Welcome to a Hump Day (“Ghjornu di a Gobba” in Corsican): Wednesday, July 22, 2026, and National Mango Day, celebrating my favorite fruit. I have visited India quite a few times, but my biggest regret is that I’ve never gone in the summer, which is mango season (the photo below shows a small selection of the varieities available). It’s bloody hot then, and I haven’t been willing to trade off eating mangos for being broiled.
It’s mango season in Pakistan, which is said to produce the world’s best mangos. This man is trying the King of Mangos (note that they’re expensive!):
It’s also National BLT Sandwich Day, National Penuche Fudge Day, and Pi Approximation Day (The date written the European way is 22/7, which is an approximation of pi: 3.1428. . .)
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 22 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Ripped from today’s headlines:
*The Trump administration is now going to allow Saudi Arabia to make nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration plans to announce Wednesday that it has reached a broad nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that could lead to the country enriching its own fuel for nuclear reactors, U.S. officials said.
The accord is intended to further bind the United States with the Saudi government as the war with Iran strains the relationship. The Trump administration, according to officials, estimates it will provide billions of dollars for the U.S. nuclear industry — starting with Westinghouse, which designs many of the reactors sold abroad.
The Trump administration plans to formally sign and announce the agreement with the Saudis on Wednesday, said two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It would announce the details to Congress soon afterward.
Although the agreement likely would have support among many Republicans, some U.S. lawmakers from both parties along with Israeli officials have expressed opposition to such a plan, fearing that the kingdom could use a civilian nuclear project to eventually develop nuclear weapons.
What’s the point? To keep Iran at bay? I don’t think so.
*And the Houthis are threatening to block the Red Sea passage.
If the Houthis make good on their threat to blockade ships traveling to and from Saudi Arabia via the Red Sea, it would yet again upend global oil markets by compromising a crucial fallback for the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the early weeks of the war with Iran, Saudi Arabia has been relying on a pipeline that bisects the country to reroute millions of barrels of oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.
Most of that oil gets to market via the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen and near territory controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia. A smaller portion goes north to the Mediterranean Sea, via a pipeline that crosses Egypt or, in the case of oil-derived fuel, via the Suez Canal.
Any disruption to those alternatives would further restrict the supply of oil and fuels to a market rattled by renewed attacks on vessels in the Persian Gulf. The threats already appear to be having an impact. Two oil tankers, the Rodos and the Xin Long Yang, that were headed toward the Bab al-Mandab made U-turns on Tuesday, according to the maritime data firm Kpler.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia showing the chokepoint. The article adds, “The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 26 kilometres (14 nautical miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments.”
*The NYT has finally published an op-ed (by Omar Bartov) declaring the Israeli attack on Gaza a “genocide.”
In the earlier case of genocides that “succeeded” because of impunity at the time or the absence of subsequent accountability, the perpetrator state went on to benefit from its criminal actions. The invention and codification of the concept of genocide after World War II was meant to prevent the persistence of this dynamic of impunity and profit.
What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.
It is a future in which other nations or leaders may have an incentive to pursue genocidal policies knowing they will not only get away with murder but may even benefit from it. It is a future in which the countries and international organizations that had been committed to stopping and punishing genocide may give license to its recurrence.
Since the current cease-fire in Gaza went into effect on Oct. 10, and President Trump’s 20-point plan was endorsed by the Security Council on Nov. 17, more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli attacks. The military now controls nearly 70 percent of the Strip. Two million Palestinians, who had previously lived in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, are now confined to a third of it, trying to survive in devastated spaces lacking the most basic humanitarian infrastructure.
. . . Israel is unlikely to face a reckoning for its actions. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as for a Hamas official, who turned out to have been killed. The United States has tried to undermine the court, and Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly visited the White House to, among other things, try to reportedly persuade Mr. Trump to launch his attack on Iran. Israel may eventually be found guilty of genocide by the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has lodged a separate case against Israel, but the implications of such a ruling are unclear as long as Israel retains U.S. support on the U.N. Security Council, which acts as the enforcement arm of the I.C.J.
