Should there be even more curbs on free speech?

January 12, 2026 • 10:00 am

Reader Gingerbaker called my attention to a Substack post by Elder of Ziyon (henceforth “EoZ”), who also has an extensive and useful pro-Israel website I’ve cited several times. The post, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, advocates for restrictions on the kind of freedom of speech presently allowed by America’s First Amendment.  The Elder’s view that the courts’ construal of our First Amendment needs to be modified is in fact shared by many, though the restrictions demanded are varied. All, however, try to restrict varieties of “hate speech.”

There are already well-known exceptions to freedom of speech as outlined in the First Amendment.  These, adjudicated by courts over the years, include speech that is defamatory, constitutes harassment, poses the thread of imminent and predictable violence, “fighting words,” false advertising, and so on (Wikipedia has a list of more exceptions).

The EoZ uses as his example the fundamentalist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahir, which is active in Western countries. Several of them have banned it for its Islamist views, but it’s banned even more widely. As Wikipedia notes,

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in Bangladesh, China, Russia, Pakistan,India, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and “across Central Asia”, Indonesia, and all Arab countries except Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE. In July 2017, the Indonesian government revoked Hizb ut-Tahrir’s legal status, citing incompatibility with government regulations on extremism and national ideology.

Why the banning in paces like America?  EoZ explains:

The justification for these bans usually begins with the group’s stated aims. Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects liberal democracy and advocates replacing it with a global Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law. It presents Islam not merely as a religion but as a political system destined to supersede Western civilization. Its rhetoric is frequently antisemitic, dismissive of pluralism, and grounded in a vision of Muslim supremacy.

It is no stretch to say that the group’s ideas are hostile to Jews, to women, to dissenters, and to the moral assumptions that underlie liberal societies. If Hizb ut-Tahrir ever held power, its worldview would translate into repression.

There is a problem, though. Hizb ut-Tahrir is explicitly non-violent. It does not carry out attacks. It does not issue operational instructions for terrorism in Western countries. Its leaders insist, consistently and publicly, that their method is ideological persuasion rather than armed struggle. Their ideas are corrosive, but they remain ideas.

It appears to have used socialist concepts to build itself this way specifically to take advantage of Western freedoms and inoculate it from being banned legally in the West.

This brings up the question of where free speech ends and where limiting speech is better.

The EoZ gives this photo in his article, widely published without attribution, but it’s not clear that the people pictured are from Hizb ut-Tahi. Still, the issue under discussion is instantiated by that poster.

The EoZ notes that banning peaceful organizations for what they believe is not only a very slippery slope, but one that’s been descended many times.  And, for example, calling for the destruction of America or replacement of democracy with ideologies like Communism still counts as free speech in America. So why ban this particular group?  According to EoZ, it’s because the “violence” that may be produced by such organizations is delayed,  so that minds can be changed by gradually contemplating a group’s message, eventually leading—in the case of Hizb ut-Tahir—to the replacement of democracy with Islamist autocracy.

At the same time, pretending that Hizb ut-Tahrir is merely another set of opinions that should be ignored is willfully naive. Its ideology does not sit in a vacuum. It is a sustained narrative that delegitimizes Western society, portrays Jews and non-Muslims as exploiters, and presents the destruction of the existing order as morally necessary. It may not tell followers to commit violence, but it devotes considerable energy to explaining why violence committed by others is understandable, justified, or admirable. Over time, that difference becomes less sharp than Western legal categories would like it to be.

The problem, as I see it, is that the West’s concept of free speech is unnecessarily expansive and out definition of incitement is needlessly and extraordinarily narrow. We tend to locate responsibility almost entirely at the moment of explicit instruction, as though speech and action are cleanly separable until a specific verbal threshold is crossed. That approach forces societies to wait until violence is imminent before acting, while treating years of ideological conditioning as irrelevant. It assumes that moral preparation is harmless so long as it avoids certain words.

Hizb ut-Tahrir operates comfortably within that space.

