Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, January 20 2024. and it’s cold outside. The ambient temperature is 4°F or -16°C, and the wind is blowing, so it feels like -9°F or -23°C. You Brits think YOU have it bad?!!
But it’s also National Cheese Lover’s Day, implying that we’re celebrating only a single person who loves cheese. Who is this person? Could it be Angry Cat Man?:
It’s also National Buttercrunch Day, National Coffee Break Day, and Penguin Awareness Day. Does that mean we’re supposed to be aware of penguins, or celebrate the consciousness of penguins themselves. (I need coffee.) Here are some penguins I photographed on the Falklands a few years ago. There are two species here; can you identify them?
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Shoot me now! Trump is grumbling that his threats of taking over Greenland are now prompted by his failure to get the latest Nobel Peace Prize. Oy!
Denmark dispatched additional troops to Greenland on Monday as President Trump added a new dimension to his pursuit of the Danish island, telling Norway that he no longer needed to think “purely of peace” after being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize.
European leaders were already scrambling to talk Trump out of a damaging trans-Atlantic trade war over Greenland, after he launched a salvo of tariff threats in relation to the island over the weekend.
So far, the European Union, the U.K. and Norway have held off openly wielding retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s threat to hit them with 10% duties for their opposition to a U.S. takeover of the semiautonomous Danish territory.
European leaders are looking to take the heat out of the rapidly escalating issue, in hope that Trump won’t follow through with his pledge.
But the president threw another curveball into the debate on Sunday, linking his pursuit of the world’s largest island to missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded by a committee based in Norway.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre had sent Trump a text message expressing opposition to the planned tariffs. Trump replied that the world wouldn’t be secure unless the U.S. has “Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” according to Støre.
“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump wrote in the message, according to Støre. “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
Can you believe that? He says he’s given up on trying to make peace because he was snubbed for the Peace Prize, which is indeed selected by a Norwegian committee. He’s like a petulant kid who, if he’s not allowed to pitch baseball, will take his ball and go home. Greenlandgate (I’m surprised nobody’s named it that yet) continues to amuse and delight us, but it’s also stupid and, for the Greenlanders, scary.
*The “60 Minutes” report on immigrants being sent to a horrible prison in El Salvador, a segment that was originally canceled by News Editor Bari Weiss, has finally aired in the U.S., but with an introduction and addendum.
CBS News faced a firestorm last month after its new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, postponed a “60 Minutes” report hours before it was set to air. Ms. Weiss said the piece, which featured the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to a brutal Salvadoran prison, needed work; the correspondent who reported the segment called the decision “political.”
The 13-minute report finally aired on Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” without any changes to the version that the correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, originally finished last month. (That version was accidentally streamed by a Canadian broadcaster, and then circulated widely online.)
But CBS News added two short segments, at the beginning and the end of the report, that included new comments from the Trump administration and additional details about the criminal backgrounds of the Venezuelan men who were sent to the prison, addressing two concerns that Ms. Weiss had previously expressed.
Most of the new material appeared in a concluding segment that Ms. Alfonsi taped in the “60 Minutes” studio over the weekend. She noted in the new material that 33 of the 252 Venezuelan prisoners had been convicted of a crime in the United States, and reiterated a statistic from the original report that eight had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent crime.
Ms. Alfonsi also noted that the Department of Homeland Security had provided a photograph in recent days showing that one of the two detainees featured in the “60 Minutes” segment once had a tattoo of a swastika on his arm. The man had modified the tattoo when he sat for his “60 Minutes” interview.
Ms. Weiss defended her decision, telling the CBS newsroom, “I held that story because it was not ready.” In an internal memo, Ms. Weiss said the “60 Minutes” team “need to push much harder” to secure comment from Trump administration officials, and suggested that Ms. Alfonsi seek an interview with Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On Sunday night, Ms. Alfonsi told “60 Minutes” viewers that her team had tried several times since November to interview top Trump administration officials on camera. “They declined our requests,” she said.
The Associated Press adds this:
Since Weiss’ appointment, Trump administration officials have been more visible on CBS News, in interviews that she sometimes helped arrange. The president himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” on Nov. 2.
The New York Times reported Saturday that after Trump was interviewed last week by new “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, Leavitt told the network that “we’ll sue your ass off” if the exchange wasn’t aired in full.
All of the 13-minute interview was shown Tuesday, an unusual step for one of the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts, a half hour summary of the day’s big stories. CBS told The Times that it had decided to run the interview unedited at the time it was booked.
I suppose these changes are reasonable, though Weiss’s desire for a comment from Miller wasn’t met. I have no doubt that we’re deporting some immigrants who are guilty of crimes beyond illegal entry into America, but the point of the piece, at least to me, was how horrible the prison was. We should not be sending anybody to that hellhole. And modifying the tattoo, if it was done just for the interview, isn’t good. I haven’t seen the new story, but am reserving judgement on Weiss as a news editor until I see more of what she does.
