Welcome to Thursday, June 4, 2026, and it’s National Cheese Day. My two favorite cheeses are, first, a well-aged Comté (preferably three years or more), and a ripe Saint-Marcellin, oozing in its bowl. Here’s a Saint-Marcellin approaching ooziness:
It’s also National Cognac Day, Global Running Day, and Hug Your Cat Day. Here’s me hugging my late beloved Teddy, the best cat ever:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 4 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Breaking nooz, ripped from the headlines. Trump has been told to end the war with Iran, and by a “bipartisan” vote in Congress that, to me, has no force but shows how Republicans are beginning to break with Trump:
The House on Wednesday voted to direct President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the conflict with Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after four Republicans sided with Democrats in a striking sign of growing opposition to a military campaign now in its fourth month.
Adoption of the resolution was a remarkable rebuke to Mr. Trump and his handling of the conflict, after he has repeatedly dismissed any effort by Congress to curb his power and as the G.O.P. has largely ceded its prerogatives to do so, deferring to him time and again. Republicans had abruptly postponed the vote two weeks ago, recognizing that they did not have sufficient votes to defeat the measure and wanting to spare themselves and the president the affront.
But they made no headway over the ensuing days in winning converts, as the conflict has dragged on and Mr. Trump has made little progress toward ending it. G.O.P. leaders were unable to delay the vote any longer because Democrats had invoked the War Powers Resolution, which requires consideration of such measures within a limited period of time.
The move was also the latest reflection of divisions between Republicans in Congress and the president on a range of issues as their interests diverge in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections. It came after Senate Republicans have in recent days forced Mr. Trump to abandon his request for $1 billion in security funding for his ballroom project and a plan that the Justice Department announced to create a federal fund to pay claimants who accuse the government of having victimized them.
The vote was 215 to 208 to adopt the war powers resolution, sending it to the Senate. Even if it were to pass both chambers, the ability of lawmakers to force a president to withdraw troops remains a contested legal question, and Mr. Trump and his senior aides have dismissed any effort by Congress to limit his war powers as unconstitutional.
*The “cease-fire” between the U.S. and Iran is being breached continually, as it was over the last two days when the two sides exchanged fire. And the airport in Kuwait, also attacked, was shut down:
The Gulf kingdom of Kuwait came under a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones on Wednesday that shut its international airport, killed one person and injured dozens more, as Iran launched its largest salvo of the near two-month ceasefire.
The U.S. and Iran had exchanged heavy fire the evening before, after the U.S. struck an empty oil tanker it said was attempting to breach its blockade. That set off a string of attacks by both sides, with Iran firing ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Kuwait said it had dealt with 13 ballistic missiles, 17 drones and that civilian infrastructure and diplomatic missions had been damaged during an attack it said began at dawn local time Wednesday.
The latest skirmish between the U.S. and Iran marked one of the most intense bouts of fighting between the two sides since they entered a ceasefire in April and came as diplomatic efforts have stalled.
Despite the heavy fire, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday night that the tenuous truce was “ongoing.” The two sides have repeatedly clashed since the truce, while refraining from a broad resumption of the war.
The fighting escalated after the U.S. disabled an empty oil tanker that it said was attempting to breach its blockade and load oil at Iran’s Kharg Island.
Iran then launched one-way attack drones at civilian mariners who were trying to transit the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said. The U.S. shot down three of the drones and conducted what it said were “self-defense strikes” on Iranian military ground control stations on Qeshm Island. The island sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and gives Tehran control over ships’ movement through the crucial waterway.
Iran responded to the strikes by firing ballistic missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, which host U.S. military bases. Two missiles fired at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in the air, and three missiles launched at Bahrain were intercepted by the U.S. and Bahrain air defenses, Centcom said. None of the missiles hit their targets.
On Wednesday, one Indian national was killed and 63 other people were injured, according to Indian authorities and Kuwaiti state media, during a dawn attack on Kuwait by Iran. Air traffic at the international airport was temporarily suspended and flights were diverted.
The only upside to this is that Kuwait and Bahrain not going to be happy with Iran. And there’s really not a truce, but a half-assed ceasefire. Firing on ships that try to block the U.S. blockade doesn’t bother me; the U.S. gives warning, goes for the engine room, and announced in advance that that was part of the “ceasefire”.
The NYT reports that Israel is willing to make a deal with Lebanon so long as Hezbollah withdraws from southern Lebanon (leaving the Lebanese army in control, LOL) and promises to stop attacking Israel. If you believe they’ll do that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal discusses what he calls “The Disarmament Delusion,” the Lebanese government’s endless waffling about ending terrorism and taking control of the military in their country, which means disarming Hezbollah.
A Lebanese official told Reuters they were proposing a phased approach to perpetuate the ceasefire based on “pilot zones”—specific geographic areas where hostilities would stop, Israeli troops would withdraw, and Lebanese soldiers would deploy, gradually building up to a nationwide truce. It appears the Lebanese have fallen for the same misapprehension common in the West: assuming that the goal of any ceasefire is the ceasefire itself, rather than the objectives of the war it is halting. The objective hasn’t changed and will certainly not be achieved through “pilot zones”: destroy Hezbollah.