But this case can also be made for many organizations, including the Communist Party and the many Islamist groups of young people who adhere to Islamism and want to see the end of “Turtle Island”.  Groups like antifa and sundry anarchists feel likewise.  Should they be banned, too? But the EoZ somehow sees Hizb ut-Tahrir as an exception, probably because it’s a threat to Jews, and the EoZ is ardently pro-Jewish (he mention that threat several times.)

 . . . . the problem posed by Hizb ut-Tahrir is not that it holds extreme beliefs, but that it functions as a preparatory environment. It habituates listeners to a worldview in which violence by others becomes morally intelligible. That places it in a different category from ordinary dissent or even radical critique, and it justifies a different kind of response.

This does not require banning ideas. It requires acknowledging that speech operates within systems. A society can restrict organizational activity, funding, coordination, and amplification when those structures predictably serve as pathways toward violence, without criminalizing theology or private belief. That approach is narrower, more defensible, and far less likely to metastasize than ideological prohibition.

Free speech in the West has gradually ceased to be treated as an instrument and has come to resemble an article of faith. . .

. . . The question, then, is not whether Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned. It is whether Western societies are capable of developing a more mature understanding of incitement, one that accounts for moral enablement and foreseeable harm without granting the state a license to police belief.

I find this unconvincing, and I see no distinction between Hizb ut-Tahrir and the many other groups that want to replace democracy (in this case American democracy) with various forms of autocracy or theocracy, including groups that cry, “Globalize the intifada”—an explicit call for Islamic theocracy and violence. But note that this group doesn’t even call for violence, so how is it possible to blame future violence on its pronouncements?

The reasons I’m unconvinced are several, and not new.  First, it’s probably impossible to determine when a group’s beliefs or utterances promote eventual violence rather than imminent or predictable violence.  There’s a difference between a lone moron on the Quad crying “Gas the Jews”, and a person saying the same thing in front of a synagogue or group of Jewish people (who in America aren’t violent anyway). If someone eventually torches a synagogue, even citing certain groups in a written manifesto for the actions, those groups cannot be retrospectively indicted for violating the First Amendment, as we cannot be sure how much they contributed to the violence. “Imminent” is far easier to prove than “much later”. After all, many people who commit acts of violence are deranged, and have a mixture of motives that may be mixed up with mental illness. Thus, although P. Z. Myers, contemplating Joe Lonsdale, has said “maybe it’s time to hang a few billionaires to teach a lesson to those greedy parasites“, I don’t think Myers should be arrested even if someone who reads his site hangs or kills a billionaire after citing Myers’ posts.

Just think of all the manifestos written by violent criminals who have cited a variety of influences! We can’t simply go back and arrest them all because they contributed to violence, for contributions are fuzzy, unpredictable, and often mixed up with mental illness or a propensity to be violent per se.

Second, the remedy for “hate speech” like the nonviolent calls for Islamism by Hizb ut-Tahrir is, as we all know, counterspeech. And that involves pointing out how Islamism is a repressive, theocratic form of government that is inimical to the well being of its believers—and of any country that adopts Islamic tenets. Women and gays are oppressed, people of other faiths (or of no faith) are endangered, and free speech itself is usually outlawed or greatly restricted.  That alone guarantees the failure of Islamism to replace American democracy, but in fact there is no way, given our Constitution, that a democracy would vote itself out of power in favor of Islamism or any government that violates the Constitution. (I’m not speaking of Trump’s probable violations of the Constitution to buttress his own power, as they will eventually be sorted out by the courts.) Even despite Trump, America remains a democracy, though a currently dysfunctional one.

Third, as John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, allowing people to say odious things has a number of beneficial effects, including “outing” those people who believe such stuff and would otherwise remain underground. Such odious views also help us us to sharpen our arguments against them, and their utterance also gives us the chance to correct the misapprehensions of their opponents (see this blog post on “Mills’s trident”).

