the piece, including how they trained the cats and kept them separate from the horses, but read for yourself. More important, see this fantastic commercial.
It’s also Bill of Rights Day (Virginia was the first state to ratify these amendments on this day in 1751), National Gingerbread Latte Day (oy!), National Cupcake Day, and International Tea Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*A Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, turned into a mass murder, with at least 15 celebrants killed by father and son snipers committing an act of terrorism. This is one of a series of antisemitic attacks in Australia this year. (Article archived here.)
Australian police said on Monday that they expected to bring criminal charges against the gunman hospitalized after a shooting spree in which 15 people were killed, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Jewish community in the nation’s history.
The authorities said they found evidence that the attack on Sunday at the city’s famed Bondi Beach, which they said was carried out by a father and son, was an act of terrorism targeting Sydney’s Jewish community during a Hanukkah celebration. But they declined to provide additional details, including the suspects’ ideology or exact motive.
At least 38 people remained hospitalized following the attack at Bondi Beach, a half-mile crescent of sand a few miles from downtown Sydney. Hundreds of people had gathered at the beach for a Hanukkah event, where children played as music and bubbles filled the air. Then the attackers emerged from a silver hatchback near a pedestrian bridge and opened fire. Gunshots ripped through the celebration.
Danny Ridley, a photographer who was documenting the gathering, said one attacker fired at him as he was hiding behind a parking meter, leaving him with a light gash on his left rib. “It was just carnage,” he said.
Investigators did not release the names of the suspects, but described them as a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. The older man died after being shot by officers. The younger man sustained critical injuries, the police said on Monday afternoon. “Based on his medical condition, it is likely that this person may face criminal charges,” said Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon of the New South Wales Police.
Officials said on Monday that the father was an immigrant who came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa and stayed in the country for decades on one partner and three resident return visas. It was unclear what country he was from.
The son is an Australian-born citizen who first came to the attention of the police in 2019 “on the basis of being associated with others,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Monday. Neither of them were known to have any history of previous criminal offenses, according to the police.
Officials said that the 50-year-old suspect had a recreational hunting license as a member of a gun club that allowed him to possess a long arm weapon, Commissioner Lanyon said at a news conference on Monday.
Some points:
The victims: Investigators have not released the names of the victims, but details have begun to emerge. Chabad, the Jewish group that organized the event, identified three of the victims, including a long-serving rabbi of the Bondi community. The Israeli foreign ministry said that at least one Israeli national was known to have been killed and another injured. And President Emmanuel Macron of France said one French citizen was among those killed.
A rare attack: Mass shootings are a rarity in Australia, which enacted strict gun laws after an attack that killed 35 people in 1996. The older suspect had licenses for six guns, according to investigators, and a total of six were recovered from the scene and two searched properties.
Antisemitic attacks: The shooting was the latest in a series of antisemitic attacks in Australia. Arsonists last year targeted a Jewish business and a synagogue, prompting calls for greater accountability. Some leaders and organizations from the international Jewish community described the attack as shocking, but not necessarily surprising.
Here’s a short video of a hero disarming one of the accused perps. Note that the hero is a Muslim with no firearms training, and kudos to him. He also suffered two gunshot wounds.
The man who heroically tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi Beach gunmen has been named:The hero’s name is Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old father of two, who owns a fruit shop.
— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76.bsky.social) 2025-12-14T13:15:12.622Z
Reader Norman gives us a website, “Here’s some apparently unedited video; a series of short clips. They are worth watching, and apparently there is more than one shooter. WARNING: DEAD OR SHOT PEOPLE.
One can’t help feeling, at times like this, that the whole world wants to demonize or even kill Jews, much less get rid of Israel. That’s a ridiculous exaggeration, of course, but all too few non-Jews are speaking out vehemently against the hate (Douglas Murray is one). I, for one, feel alone, as if, even being an atheist (but a member of the tribe of cultural Jews, only other Jews have my back. This period of mourning by non-Jews will last a week (like the mourning after October 7) and then it will be business as usual.
*As long as we’re talking about antisemitism, a WaPo op-ed by two employees of the International Legal Forum (Cotler-Wunsh is a former Israeli special envoy for combatting antisemitism), has the title “A celebrity-backed letter shows antisemitism entering the mainstream” and the subtitle, “Signatories demanded the release of a convicted Palestinian terrorist. It signals a deep problem.” If you know of Marwan Barghouti, you’ll see the issue immediately.
The Post, reporting in 2004: “Barghouti was found guilty of ordering attacks that killed a Greek Orthodox monk in the West Bank in 2001, an Israeli at the Jewish settlement of Givat Zeev in 2002 and three people at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv in 2002.” Barghouti is serving five life sentences. The court determined that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of 21 other violent deaths cited in the original indictment.