. . . Some may argue that the case of Gaza is singular because Israel enjoys a unique international position thanks to its tight alliance with the United States and its reliance on the legacy of the Holocaust. Perhaps other states cannot expect to be rewarded and may even be punished for genocide. Yet what we are seeing today sets an extraordinary precedent, one that has the potential of undermining the entire premise of genocide as a crime punishable under post-World War II international law.
Two points here. Bartov mentions Hamas only twice, one in the third sentence of this extract (and in the whole article). There is no criticism of Hamas, nor any recognition that its attack on October 7 was intended to begin a real genocide. The original Hamas Charter of 1988 explicitly calls for the killing of Jews, and while the later 2017 charter has effaced the antsemitism, it’s still antizionist, calls for a Palestinian state from the “river to the sea” and does not recognize the state of Israel. It now uses the words “Zionist” and “Zionism”, but nobody’s fooled by that. Palestinian children are still taught to kill Jews and become martyrs, and the PA still has its “Martyr’s Fund” to reward Palestinians jailed for killing or attacking Jews. Does Bartov not recognize the explicit genocidal intent of Hamas?
Second, what did Bartov want Israel to do in the face of repeated terrorist attacks on Israel culimating on the October 7 massacre? Did he expect the Israeli army to go into Gaza, shoot a few bullets at Hamas without harming the populace in which they were embedded, and then withdraw? What would he have done to stop the terrorism?
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal says that Iran’s nuclear program is “buried but not dead.” And the WSJ has an exclusive called “Israel believes Iran moved nuclear centrifuges into PickAxe Mountain“.
t’s Tuesday, July 21, and buried at least 100 meters deep beneath a mountain near the city of Natanz lies a critical piece of Tehran’s nuclear program. But it isn’t enriched uranium that makes Pickaxe Mountain the stuff of Israeli nightmares.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Israeli intelligence has determined that Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep within the mountain last fall, following the 12-day war in June. If accurate, this represents a significant acceleration of Iran’s path to reviving its nuclear program—one that both the U.S. and Israel believed was effectively dead and buried.
Pickaxe Mountain has been under construction since the fall of 2020. At the time, Iran claimed the underground halls would replace the destroyed above-ground centrifuge assembly facility at Natanz’s main site, which was severely damaged in an explosion widely suspected to have been an act of sabotage. Iran describes the facility publicly as a centrifuge assembly plant. Israeli intelligence, however, indicates the purpose is far more ambitious: The site is believed capable of supporting not just assembly operations but limited uranium enrichment.
Over the past 15 months, satellite imagery has documented steady activity: truck traffic, tunnel reinforcements, and expanding security perimeters. The assumption had been that U.S. overflights and the implicit threat of precision strikes would deter Iran from restarting its nuclear program—but that calculation appears to have been wrong. The facility was not targeted during last year’s Israel-Iran war, nor has it been struck during the current round of U.S.-Iran fighting, either because operators assessed that bombs would have minimal effect or because the site remained under construction. But that calculus may now be shifting.
Last week, Donald Trump broke his public silence on Pickaxe Mountain. “Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” Trump said.
. . . and from the WSJ’s similar report:
Known as Mount Kolang in Iran, Pickaxe has been under surveillance by the U.S. and Israel for years, and what little is known about Iran’s activities at the site suggests it would present challenges to any airstrikes. Located near one of Iran’s main nuclear installations, Pickaxe was commissioned as an underground replacement for an Iranian centrifuge-assembly facility that was badly damaged after a 2020 explosion, which might have been an act of sabotage.
Activity has continued there steadily for the past 15 months, with truck traffic, tunnel reinforcements and a security perimeter springing up, said the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank on nuclear and nonproliferation issues. There was also work around an older tunnel network that dates from 2007, which Iran has since sealed up.
“It is plausible that Iran moved centrifuges into the tunnels” in Pickaxe, said David Albright, the institute’s president.
Experts estimate that the subterranean complex reaches 300 to 450 feet deep beneath solid rock, with enough room to accommodate several nuclear-related facilities.
It still amazes me that any sentient being thinks that Iran will obey an agreement to not construct nuclear weapons. That is its overweening task, and if it agrees to abandon the drive for nukes, it is lying. And, of all people, Trump seems to believe it, too. If he was serious in saying that no agreement to end hostilities can be made without Iran promising to never make nuclear weapons, he was deluded. Besides, we’ll have a new President in 2029, and all bets are off.
