Welcome to a Hump Day (“Gjornade dal gof” in Friulian): April 22, 2026 and, of course, that means it’s Earth Day, now celebrating its 56th birthday—but who remembers? Here is the unofficial Earth Day flag, noted by Wikipedia as created by John McConnell and including The Blue Marble photo taken by the crew of Apollo 17:
There is a Google Doodle for Earth Day; click the screenshot to see where it goes:
It’s also “In God We Trust” Day, marking the day in 1864 when Congress passed an act allowing that religious phrase to appear on U.S. coins. Finally, it’s National Jelly Bean Day, and here are two fun jelly bean facts from Wikipedia:
The “jelly bean rule“ is a rule put forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 19, 1994.
It says that just because foods are low in fat, cholesterol, and sodium, they cannot claim to be “healthy” unless they contain at least 10 percent of the Daily Value (DV) of: vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, protein, fiber, or iron. The FDA also made a policy that companies could not fortify foods with the sole intent of making that claim.
and
In United States slang during the 1910s and early 1920s, a “jellybean” or “jelly-bean” was a young man who dressed stylishly but had little else to recommend him, similar to the older terms dandy and fop. F. Scott Fitzgerald published a story, The Jelly-Bean, about such a character in 1920.
The next time conversation lags at a gathering, just ask people what the connection is between F. Scott Fitzgerald and jelly beans. You’ll be the life of the party!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
UPDATE: Iran apparently fired on two ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Two ships came under attack in the Strait of Hormuz as tensions flared in the waterway, after President Trump said the U.S. would extend its cease-fire with Iran and continue its blockade until Tehran presents “a unified proposal.”
An Iranian gunboat fired on a containership northeast of Oman, before a second vessel reported being fired at off the coast of Iran. The two incidents within hours of each other demonstrate that while the aerial war between the U.S. and Iran is on pause, the fight for control of the strait continues.
*Trump has extended the cease-fire with Iran indefinitely as talks have gone nowhere:
President Trump said that the U.S. will extend its cease-fire with Iran and continue the blockade of the country’s ports until its leaders present “a unified proposal.” The move came after Vice President JD Vance paused plans to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday for negotiations with Iran over ending the war, highlighting uncertainty about possible talks. Regional mediators led by Pakistan are racing to try to convince Iran to join the talks, and neither Washington nor Tehran have informed the mediators the talks will be cancelled.
Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. forces boarded an oil tanker in the Indo-Pacific region that was previously sanctioned for working with Iran, the first such move outside the Middle East in connection with the war. Trump, in an interview with CNBC, said he wants to make sure the threat from Iran is ended even if it means the war doesn’t wrap up quickly. “I have all the time in the world,” he said.
“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump didn’t set an end date for the new cease-fire extension. A previous two-week cease-fire was due to expire Wednesday evening, he said previously, and had signaled earlier this week that he was unlikely to extend it.
The question is this: who does the extension help more: Iran or America? As gas prices rise and Americans get weary of war, it hurts the U.S. But as Iran loses its main source of income, it’s bad for them. And Trump doesn’t have all the time in the world: he has about 2 years and six months (or six months if you count of Republican losses in the midterms).
*Imagine what would happen if two members of Hamas made their way into Israel and one photographed another smashing the door of a synagogue. They’d be heroes! But when one IDF soldier photographed another smashing the head of a Jesus statue in southern Lebanon, it gave the whole world an excuse to damn Israel (the NYT reported it in detail), even though this is totally atypical behavior for the IDF, reflecting a couple of bad actors. And, sure enough, the two IDF soldiers were jailed:
Two Israeli soldiers have been pulled from combat duty and given 30-day jail sentences after one photographed the other swinging what appeared to be a sledgehammer at the head of a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.
Other troops who stood by but did nothing to intervene, the military said, have also been summoned and could face disciplinary action.
The military replaced the damaged statue with a gleaming new sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ and released a photo of it.
The extraordinarily swift administration of military justice by Israel was a tacit acknowledgment of the reputational damage the incident had done to the country, more than the seriousness of the crime.
The incident occurred in Debl, a Christian village in Lebanon a few miles from the Israeli border. The village is in an area that the Israeli military seized as a buffer zone before a cease-fire with Hezbollah went into effect late last week.