Now I understand where EoZ is coming from. The Elder is certainly Jewish and is appalled by hearing things like “globalize the intifada”. Jews are being attacked throughout the world, and the EoZ holds antisemitic speech responsible. Indeed, many countries, like Germany and Canada do ban antisemitic speech or “hate speech” that demonizes identifiable groups.

Why shouldn’t we follow them? In my view, the reasons for banning “hate speech” are weaker than for allowing it, so long as that speech doesn’t lead to imminent and predictable violence or violates other restrictions the courts have put on the First Amendment. People can differ on this, just as I differ with the good Elder of Zion. But Mill laid out the reasons against speech bans in 1859, and in my view his reasons are still good.

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 12, 2026 • 8:15 am

Please send your photos, as I have only one set left!

Athayde Tonhasca Júnior is here with photos of a trip to a special place in Greece. Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Between Heaven and Earth

Meteora (Μετέωρα) is a majestic rock formation comprising countless peaks, caves, crevices and overhangs in the Thessaly region, northern Greece, a 3.5-hour or so drive from Thessaloniki:

These pillars were formed about 60 million years ago, when the seabed receded and exposed the rocks to winds and waves. Thanks to its remoteness and inaccessibility, Meteora for centuries has been a magnet for misanthropic characters seeking salvation in solitude or common folk escaping from marauders and assorted enemies:

Hermits and monks from all over the Byzantine Empire converged on the area to build proto-monastic communities, which with time grew into monasteries. Out of the 33 that were founded throughout the centuries, six are active today:

The word meteoron (pl. meteora) means ‘between earth and sky’, ‘lofty’ or ‘elevated’. Meteora was a bastion of Greek Christian orthodoxy during the 400-year Turkish occupation (for a gripping account of how the occupation ended, see The Greek revolution: 1821 and the making of modern Europe, by Mark Mazower):

The first monks climbed up Meteora’s peaks by using scaffolds propped up by joists that were wedged against holes in the rock. Later, rope ladders and nets were deployed until the first stairs were carved into rocks in the early 20th century:

Until the 1920s, many monasteries winched visitors tucked inside nets, a 370-m journey in one case. According to tradition, a wary visitor asked a monk whether the rope of his transporting basket was ever replaced. ‘Yes’, he answered; ‘when it breaks’. Bridges and stairs chiseled into the rocks have made ascent a lot easier, but supplies are still hauled up in some monasteries:

Here, a group of tourists (highlighted) cross a narrow bridge, the single access to a monastery:

Meteora comprises the most important group of Greek monasteries after Mount Athos. The six active ones (two are now nunneries), the massif and the village of Kastráki (in the distance) are a UNESCO World Heritage Site:

If you live on the narrow top of a mountain, you need to be resourceful and imaginative with your gardening…:

….and your booze supply. This 16th-century oak cask once stored up to 12,000 l of wine:

The monasteries’ churches, in typical Byzantine fashion, are packed with priceless frescoes, icons and mosaics depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and assorted saints in a jumble of gold, colours and shapes. Alas, photos are not allowed inside the churches, so you will need to look up online to find out more. This photo was taken from the outside, so no sin was committed:

The monasteries are not for people with impaired mobility or couch potatoes. All but one require moderate to hard climbing – up to 300 steps. Too hard for many visitors, who stay put by the road and pass the time photographing the landscape:

Now the bad side of Meteora. If you are thinking about visiting the monasteries for peace and contemplation, forget it: they have been turned into mega-tourist attractions. The narrow access road through the mountains is lined with coach after coach disgorging hordes of tourists and rude pilgrims, there are long queues for the entrance fee (5 Euros, cash only) and the buildings are claustrophobically crowded. Having said that, Meteora retains its magnificence. If you go, pick a cold, rainy day outside the religious calendar, and get there early:

Monday: Hili dialogue

January 12, 2026 • 6:45 am

Well, the work week is upon us again: it’s Monday, January 12, 2026, the beginning of a long and dispirited week, and National Marzipan Day (I have a marzipan pig as a Christmas treat; my sister sends me one every year in memory of the time we lived in Germany). Marzipan is traditionally molded into various shapes and then colored, most often as small fruits. Here’s how they’re made in Sicily (sound up):