This paralysis is not new for the Lebanese government. Despite voting three times to disarm Hezbollah since the summer of 2025, little has actually changed on the ground. The cornerstone of these efforts—the August 2025 “Homeland Shield Plan”—promised to progressively bring all weapons under state control by the end of the year. But, as evidenced by the fact that it is now June, enforcement has remained entirely superficial. While the Lebanese Armed Forces proclaimed the area south of the Litani River clear of Hezbollah infrastructure in January, they deliberately bypassed the group’s massive tunnel networks and drone facilities to avoid confrontation.
. . .This facade is maintained by LAF Commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal’s extreme risk aversion and Hezbollah’s deep institutional influence over the military; the group has held an effective veto over the army for decades and still maintains critical alliances within it. The breaking point arrived in March when Hezbollah dragged the country back into war. The civilian cabinet formally ordered the LAF to halt the militia’s military operations. Instead, Haykal effectively went rogue, issuing a directive that mirrored Hezbollah’s own rhetoric by prioritizing “national unity” and resisting Israeli aggression over dismantling the group’s infrastructure. Despite numerous calls from the U.S., France, and Saudi Arabia to fire the rogue commander, no disciplinary action has been forthcoming, with the cabinet fearing military mutiny and the perennial ghost of civil war.
Haykal is not Hezbollah’s only friend on the inside. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri acts as their political enabler, effectively functioning as the organization’s diplomatic wing—it was Berri, after all, who brokered this current ceasefire. Through his political maneuvering, Hezbollah maintains a stranglehold on vital state sectors like the Ministry of Finance and the General Security Directorate. This institutional capture provides the necessary levers to allow $1 billion in Iranian funding to successfully slip through in the past year, while also sustaining the terror group’s flourishing $18 billion shadow economy.
The chasm between Lebanon’s official decrees and the reality on the ground is enormous. While the Lebanese Cabinet issued formal orders in March to hunt down and deport Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives, the organization has only become more entrenched. To sustain their proxy after Israel decapitated most of its leadership, Iranian forces have essentially assumed direct control of Hezbollah, deploying hundreds of their own officers alongside Syrian and Iraqi fighters to rebuild the shattered militia. Under this direct Iranian command, the strategy is straightforward: ensure Hezbollah’s survival by outright refusing disarmament, exploit the paralysis of the Lebanese state to regain its arsenal, and maintain a baseline of confrontation that prioritizes escalating aggression against domestic Lebanese rivals over full-scale war with Israel.
The upshot is, like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is and will remain in military power in Lebanon, despite the UN decree that they disarm. For sure Lebanon and its army ar in a hard place, but I doubt that Israel is going to agree to a permanent peace with Hezbollah, which, as noted above, is effectively controlled by Iran. Any demand by Iran that Hezbollah be allowed to remain in power is a demand for the perpetuation of terrorism against Israel. I feel sorry for the Lebanese people caught in the middle here.
*Bret Stephen has a mock letter to Trump in the NYT called “Dear President Ozymandias” (archived here), referring to Shelley’s famous poem, “Ozymandias”, about the fading of a ruler’s glory once thought to be permanent.. You can read the poem here, and it’s also in the op-ed, which is in fact signed by Shelley (or rather by a trio of people named “Percy,” Bysshe,” and “Shelly). The column is, of course, sarcastic, reassuring Trump that he will be the exception:
We are writing to let you know, sir, that we are as outraged as you are that some liberal judge has ordered that your name be stripped from the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Not only is the decision wrong, it’s also backward. You’ve survived three assassination attempts and yet the building will keep his name?
On a related subject, sir, we hope those knuckleheads in Congress won’t let some old law stand in the way of putting your face on a $250 bill. After all, nothing advertises the strength of a country’s economy like high-denomination bank notes. And since restaurant meals now often run to about $250 (minus drinks and dessert) for a party of four, making a bank note with your mug shot on it will be triply convenient: faster payment; a reminder of how affordable things have become under your presidency; and proof that, in the land of the free, you can get away with just about anything.
We’re also big supporters of your plan for your triumphal arch for Washington soaring a proud 250 feet, nearly as tall as the Capitol itself. Hopefully it will include large gold-plated statues of the greatest American leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln and yourself. People are calling it the “Arc de Trump,” like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. That one was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, just before such strokes of military genius as the Peninsular War, the invasion of Russia and the Hundred Days campaign of 1815.
Do you know they named a bridge and a train station in London in honor of the battle that ended that last excursion?
At any rate, leaders who build gargantuan triumphal arches always go on to greater military glory. Maybe yours will be for the liberation of Hormuz, though that may have to await the deployment of the new “Trump class” battleships after the first one commissions sometime around 2036.