*Jake Altman tells all in the Free Press: “I was in the DSA. Here’s what they really believe.” (DSA is the party Democratic Socialists of America.) I’ll bite:
I was a member of the DSA from the 2010s until 2022. During that time, I witnessed a rise in extremism, ranging from an eagerness to collaborate with Leninist groups to a growing animosity toward the U.S. and the West. My final departure was prompted by a DSA statement that attributed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to American “imperialist expansionism.”
So what does the DSA stand for? An answer to that question arrived last week in the form of a new platform. Among the DSA’s core aims are ending the presidency and Supreme Court. Abolishing prisons. Universal free housing. The elimination of all debt. Closing all U.S. military bases overseas. Lifting all sanctions from Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. And so much more.
“Workers Deserve More!”—the title of the new platform—is meant to present a friendlier face to the world and overcome the radical reputation the organization has developed in many corners of the public. That makes it even more remarkable that the document is still so radical on its face. It advocates the elimination of capitalism, not a thick layer of redistribution on top of the current economy. It prompts readers to imagine a world where the profit motive has been squelched out of existence. “You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded.” It goes on to promise open borders, the abolition of the police, “free” everything, and guaranteed jobs, all with less effort from the individual. This is the stuff of fairy tales, but instead of a fairy godmother, the reader is greeted by an agent of the secret police.
. . .Crucially, DSA’s foreign policy positions ignore America’s enemies: While DSA targets U.S. and Israeli leadership for prosecution, the platform is silent on the actual atrocities committed by the Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan, and Chinese regimes. In early 2019, when I argued that the DSA should denounce the Nicolàs Maduro regime for mass persecution, abuse, torture, and murder, a local leader told me that to advocate against the Maduro administration would be to play into U.S. war propaganda.
It is always the U.S.—so-called American imperialism—that comes in for the harshest criticism while America’s authoritarian enemies get apologia. For the DSA, the world’s most authoritarian regimes deserve political cover. DSA blamed NATO and Western “imperialist expansionism” for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. October 7, 2023, the DSA first expressed its solidarity with Palestine and then laid the blame for Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel. After the Maduro regime brutalized and murdered its opponents, DSA members were happy to visit him and celebrate his regime. Meanwhile, the West is expected to dismantle its military capabilities.
Part of the DSA program is an attack on the forces of law and order. The DSA continues to push for police and ICE abolition while simultaneously establishing what sounds like a paramilitary wing. The DSA has formed a group called the Red Rabbits to prepare for a “national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.” So it’s a paramilitary force for the DSA, but no protection for the rest of us.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and dare I say comrades?: this is what the mayor of NYC wants, along with AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders (the former two card-carrying DSA Congresswomen, and Bernie a running dog. Some day, when AOC tries to realize her ambition of becoming a Senator, or even President, this will come back to haunt her. Well, it should.
Read the platform for yourself (it’s short) and see if you want to live in an America like that.
*More ideological corruption in publishing: the Times of Israel reports that a U.S. publisher refused to publish a book, Cartoonists Against the Holocaust, containing 150 political cartoons published in the U.S. during the Nazi era, unless the author let the publisher add an anti-Israel statement. This is unbelievable.
A US publisher canceled a book about the Holocaust because the author refused to add text denouncing Israel to the book, the StandWithUS advocacy group said this week.
Dark Horse Comics was scheduled to publish the book, “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust,” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, this summer, but informed the author’s team last month that publication had been canceled.
The book uses 150 editorial cartoons that had been printed in US newspapers in the Nazi era, alongside commentary from Medoff, to show what Americans knew about the Holocaust at the time.
An editor at Dark Horse last year told Medoff that he would add a statement to the book accusing US President Donald Trump of “attempting to create concentration camp-style prisons,” among other offenses, according to correspondence shared by StandWithUs.
The proposed addition also included a paragraph condemning Israel.
Get a load of this “addition”:
In a response emailed to the editor, Medoff pushed back against “politicizing our book” and called the claims “factually inaccurate.”
The email also said that, during a phone conversation, the editor had demanded Medoff accuse Israel of genocide in the book’s introduction to prevent people from getting “mad.”