@bakinghermann

Sicily’s fruit-shaped marzipan 🇮🇹 #fruttamartorana #italianfood #vegan

♬ original sound – Julius Fiedler

It’s also Kiss a Ginger Day (if you’re a redhead, you’ve got it made), National Curried Chicken Day, International French Onion Soup Day (not eaten by many French people), National Glazed Doughnut Day (the worst type, espeically in the Krispy Kreme form, which seems to be mostly air), and National Hot Tea Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The protests in Iran are growing, and the government has imposed a complete blackout of the Internet (they don’t want news going out or the protestors communicating with each 0ther).

For a third night in a row, nationwide antigovernment protests rocked Iran, according to witnesses and videos verified by The New York Times, posted on BBC Persian and social media, even as the government intensified its crackdown and the military said it would take to the streets in response to the unrest.

In Heravi Square in Tehran, thousands of people marched through the streets, clapping rhythmically and chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, videos verified by The Times showed. “You can’t see the start and end of the crowd,” shouted a protester moving the camera.

Videos and information from Saturday’s protests were hard to obtain, trickling in only with hours of delay, as the government maintained the internet blackout it imposed Thursday and blocked calls from abroad. Iran’s Telecommunication Ministry said in a statement that security officials had decided to shut down the internet because of the “situation unfolding in the country.” But the death toll appeared to be rising.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have not updated their casualty numbers since Thursday, when both were reporting 28 protest-related deaths. But two other rights groups focused on Iran, the Washington-based HRANA and the Norway-based Iran Human Rights, each said their tally was about 70 killed, among them minors and about 20 members of the security forces.

The Iran Human Rights group said that Rubina Aminian, a 23-year-old college student, died when she was shot in the head on Thursday after leaving her college campus and joining protests in Marivan, a Kurdish city in northwest Iran.

“The situation is extremely worrisome; this regime has always prioritized its survival over all else, and it will do so again, at the cost of people’s lives,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights.

Here’s a video of Masih, quite distressed and exercised, describing on CBS News the unrest in Iran (and the Internet blackout, which has cut off her main source of information; h/t Frank). She says the Iranian people are calling for help from President Trump.

Noa Tishby said this on her instagram page:

A Tehran doctor told @time on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths, “most by live ammunition.”

The death count, if confirmed, would signal a feared crackdown presaged by the regime’s near-total shutdown of the nation’s Internet and phone connections since Thursday night. It would also constitute a direct challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier in the day warned that the regime would “pay hell” if it killed protesters who have taken to the streets in growing numbers since Dec. 28.

But as of now, the AP puts the toll at “at least 544”, though that comes from activists.

*According to the Times of Israel and other sources like the Wall Street Journal, if the U.S. goes after Iran, that country has threatened to strike U.S. bases but also Israel (it’s always good to throw in attacks on Israel if you’re under siege).

Tehran threatened on Sunday to retaliate against Israel as well as US military bases in the event of American strikes on Iran, issuing the warning as Israeli sources said the country was on high alert.

With Iran’s clerical establishment facing the biggest anti-government protests since 2022, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in recent days amid reports of a growing death toll from a crackdown on demonstrators.

US media reported that Trump had been presented with options for potential strikes, including on non-military sites in Tehran.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaking in parliament on Sunday, warned against “a miscalculation.”

“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s elite paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.

“We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat,” he said.

Any decision to go to war would rest with Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Three Israeli sources, who were present for security consultations over the weekend, said Israel was on a high-alert footing for any US intervention, but did not elaborate on what that meant.

Note that Khameni is a religious leader, but is the one who makes the big decisions.  I still don’t think Trump will physically attack Iran, nor do I think that would be wise, as it would set a bad precedent for our interfering in other countries’ purely internal affairs. On the other hand, there are more indirect ways he can penalize Iran, as the next post shows.