, . .We also believe you were too modest when you chose to rename the Gulf of Mexico after America rather than after yourself, as you had thought to do at first. But why settle for a mere gulf? The Atlantic Ocean is named for Atlas, a figure from Greek mythology, which makes little sense since Greece is nowhere near the Atlantic. And the Pacific Ocean, which is much larger than the Atlantic, was named after a brand of Mexican beer, Pacifico, which makes no sense at all.
You know what does make sense? Trump Oceans. Plural. It simplifies geography while amplifying your name.
And we cannot stop there.
There’s more, but it’s along the lines of this heavy-handed satire. It ends with this, and then the poem:
Speaking of space, aren’t we going back to the moon under your presidency? That’s got to mean naming rights in addition to bragging rights. At a minimum, our first lunar base must be named for you. (The second one can be named for Elon, or maybe Jeff, whoever is first, provided you’re still on good terms with either of them.) But why do we even call our planet’s moon “the Moon,” as if a generic noun should be a proper noun, too? That needs to change.
Get ready for it: Trump Moon.
I think Stephens is better at real op-eds than satire like this, but perhaps it will placate those who think Stephens is some kind of alt-righter.
*Demonstrations are erupting in the UK over the death of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, who died after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, a young Sikh. As Nowak lay dying, the police handcuffed him because the murderer claimed that he had been the victim of a racist slur by Nowak (this wasn’t true). This is one of the more horrifying stories I’ve heard about British enforcement of “hate speech”, and the officer should be fired for incompetence.
The British home secretary told Parliament on Tuesday that she fully supported the country’s police watchdog in investigating why several officers handcuffed a college student while he lay dying, in a murder case that shocked the country.
Henry Nowak, 18, was stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, 23, in December 2025, after the two men had a brief interaction in Southampton, a city in southern England. Mr. Digwa, who is Sikh and stabbed Mr. Nowak with a religious knife he was carrying, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 21 years, on Monday.
Mr. Digwa lied to the police at the scene of the murder repeatedly, falsely claiming that he had been the victim of a racist attack. Police officers arrested and handcuffed Mr. Nowak for about a minute, according to the judge who sentenced Mr. Digwa, before they realized he was severely injured and began administering first aid.
Police body camera footage released on Monday after the sentencing showed Mr. Nowak lying on the ground, saying “I can’t breathe” and telling officers repeatedly that he had been stabbed. One police officer can be heard saying, “I don’t think you have, mate.”
The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which examines reports of police wrongdoing, confirmed it is investigating the police officers’ actions.
The case has been increasingly politicized online, with the right-wing populist lawmaker Nigel Farage claiming the police’s initial response was evidence of “anti-white prejudice.” He encouraged his social media followers on Tuesday to “respond with pure cold rage.” Elon Musk has posted multiple times in recent weeks about the case.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, whose office oversees law enforcement, told Parliament that the murder was a “vile and violent crime” and said that Mr. Nowak’s family deserved answers “about what happened on that awful night and the actions of the police officers who arrived on the scene.” She described the body camera footage as “disturbing and tragic.”
But she also warned that “misinformation and inflammatory commentary is making a dreadful situation worse.” After one police officer unrelated to the case had been misidentified online, she said, he had received death threats and had to be relocated for his safety.
“We cannot allow this murder to turn communities against one another,” she said, adding: “We must condemn those who seek personal political profit from tragedy.”
Mahmood doesn’t see what’s going on here. It’s not racism, but anger at the sacralization of immigrants, particularly immigrants of color, by law enforcement. Remember how the police largely ignored the “grooming gangs” composed largely of South Asians (Pakistanis). And this is combined with draconian laws against “hate speech,” which, in this case, prompted the cops to put a dying man in cops when he was falsely accused of attacking Digwa on racial grounds. I’m not sure why Digwa stabbed Nowak, but it’s terribly sad, and a horrible indictment of the ideological climate pervading much of Britain.
Here is a video showing Nowak in cuffs right before he died (WARNING: you may find this news report disturbing):
Quillette has a wobbly piece, “The murder of Henry Nowak and the politics of certainty” which tries to be judicious but comes off as anodyne:
The case is unbearable, in part because the bodycam footage appears to show an innocent man dying while he is treated as a suspect. Nowak told police that he had been stabbed and could not breathe. An attending officer expressed disbelief. Nowak was handcuffed and arrested before the severity of his injuries became apparent. His father later described that treatment as “inhumane and degrading.” But he also made it clear that Vickrum Digwa, his son’s 22-year-old assailant, bears complete responsibility for the murder. That distinction should not be difficult to hold in mind. The killer is responsible for the killing. The police response was still gravely inept.
*CBS fired veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley just one day after he criticized the new producer as well as the new CBS News Editor. Bari Weiss:
CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.
Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.
“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.
CBS News declined to comment. In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been “terminated for cause effective immediately.”
Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly after he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to “60 Minutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.
“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast.”
The firing of Mr. Pelley is among the most consequential moves of Ms. Weiss’s rocky tenure at CBS. And it is almost certain to spike tensions that have coursed through the network for months.