Medoff said the editor’s proposals amounted to minimizing the Nazi genocide and Holocaust inversion.
“What you are saying, in plain English, is that the Jews were victims of the Holocaust and now the Jews are committing another Holocaust,” Medoff wrote. “I understand it has become fashionable in certain circles today to accuse Israel of mass murder. But being fashionable is not the same as being right.”
More of the same—every damn day. Here the publisher wanted to establish purity by damning Israel, in a book that was about the Holocaust in WWII. Relevant? No. Shameful? Certainly.
*On Saturday a Scottish runner, Josh Kerr, broke the men’s record for running the mile; the old record had stood for 27 years (the mile is not an international event, but is still an iconic distance).
Scottish middle-distance runner Josh Kerr became the fastest man in world history over four laps on Saturday, clocking 3:42.66 to break a world record set 27 years ago by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.
The historic run at the London Diamond League fulfilled Kerr’s season-long Project 222 quest, so named for the number of seconds required to break 3:43.13, the standard set by El Guerrouj in 1999 at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, the site of his still-standing world record of 3:26.00 in the 1500 meters set a year prior. Prior to this race, Kerr was the sixth-fastest man in world history with a personal best of 3:45.34.
Kerr’s Brooks Beast teammate Brannon Kidder of the United States and Zan Rudolf of Slovenia paced the attempt with splits of 54.75 and 1:50.63. With a lap and a half to go, Rudolf stepped off the track and it was up to Kerr, who led American Yared Nuguse and Germany’s Robert Farken through 1200 meters in 2:46.39 with a quarter-mile split of 55.76. The final result was never in contest as the Brit powered home in a new world record. Nuguse finished a well-beaten second in 3:45.69, a season’s best.
. , ,Kerr has built a reputation as one of the most confident middle-distance runners in the world. On Saturday, he said he relied on the pacemakers to carry him through.
“The best analogy we worked with today was that my two pacemakers set the tone, the river,” Kerr said to FloTrack. “They set the stream and all I had to do sit in that water for as long as I could, follow it, and not fight it. I said I wasn’t on a chase today. I was flowing with the conditions that were set and I just needed to not slow down.”
It took year to shave off half a second from the previous record. Of course there is a physiological limit to how fast it can be run: humans cannot run a mile in ten seconds but they can in 3:43. And the time is reaching an asymptote, though we don’t know what it is. .
Here’s the record run:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is lording it over Kulka (Hili hates Kulka but Szaron doesn’t mind her):
Szaron: Kulka is right below you.
Hili: Everyone ought to know their place.
In Polish:
Szaron: Pod tobą siedzi Kulka.
Hili: Każdy powinien znać swoje miejsce.
*******************
From Addicted to Ducks. And this is true, too! In French, for example, duck noises are “kwan kwan” (IPA: /kwɛ̃/), with the vowel nasal.
From Beth:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From the Free Press via Masih: two young Iranians just executed for sheltering protestors. The regime continues to kill left and right, but “regime change” is not on Trump’s agenda:
Two Iranian teenagers were just executed for opening their doors to fleeing protesters. They are only the latest victims of a regime that uses the world’s distractions to carry out mass killing, writes Masih Alinejad. https://t.co/2OabCNqUqL
— The Free Press (@TheFP) July 21, 2026
Larry caught a mouse! But after all, he is the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. I think this is his second mouse ever.
No harm in showing the new boy that I’m an asset https://t.co/TynFehhv1E
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) July 21, 2026
And Larry’s catch made big news!
Photo du Jour: Members of the press photograph a dead mouse caught by Larry the Downing St cat (left). By Stefan Rousseau/PA pic.twitter.com/2TrY1OFJh8
— Stefan Rousseau (@StefanRousseau) July 21, 2026
From Luana; disproportionality in a “studies” department:
Penn State has 42,000 undergrads. Exactly 10 graduated in women’s, gender & sexuality studies (WGSS) in 2023–24. The department lists 28 professors.
The “studies” department racket is real: every department combined—area, cultural, gender, black, Asian, Native American,…
— Brandon Fuller (@fuller_brandon) July 20, 2026
One from my feed; a lovely baby otter and its mom:
The embrace between Sea Otters and their babies is one of the most tender behaviours in the animal kingdom.