*The WSJ suggests how Trump can make good on his threat to the Iranian regime without having to strike it with the military.

President Trump has warned Tehran that Washington is “locked and loaded” if the regime slaughters peaceful protesters. Iran is calling his bluff. With at least 42 confirmed dead, the president’s warning is now a policy test. Will America enforce its red lines?

Mr. Trump has proved he isn’t Barack Obama on Iran policy. Whereas President Obama made a nuclear deal enriching Tehran’s theocrats, Mr. Trump withdrew from that flawed agreement and pursued a sanctions strategy robbing the regime of oil revenue. When Iranians took to the streets starting in 2017, unlike Mr. Obama in 2009, Mr. Trump offered robust political support to protesters and torpedoed the conventional wisdom in Washington that doing so would be the kiss of death.

Now, as the regime is firing at hospitals and warning of no leniency, protesters inspired by President Trump’s promise are beseeching him to help, even naming streets after him. Will Mr. Trump replicate Mr. Obama’s 2013 red-line debacle in Syria, which undermined U.S. deterrence globally, locked in a teetering regime for more than a decade, and plunged the Middle East into bloody conflict begetting a refugee crisis?

The Islamic Republic is betting that it can suppress this latest uprising with lethal force while the West watches. Mr. Trump can prove them wrong. How? By tracking and confiscating oil tankers, something the U.S. has done with Venezuela. These tankers, dubbed the “Shadow Fleet,” are illicitly transporting Iranian oil to China and undermining Mr. Trump’s policy of maximum pressure.

This approach allows the U.S. to inflict acute pain on the regime without immediate military strikes against Iranian territory. It also buys time for Iranian protesters to grow their numbers on the street.

President Trump has warned Tehran that Washington is “locked and loaded” if the regime slaughters peaceful protesters. Iran is calling his bluff. With at least 42 confirmed dead, the president’s warning is now a policy test. Will America enforce its red lines?

Mr. Trump has proved he isn’t Barack Obama on Iran policy. Whereas President Obama made a nuclear deal enriching Tehran’s theocrats, Mr. Trump withdrew from that flawed agreement and pursued a sanctions strategy robbing the regime of oil revenue. When Iranians took to the streets starting in 2017, unlike Mr. Obama in 2009, Mr. Trump offered robust political support to protesters and torpedoed the conventional wisdom in Washington that doing so would be the kiss of death.

Now, as the regime is firing at hospitals and warning of no leniency, protesters inspired by President Trump’s promise are beseeching him to help, even naming streets after him. Will Mr. Trump replicate Mr. Obama’s 2013 red-line debacle in Syria, which undermined U.S. deterrence globally, locked in a teetering regime for more than a decade, and plunged the Middle East into bloody conflict begetting a refugee crisis?

The Islamic Republic is betting that it can suppress this latest uprising with lethal force while the West watches. Mr. Trump can prove them wrong. How? By tracking and confiscating oil tankers, something the U.S. has done with Venezuela. These tankers, dubbed the “Shadow Fleet,” are illicitly transporting Iranian oil to China and undermining Mr. Trump’s policy of maximum pressure.

This approach allows the U.S. to inflict acute pain on the regime without immediate military strikes against Iranian territory. It also buys time for Iranian protesters to grow their numbers on the street.

Iran gets a fair amount of prized heavy crude oil from Venezuela, which it apparently processes and resells, often to China. I’m not sure how “acute” the pain to Iran will be, though. Much as I want the regime to fall, it’s not good optics for us to be attacking every country whose politics we don’t like and who can’t do a lot of damage to us.  North Korea would be an obvious target save for its proximity to South Korea, which would be destroyed.

*Maryellen MacDonald, professor emerita of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written an op-ed in the WaPo called “Gen Zers aren’t talking—and it could cost them.”  (Note that Gen Z is supposed to eomprise people born between 1997 and 2012: between 14 and 29 years old.