Though the celebrities’ letter calling for Barghouti’s release has prompted debate about whether the signatories understood who and what they were defending, the problem is deeper than a misinformed petition.
For decades, efforts to demonize, delegitimize and apply double standards to Israel, and implicitly if not overtly justifying violence against Jews, occurred mostly in academic institutions, fringe activist movements and international forums. But lately, these ideas have migrated decisively into mainstream public life in the West — into sports stadiums, concert halls, music festivals and entertainment platforms.
Last week, just when those celebrities were clamoring for a terrorist’s freedom, public broadcasters in Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain announced that they would refuse to participate in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to compete.
. . . . Last week, just when those celebrities were clamoring for a terrorist’s freedom, public broadcasters in Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain announced that they would refuse to participate in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to compete.
. . .The letter calling for Barghouti’s release must be understood within this broader cultural shift. It reflects an environment where violence against Israelis is romanticized, anti-Zionism is presented as a moral duty, couched in the language of human rights. Once antisemitism acquires the patina of legitimacy, the justifications for extremism spread through the same channels.
The normalization of ever-mutating antisemitism creates the conditions for hate that does not stop with Jews, because it’s never about Jews alone. What is being mainstreamed is a thuggish sensibility in which any targeted group can be demonized, and people can be barred from public spaces for their own “safety.” The deeper threat from rising antisemitism is the general erosion of fundamental principles of life and liberty.The Barghouti letter shows not just the moral lapse of (several dozen) celebrities. It is a siren, joining many others, warning of a fire that isn’t even close to being extinguished. The fire brigade needs the help of millions, Jews and non-Jews alike, who treasure the principles of life and liberty.
I would not be honest if I didn’t add this bit from Wikipedia:
An Inter-Parliamentary Union report found that Barghouti was not given a fair trial and questioned the quality of the evidence.
He has also spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. And AI says this, which is verified by other sources:
He refused to present a defense in court, maintaining that Israel had no legal authority to try him, as his activities were a form of legitimate resistance against occupation.
Now THAT isn’t acceptable, but why are the signers asking for release rather than a new trial? If Barghouti again presents no defense, there can be no new trial. Note that of all the convicted terrorists that Israel released to get the hostages back, Barghouti was the one they refused to release. One might say that he should be released some think him a good candidate to head the Palestinian arm of a “two state solution.” (I don’t.) But that would be the case only if he were not convicted of murder and terrorism in a fair trial.And the two-state “solution” is decades away.
*And on the other side of the globe, two people were killed and nine injured in an attack on a study session at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
A person of interest was in custody on Sunday in connection with a shooting at Brown University that killed two people and injured nine others, the mayor of Providence, R.I., said.
Of the nine students who were injured and taken to hospital, seven were in a stable condition, one was in critical but stable condition, and another had been released, Mayor Brett Smiley said on Sunday.
The university said a campus lockdown had been lifted early Sunday.
Here’s what to know about the attack.
What happened?
The shooting occurred Saturday afternoon inside a final exam review for a principles of economics class on campus, Christina Paxson, the Brown University president, said on Sunday. The students inside were taking final exams or seeking quiet spots to study.
The shooting was first reported at about 4 p.m. An alert sent by the university told students and faculty members to lock their doors, silence their phones and stay hidden because of reports of an active shooter. Many students hid in dorms, while others took shelter in the basement of a popular tea shop.
Owen Fick, a junior at Brown, described seeing heavily armed police officers in protective gear running down the street, before he rushed to a dorm room to shelter in place.
“There were a lot of ambulances, a lot of cop cars, fire trucks,” he said. “They just had a lot of gurneys.”
What do we know about the person of interest?
The person of interest detained by law enforcement is in their 30s, said Col. Oscar Perez, the chief of police in Providence. The authorities did not give any additional information about the person they had detained on Sunday.
. . .The police released a video of the suspect. They said that it was not clear how the gunman entered the engineering building, but that he had exited the building on the Hope Street side. They do not know what kind of weapon was used.
On Saturday night, the Brown campus resembled a fortified outpost as over 400 law enforcement officers swarmed the area. Some searched for the gunman by shining flashlights into parked cars.
But of course guns play no role in these repeated shootings in America. After all, as the gun nuts say, it’s not guns that kill people, but bad people who kill people. But if they didn’t have guns, there would be fewer deaths. There’s no doubt about that. And, as we know, the vast majority of people killed by people who buy guns to protect themselves are not attackers or burglars, but people killed by mistake—or suicides.
*According to the Wall Street Journal, the bargaining with Russia and Ukraine to end their war has apparently reached an impasse.
President Trump’s top envoys launched two days of meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders on Sunday as the administration stepped up pressure on Kyiv to put aside its resistance and agree to a peace deal with Russia by year-end.