The photograph surfaced online Sunday, sparking widespread outrage in Israel and beyond, and demands for harsh punishment of the soldiers.
Experts said the act of vandalism reflected both ignorance and a growing hostility to Christians among some Israeli Jews, who see Christianity as a form of idolatry or Christian proselytizing as a threat.
The incident also prompted immediate and profuse apologies from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its foreign minister, Gideon Saar.
In a statement Tuesday, Israel’s military expressed its “deep regret” and said that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had condemned the incident as “a moral failure.”
I’m no expert, but this is the first I’ve heard of a fulminating hatred of Christianity among Israeli Jews. At any rate, it shows the very high (and double) standards to which the IDF and Israel are held compared to other countries. One or two rotten apples in the military suddenly tars the whole enterprise. But of course that is the way it has always gone.
*This is a surprise: The U.S. Department of Justice has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with financial crimes, namely defrauding donors by misusing their money. As you may remember, the SPLC was once a respectable organization uncovering and enforcing civil rights for all groups. But it then fell on hard times, with accusations of misusing funds and selectively leveling charges based on ideology, There were mass layoffs and the leadership quit or was fired. The latest news, however, seems to be a very hard blow (article archived here):
The Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that has long tracked hate groups, on Tuesday with financial crimes, accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations.
At a news conference announcing the charges, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that from 2014 to 2023, the group made payments totaling more than $3 million to people who were affiliated with extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America. The law center, he added, was “doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it.”
The indictment, however, offers little to support the notion that the group’s payments to informants was meant to aid the extremist groups they had infiltrated.
That last paragraph, however, seems less than accurate in light of this:
Prosecutors describe how one informant, which the law center refers to as a field source, “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the S.P.L.C.”
That rally included torch-wielding marchers chanting antisemitic slogans, and violent clashes that culminated with one participant ramming his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and leaving at least 19 others injured.
The informant “made racist postings under the supervision of the S.P.L.C. and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the charging document said. Between 2015 and 2023, the informant received more than $270,000 from the group, the indictment said.
Is that not helping the organization?
The center faces charges of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. No individuals were charged in the indictment, though Mr. Blanche said the investigation was continuing. He accused the group of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
Luana sent a tweet thread with more information, if it can be trusted:
Context: The SPLC spent more than $3 million in donor funds on informants from 2014-2023.
The crux of the DOJ’s case is that the SPLC did so duplicitously in violation of the law. pic.twitter.com/eo7dp35YXC
— Patrick Casey (@restoreorderusa) April 21, 2026
That thread also alleges that the SPLC set up dummy corporations to funnel the money to a series of extremist organizations. I guess this all depends on whether it is considered illegal to use donor money to pay off informants, especially if the dosh somehow furthered the goals of the organizations that the SPLC was infiltrating. We shall see.
*The Free Press describes a new literary genre, “Gazology,” in which, says author Matti Friedman, the whole world is seen through the lens of the war between Israel and Hamas, and to the detriment of Israel. Whole sections of bookstores in the West are devoted to these tomes. Here’s one example:
It’s likely that much Western culture, journalism, and politics in the coming years will be downstream of these books and the ideology behind them. Students in disciplines from anthropology to medicine will be assigned these works and invited to see the world’s problems through the lens of “Gaza.” For this reason, the genre is important. What follows is a survey of five representative samples of the volumes in question, in an attempt to sketch the contours of this expanding body of writing and to understand what it is trying to say.
. . .The memorable cover of the genre’s most popular title, and the first one I read, shows a stylized girl with a bomb about to drop on her head. The author, Omar El Akkad, was born in Egypt and immigrated to Canada, where he reported for The Globe and Mail before moving to the United States. He’s now an American citizen living in Oregon.
In the pages of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, El Akkad watches the war in Gaza unfold in portrayals on television and online, describing it as an era-defining evil that people will eventually claim to have opposed, like the crimes of the Nazis or the conquistadors. The war resonates for him as someone living with the displacement of his own migration from the Islamic world as a teen, with a heightened sensitivity to racism, and with the abiding discomfort of a Muslim man living in North America.