Gen Z’s interaction anxiety has expanded beyond “telephobia.” Despite craving closeness, they’re now reluctant to engage in face-to-face conversations. Opting for texting might seem like a convenient alternative, but this avoidance is costing the generation in more ways than they realize. What will it take to get Gen Z talking?

The social consequences of talking aversionare obvious: Businesses are starting to worry that young employees won’t be able to engage effectively with co-workers and customers.Young adults are lonelier. Dating is declining, and friend groups are shrinking.

But the problem isn’t just a matterof social awkwardness. Talking is important brain exercise, a desirable difficulty that enhances our cognition — in the moment of talking, and over our lifetimes. Young adults frequently listen to other people’s speech via podcasts, YouTube, TikTok and the like, but these activities don’t provide the same cognitive stimulation. The mental effort required to speak is much greater than what’s needed to understand someone else, and the cognitive benefits of talking exceed those of listening.

Those benefits are extensive: Talking about goals boosts mental focus and follow-through. Athletes are routinely coached to talk to themselves to improve perseverance, focus and mood. Talking about a topic speeds up learning and makes it more durable. And it continues to tune our brains all the way to old age, when high rates of socializing guard against dementia.

Young adults who avoid conversation are missing out on all of that. We don’t yet know the long-term consequences of losing talk-based cognitive, emotional and social enhancement, but the link between silence and dementia is worrisome.

What caused this talking avoidance? The pandemic is one likely culprit, as it removed opportunities for young people to practice socializing while they transitioned to adulthood. Remote work further reduces talking practice and degrades social skills. Helicopter parenting also clears away many challenges of childhood, leading to lower coping and social skills. For over-snowplowed adults still living at home, the parent concierge remains ready to take on phone calls and other talking challenges. It’s a vicious cycle: Reluctant talkers gravitate to non-talking activities like looking at their phones and moving through life with earbuds, which discourages anyone from striking up a conversation.

Actually, though I don’t interact much with Gen Zers since I’m a quasi-geezer, I do interact with people over 40, and have found that many of them prefer texting to talking.  This saddens me as texting is not only slower and less detailed than regular conversation, but does lend a certain and unwanted formality to interacting with friends. Right off the bat I can think of two people who I really want to talk to, but who seem to prefer texting. And yes, I do think that the latter is injurious, as there’s a whole lot of cues you miss when talking: facial expressions, for one thing, including laughing, which comes out as “LOL” in text. Seriously, who really “laughs out loud” when they’re texting? I’ve done it maybe twice in a gazillion years. Get off my lawn!

*Get this:  a group of Buddhist monks, accompanied by a rescue dog, are walking from Texas to Washington D.C., scheduled to arrive in the capital in February. That’s a long walk for both Buddha and Buddha’s Best Friend.  But I don’t want to be snarky, as they’re walking for peace:

A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route.

In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It’s a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it’s resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics dividing the nation.

Their journey began Oct. 26, 2025, at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas, and is scheduled to end in mid-February in Washington, D.C., where they will ask Congress to recognize Buddha’s day of birth and enlightenment as a federal holiday. Beyond promoting peace, their highest priority is connecting with people along the way.

“My hope is, when this walk ends, the people we met will continue practicing mindfulness and find peace,” said the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, the group’s soft-spoken leader who is making the trek barefoot. He teaches about mindfulness, forgiveness and healing at every stop.

And people love them, waiting for hours by the roadside to see them. Does this mean we all have a Buddha-shaped hole in our souls?  (Sorry, I don’t mean to be so flippant!) Although Buddhists believe in things like karma and reincarnation, which are manifestly ubevidenced, they are in general one of the least harmful relgions. But wait–there’s more!

Preferring to sleep each night in tents pitched outdoors, the monks have been surprised to see their message transcend ideologies, drawing huge crowds into churchyards, city halls and town squares across six states. Documenting their journey on social media, they — and their dog, Aloka — have racked up millions of followers online. On Saturday, thousands thronged in Columbia, South Carolina, where the monks chanted on the steps of the State House and received a proclamation from the city’s mayor, Daniel Rickenmann.