*PBS reports that the Department of Justice is going to press charges against protestors who disrupted a church service where an ICE official is apparently the pastor.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors — David Easterwood — also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests.
U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend. “If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and the need to check their hearts.”
Well, the law is the law, and this is “whataboutery”. The government can and has investigated the behavior of ICE agents in Minnesota at the same time that they can investigate violations of the law by protestors. (And I presume there will bne an investigation of the ICE agent who killed Renée Good.) There is no contradiction here, though one senses that the protestors would like to do their thing regardless of any consequences.
Here’s the video I found on the BLM Minnesota page:
*A Muslim scholar in the U.S. who had made statements urging people to join an overseas militant group, has had his convictions tossed by an appeals court on First Amendment grounds. He’s been in prison for 14 years serving a life sentence. (Article is archived here.)
An Islamic scholar in Virginia who was sentenced to life in prison in 2005, for encouraging his followers to join an overseas militant group to train to fight against the United States, has had all of his convictions thrown out. A federal appeals court this month ruled that his statements, no matter how disturbing, were protected by the First Amendment.
The scholar, Ali al-Timimi, was convicted two decades ago on 10 criminal charges, including soliciting treason. But on Jan. 9, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., tossed out all of his remaining criminal convictions.
“Plenty of speech encouraging criminal activity is protected under the First Amendment,” Judge James Wynn wrote in the unanimous opinion. “The First Amendment’s protection does not depend on the popularity or palatability of the message conveyed. On the contrary, it is most vital when speech offends, disturbs or challenges prevailing sensibilities.”
. . .Mr. Timimi, who was known internationally for his lectures on Islamic topics, had advised a group of Washington-area Muslim men, who identified him as their spiritual leader, to travel to Pakistan. There, he said, they could join a militant group to get military training and potentially fight American troops in Afghanistan.
Some of the men bought weapons and received training, although none ever fought in Afghanistan. They became known as the “paintball terrorists” because they had used paintball games in Virginia as part of their training, prosecutors said in 2005. Some were convicted on various charges and served lengthy prison terms.
Mr. Timimi’s defense team argued that he had simply counseled his followers to take their families abroad after Sept. 11 to protect them against an anti-Muslim backlash.
Mr. Tamimi and his lawyers have been challenging his conviction for 20 years. One of his longtime lawyers, Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar and law professor at George Washington University, said the case “stands as one of the longest direct appeals in history.”
. . . During oral arguments three months ago, two of the judges hearing the appeal used President Trump’s speech, delivered to his supporters just before they attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a point as they tried to clarify the distinction between First Amendment-protected speech and the punishable act of aiding and abetting a crime.
Here’s one of the “hard cases” where we need the First Amendment and the courts’ subsequent interpretation of it. Yes, this does seem like “hate speech,” but al-Timimi wasn’t aiding the commission of a planned crime, nor was he creating the likelihood of “imminent and predictable violence.” Now Trump’s words on January 6, 2021 come closer to direct incitement, as he was speaking to people massed in front of the Capitol, and his words could be interpreted as prompting them to attack. But Trump was acquitted of incitement in an impeachment hearing.
*The Guardian describes a tool-using cow: a bovid that uses a stick to scratch its back! (h/t Barry):
Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.
Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.
Wiegele, who said Veronika recognised family members’ voices and hurried to meet them when they called, began playing with pieces of wood years ago, then worked out how to scratch herself with sticks.
“I was naturally amazed by her extraordinary intelligence and thought how much we could learn from animals: patience, calmness, contentment, and gentleness,” he said.
Word soon got around and before long a video clip of the cow’s behaviour reached biologists in Vienna who specialise in animal intelligence. They immediately grasped the importance of the footage. “It was a cow using an actual tool,” said Dr Antonio Osuna Mascaró at the city’s University of Veterinary Medicine. “We got everything ready and jumped in the car to visit.”
Veronika’s home town, Nötsch im Gailtal, is “straight out of the Sound of Music” with green forests, blue lakes, mountains and a church and school near Veronika’s meadow, Osuna Mascaró said, adding: “It’s the most idyllic place imaginable for an Austrian cow.”
Armed with a deck brush, Osuna Mascaró and his colleague Alice Auersperg set about testing Veronika’s skills. Through a series of field trials, the brown Swiss proved she could not only pick up the broom, but wield it according to the job at hand. If the broom was at an awkward angle, Veronika used her tongue to reposition it before clamping it in place with her teeth.