The book’s title, particularly the word this, led me to expect an account of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, or the war itself, but the strangest aspect of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is the author’s slim interest in any of those topics. We follow his travels in Oregon, and in Montreal. He listens to Nirvana. His backyard deck collapses in a way that feels emotionally significant, an episode that gets more space in the book than the entire ideology of Hamas—including the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews in pursuit of the supremacy of Islam—which is never mentioned at all. He writes sentences like “We are all governed by chance. We are all subjects of distance,” and “Fear obscures the necessity of its causing.” His daughter, we learn, “turns seven soon, a hundred in dragon years. She is made of dreaming.” The book won last year’s National Book Award for nonfiction.
El Akkad complains about racism from officials on the U.S.-Canada border, about the hardships of the writer’s life, and about the immoral Israeli investments of people who once gave him a Canadian book prize worth $100,000, which he doesn’t mention giving back. “I’ve sat through a wildly uncomfortable book tour interview once after I joked that I write all my novels in Arabic and then run them through Google Translate, and the interviewer believed me,” he tells us. We’re meant to sneer at this prejudice and sympathize with its victim, but why wouldn’t the interviewer believe him? And why does an author claiming to have discovered the age’s defining evil seem to be concerned primarily with himself? This was confusing at first, but as I read Gazology more deeply, I realized this approach is a characteristic of the genre: In these books, Gaza is not a subject but a stage.
The author gives no indication of ever having set foot in Gaza or in Israel, and when he talks about witnessing events, the recurring phrase is “I watch footage.” Some events are “witnessed” in this fashion—that is, via images that are subject to Hamas censorship and intimidation in Gaza, often curated by Western activists practicing journalism as agitprop, and then supercharged by the various Qatari, Chinese, and Russian information campaigns bending our online algorithms. Other events are not witnessed but ignored to the extent possible, most notably the October 7 massacre that began the war. In what turns out to be another feature of the genre, El Akkad sidesteps the butchery of that day by homing in on one false story promulgated after the attack about Israeli babies who were beheaded or put in an oven. That didn’t happen. But a reader doesn’t learn what did happen: namely, a premeditated mass murder committed by teams of terrorists going house to house through Israeli communities, burning families in their bedrooms, kidnapping toddlers and grandparents, and gunning down more than 350 young people at a music festival. To a reader of this book the motivation behind the attack remains mysterious. Though it was carried out by the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by the Arabic acronym Hamas, the words Islam or Islamic appear in the entire book a total of four times. The word genocide, on the other hand, appears more than 40 times.
There are four more examples, of course. The reason for the popularity of this genre, of course, is because Gazans and Palestinians are seen as The Colonized, people of color who have been victimized by “white adjacent” Jews. It’s the world turned upside down
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess demands her due:
Andrzej: What are you doing here?
Hili: Waiting for applause.
i
In Polish:
Ja: Co tu robisz?
Hili: Czekam na oklaski.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From FB, source unknown:
From Give Me a Sign. Even I am not enough of a curmudgeon to carry around a bunch of these pre-made signs:
From Masih; another political prisoner executed in Iran:
Today, right after the call of “Allahu Akbar” at dawn, the regime in Iran, placed a noose around this young man’s neck and kicked the chair from under his feet, so he would struggle, suffocate, and die.
Yes this is happening in 21st century. They executed him because he went to… pic.twitter.com/4uAcRRVT9L— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 21, 2026
From Luana, who says that this book was “banished from Amazon for telling a dystopian story of France after immigration in the distant future”. This article gives more information; the book definitely appeals to the Right, but Amazon is not supposed to censor books based on ideology.
In an egregious act of censorship, Amazon has removed @VaubanBooks‘ new edition of The Camp of the Saints, by the prize-winning French novelist Jean Raspail, from its US site. Since I wrote the critical introduction for the new edition, this turns me into a banned writer!
It had… https://t.co/S0t1m2PZa1 pic.twitter.com/yEXRmgkgo0
— Nathan Pinkoski (@NPinkoski) April 20, 2026
From Malcolm: orange cats!