It also raises the stakes of Ms. Weiss’s surprising decision to replace the entire leadership team at “60 Minutes,” CBS News’s most successful franchise, and hire Mr. Bilton, who has no experience in broadcast TV, to oversee the show. The program’s viewership was up 9 percent this past season from a year prior, and the show is routinely among the nation’s highest-rated weekly broadcasts, according to Nielsen.
It looks as if Bari Weiss is using a heavy hand at CBS news. “60 Minutes” is perhaps their best-known show, and replacing the entire leadership team, with the new head having no broadcast TV experience, seems to me a ham-handed move. What, exactly, was wrong with the previous show? I predict that Weiss will use it to slant more right in a show that, as far as I could see, had no political slant. We shall see, so watch a few episodes. The more I hear about Weiss, the less I like her.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili prefers to take an empirical rather than a theoretical approach to finding truth:
Szaron: Might there be something delicious hidden in this jungle?
Hili: Find out for yourself. Academic discussions don’t get you anywhere.
In Polish:
Szaron: Czy w tej dżungli może ukrywać się coś smacznego?
Hili: Sprawdź, akademickie dyskusje do niczego nie prowadzą.
*******************
From TherionArms (I love these letters and their descriptions):
From Meow, Incorporated:
From The Language Nerds:
A two-for-one tweet from Masih, still enraged that Iran keeps executing protestors:
Today, they hanged him in Iran for protesting.❤️
Now you understand why I showed a graphic image of a hanged man in front of 2,000 people in Washington DC.
If that image was too sensitive for people in the West، this is Iran’s daily reality. 4 to 5 people hanged. Every. Single.… https://t.co/fUCQplPzHv pic.twitter.com/F6TxcS3533
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 3, 2026
An owl “raises” a duckling. I have many questions. What did the duckling eat? Did it finally get to water? And did it survive. Sure, this is cute as shown, but the sequelae could be dire:
A duckling was raised by an owl after hatching in the wrong nest
Photographer Laurie Wolf captured the rare scene after a wood duck egg ended up in an eastern screech owl’s nest. The owl incubated the egg and cared for the hatchling until it eventually left on its own pic.twitter.com/gCdkOl0YrJ
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 1, 2026
From Luana: the increasing and insupportable importance of grades over standardized test in college admissions. The Y-axis is the percentage of admissions officers who think that grades or standardized tests are “of considerable importantce.”
“Admissions offices have fallen victim to ideological capture”
I often hear people say both grades & tests should matter. In the early 2010s, admissions officers seemed to agree
But over time, many believed grades alone were superior, casting aside the valuable info from… https://t.co/88efDiro0W pic.twitter.com/pIthQF4Rfd
— Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) June 3, 2026
Two from my feed. First, these abilities (especially the camouflage) are amazing:
Octopus, the Alien of the Ocean pic.twitter.com/F9WjwhfiAy
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 3, 2026
From the late great Andreas Kay; more amazing camouflage:
This caterpillar found in Ecuador mimics the appearance of a feather to avoid detection by predators.
📽: Andreas Kaypic.twitter.com/4NzuixskVj
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) June 3, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Belgian Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was only a year old, and would have been 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/4HqtXfYWyC
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 4, 2026
And two from Herr Professor Doktor Cobb. First, a great wild cat fighting extinction (figuratively, of course):
The world's smallest wild cat and her kitten were recently found in a scrubland on the urban edge of Delhi, India. The rusty-spotted cat is the smallest extant wild cat in the world, but is extremely resilient as we observe this wild cat in a small section of fragmented habitat.
— Felidae Conservation Fund (@felidaefund.org) 2026-06-03T13:33:27.897Z
Sound up to hear calling from inside the eggs!
*Turn your sound up for this one*You can watch live here: buff.ly/5ALnVcB
— National Trust (@nationaltrust.org.uk) 2026-06-03T15:29:40.233Z
A correction Jerry, the “grooming gangs” are mostly of south Asian heritage not east Asian. The majority being Pakistani. Also, many people consider the term “grooming gangs” to be a euphemism and instead call them rape gangs.
Right. East Asian: Japanese, Chinese, Korean. South Asian: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi. South-East Asian: those in-between in appearance (often with darker skin and narrower eyes). Not sure where Nepalese, Tibetan, etc. fit in.
Yes, almost all Pakistani Muslim. Both are relevant owing to (1) the very clannish, cousin-marrying Pakistani culture which meant that they could trust their communities to join in or at least keep quiet, (2) Muslim culture that sees non-Muslim girls as trash and fair game, plus of course (3) police that refused to do anything to stop it owing to a culture that sees being “racist” and “Islamophobic” as vastly worse sins than the mass rape of under-age girls.
Yes, I know they are largely Pakistani, I guess I mistakenly called them “East Asian” because they’re really not very far east. I’ll correct it thanks.
Henry Nowak died from blood from the stab wound filling his lungs such that he couldn’t breath. It’s possible that the police actions greatly worsened this. Nowak had remained alive and conscious for about 15 minutes prior to the police arriving, then lost consciousness and died only about 1 to 2 minutes after being hand-cuffed.