. . . .Hailing from Theravada Buddhist monasteries across the globe, the 19 monks began their 2,300 mile (3,700 kilometer) trek at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth.

Their journey has not been without peril. On Nov. 19, as the monks were walking along U.S. Highway 90 near Dayton, Texas, their escort vehicle was hit by a distracted truck driver, injuring two monks. One of them lost his leg, reducing the group to 18.

Well, more power to them and Aloka, and I’m sad that one monk lost his leg.  This won’t really bring peace in the world, but it’s brought happiness to a lot of people.  Here’s a five-minute news report:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is lonely but not alone. In fact, Kulka and Szaron are right there! (Remember that HIli hates Kulka but is friends with Szaron.)

Hili: Loneliness is a very painful feeling,
Me: But you’re not alone.
Hili: Sometimes the presence of others only deepens the feeling of loneliness.

In Polish:

Hili: Samotność to bardzo przykre uczucie.
Ja: Przecież masz towarzystwo.
Hili: Czasem obecność innych zwiększa poczucie samotności.

*******************

From The 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:  I just looked this one up on Snopes, and (fortunately for the woman) it is false. Beware of fake-news memes!

I don’t know where I got this, but I like it:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff.  What a toy!

The numbers of Iranian dead are growing quickly. This is from noon yesterday and I’ll update it this morning:

From J. K. Rowling, posting about Iran. Are they going to demonize her for this, too?

I came across this tweet while browsing.  What do you think of the paintings?  What’s irritating is that they don’t tell you which painting surpasses the Mona Lisa:

From FB, a lovely way to honor the death of Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. I’d like to be the person who controls the lights on the Empire State Building:

From Malcolm; Niagra Falls in winter and summer. I don’t think they ever freeze over.

One that I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb, famous author. First, a colorful montage of beat scat:

Get yourself a friend who will send you postcards of brightly colored bear scat, because she knows you, and only you, will adore it. @staycurious.bsky.social this makes my WEEK.

— Bethany Brookshire (@beebrookshire.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T20:34:29.436Z

I may have posted this, but why not see the lovely shrimp again?

The world feels rough right nowSo please enjoy this shrimp, filmed off Cozumel, Mexico. It may be a larval reef shrimp, but we don’t know what species or how long it lives or what it eats. The world is still full of wonder and beauty and mystery. 🎥 @pedrovalenciam scuba diver on Insta

— Rebecca R Helm (@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T20:20:53.607Z

A “progressive” phrasebook

January 11, 2026 • 11:20 am

Anna Krylov called my attention to this articl at the site The Gadfly, which appears to be run by Frederick Alexander—someone I’ve never run across before. His article gives ten phrases associated with wokeness, four of which I really detest. I’ll put them all below the screenshot (click it to read the article), and perhaps you can guess which four curl the soles of my shoes.

Alexander’s phrases are in bold, and all of his words are indented. My few comments are flush left. He begins with an introduction about how the burgeoning of DEI after George Floyd’s death in 2020 has led to embedding certain phrases in woke language. Some of them are well familiar to me, while others are not.

Part of the intro:

It’s tempting to look back on those events as if they were a curious aberration, a moment of hysteria brought about by lockdown cabin fever. Today, it’s common to hear that “woke is dead” – and it’s true that many DEI programmes have been shut down or rebranded. The finger-wagging sanctimony has been toned down a few notches, too.

But what remains is the language: a distinct and unmistakable lexicon with a long half-life. This is the fallout from a blast we thought was long behind us. DEI no longer marches through institutions with a fanfare, but it operates as background radiation. Wave the Geiger counter over policy small print or the latest HR initiative, and you’ll hear the familiar crackling of progressive orthodoxy.

The language has insinuated itself into corporations and public bodies across the Western world, becoming almost invisible through constant repetition. Phrases that sound benign on the surface mask a cold system of enforcement that continues to reward fluency in Newspeak while punishing dissent. Taken together, they form a closed moral system – one that begins with empathy and ends with coercion.