Veronika favoured the bristled end of the broom to scratch the tough skin on her back. But she switched to the smooth handle and scratched more gently when the itch was on more delicate, lower body areas such as her udders and belly, according to the study in Current Biology.
Of course you want to see the video of Veronika scratching:
And maybe you’ll want to read the short paper (click screenshot to read for free):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess makes a rare confession that she needs love!
Hili: I need your love right now.
Me: Just give me five minutes, I have to wrap up this paragraph.
In Polish:
Hili: Potrzebuję twojej czułości.
Ja: Daj mi pięć minut, muszę dokończyć ten akapit.
*******************
From Annie:
From Jesus of the Day; a medieval drawing:
From Things With Faces; a perplexed apple:
Masih conveys eyewitness information from a protestor in Tehran, who describes the wanton shooting of protestors:
This voice message was sent by a citizen inside Iran to a family member, revealing part of the regime’s crimes.
He says he personally witnessed the killing of civilians in Tehran. He also reports from Babol that regime forces carried out violent attacks against people there.… pic.twitter.com/TDEpjEGHpo
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 19, 2026
More from Luana about Iran. This is horrible, and note the huge “bullet fee”!:
Three-year-old Melina Asadi was shot and killed in Kermanshah while walking with her parents during protests.
After Melina was killed, her father was arrested and tortured by the regime and coerced into falsely blaming protesters for her death. In return, the regime handed over… pic.twitter.com/yRrgyDl84I
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) January 18, 2026
*Number Ten Cat stands up for women. Yay! Jenrick is a member of the conservative Reform UK Party.
I’m not dismissive of women’s concerns, says Honest Bobby Jenrick, rudely dismissing the concerns of a woman. https://t.co/WXVpkqOzla
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 19, 2026
From Malcolm: snow in Athens, and on the Parthenon. I lived in Greece for 2½ years as a kid, and I don’t remember any snow:
Footage of snow falling on the Acropolis. The Parthenon stands beautifully in the wintery landscape.
[📹 farawayfarers]pic.twitter.com/qIzWKhIon5
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026
One from my feed. I think it’s real, but why the stripes on the cat? Are they covering its nametag?
Couldn’t find my black cat anywhere… then I saw this 😂
pic.twitter.com/TE1OYYEmQx— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) January 19, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial. Today is the anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, in which the “final solution of theJewish question” [Endlösung der Judenfrage”] was decided in a villa near Berlin. That solution was the deportation of all Jews to camps followed by murdering them (Hitler had already ordered the extermination of the Jews; the conference was just to clarify and ratify it.) From the tweet:
20 January 1942 | Reinhard Heydrich, the Head of the Reich Security Main Office, chaired a meeting of 15 high-ranking civil servants and SS officers in a villa at Großer Wannsee 56/58. The topic of the conference was technical, logistic and legal implementation of the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, which was a euphemism for a planned mass extermination of Jews. Read the protocol of the conference here) Exactly a year later, on 20 January 1943, a transport of 748 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from the Westerbork camp in the occupied Netherlands – 315 men and boys and 433 women and girls. After the arrival selection 10 men and 25 women were registered in the camp. The remaining 713 people were murdered in gas chambers. On the same day, a transport of around 2,000 Jews from the ghetto in Grodno arrived at the camp. After the selection, 155 men and 101 women were registered. The remaining group, probably 1,744 people, were murdered in the gas chambers.
20 January 1942 | Reinhard Heydrich, the Head of the Reich Security Main Office, chaired a meeting of 15 high-ranking civil servants and SS officers in a villa at Großer Wannsee 56/58. The topic of the conference was technical, logistic and legal implementation of the so-called… pic.twitter.com/cqZI7NwqNf
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 20, 2026
The protocol (rectangle is mine):
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, Janis Joplin had a cat (or is holding somebody else’s):
Janis Joplin (19 janv. 1943 – 4 oct. 1970) 🌟💫© Michael Ochs
— Marie Ruiz-Vidal (@ruizvidal7.bsky.social) 2026-01-19T11:54:23.625Z
. . . and a beautiful ancient cat, made over 2600 years ago:
Ancient Egyptian bronze head of a cat with amber eyes, c. 600 BC.Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. 📷 by me#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2026-01-18T17:46:19.783Z
Perhaps when they name those seemingly single-person days, such as “Cheese Lover’s Day”, they’re invoking some type of Platonic Ideal Cheese Lover, of whom all worldly cheese lovers are imperfect reflections. I’m probably giving too much credit.
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
Maybe every other American movie shouldn’t be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence. -Bill Maher, comedian, actor, and writer (b. 20 Jan 1956)
Bill Maher is correct here, as far too many of the damn things are made. As sequels of sequels, no less. It is also true though that they make lots of money, and they have enthusiastic viewership abroad.