The mothers hug them against their bellies to keep them warm, groom them, and prevent the current from carrying them away.#WildlifePhotography #Otters 🦦
🎦 Credit:… pic.twitter.com/6ESIjciwf6
— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) July 21, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was eight years old. https://t.co/VTHrFrj4AK
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 22, 2026
Two from Doc Cobb. He posted this one about a man part of whose job is to remove knobs from the Tour de France course. He’s been doing it for 15 years!
The guy who artfully removes the knobs from the Tour de France roads so TV viewers will not be shocked by infantile graffiti.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T11:39:44.961Z
And a “fossilized” keyboard. Proof that the Earth is less than 50 years old!
The famous fossilised keyboard in Norwich
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T08:08:55.375Z
We have a new Cabinet in the UK. None of them has any background in science or technology (only 1 studied science as an undergraduate). None of them has any real experience in business or wealth generation.
Typically they studied arts/humanities degrees as undergrads, got involved in student politics, became assistants to MPs, then became MPs, and now cabinet ministers. Where they do have any wider experience, it’s usually with charities or NGOs (that is, spending money and activism, not creating things or generating wealth). There’s more or less nobody who has had any notable track record or success outside politics.
I read ‘only 1 studied science as an undergraduate’ as ‘only I studied science as an undergraduate’ and thought for a few seconds that you were in the cabinet. Smart people who want to serve in government don’t waste their time studying science!
😀 So, for example, the new Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Science studied politics as an undergrad, then trained as a solicitor for a while, before becoming an assistant to an MP and then an MP. So no background at all in any of Business, Innovation or Science. 🫨
If you want to be a politician, or an advisor. To politicians, why would you study science? Science degrees require far more work than degrees in the humanities or social sciences, and much of the work involves quantitative subjects. Why put yourself through all that when you could be making connections, joining student political organizations, virtue-signaling, and all the other things that a student is supposed to do—having fun?
The skills that one acquires with a science degree are not really very useful in today’s political world. there are very few positions for a C.P.Snow or a Vannevar Bush, and their opinions would not count for much anyway. It is more useful for a politican’s office to hire a Gender Studies graduate than a graduate in Physics or Biology: employing the latter won’t bring in many votes.
Of all people, it is humanities majors who should know that Plato’s Ship of State is a warning not a guidebook. Alas….
Sal Mercogiano has a good 20-minute video summary of the current situation for shipping in both straits this morning. He has had an inside joke for some time about taking a drink every time he mentions the Bab al Mandab, so do not be distracted by an occasional “cheers”. But I think he lays out the confusing and dire situation for cargo and in particular the merchant mariners that are on these ships. His “whats going on with shipping?”, Guardians of the Strait of Hormuz edition should be at url
Yes, letting Saudi Arabia have nukes is not a good idea. On the other hand, it’s about time they used their army and dealt with the Houthis.
I agree. They’re not much of an improvement on Iran, although the current leader (a hereditary prince) is making some vague modernization efforts.
Also, I don’t think the government funds terrorist groups all across the Middle East. But their austere version of Islam inspired 9/11.
I also love mangoes, but I learned a harsh lesson about them years ago. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, I got invited to a soccer game, where some kid was walking around with a basket of mangoes, so I bought one, peeled it and ate it while watching the game. It was delicious, of course, but in due course I had the worst itchy rash all over my chin and neck. Turns out the sap has an ingredient in it that can cause a poison ivy-like reaction in some people. Who knew? I still eat mango, but only after it’s been cut up.
I’m allergic to mangoes too (see my comment below). Lucky us. I first learned that when I helped a neighbor peel a whole basketful of the things. Since it was such a messy job, I wore a skimpy two-piece bathing suit, got juice all over my skin, and developed a horrid, itchy, whole-body rash afterwards.
Since you like mangos, you might want to try marinating – or maybe the word is pickling – mango pieces in soy sauce. My neighbor’s family loved them that way.
I have the same problem, which developed late in life after I had a bad reaction to a local Ecuadorian poison ivy tree. You ask “Who knew?” Well, it actually does make perfect sense, since mangoes are in the same plant family as poison ivy. The family Anacardiaceae. Be careful of other members of that family!