The talks between Ukraine and its Western partners have become a tug of war, even without Russia at the table. Washington is pushing for quick decisions, while Zelensky and his European backers contend that significant differences remain that must be resolved.
Among those points, Ukraine has balked at Washington’s call to withdraw its forces from a portion of the eastern Donbas region that Kyiv’s forces still hold. European and Ukrainian officials have pushed for clarity on what the U.S. would do if Russia were to break a peace deal and attack Ukraine.
Both issues will be at the heart of the talks in Berlin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed the meetings during a talk European leaders held with Trump on Wednesday, which both sides described as difficult.
“We want a lasting peace in Ukraine. Difficult questions lie ahead of us, but we are determined to move forward,” Merz said on X after talks began.
Trump said he was invited to join the Berlin talks but publicly doubted the trip would be worthwhile. On Friday, Trump decided to send his special Russia envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Witkoff, who has spearheaded talks with Ukraine and Russia on a U.S. peace plan, is expected to meet with the Ukrainians on Sunday before sitting down with European leaders. Over the past few weeks, he has shuttled between meetings with the Kremlin in Moscow and separate discussions with Kyiv in the U.S. or Europe.
Without security guarantees for Ukraine, Europe and Ukraine are right: how would Ukraine prevent Russia from taking over the entire country? But of course that is what’s happening now, and will happen if there’s no peace deal. I got back and forth about this because I don’t want Russia to have any of Ukraine, but the U.S. won’t stop some attrition. And so the fighting goes on. This is a just war—for Ukraine, and Putin will only be heartened if he gets any new territory.
*Here’s a provocative headline from Quartz (click to read, h/t Ginger K.):
While a Florida woman insists she was hit in the face by a duck while riding a roller coaster at SeaWorld Orlando (and is seeking $60,000 in damages for the incident), the theme park says the case should be thrown out. Oh, and it wasn’t a duck either, by the way, attorneys added.
Hillary Martin, who lives in Florida’s Orange County (which includes Orlando), claims she was riding the Mako roller coaster, an extreme ride that reaches 200 feet in the air and boasts maximum speeds of 73 mph, when a duck allegedly flew in the coaster’s path, hitting her in the face and knocking her unconscious and causing injuries. In a court filing, however, SeaWorld says it was, in fact, a Snowy Egret that flew into the coaster’s path.
“This matter does not and has never involved a duck,” SeaWorld’s attorney wrote.
Notwithstanding what type of fowl was involved, the park’s attorneys are asking the judge overseeing the case to dismiss it, saying it has no legal responsibility for the behaviors of birds that fly in or near the park. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 8.
In her suit, Martin claimed to have suffered permanent injuries, pain and suffering (both physical and mental), the loss of ability (and capacity) to lead and enjoy a normal life, the aggravation of an existing condition, and more. SeaWorld attorneys said she had refused medical treatment on the scene, though, because she didn’t want to take time away from the park. She received treatment the next day.
Martin’s suit also alleged the theme park “created a zone of danger for bird strikes” with the coaster’s height and by positioning it “over or near” a body of water that was “within the known territory of waterfowls in the area.”
SeaWorld attorneys rejected that argument.
“The duck’s presence in the air, away from the alleged water source, negates any plausible relationship between SeaWorld’s premises and Plaintiff’s alleged injury,” the park’s response to the suit wrote. “Martin’s event, by its own description, could have occurred regardless of the presence or absence of any body of water within the park, and it still would not have been SeaWorld’s legal responsibility.”
The park is not guilty, and the duck should sue the woman for hitting it by getting into a roller coaster impeding the duck’s flight path. In reality, this is a dumb lawsuit and the judge should have dismissed it as frivolous. That is, the woman was hurt, and has my sympathies for that, but no way is the park responsible for what happened to her. AND IT WAS NOT A DUCK!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej wants to hear some noise:
Andrzej: Are you sleeping?
Hili: No. Why?
Andrzej: Just wanted to break the silence.
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, czemu pytasz?
Ja: Żeby przerwać ciszę.
*******************
A warning from Jesus of the Day:
From Stacy:
From Meow Incorporated:
From Masih, re yesterday’s massacre in Australia. Click “show more” but only if you don’t like looking at dead people:
An Iranian reminds all of us, including @EvanLSolomon
“We who have experienced living under #Islamic ideology warned the free world. But we were mocked. Called Islamophobic. Silenced.
Now innocent civilians are dead.This is the result of normalizing so-called “resistance.”
Of… https://t.co/gDZ6kFFZ09— W. H. (@gr8wheels) December 14, 2025
From Emma, tired of dumb arguments:
“But I’ve had a hysterectomy, am I not a woman?”