It’s always the orange cats. Love them all. pic.twitter.com/ZAKjpaklV1
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 9, 2026
One from my feed; parrots share the wealth:
Scientists taught parrots the concept of money, and what happened next shocked everyone pic.twitter.com/GV8HEuiq5h
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) April 22, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz She was nine years old. https://t.co/t0VSPqs3XR
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 22, 2026
And Matthew posts a picture of his cat Harry:
Harry.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-21T10:45:53.374Z
Regarding the SPLC, the specific charges are eleven counts of wire fraud, false statements to a Federally-insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
“And Trump doesn’t have all the time in the world: he has about 2 years and six months (or six months if you count of Republican losses in the midterms).” I have begun a wish list for 2029: #1 is remove Trump’s name and image from everything but the Epstein files. I welcome suggestions.
Maybe you could do what the old Egyptians did when they didn’t like an earlier pharaoh: chop off his nose from every statue or reliëf they could find of him (or in Hatshepsut’s case, her). And if they really didn’t like him or her they would chisel away everything that reminded them of him/her.
If I recall, he did arrange for significant contributions to the Kennedy Center, including getting funding for needed renovations. So I think it appropriate to put a brass plaque on the new HVAC system, naming it after him. This after his #%^$ name is removed from the edifice of the building.
A quick google of Amazon for “The Camp of the Saints” this morning shows the paperback edition available at popular price. So the controversy ginned up by last week’s removal will certainly not hurt sales…much like Norman Mailer’s love for the *’s that were substituted into the spelling of his obscenities by the popular press: he said that an otherwise ordinary appearing word would suddenly jump out at the reader as exploding fireworks….
In any case, the book continued to be available from other purveyors such as B&N and the publisher itself. Amazon is not the only game in town and, since I like to support my local brick and mortar B&N, I normally check there to see if a book is available in-store (even at a higher price) before going to amazon.
Censorship is awful, but, it seems to me, a prerogative of the purveyor, though I do not know (and do not care to try to think about it this early) how this translates to refusing to provide a wedding cake for a gay couple.
There are other sources and by its action, Amazon unknowingly perhaps laid a small brick in the wall (at least over a weekend) against becoming a monopoly for books.
Yep, you can even get it on Kindle.
It’s a vile book, a favorite of Stephen Miller, the hardcore anti-immigrant member of Trump’s staff.
Thanks Frau. I don’t want the book. Just pointing out that Amazon marketing decisions are not decisions for the world. We (still) have alternatives. But thanks for the assessment!
Amazon has about 90% market share in internet book selling, and when a company gets that dominant its decisions do become of public importance. For example, no mainstream publisher would take on a book these days if they knew that Amazon would not sell it.
Oh I’ve read it. Like the supremacist Turney Diaries. I’m interested in propaganda and unusual books like these.
You don’t need to agree with the sentiments of either (I don’t), but both are better written – as works of fiction – than you’d expect.
I got both probably where I get almost all my books, ebay.
D.A.
NYC🗽
I’d just like to point out here that Amazon is still selling Mein Kampf…
I’ve read “The Camp of the Saints,” which certainly contains many crude, insensitive, and racist passages. Its real force is not Raspail’s diatribe against the Third World but rather his brutal indictment of a decadent, guilt-ridden, and self-loathing West. In his depiction, we are witnessing the cultural collapse of a civilization that has lost the will to defend what it once rightfully took pride in. One can object to the portrayal of others, question the air of superiority, and critique the sweeping assertions. But it is a mistake to dismiss outright his core contentions about cultural elites in the West.
Contempt, superiority, and intolerance do not disappear simply because they are redirected from the foreigner to one’s own people and their past.
I like the Möbius cheat sheet. It reminds me of the joke:
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
A: To get to the same side.
Very good!
Reminds me a bit of the M John Harrison novel “The Centauri Device”, where in the far future the world’s two main political factions are basically the Israelis and the Arabs.
At the time many people said it was silly just projecting current (1970s) obsessions onto the far future like that…..
It also included the idea that, in the far future, most military technology will be remotely operated by 13 year old boys, as they have the quickest reaction times. Yeah no, that could never happen.
I’m surprised you haven’t heard of the “fulminating hatred of Christianity among Israeli Jews.” I see regular reporting and videos of Orthodox Jews spitting on Christians in Jerusalem, it’s apparently a fairly common occurrence. And there are other incidents: see for instance Great Orme in Wales where a decades-old cross made of stones on a hillside was destroyed to make a star of David, or the destruction by the IDF of a cross on top of Mount Hermon (hardly out of strategic necessity). Religions poison everything, and there certainly are fanatics everywhere.