Benny Morris has a very good article about Omer Bartov on Quillette:
https://quillette.com/2026/07/20/omer-bartov-what-went-wrong/
Regarding Israel’s war against Hamas: One wonders what any other country would do if it’s civilians were attacked as were ours on 7 October, with an enemy promising to do the same again if given the opportunity, and openly saying that the goal was to eradicate Israel. Begin with the fact that many people were accusing Israel of genocide prior to the Israeli response. And given the shrillness of those people, as well as the large Muslim population in many democracies, politicians have climbed aboard the bandwagon accusing Israel of the worst crimes against humanity—all the while ignoring far worse crimes committed by Israel’s enemies.
I am no supporter of the current Israeli government. But any other leader would have also sent the IDF against Hamas. The major difference is that any other government would have laid calculated a strategy for the day after in Gaza—Bibi, because of political difficulties, has feared to do so, leaving people ordinarily sympathetic to Israel wondering just what Israel means to do.
It is easy for certain politicians to attack Israel. After all, it is far easier to attack Israel than to deal with their own local problems—the ones that they were elected, or trying to be elected, to solve. Mamdani and El-Sayed are just two examples. And given the shrillness of the “free Palestine” crowd, it is somewhat of a litmus test for Democratic candidates to join in. While there are exceptions, of course, that seems to be the rule for the Democratic Party these days. The nepo-baby perpetual student socialists are trying to take over the entire party, and they may well succeed. And then they can continue to fight the good fight against Jews (and Western liberalism) from the comfort of Manhattan, Seattle, Denver, and San Antonio.
Hear hear.
San Antonio ???
Maureen Galindo did not come out of nowhere.
I mentioned Seattle, San Antonio, and Denver because they are places that I love, and that I know are still populated by sensible people, despite some of the candidates that their more progressive citizens support.
I thought that you might have confused San Antonio with Austin, which is a well known Left haven in a Red state.
Low enriched Uranium (1-3% U-235) can be used to run power reactors (and is in the US and elsewhere) and can not be used to make bombs. High enriched Uranium (60-90% U-235) can be used to make bombs and run research reactors and produce medical radioisotopes. IAEA inspectors are aware of both and check for both. If the Saudi program only produces low-enriched Uranium, little harm will come of it. Iran has produced bomb-grade Uranium for purposes they claim are benign. I don’t believe them.
Note that Uranium enrichment (for non-military purposes) occurs all over the world (Europe, the US, the FSU, etc.). Indeed, the modern process (centrifuges) was actually developed by German engineers working in the FSU. The same process is also used to produce bomb grade Uranium. The Gas Diffusion process (pioneered by the US) is obsolete.
“Iran has produced bomb grade uranium for purposes they claim are benign”
There are ZERO benign purposes for uranium enriched over 25 or 30 percent. If the Iranians think they have a benign purpose for uranium enriched over 60%, they really should tell the world exactly what it is. Nuclear scientists and engineers all over the world would be interested to hear about it.
Most modern reactor designs only require a couple percent enrichment. Some older designs require as much as 25 to 30%, but not more and, indeed, can’t work with fuel that is more highly enriched. Only very small nuclear reactors such as the ones on nuclear submarines and ships are sometimes designed to run on weapons grade uranium.
In the US, bomb grade Uranium has been use for university research and training reactors. See “Uranium Reactors on Campus Raise Security Concerns” (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/us/uranium-reactors-on-campus-raise-security-concerns.html).
There maybe few graduates in some Humanities department, but the main issue is not how many students graduate with a major in these area, but how many students take courses there. Area studies educate a huge amount of students who take foreign languages, study abroad, etc. One cannot say the same for gender/various ethnic studies.
Since I grew up in Hawaii, I have a lot of feelings about mangos. Unfortunately, none of them are good. This is due to two things: one, everyone had a mango tree in their yards, and two, as a kid and a teenager, I was always barefoot and spent half my waking hours in a bathing suit. Consequently, during fruiting season – and boy, do those trees produce! – I couldn’t help but step on the ooey gooey guts of the rotting fruit where it lay on the ground or, even worse, making accidental contact with the sap, which I’m as allergic to as poison ivy. And to top it all off, I don’t even like the way they taste.