Thus it could well be that the police roughly pulling his arms behind his back and handcuffing him, literally dragging him around on the gravel in the process, greatly worsened the bleeding into the lungs.
The issue here is the police’s automatic assumption that the white male is the one in the wrong. So the migrant family’s claim that “he done a racism!” is accepted as all important, while the white male, curled up on the ground and softly repeating “I’ve been stabbed”, is met with “I don’t think you have mate” from the police, as they arrest and handcuff him.
[Of course anyone making an issue of the police’s handling of this is currently being traduced by the UK media as “playing politics”, “stirring up division” and being “far right”; whereas anyone who made an issue of how the police treated, say, Stephen Lawrence, was hailed as a brave hero.]
Right. And those saying that it should not be politicized are the same ones who took the knee for Floyd and said that riots and looting (which included destroying and looting shops owned by Blacks) were justified. More and more people are seeing right-wing populist parties as the lesser evil compared to the woke “left” (which has practically nothing to do with the traditional left anymore). Unfortunately, there is little motivation for the “left” to reform as long as enough people say “mo matter what (rapists in women’s prisons, castration of minors, etc.) I’ll always vote left”, because that gives them carte blanche to become even more woke.
Yep. Thats the Frantz Fanon (representative) position that justifies Oct 7 as a justifiable feel good expression by the long-time oppressed against their oppressors. Terrible stuff, but do not know how to get some of my former liberal friends to sit down and have a discussion about it. It has become a religious (irrational) argument it seems.
“Terrible stuff, but do not know how to get some of my former liberal friends to sit down and have a discussion about it.”
At a recent social event with friends who are also professors at my cozy university, I did the experiment by expressing the most mild disappointment with the university’s DEI policies. One colleague who is also my neighbour called me an elitist (and probably a racist) who does not want oppressed people to succeed. He’s a big guy who climbed up on top of his chair to physically intimidate me with his view. I shut up so as not to make a bad scene worse for our hosts. Everyone else in the conversation suddenly took a keen interest in the patio flagging stones, but it was not clear whether those folks were embarrassed for me and my wrongthink or for my accuser and his white saviour complex. They may also have been embarrassed because they know my accuser is a wealthy owner of investment properties who by definition is a member of the elite 1%.
It was a pretty good metaphor for how this social dynamic works at scale: a small minority of vocal and hypocritical true believers embarrass or intimidate both those who agree with them and those who don’t.
One of the things I love about being retired is that I am beholden to no one for a job, social standing, financial security, etc. I exercise this superpower only now and then, but when I do I can cope with the insults, rejection, etc., knowing that whatever hurt feelings I experience will soon pass, with no practical consequences.
And yet, that the Jews, subjected to 1,400 years of oppression by the Arabs from the time of Mohammad, rising up to declare their own state and defending it and themselves very stoutly are declared Nazis, pariahs and illegitimate and their acts entirely indefensible. An insane inversion, and very obviously an expression of the Arabs’ belligerent self-pity as someone once wrote – I can’t remember who. I find it very difficult to understand but, then, I find religion difficult to understand too.
This was in reply to Jim Batterson at 8:07am.
It’s absurd that using a slur, allegedly, is treated as a violent crime that requires handcuffs. Not only the cop, but the whole British government should be fired for incompetence.
It’s not only the Brits (and Canadians).
Which is regarded as worse in the US: full-on assault and battery, or public use of the N-word?. I do not like racist language of any sort, but raising such language to the level of a violent crime is wrong.
I must say, however, that the story of the grooming gangs in Britain is far worse methanol anything else that i have heard outside of actual war.
When I was in high school, a White member of the basketball team, after some incident on the court, called a Black player a N-word, in the heat of the moment. This would have been the early ‘70s, and using that word would have been a social faux pas, so I am pretty sure he would not have done it normally. The result was that he was accompanied by a police officer for the remainder of his high school years (about 5 months, IIRC) for his own safety.
Those were tough times, when schools were “integrating” in my city. We used to say that race riots were one of our team sports. Luckily, being a nerd, I was not involved, as long as I did not trespass into the wrong territory (like the bathrooms).
Starwolf one of the things I’m most proud of as an immigrant, an American and a lawyer, is our 1st Amendment – it is the “master variable” downstream of which all freedom, human flourishing and even wealth exist.
So there’s always been an irony that – unlike in the rest of the Anglosphere, we Americans are so fanatical regarding the “N” word, and indeed nearly as badly: the “C” word.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
At the risk of stating the obvious. The police are protected from prosecution for their crimes. Always were. The only fear they have is contradicting the POLICY of the day, for which they can be disciplined. The civil servants wrote the policy most likely in such a way as to favour minorities by selectively applied, APPARENT incompetence. From the viewpoint of the police, there are probably DISCIPLINARY CONSEQUENCES for favouring a white person vs. a minority person – as long as it is NOT GROSSLY APPARENT that they favour the minority. That gives the politicians breathing room: they don’t face admitting that they made police FAVOUR minorities, yet they can turn around and say they are pro-minority – to the minorities.