Your gotchas don’t work. Not only are you (deliberately) failing to distinguish between sufficient and necessary, you are also, remarkably, failing to understand that why you don’t have a womb is kinda key information here.
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) December 14, 2025
One Nobel peace Laureate to another (the latter in prison in Iran). Translation below:
Yesterday, I was able to speak by phone with Hamidreza, the brother of the Nobel Prize winner kidnapped by the Iranian regime, Narges Mohammadi (@nargesfnd)
and express our full support to her during these very difficult and dark times. Narges is being kept isolated in a detention center in Mashhad, and she has not been allowed even a phone call with her family and lawyers. Before this, she had already spent 10 years of her life behind bars, and now no one knows for how much longer they might keep her in prison. Additionally, as a mother, she faces one of the worst punishments: not being able to embrace her children since 2015 due to the ban on leaving the country. Today, seeing her photo in the exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center, I can’t stop thinking about the cruelty of regimes like those in Iran and Venezuela, capable of doing whatever it takes to stay in power and silence the voices that expose the truth, but our message is unstoppable, just like this movement for peace and freedom that the entire world knows. To the extent that we come together and defend these values, we are even stronger. Immediate freedom for Narges, for Iran, and for Venezuela.
Ayer pude conversar telefónicamente con Hamidreza, hermano de la premio Nobel secuestrada por el régimen iraní, Narges Mohammadi (@nargesfnd) y manifestarle todo nuestro respaldo en estas horas tan difíciles y oscuras.
A Narges la mantienen aislada en un centro de detención de… pic.twitter.com/7sxX04gILy
— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) December 14, 2025
From Nick Robinson, a presenter on BBC Radio 4. Be sure to read the whole thing.
The news from Bondi beach is grim.
For many it will have terrible echoes of the massacres on October 7th.
For Jews living here it will feel painfully close to the murders at a synagogue in Manchester.
It is a reminder – if one was needed – that Jews all over the world now live…— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) December 14, 2025
From Malcolm; this is sweet but sad:
to anyone who thinks animals can’t feel loss…it’s been 6 months since my dog passed and my cat still cuddles his collar every night before bed pic.twitter.com/sy8KiB6OcU
— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) November 24, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She was eight years old and would have been 91 yesterday had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-15T11:23:11.864Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. I told him to get a menorah:
Putting up our tree, for a northern festival of lights, hard not to think of those who, on the other side of the world, were lighting their first candle in a very similar tradition, and were cruelly cut down.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-12-14T15:48:19.506Z
And slime mold; I suspect this one is an ameboid protist (but I don’t know):
Slime mold on a stick. NWT, Canada. Photo covers about 5cm in height. #slime #myxo #fungifriends
— Jeff Hollett (@jeffontherock.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T20:24:21.164Z
Actor/Director Rob Reiner and his wife were stabbed to death in their Hollywood home. That’s all we know so far.
OMG, that’s HORRIBLE!
An obituary in ToI this morning at url
https://www.timesofisrael.com/rob-reiner-jewish-comedy-giant-behind-slew-of-iconic-hollywood-films-dies-at-78/
Said his father (comedian Carl Reiner) brought a teacher to the house to teach Rob Yiddish, which for many Jewish kids his age was spoken fluently by grandparents and less so by parents. He also taught Rob Jewish history, so Rob says you might say that I was “home shuled”.
Reports (at least last night) were saying it was their son, who’s struggled with addiction and homelessness for years. Truly shocking.
Yes, I couldn’t believe it. Just terrible.
WTF
And shortly after Spinal Tap 11.
This will take a while to adjust to. Reiner was a great comedian and writer…. Carl Reiner his dad lived til 2022.
Devastating news. I’ve loved him since All In the Family. He was a multi-talented genius.
“Trump suggested that the couple was killed because of “the anger” Rob Reiner caused in other people due to his opposition to the president.” [CNBC]
Every time I think that Trump has scraped the bottom of the barrel he manages to scrape another few inches down. A vile man.
🤬
Yep, this is the apparent statement:
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”
“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
To repeat what I said not too long ago – anyone who has ever accused anyone of suffering from TDS owes them a big apology.
Oh wow, horrendous. The page I read only had the quote I shared. The full thing is even worse. Trump is the one who is deranged, even using the death of a great director to fan his own narcissism.
He can’t hear you, you know….
Hard to imagine a more niggardly statement, but here’s some bright news. It seems that it’s more than some in his base can take, too. To wit:
“Russell Moore, editor-at-large of Christianity Today and former Southern Baptist Convention leader, didn’t mince words. [His] post, Moore wrote, was “vile, disgusting, and immoral,” adding that “how this behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation.”
Does that barrel even have a bottom? I find too many similarities with Stalin (classifying anti-Soviet beliefs as mental illness) and Mao (the bombastic Great-ness). Not to mention all the proud vileness.