There is a small group of ultranationalist fanatics strongly opposed to all other religions, as well as streams of Judaism (Conservative, Reform) not to their liking. Well, two groups actually: one ultraorthodox, one ultranationalist orthodox. Neither are representative of the majority of their communities. This incident is from some of the latter; the former do not serve in the IDF.
Such actions are illegal. Spitting on priests, or anyone else, is a crime, though usually receiving light (IMO) punishment. In one case from several years ago, an ultraorthodox guy spat on a Christian seminarian, who promptly turned and punched him in the nose. The punch witnessed by cops, who arrested the seminarian, who was released by a judge for having been provoked.
In the interest of brevity, I will not provide further examples. I will say that, IMO, punishment for such acts should be far more severe.
I think 30 days in jail is long enough for smashing the head of a non-historical religious statue. Or would you prefer execution?
Here here. My pro-Pal opposites on twitter/x were all over this, of course, b/c they’re stupid and have no sense of proportion.
They honestly don’t see the asymmetry of a few religious nutters spitting on people – or a busted statue –
)
)verses
)
)an entire religion of hate and annihilation, Oct 7, 5-6 murderous wars by a population who believe these things and put them into practice.
Like the almost mythical “settler violence”, they love to try and “both sides” it.
It is the same trick defense attorneys (who aren’t me) question what the rape victim was wearing: it is to try to “balance” the moral scales. They fail.
D.A.
NYC🗽
No, of course not. But given the damage that those soldiers did to the state, I think that 30 days in jail is not enough. One can, for example, further punish the soldiers by confinement to base for a longer period. The conditions are just like normal life, but without home leave.
Those soldiers violated the ISF Code of Conduct, a rulebook that far more stringent than civil code.
This is more in reply to the Host but I don’t like to nest replies excessively. Perhaps smashing all religious statues with sledgehammers, not just those depicting ahistorical figures, would make the world a better place. Possibly. Nonetheless, this statue was someone’s private property that someone invested a lot of time and effort into making, and means a great deal to some people Israel would like to keep on its side. It ought not to be smashed for the Hell of it, especially not by soldiers without some military purpose as ordered by the chain of command.
The additional dimension here is that the soldier ought to have known, and his commanders certainly did, that this would damage the IDF and by extension Israel in the eyes of the world. Fortunately nobody much cares about Christians so this will blow over — even we Christians who support Israel with all our hearts will forgive this lapse of good order and discipline. But swift administrative disciplinary punishment is certainly called for in such breaches, just as if a soldier is caught helping himself to a fruit seller’s melons or his daughter. The fog of war doesn’t apply here.
Starwolf, I don’t know if your calling for more severe punishment for “such acts” referred to the offenses against persons as you cited in your reply, or if you were commenting on the 30 days in the stockade for the sledgehammer incident. But your point is well-taken especially when the IDF is off home ground. (A sledgehammer! That meant he had to go scrounging around for one. Not part of the usual kit for an infantryman. What was he thinking?! Can you imagine if he was whaling on the wall of a mosque?)
” . . . ultraorthodox . . . do not serve in the IDF . . . an ultraorthodox guy spat on a Christian seminarian, who promptly turned and punched him in the nose . . . witnessed by cops, who arrested the seminarian, who was released by a judge for having been provoked.”
It strikes me that spitting is assaulting. Did the ultraorthodox guy get lectured by his mother and/or mother-in-law as a consequence?
It seems that they are mighty fine spitters. Perhaps they could be persuaded to form a brigade or division to contribute their assault specialty to the IDF.
It is strange that some Jews do not have a favourable attitude towards Christians when Christians have treated them so well in the past. Religion has a lot to answer for.
In America in the 2000s, the demand for anti-black racism far exceeds the supply. So the SPLC needs to seek out, promote and fund the “hate groups” it can then oppose.
Similarly, as documented by Wilfred Reilly in “Hate Crime Hoax”, the number of anti-black “hate crime” incidents is much lower than the number of hoaxes. If, for example, anti-black racist graffiti is found on campus, it’s most likely to have been put there by a black student.