To be fair, Digwa told police that Nowak punched him and pulled off his turban, in addition to calling him a “Paki.” The problem is that the police accepted these statements and ignored Nowak’s statements (and readily verifiable injuries) with no investigation whatsoever.
What do you mean “to be fair”? Do you think that even if Digwa said that stuff, which was untrue, it somehow mitigates his murder?
No. Absolutely not. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
DrBrydon said, “It’s absurd that using a slur, allegedly, is treated as a violent crime that requires handcuffs.” I felt that, “to be fair,” I should point out that Digwa alleged that Nowak had committed a violent crime.
Also that the slur — “Paki” — was pretty mild.
That is not why he was handcuffed. The police had been led to believe (by his murderer) he was violent and they attributed his state as being caused by drunkenness. They clearly made a horrendous error but the idea that he was handcuffed for a slur is false.
From Grok, which consulted several soures:.
That is the end of this discussion, I think. Unless you were in the heads of the coppers, you cannot say with certainty why he was handcuffed.
“This is the moral logic of white‑guilt[1] tribalism. It is not simply that some officers made bad decisions on a dark street in Southampton. It is that an entire moral order has taught them that accusations of racism carry an almost sacred weight, and that to question such an accusation is more dangerous than to doubt the word of a dying boy. In this order, whites are treated not as individuals but as a permanent defendant class, bearing a collective guilt that must be continually paid down.”
-Eli Steele
White Guilt Silenced Henry Nowak
https://x.com/hebro_steele/status/2062233044061442342?s=46
[1] See:
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
Harper Collins
2006
… which I only just got but is superb. I think Steele (both) are correct in identifying a distinct, intangible but real “moral order”.
One thing that has long puzzled me is how secular liberals objecting to the importation of the ultra-far-right ideology of Islam are themselves reflexively labelled “far right”. How did this happen? And how the heck do the media people doing this keep getting away with it?
There is no evidence of this. The police received a 999 call from Digwa’s brother claiming a racial attack. When they got to the scene, Digwa apparently sounded credible, giving them no reason to doubt the story. They just assumed Nowak was drunk. They should have done much better but there is no evidence that it was because Nowak was white and Digwa was non white.
Digwa is British. He is not a migrant.
And yes, people are playing politics without being in full possession of the facts. I don’t think they should do that.
Yes, Digwa is British and he is a person of color. There is no evidence that the police didn’t act partly because a person of color said they were “racially insulted”, either. I am also not sure whether there is evidence that the police were responsible for George Floyd’s murder because he was African-American. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
Nowak said that he had been stabbed. The officer said “I don’t think so, mate”, pulled his arms behind his back, and handcuffed him. That probably killed him in the sense that if he had received medical attention he coould probably have survived.
That the UK police are REQUIRED to be more lenient on people of colour is part of the official law. If someone says that he has been stabbed, and is obviously not a clear and present danger, not trying to verify that is criminal negligence.
Whether Digwa is technically a UK citizen or not is not the point, and everyone knows it. Nowak was also a migrant of sorts. It’s not about citizenship, it is about cultures which respect human life differently and two-tier policing.
I think it would still be better if there were no Pakistanis in Britain. Then there would be no 999 calls falsely alleging racial attacks, and no need for two-tier policing to mitigate “over-incarceration of racialized groups”, would there?
Immigration is good for a country only until they ruin it.
Sad news: Marjane Satrapi died at only 56. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/world/europe/marjane-satrapi-persepolis-death.html
This was very sad news.
Do not understand the surprise of people regarding the “60 Minutes” kerfuffle. Seems that Ellison wants to go in a different direction, putting Bari in place, as part of buying her company, to start the CBS ball rolling….which she is doing. It’s business by the autocrats/kleptocrats, jake.
Ellison needs federal approval for his planned takeover of Warner. Trump is known to hate “60 Minutes” and thus it must be changed, despite being the highest rated news show on network TV.
It’s disappointing that Bari Weiss is cooperating with this. I’ve not renewed my subscription to The Free Press.
From what I’ve read about l’affaire Pelley, it sounds like his behaviour and attitude justified his firing for cause.
Well, he was vigorously defending the traditional show, so I can see the new autocrats firing him, but in my view they should have not replaced the boss and much of the staff of that show.
Autocrats, schmautocrats. CBS is a business, not a democracy. The bosses set policy. The people who work under them follow that policy. If they disagree, they are free to leave. That’s what Bari Weiss did, and now she’s worth $150 million.
Since 60 Minutes was doing fine in ratings, and will probably lose viewers when it starts turning rightward (those who like Fox News already have it), CBS was hardly making a good business decision. Furthermore, people who work in the news and are serious about their job never regard it as just another business. Such an attitude lumps 60 Minutes with TMZ. Bari Weiss has obviously been drifting rightward; the idea that she’s just doing business is risible.