With Trump it’s more of an abyss than a barrel I suppose. 😁 Good to see Hempenstein’s comment that even some of his fans are objecting. Trump doesn’t have the brains to be a Stalin or Mao. There were evil, but devious and managed to carry out their dictatorships for years. Trump falls apart when anyone asks him a question, he can’t answer.
Yes, Leslie, I know he can’t hear me. Do you only express opinions when the subject is within earshot? 🙄🤦♀️
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Writing is like carrying a fetus. -Edna O’Brien, writer (15 Dec 1930-2024)
Agree about the cat herding commercial. I enjoy it every time.
Agree completely. Lots of bad news today but the cat herding video is delightful.
Yes, the cat herders ae delightful. All the little things you see (and hear, like sneezes) when you watch it the fifth or tenth time. 🙂
A nice antidote to the unspeakable in Australia. I just don’t know what else to say except to be grateful to the unarmed bystander who intervened.
Absolutely the best commercial of all time.
Article on RealClearPolitics the other day about the supposed danger of legally armed civilians.legally armed civilians.
That guy is in the video/link I put in my comment.
The FBI reports that their data set for shootings from 2000-2019 (published May, 2019) is :
“[…] not intended to explore all […] active shooter incidents but rather to provide […] a baseline understanding.”
That data set excludes a number of cases in which citizens react to stop active hostile shooters, for example :
• Titusville, FL, August 2016 (zero deaths)
Outside that time range, the FBI also excludes e.g:
• Surprise, AZ, July 03, 2022 (zero deaths)
And if a citizen stops an active shooting, the death count tends to be low – as would be expected, such as :
• South Carolina, June 30 2016 (zero deaths)
Incomplete data sets are better than nothing. But a major source of error is the baseline/base rate accuracy (Steven Pinker has a great treatment of base rate in Rationality (2021) ). And it is not clear how the FBI omits incidents (at least the two specific incidents in FL and AZ above as noted), and how much confidence that gives to any conclusions about gun violence in the United States.
I found this information in a John Stossel video :
https://x.com/johnstossel/status/1997083312188440610?s=46
Well, I’m a non-Jew who is passionate about the Jewish cause, for the little good it does. I detest antisemites as much for their stupidity as their toxic beliefs, since any person who actually tries to base their opinions on evidence rather than just parroting the crowd realizes that the entire basis for antisemitism is a house of cards on a foundation of thin air.
Same here. My dearest friends are frightened in a way I’ve never seen before. I won’t tolerate that kind of tolerance anymore. Anyone within my (ever diminishing) hearing radius who tries to normalize this shit again is to going to get an earful from an angry old man. I’ve had it.
Exactly.
I am not Jewish but I continue to be utterly confounded, and completely mortified, by the explosion of antisemitism around the world. I would never have believed that this much virulent antipathy was festering among so many. I know the basics of history reasonably well, the pogroms and the persecutions, and yet I still do not understand. I had thought that we, in the general sense of humanity rather than the malevolent minority, had moved past that sickness. I seem to have been mistaken.
I have a number of Jewish friends that have varying views on the whole situation (a couple are extremely anti-Netanyahu) but all of whom are increasingly worried about where this is all headed and think things will get worse before they get better. I can’t blame them. Hitler must be laughing in his grave.
Thanks Brooke! You are a rare and valued friend!
The thing with the antisemitism I think… is it is a “leading indicator” of a lot of terrible stuff that has wider implications for whatever society we find it in. I think being anti-gay is a similar leading indicator. This is irrespective of one’s feelings about Jews or LGBT.
D.A.
NYC
Unfortunately, these days hatred of Jews (and gays) is all-too-often an indicator of how many Islamic immigrants have been let into your country. Australia is a case in point, as is the UK. The religion of war openly teaches such hatreds. Those who don’t take the religion seriously are fine, its those who do take it seriously that are the problem.
Fewer GUN deaths, definitely. But won’t any serious proposal for reducing the US to a state in which ‘they did not have guns’ conflict with the current interpretation of the constitution? Unless someone proposes a viable solution, drastically reducing the number of privately owned guns is just talk.
Please note that I am not expressing an opinion about gun ownership. I’m merely making an unoriginal observation.
As Garry Wills wrote in an eloquent article in the NYRB, the Second Amendment has been misinterpreted to allow private ownership of guns. Changing that interpretation can be done by the courts and doesn’t require a new Amendment.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, 4 April 1819
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0234
Gary Wills is certainly entitled to his opinion, which is not a new idea, but one which has been in contradistinction to the prevailing view for two hundred years.