Anyway, enough with hating on mangos. Let’s hate on Jews instead. God, human beings are a dismal species. Maybe the aliens in Bugonia had the right idea.
Underlying the genocide charge discussed above is an exploding antisemitism that has taken on a life of its own. The latest manifestation is in the form of a never ending list of “charges.” You’ll hear and read these charges over and over, often several of them in the same sentence.
—The genocide charge being applied to Israel, rather than to Hamas.
—The colonialist charge being applied to the anti-colonialist project of restoring an indigenous people to its ancestral homeland.
—The apartheid charge being applied to the only democratic, multicultural, society in the entire Middle East.
—The hidden power charge being applied to Jewish lobbying organizations behaving no differently than any other interest group.
—The redefinition of Zionism from the Jewish movement for self-determination to a sneer that connotes pure evil.
—The lie that none of this is antisemitism, that these charges are just “policy disputes.”
Modern Jew hatred rarely manifests explicitly. Rather, it has condensed around a socially sanctioned series of “charges.” As so many have said and written, antisemitism morphs to meet the times. How long will this list of “charges” become?
And what can we do about it?
And what can we do about it?
We can get rid of the regimes in Iran and Qatar, that’s what.
The explosion in global antisemitism is not homegrown – it is the fruit of a decades-long program of manipulative propaganda across all social media and academia generated and financed by the very deep pockets of Islamists and their allies, all aligned with anti-Western agendas.
And the fact that on October 8th organized protests exploded across the world with pre-printed placards and unified messaging proves this.
That would be a good start.
Iran is a root of so many of these problems. It’s very disappointing that the regime is holding on so tenaciously.
Qatar and al-Jazeera are pretty bad too.
“The explosion in global antisemitism is not homegrown – it is the fruit of a decades-long program of manipulative propaganda . . .”
I’m hesitant to hand the Jew haters a “devil made me do it” escape. Your point is not without merit, as long as we clarify that Iranian and Qatari propaganda efforts amplified grassroots antisemitism. They stoked a fire already burning. The simplistic oppressor/oppressed dynamic that flowed out of Western universities in recent decades and into a subset of our simultaneously overeducated and underthinking population would have been sufficient on its own, especially given the centuries-long backdrop of antisemitism in our societies. And no additional propaganda efforts were needed in many Muslim countries.
That said, while I have no qualms about expressing sneering disgust toward the Jew haters, I think the propaganda efforts in the West succeed most in those whose emotions lead their sense. Some of them are my friends and family. They are not antisemites, but they do lazily glom onto terms like “genocide” and “war crimes” when they see pictures of dead children. Perhaps you think it is these people who account for the “explosion.” My concern, however, even with this group, is the growing tendency for dislike of the Israeli government to morph into an unfavorable view of the Israeli people.
And when people advocate policies that would amount to civilizational suicide, does it really matter whether they are prompted by rabid hatred of Jews (whites, colonizers, supremacists, the rich, etc.) or are simply misguided bleeding hearts? They must be opposed.
I consider “the simplistic oppressor/oppressed dynamic that flowed out of Western universities in recent decades…” to be part of the propaganda effort of Islamism.
While we can not know how much money Qatar alone has spent subverting academia at the collegiate and K-12 level, it is documented that they have spent at least $9 billion dollars toward that end, and experts at the ME Forum who track this sort of thing think it may be an order of magnitude higher.
It is not a simple financial calculation for Qatar. Their ruling families have all taken a solemn religious vow of the highest order to accomplish that mission. Their total wealth, like the Saudis, is, believe it or not, not actually known.
The oppressor/oppressed lens was already well developed in Western academia in the 1970s and 80s. It emerged from Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and various strands of postmodern thought, all Western intellectual products that predate Qatari funding by decades. So did the rise of activist “studies” departments that substituted ideology for knowledge.
I fully accept that foreign money has turbocharged this noxious environment, but in following the money, you mistake exploiter for source. Ultimate responsibility is much closer to home, among many of our colleagues, families, friends, and neighbors—both as instigators and enablers. If only it were so easy to blame sheikhs in the sand.