CBS News has a known leftward lean (see ratings by Allsides available online). Although I can’t say for certain that that applies specifically to 60 Minutes, that program is a product of that network. If CBS News is left-leaning, then shifting rightward to a more centrist (ie, fair) position would be a positive move—one that in the long-run would increase viewership. You are aware, aren’t you, that trust in the mainstream media is at its lowest point since the 1970s, precisely because the media is (correctly) perceived to be politically biased.
You insinuate (without evidence) (1) that 60 Minutes will turn rightward and become more like Fox News, (2) that this will cause a decline in viewership, (3) that Bari Weiss has “obviously” been drifting right, and (4) that she is so ideologically motivated that she will be willing to harm the news division she now runs. Talk about risible!
True. But given that Ellison’s motive is to please Trump so he’ll approve the purchase of Warner, I’m not impressed.
It’s the highest rated news show on TV. It just won 2 Emmy’s. This was not a decision based on profits. Nepo baby Ellison is playing with Daddy’s billions.
Bari Weiss is a disgrace.
The ratings on CBS’s other news shows are already at all time lows thanks to her meddling.
Casual observation suggests the correlation between Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Weiss Derangement Syndrome (WDS) is about 0.9.
Sorry Jay T, but no way is Bari a deranged sociopath like whats-his-name. IANA clinical psychologist, but I recognise the type.
The NYT excerpt incorrectly reported that Nowak was stabbed with with a “religious knife”. The video shows a picture of the actual murder weapon and indicates that the murderer was also wearing a religious knife called a Kirpan worn by Sikhs as part of their religious practice…
Oh, well, then….
As you were. Nothing to see here, folks. A white guy was killed. Move on.
I was just going to say the same thing. As an archaeologist we often characterize a weapon as ceremonial when it’s too ornate or proportions too outsized to be practical — for instance, certain Minoan double axe-heads or the famed Gebel el Arak knife (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife). Ceremonial Kirpans are legally carried in schools — including elementary schools — and workplaces but these are “usually” small and blunt. The perpetrator ALSO had a sharp, full size knife that was used in the stabbing. It does make one wonder, however, who is checking that the Kirpans carried into schools are blunted? Here’s more about the accommodations: https://www.sikhcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/kirpan-factsheet-aug2018.pdf
Mice there seems to be a special carve out in British (and some other Anglosphere) laws for Sikh ceremonial knives. And this has become a culture war issue, of course.
We miss the ball though. This guy (kicked out of his own Sikh temple, btw) was clearly a lone ranger maniac.
Herein the larger issue of concern, Islam, is totally lost unfortunately. Ironically, the Rotherham gangs specifically targeted white and Sikh girls.
Further, police reaction is the real issue IMHO.
best Mice,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
What is deeply concerning is that being a Sikh he is allowed by law to carry a lethal weapon like this but no one else can. Women are not allowed to carry pepper spray as a means of defense even against rape say. Is this fair?
Other points of concern include:
His mother hid the weapon
His brother called the police and not an ambulance.
The brothers lied and tried to justify their actions about something to do with their turbans flying off.
The family all stood around him and never helped.
Honestly this seems to be a clear example of death from racism. It is the logical conclusion to treating people differently according to their ethnicity.
Keir Starmer and all the other political fools readily bent the knee for a drug addict whilst saying justice needed to be done blah blah. For this poor boy they are saying we must remain calm. Why?
Andrew Doyle had a good piece on the Henry Nowak case yesterday (archive link https://archive.ph/Nc457 ). Re Scott Pelley, I read somewhere yesterday (can’t find the link now) that 60 Minutes has long declared themselves exempt from CBS management oversight, situating themselves in a separate building and demanding complete autonomy. So Pelley’s tantrum was not all that surprising, nor is the general resistance within the 60 Minutes team to push back against anything the new management wanted to do. I can’t speak to Bari Weiss’s management, obviously, but it sounds like the 60 Minutes crowd was going to throw tantrums over whoever showed up wanting to impose some oversight.
Found that other story I referenced re 60 Minutes: https://www.dailymail.com/media/article-15870743/scott-pelley-60-minutes-cbs-fired-exit.html
Doyle mentions the the Police Action Plan of 2022, but the plan was updated just last year. Did it course-correct from the ideology of equity and anti-racism (sic) that has so divisively poisoned The West? Nope.
“Our commitment to racial equity means
Producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different
ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according
to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with
understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing
harm.
It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’ (racial
equality)”
https://www.npcc.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/our-work/race-action-plan/police-anti-racism-commitment.pdf
I had to click — deterministically I had no choice — on the link to find out what newspaper would use the puerile construction “time and time again”. This is what naggers do, New York Times. Couldn’t you use your vast journalistic resources to provide us with an actual count of the number of times Congressional Republicans have ceded their claimed Constitutional powers to the President over this war?