On the other side of the ledger is the fact that private ownership of guns has never been illegal in any US state ever, and I believe, has never even been challenged on a State or Federal level. Hunting and shooting with guns has been legal and regulated in every state for two hundred years. Additionally, we have two hundred years worth of State and Federal law – dozens if not hundreds of cases – affirming private gun ownership and use.
And, we have multiple relevant US Supreme Court rulings on the 2nd and 14th Amendments specifically upholding the Constitutional right of individuals not only to own/possess guns, but to use them for various purposes, including self-defense.
IANAL, but I’m pretty darned sure that the idea that “changing that interpretation can be done by the courts” would be unconstitutional in any court short of the US Supreme Court, and unlikely in the extreme at the SC.
Yes, that ship has sailed. We are cursed with that amendment. It’s true that has been interpreted as a right to private gun ownership from the beginning. But it is also true that the reason kindergarteners’ brains are occasionally splattered across their classroom walls in the US is because that amendment has been interpreted as a right to private gun ownership.
We USans are so lucky; we get to have both rights and horrors.
From the brief excerpt available to read, the Willis piece is an application of dialectics which takes the form:
Abstract->Negation->Concrete
Dialectics is the practice of alchemy with thought, as compared to sulphur, salt, mercury, etc.
The Willis piece starts with a projection to invert “rights” to apply to objects, and negates individual intrinsically endowed rights and liberty, synthesizing the conditions necessary for the distribution of rights to the population through the State – Aufheben der Rights – which is clear in the excerpt.
The alchemy of dialectics is explained in :
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition
Glenn Alexander Magee
Cornell University Press
2001
The atrocity in Australia: Like father like son. This is one of the ways that antisemitism spreads. As an atheist Jew,* I’m at a loss. It feels like society is on a runaway train and that there’s no way to stop it.
I wonder how many Jews are lighting their Chanukah candles deep inside their homes, away from the windows where the Chanukiah** was traditionally displayed. Many Jews downplay their Judaism, refraining from wearing anything identifiably Jewish. My parents mounted their Mezuzah inside the front door, rather than outside. Our synagogues have armed guards policing who can enter. Will we need to become crypto-Jews yet again?
Fortunately, Jews do have education and money and power. We can fight. And we have Israel. This is why Jews and Zionism are inseparable. Israel is the only place where Jews are welcome without reservation. Israel is a lifeline.
*Judaism is as much a culture, a nation, and even a civilization as it is a religion with a core set of beliefs and rituals. There is nothing contradictory about being an atheist Jew. My guess is that atheist Jews comprise a large plurality.
**A “menorah” refers to any lamp. The special one we light on Chanukah is called a Chanukiah. “Menorah” is fine. We’re not jerks about it.
A Jewish commenter on another Substack with whom I have frequent friendly discussions was worried that the preponderance of Muslims in many Canadian ridings (what we call our electoral districts) important to the Liberal Party means that our Government will do exactly nothing about antisemitism, except not interfere with the police who charge people with clearcut crimes. (Imams are careful to call on Allah to slaughter “the Zionists” instead of saying “the Jews”, thus keeping themselves narrowly on the right side of hate speech laws. So they can fill the streets of Montréal with mobs shouting Death to Israel, Death to the Jews without worry. The mob seems to miss the difference.)
What the Government will never do is deport non-citizens who whip up antisemitic furor, even though, as can the United States, Canada’s Cabinet Minister responsible for immigration can administratively deport any non-citizen who makes himself undesirable. When my friend was suggesting darkly that it was time to take more decisive action, I suggested that maybe he would be better off emigrating to Israel, the only country pledged to protect Jews as Jews and the only country where he could lawfully protect himself and his children with armed force, by joining the IDF. I don’t want to see him put in prison for doing it here.
A country that makes itself so toxic with hatred that Jews want to emigrate has only itself to blame for the decline and decay that will surely follow, but as I told my friend, that would be Canada’s problem, not his.
It is similar in the UK in that Muslim immigrants, who have nearly always voted Labour, are now numerous enough in at least 50 Parliamentary seats to be hugely important to the outcome. The Labour Party is very afraid that a new “Muslim Party” might form, costing Labour dozens and dozens of seats. Hence they daren’t say boo to Muslims.
Labour’s whole spiel is to “thank the Muslim community for their immense contributions to the country” (specifics are never given) and to depict “Islamophobia” as the biggest problem that the country faces. Taking that cue, the police and judges then misuse statutes to criminalise any speech that might offend Muslims.
Thank you for your reply. At the link below is a new pair of interviews regarding the Australian terror attack. In Australia, too, people are worried that Jews will need to go underground simply to live their lives. One interviewee, who went to a Jewish day school and was accustomed to her school being patrolled by armed guards, tells us that she was shocked to discover that she could walk directly into her friend’s (non-Jewish) school and right into the main office without causing any attention at all. She had no idea that her non-Jewish friend could simply live out in the open in peace.