Meanwhile the rate of racist murders of whites by black people is running at over ten times the (tiny) number of racist murders of blacks by whites (though the latter receive 100 times the media attention of the former).
Let’s get to the core of the matter: Social justice groups like the SPLC, BLM, NAACP, Urban League, National Action Network…and so on, are outdated and ineffective. If you donate to these groups, you’re throwing money away.
Wilfred Reilly is one of my favorite public intellectuals and we follow each other on X.
His Hate Crime Hoax book was excellent, as was “Lies my liberal teacher told me.”
The demand for racism outstrips the supply by an order of magnitude, and my lefty Manhattan friends still believe “thousands” of unarmed black men a year are killed by the cops.
(sigh)
D.A.
NYC🗽
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
That’s a misquote of something Eric Hoffer said, but I still agree with it.
According to Wikiquote it’s from The Temper of Our Time:
“Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”
Frequently misquoted as “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
[Updating my quotes file….]
Who benefits more from the delay? Hard to say. More time to plan and/or position assets benefits both sides. One positive for the good guys is the fact that a blockade of the Strait puts Iran in a stronger financial chokehold than it does the other countries involved.
The current strategy of degrading Iran’s ability to project power (which includes preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon) has seemingly run its course. We’ve destroyed a lot of Iranian military assets, but the regime shows no sign of giving up (although there does seem to be disarray among the leadership, which we need to exploit). Six weeks of devastating war has proved that the Iranian regime cannot be reformed. For real change it must be eliminated.
Rather than carrying on in the same way as before and expecting a different result, we should shift to the strategy of regime collapse. The tactics are three:
i. Focus on eliminating more of the current political and IRGC leadership, fomenting chaos regarding who’s in charge, and forcing less qualified people into positions of authority.
ii. Focus on destroying the Iranian economy by keeping the blockade in place, disabling the functioning of Kharg Island, and implementing all possible sanctions.
iii. Focus on identifying and arming dissidents who could take power in a new Iran.
A major problem is that the U.S. is its own worse enemy. The public wants the war to end ASAP, and the media are so blinded by hatred of Trump that they are cheerleading for failure. They don’t actually want us to lose the war, but they do want Trump to fail. Unfortunately, the two are correlated.
Brilliant. In other words, win the war, which means decapitate the the IRGC.
I heard today that some Iranian ships were getting past the blockade. The host of “What’s going on with shipping” didn’t have details but noted that a ship could stay in the territorial waters of Iran (less than 12 miles from the coast) and continue in the waters of Pakistan. He didn’t think the US would try to grab a ship under those conditions.
This just in. The Iranian PressTV claims that one of the ships it seized is Israeli: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/22/767348/IRGC-seizes-Israeli-ship,-second-vessel-in-Strait-of-Hormuz.
But is it true? According to VesselFinder.com, the ship is sailing under the Panamanian, not Israeli flag: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/22/767348/IRGC-seizes-Israeli-ship,-second-vessel-in-Strait-of-Hormuz.
It could still be Israeli-owned, but I don’t think so, as it is listed as owned by Mediterranean Shipping Company, a private company wholly owned by the Aponte-Diamant family, with Diego Aponte serving as MSC Group President and Gianluigi Aponte as founder and Chairman.
An Israeli ship? Hmmm.
The Roolz are looming. My commenting on this thread is done for the day.
Sal at “What’s going on with shipping” explained that the definition of “Israeli” could be pretty tenuous (based on experience reporting about the Red Sea).
In one case a ship was considered “Israeli” because the owner’s wife had an Israeli passport. These guys are crazy!
The Gaza gaze: The act of presenting Israelis from a radicalized Islamic perspective in which Israeli Jews are inherently violent and oppressive creatures whose existence should—and does—fuel the insatiable moral displeasure of Western leftists and their fellow Gentile travelers. Whether Jews aggressively resist or sink into self-hating passivity is of no consequence to the passions of the viewers. Each position arouses their moral superiority equally and aligns them with the spectacle’s creators.
Having been on the staff of a (now ex) parrot I do tend to anthropomorphise them. I suspect that the parrots’ selfless altruism vs. the monkeys’ transactional approach is mainly due to there being no sufficiently worthwhile adult favours for parrots to trade 🙂. Further research is needed.