As for the French oiseaux, the two vowel groups (and the two consonants) are pronounced exactly as they are supposed to be, in French. A French child learning to read would have no trouble decoding the word phonetically and uttering it as written. (Other than in liaison, the only terminal consonants normally pronounced are c, r, f, l, the common exception being -er, in which it is not, usually like é.) Spelling of spoken words can be a challenge, as in la Dictée, the contrived, notoriously difficult equivalent of a spelling bee, where zero is a pretty good score. Nonetheless, French has only a few homonyms with different meaning, such as sur and sûr, which context will resolve.
Finally, I’m enjoying the TherionArms series of illustrated letters. Please feel encouraged to continue it. I like to think how much each one cost the mediaeval customer, like having the first colour TV on the block.
French has a huge number of homonyms, probably more than English.
I wasn’t counting gender inflections of adjectives and participles like joli and jolie, descendu and descendue, né and née. The English homonyms that bedevil us are the nouns, which don’t have part-of-speech to distinguish, in the way that la and là, des and dès, help us. The words in those pairs aren’t pronounced exactly the same, btw.
Anyway, I was just recalling my impression from learning French about six years after I learned to read English as a pre-schooler. Maybe you don’t notice homonyms so much after you have already learned your letters and phonics. French has, I still say, less opportunity to make homonyms because vowels are less degenerate — most sounds can be made with only one vowel or combination; doe and dough* don’t exist and “veux” and “vieux” sound different, as do “soeur” and “sur”, “chevaux” and “cheveux”. Consonants are nearly always pronounced (though not always exactly like in English), except terminally, where yes, knowing what consonant was left unpronounced can be a challenge. “Forêt” and “fores” would be homonyms, but I just made up “fores”.
My struggle with long-decayed conversational French is decoding even unique words rapidly enough to keep up, never mind distinguishing between homonyms. If I hear “vyay” (sort of — it could be “vyay-yuh” in Provence) it takes me too long to recognize it as “veille” (feminine of old.). And hearing “wahzoh” is a stretch for an Anglo to get “oiseaux”, which unlocks the meaning.
(* The homonyms make English phonics difficult to learn. Because dough sounds like doe, it makes it hard to make a rule for -ough, which can also sound like enough, through, and bough. And “blow” rhymes with “doe”, but “now” doesn’t. I don’t see this in French.)
https://laughingsquid.com/absurd-french-phrase/
Touché.
That sentence would be on a dictée/i> for sure. I’m surprised he didn’t work in vair, the winter fur of the red squirrel. Some killjoys think Cinderella’s “glass” slipper was really squirrel fur. After all, the Fairy Godmother enlisted several other rodents in the garden to get Cinderella to the ball.
Glad you brought up the Kuwaiti thing:
Let’s talk about Iraq’s “19th Province” formerly known as Kuwait.
hahaha. Just kidding.
Remember that? When the US and dozens of countries kicked the Iraqi monsters out of their tiny, wealthy, sweaty Sultanate ?
And yet, Kuwaitis a few years ago STOPPED FLYING TO AMERICA b/c they couldn’t resist their urge to kick Jews off their flights.
Now they got no flights!
But the UAE does! I’ve seem Orthodox Jews, hats from my hometown, on Emirates flights. B/c the UAE knows how to pick its friends. Consequently while attacked the most, the Emiratis have been kept much safer thanks to Israeli tech.
But I’m sure the Kuwaitis will enjoy their tussle with the Iranian orcs. Good luck to them.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Orcs? How dare you!
They’re Morlocks. Green and red subterranean murderers from a Time Machine.
Re. that wood duckling raised by a screech owl, it’s not directly analogous since the duckling was still an egg when it started under the owl, but recently a page called The Lonely Camp has started showing up in my FB feed. They post on interesting conservation-related things, and seem legit – all posts are referenced.
Yesterday there was one about a bear biologist who tries to rescue orphaned cubs. An orphan placed in a den with a hibernating mother with other cubs results in the orphan being accepted by the surrogate when she comes out of hibernation, but place an orphan outside the den of a mother who’d just sleeping, and the sow will kill the cub. What to do? He sedated the mother and smeared Vicks Vapo Rub on her nose(!), overpowering her olfactory senses, and she accepted the cub on coming-to. Smearing VVR on the cub had the same effect – she couldn’t detect any not-mine bear scent!
To find the piece, enter The Lonely Camp in your FB search box. Should be easy to find. Pic with it is of a bear with cubs in a den.
No justice, no peace:
“The UK’s police watchdog (IOPC) stated there is no evidence the officers acted improperly, and cleared them of any misconduct.”
Please don’t accept the New York Times’s version of L’Affaire Pelley as complete or balanced!
Weiss hired Bilton to head 60 Minutes. Bilton held his first staff meeting, which Pelley used as a bully pulpit to insult both Weiss and Bilton as unqualified and to accuse Weiss of “murdering” the show. Bilton (with unnamed others) then had a private meeting with Pelley, basically giving him one last chance, at which Pelley continued to be insubordinate. Meanwhile, all of this went public. I don’t think Weiss and Bilton had any choice, really.
Yes, I said that in the comments.
This is a pretty accurate account of the 60 minutes saga:
https://babylonbee.com/news/60-minutes-begins-search-for-new-pompous-blowhard