I’m friends with a man who makes martial arts films, based here in LA. I had no idea they still made them. They have franchises (story lines; sequels on sequels) just like the comic strip movies. They’re hugely popular outside the US and he never has trouble getting funding and permissions to film. Some countries pay his company to film on location. It’s a strange, strange world.
Has anyone seen an independent (and nonpartisan) strategic analysis of the Greenland matter beyond the headlines? What little attention I had ever paid to it was simple awareness of the small US Air Force presence at Thule (if I may still call it that). I am particularly interested in the US national defense implications for basing rights, as well as potential access for US competitors, were Greenland to gain independence from Denmark—as they have increasingly voiced intention over the last three or so years—and exit the NATO defense umbrella of their own accord.
I have heard rumbling of these ideas. The biggest problem I have with them is; why wouldn’t you respond to these things as they arise? With, you know, diplomacy. Destroying the relationship we’ve had with Europe for more than seventy five years to assuage the hurt feelings of an Orange Toddler is lunacy. Abject madness. So, no matter the merits of those arguments, they simply pale in comparison to the disaster that would unfold if that idiot makes good on his childish threats.
Black cat and orange cat: I suspect that the stripes are interference between high-frequency lighting and camera frame rate, as they only show on white surfaces (wall, cat bib, etc) oriented, and unshadowed, generally to one direction
Wannsee Conference is an important reminder of why there is a need for an autonomous Jewish homeland. We have to remember that during the thirties, Jews could not easily find a country to which they could emigrate with many nations, including the U.S. severely restricting Jewish immigration and arabs in Palestine petitioning the Ottoman Sultan to bar additional Jews from entry there.
Also: When I first saw the photo of the Parthenon ruins in the snow, I thought it was a trump’s ballroom construction progress report.
I agree. With the expansion of liberal democracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews began to think that they were finally being embraced as full citizens in the countries in which they resided. Consequently, Reform Judaism in the U.S. largely rejected Zionism, thinking that the future of Judaism was in the western democracies. They also argued that continuing calls for a Jewish state were making acceptance of Jews into society at large more difficult—the “dual loyalty” issue. The Holocaust changed all that. With antisemitism emerging yet again from whence it was always hiding, I am again reminded that the State of Israel is the only place in the world where Jews are welcomed without reservation.
” . . . one of the church’s pastors — David Easterwood — also leads the local ICE field office . . . Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads . . . Racial Justice Network . . . added she is an ordained reverend. ‘If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and the need to check their hearts.’”
Let’s see how she reacts should some opposition group disrupt her own “business as usual” church service. (I wonder what MLK Jr.’s position would be on the matter.)
” . . . added she is an ordained reverend.” To evoke Christopher Hitchens, what can’t one claim to legitimately and justifiably do or say due to having “Reverend” before their name? (Where’s Al Sharpton been in this matter?)
I don’t know the case but I’d be surprised if Sheik Al Timini’s prison sentence was just about saying nasty, inciteful things.
Sometimes if you dig deep you might find (say, here) that his guys who went to Pakistan/Afgh. to basically become terrorists were given names and meet ups with the organizers in Pakistan.
There’s a British hateful Imam (Chowdry is one, before ISIS even) who went to the slammer for actually organizing a terrorist cell.
D.A.
NYC (freezing)
Perhaps churches in the Minneapolis area should start having parishioners go armed at post guards at the four corners, like the Cameronians?
On the medieval “come home drunk and lecture your pets” – my question would be why WOULDN’T you do that? They like it also!
In Germany many years ago I didn’t visit the camps but I did tour the Wansee House/museum (referenced above) outside Berlin which was pretty haunting.
D.A.
NYC
I can’t say I agree with our host when he says; “..I presume there will … an investigation of the ICE agent who killed Renée Good.” I do not believe the feds will do a legitimate one. Minnesota might, though I expect it’d be limited by non-cooperation from the feds and pressured by their own state politics.
One other thing. It is often noted here how terrible medieval artists were at drawing cats. Sometimes I really wonder if they ever even saw one, the drawings are so bad. But the ancient Egyptians… man they got the essence of CAT in their sculptures. Probably from all the worship.
Re:Final solution, there are two interesting movies worth seeing. I’m copying Gemini:”The primary film about the Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution” is Conspiracy (2001), starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci, which dramatically portrays the 1942 meeting where Nazis coordinated the Holocaust; a more recent German film, Die Wannseekonferenz (2022) (The Wannsee Conference), offers a starkly realistic, subtitle-driven depiction of the same event, focusing on the chillingly bureaucratic planning of mass murder. Both films detail the logistical planning for the extermination of European Jews, with Conspiracy focusing on the power dynamics and Die Wannseekonferenz on the cold, procedural discussions”.