Our civilization is badly broken.
https://youtu.be/moepLRyjbLg?si=_jDrUn3tQFwsxpUx
I come from a long tradition of atheists, of mixed “religion”. I got the worst of both! hehehe
But what shocks me is how antisemitism …was so rare there. When I was a teen I had a religious year – went to (Orthodox) shule and all. I remember the rabbi saying, and everybody agreeing “Australia is the least antisemitic country in the world along with the Great United States.”
A bigger shock are (seemingly true) reports of “celebrations” in (predom Muslim) West Sydney. Like the Oct. 8 “river to sea” mania in Times Square here.
THERE is the bigger problem than random nutters on “Take your son to jihad day”.
As Douglas Murray and Sam Harris both put it “The glee.”
D.A.
NYC (formerly of Melbourne)
Assuming it could even be done legally, those who think “just getting rid of the damn guns” will solve the problem, need to lay out a plan for going about it. How, exactly, do you find and seize all the guns in private hands in the United States? The experience in Canada may be instructive.
After a rare spree shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020, the Liberal Government of Canada legislated the prohibition of all rifles capable of semi-automatic fire of centre-fire ammunition. (This includes rifles styled as “assault rifles” but a long list of named scheduled others as well.) Confiscating them all should have been easy because these rifles were previously scheduled as “restricted”, which means the owner must keep the firearm at the address stated on his licence and can carry it in a vehicle only directly to and from a registered gunsmith or a licensed shooting range. (This being Canada, there are exceptions respecting “Treaty rights.”) So all the police would have to do is go to each address not covered by Treaty rights and demand the surrender on the spot of the itemized now-prohibited firearms therein (and give an IOU for the buy-back.) If the owner couldn’t produce them he’d be committing a criminal offence and would be arrested. What could be easier? The only ones the police would miss would be the ones obtained by criminal activity and never registered and licensed (as the Nova Scotia shooter actually did with his rifle smuggled from Maine.)
Yet five years later, the Canadian authorities have yet to confiscate a single rifle, even though the police know where they all are….and they know they aren’t held by violent unstable criminals because people with a history of trouble with the law can’t get a firearms licence. Is this just Canadian fecklessness? (No semi-auto rifles have been used in crimes since the 2020 shooting, FWIW.)
Now imagine trying to do that in a country where you don’t even know where the guns are — in someone’s house, in his car, in a stolen car, hidden in the woods somewhere, stuffed in his pants on the street, hidden in a neighbour’s house while his is being searched? Maybe this particular guy you are shaking down doesn’t even own any guns. How do you know? What about his civil rights? Worse for the police trying to confiscate guns, many are held by violent criminals who have their own ideas about giving them up peacefully, especially if they have been taught by “community leaders” that the police will surely murder them if they give up their guns.
If all guns were to magically disappear today, America might be a better place. I don’t know. But magical thinking isn’t going to reduce gun deaths. By the low-hanging fruit effect, law-abiding people like the ones who own semi-auto rifles in Canada today might give up their guns even if criminals got to keep theirs as being too hard to disarm. But so far the Canadians haven’t. So please tell us how you are going to disarm the population if even law-abiding people whose names are on a government list won’t disarm.
“So please tell us how you are going to disarm the population if even law-abiding people whose names are on a government list won’t disarm.”
We can’t. It’s not possible and anyway, in the US at least, our culture is far too ugly to let them go. Americans have already come to expect regular school and work place shootings; it’s like medicare fraud and road rage, just part of daily life in America. Our love of guns and the subsequent death toll is a ratchet, though. The killings will not go down; they will only increase, in frequency and number of victims.
There truly is no hope, as we’ve have been utterly incapable of taking any reasonable steps to address the insanity. After Sandyhook, when the only action the government took was to reduce gun regulations, it could no longer be denied; all is lost. We are condemned to suffer these nightmares.
Other apparently hopeless intractable situations have been resolved, but usually at very great cost. One of these a century and a half ago comes to mind.
Yes, Leslie. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Very much so here and in our great state of Canada. 😉 You provide an interesting explaination.
— An unarmed democracy is better. In Japan there are, practically, no guns or shootings. But they never had a gun culture. Lucky them. Even swords are banned!
— Here in Nth America we can’t undo the system without damaging our national psyche, laws and people.
— In Australia (remember, 30 years ago there was a mass shooting so) they took awa most of them. And in NZ also (an interesting story)
But the “gun culture” was never so big there, in Oz and NZ, so few objected and most were cool about it.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Guns used to be more readily available in Japan. We bought my first rifle there. Availability of legal guns in Japan is unrelated to the levels of gun violence there. Japan is one of the safest places in the world because it is full of Japanese people.