I am not saying your position lacks value, Roger. But in leaning so heavily into the Islamist funding side, I think you let secular Western intellectuals off the hook as passive victims rather than as active agents who helped create this toxic brew. In doing so, you don’t wrestle with the deeper, homegrown problems in our institutions.
The US in WWII used several other processes to produce enriched Uranium. The US used a process called ‘thermal diffusion’ to produce (in large quantities) 20% enriched Uranium. The US also used calutrons (giant mass spectrometers) to produce bomb-grade Uranium. Saddam (apparently) tried to use the same approach. A book (‘The Girls of Atomic City’) was written about this.
There is a rumor the Israel has developed yet another approach to enriching Uranium. Supposedly, Israel has perfected laser enrichment. It is not clear to me, if this is true.
Of course, Plutonium is an alternative to highly enriched Uranium. Any number of countries (the US, the FSU, N. Korea, Israel, etc.) have produced Plutonium.
Don’t get me started on Tritium. A big subject, in its own right.
Just read the DSA platform. The language of “workers” is creepily reminiscent of the Soviet state. One thing I never see addressed is innovation. Without incentives, who will step forward to innovate, for example, to take the risk to develop new drug for cancer? If incentives aren’t monetary, what are they? A larger living space? Better food? A boat? (Oops. Can’t have that.)
How would the socialist life ever be anything more than subsistence, a kind of gray stagnation?
AIUI, after enough time living under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a New Soviet Man would emerge with different motivations than the greedy Capitalists.
They really should have tried a proof-of-concept pilot project first.
LOL. Maybe the incentive for innovation can be medals of commendation. Have you even seen how those Soviet-era military officers are weighed down with all that brass? They can barely support their own weight.
But then again, there have been pilot projects, no? 🙂
Of course the problem with medals (in addition to the weight 🙂) is that they are a fiat currency, so medal inflation seems an attractive solution to current problems, eventually making them valueless. “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” AIUI, foreign tourists were offered medals for sale very cheaply.
Current Western versions of this are where everyone must get prizes, high grades, etc. etc. It doesn’t end well. 🎶🎶 “When every one is somebody / Then no one’s anybody.” (G&S, The Gondoliers)
The questions I have after reading the DSA platform is, “Where does the money to do all this come from?” How they plan to eliminate the current offices of President and the Supreme Court and replace with congressionally-chosen executive and judiciary is also a big question. Overall, it’s childish platform.
However, if we end up with an AOC + DSA VP 2028 Democratic ticket, so-called moderate Ds who are today complaining about the DSA will still pull the blue lever, unless it’s a meaningless vote in a hard blue state. People will jump through all sorts of mental hoops to justify why the DSA platform is better than the horrors that they think will occur if an R wins. The ironic thing is that the DSA knows this and has expressly stated that they’re only working through the Democratic party as a means to obtain power.
If it’s Rubio vs DSA anywhere on the ticket, I think it will be the end of the DSA and the end of this incarnation of the Democratic Party as well. The DNC will be where the Republicans were after Goldwater.
The European way of writing dates could also be called the common way or the unexceptional way. The three exceptions are the US, the Philippines, and Belize; Canada is ambivalent 🙂.
Kerr’s record is amazing! I didn’t realize that the record was so far below 4 minutes.
Several people have commented about Qatar funding universities to “educate” young Americans according to their beliefs. And indeed, the acceptance of Islamic extremism is worrisome.
But the American young are easy targets. I often complain about ignorance of science, but ignorance of history is worsening in America. It’s not that college students can’t name Millard Fillmore’s vice-president, it’s that they are ignorant of systems of government that have killed millions of people—by design. And then when some social media personality, whether a Nick Fuentes or a Hasan Piker, come along and praise these systems of government to young Americans who are not vaccinated with knowledge, we have a recipe for disaster. Worse, candidates for national office campaign with these “influencers”. Who would have thought that a candidate for the Senate would want to campaign with a moral idiot who praises the Chinese Communist government in general and Mao in particular. The average college student in the US has probably never heard of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, etc., but they should really try n talking to people who have lived under the system during those days. And Hasan Piker is praising that system (all the while denigrating the US)? And candidates for national office, instead of calling him out, are rushing to be interviewed by that guy?
This is what happens when knowledge of history is replaced by knowledge of officially sanctioned pronouns.