Plus, I cannot help but notice that nobody is even floating proposals for disarming the actual criminals, although any firearms they possess are likely illegally obtained and held. We don’t need to change the constitution to disarm them, it can be done by enforcing present laws.
Instead, the proposed solutions to gang shootings in Chicago and Memphis always seem to be disarming ranchers in Colorado. Disarming my wife increases the chance that she will be eaten by a bear while fishing or killed by an addict outside her clinic some night. It will not keep anyone from being carjacked in Chicago.
As for the Bondi shooting, one detail that is being overlooked is that the shooters put an ISIS flag on their windshield before their rampage. That answers most of the “motive” questions for me.
(source link for this excerpt follows ):
“Supporters of nationwide gun control often speak as if the law itself does the work. As if guns disappear because a statute exists.
But laws are enforced by people, with weapons, under stress, making split-second judgments. Any honest discussion of gun policy has to reckon with that reality.
[…]
A permanent system must be built to maintain the absence of guns in a society that began with hundreds of millions of them.
This is what people are implicitly asking for when they say “nationwide gun control.”
Not a law, but a standing domestic enforcement apparatus.
Not a reform, but an ongoing project of surveillance, search, seizure, and suppression.”
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/the-reality-of-nationwide-gun-control
Jerry, if you think there will be a week of mourning, you’re a lot more optimistic than I am. I expect that there will be another attack somewhere before the week is out. Already this week, someone shouting “Allahu Akbar” fired at a home in Riverside, California, that was displaying Chanukah decorations (no one was hit). I’m not sure if that occurred before or after the Bondi massacre. This, I believe, is the new normal: global intifada.
Australia supposedly has some of the strictest gun laws on the planet, yet an illegal Muslim immigrant was able to legally own the six guns used by himself and his son to massacre Jews at Bondi. In Australia at least, the problem goes a lot farther than guns.
Of course I haven’t read everything about this massacre. This is the first that I’ve heard that the father was an illegal immigrant. I wouldn’t be surprised that he were an illegal immigrant. Would you care to document that claim?
To run the risk of seeming “conspiratorial,” this morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” NPR was good to report the name of the hero who took the gun away from one of the shooters (the son?). He is to be praised and greatly honored and respected. At the same time, I don’t see why NPR would be no less similarly empowered and positioned to also have named the shooters. After all, the authorities had been monitoring the son for the last few years and of course knew his name. Other media outlets seem to have been in the know. Perhaps NPR has gotten around to naming the shooters upon airing “”All Things Considered” today.
Pleading for precision in language, there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant anywhere. Immigrants include only lawful permanent residents and naturalized citizens. The deceased shooter entered Australia on a visa, and therefore legally, in the 1990s and has been in the country ever since on various extensions, according to the Guardian. So it sounds as if he is a legal alien. Legal aliens can get gun licences in Australia, which is the point of this little sermon.
I heard (on the news) authorities saying that he was admitted decades ago on a student visa and overstayed his visa, illegally. If he was later granted a legal status of some sort, then he was not an illegal immigrant when he committed his jihadi attack, but I have not come across that datum yet. I will investigate further.
The latest information I’ve seen is that he entered Australia in the late 1990s on a student visa, then in the early 2000s obtained a partner visa (through his wife) and has had a resident return visa since then (the resident return visa allows permanent residents to return to Australia from overseas without having citizenship).
I’m confused here:
Neither of the embedded links adduce evidence that his trial wasn’t fair. (They just tell us what the IPU is and what a fair trial is.) What business does the IPU have commenting on Israel’s criminal justice system?
In what sense is THAT not acceptable? Do you mean it’s not an acceptable defence to claim the Court that’s trying you has no jurisdiction? If so, I agree with you, but then it would follow that his subsequent conviction and imprisonment were fully justified. No call for release or for a new trial. He could have requested leave to appeal if he thought any Israeli appeal court would throw one of its trial courts under the bus. Fat chance.
But if you mean it’s not acceptable to convict a defendant who doesn’t present a defence at all, not even to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses, then I have to disagree. Every defendant would get off just by declining to defend. That is, in essence, a nolo contendere plea like Spiro Agnew copped, which leads to a guilty verdict. Kind of open and shut. An unevidenced defence that the Court has no jurisdiction is just grandstanding. (Some “sovereign citizens” try it.)
The world might think he should go free just because he was leading the Intifada, but that is of no concern to Israel, who has convicted him according to its own legal standards. If Mr. Barghouti is the top pick by Palestinians to be head of the new state someday, Ceiling Cat help us all.
My grandmother had a pet leopard.
Your grandmother’s name wasn’t Susan Vance, by any chance …? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gBn9_vdVPk
Nope.