Here are a few phrases you’ve probably heard before.

You can read Alexander’s full explication at the site; I’ll give just a sentence or three that he says about each one. And I’ll add my own short take:

1.) “We’re on a journey.”  The world’s most overused corporate metaphor is also a favourite of institutions haemorrhaging money on failed DEI initiatives. Bud Light went on a journey with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April 2023 and ended up in corporate hell. The brand lost its spot as America’s top-selling beer, two marketing executives were put on leave, and the whole debacle cost a billion dollars in lost sales

That one I’m not familiar with, nor am I familiar with #2:

2.)  “Bringing your whole self to work”. Silicon Valley invented this one. The idea was that workers would bring their creativity and passion to the job. Instead, they brought their politics and personal grievances.

It turns out there’s only really a problem if your “whole self” doesn’t align with “correct thinking”. Don’t bring your whole Christian self to work – the one who opposes abortion or thinks polygamy is a bad idea. That won’t go down too well. Think national borders might be a good thing? That whole self had better stay away, too. A gender-critical whole self? Don’t be silly. Best put all those whole selves back in their box, or wave your career goodbye.

3.) “Brave conversations. . . We’re talking about “courageous dialogue” with your line manager following an apparent “microaggression”. Turns out you need more training in how to think and when to declare your pronouns.

These conversations tend to begin with an admission of privilege, followed by an acknowledgement of harm, and conclude with a commitment to growth. Actual conversation – the kind where people disagree and minds change – never happens. That’s the wrong sort of bravery. The proper kind is where you confess to thought crimes you didn’t know existed.

I haven’t heard that one, either. Where have I been? After all, I’ve been on campus for decades.

4.) “Educate yourself”.  This is a phrase professional activists and scolds deploy when they can’t defend their position. It’s the go-to for transforming intellectual laziness into moral superiority.

What “educate yourself” really means is this: read the approved texts so as to arrive at the conclusions I agree with – what we used to call indoctrination. Any other outcome is seen as proof of moral and intellectual deficiency.

I’ve used #4 myself, but only when faced with obtuse commenters who make arrant misstatements, usually about evolution. And I don’t use it too often, though of course all of us in academia have heard it used in exactly the sense that Alexander means.

5.) “Psychological safety.” Today, it means an environment where nobody can disagree with progressive orthodoxy without being invited to an HR struggle session. The safest spaces, it turns out, are wherever difficult questions are never asked. Feeling “unsafe” is now what happens when we challenge someone’s views on immigration or question whether men can become pregnant. JK Rowling has spent years being told her defence of women’s spaces makes trans people “unsafe”.

Of course we’ve all heard of “safe spaces,” which is apparently what “psychological safety” means. I’ve never heard that term used, though.

6.) “Lived experience.”  This one refuses to die, which is a tragedy because few ideas on this list have wrought so much chaos and misery as the idea of “lived experience”. A phrase that transforms subjective feelings into unassailable truth, lived experience is invoked again and again to shut down “problematic” questions like “why are you trialling experimental puberty blockers on children as young as 10?”

This is how clinicians at Tavistock were silenced when they raised concerns about rushing children into medical transition. They were told they were “invalidating young people’s lived experience” of gender identity. Evidence-based medicine lost to feelings-based ideology. The Cass Review finally reintroduced rigour, but only after a decade of children used as test subjects.

Or consider Iranian women protesting forced veiling. Western feminists have dismissed them while deferring to the “lived experience” of those women who defend the hijab as empowerment. When evidence becomes inconvenient, personal testimony is invoked as epistemological authority, leaving empirical reasoning nowhere to go.

Several times this one has appeared on my “words and phrases I detest” posts (I need to make more of these). First of all, it’s redundant, since all experience is lived. (Is there such a thing as “unlived experience”?) But, more important, it suggests an alternative form of personal truth, a form that is fundamental to wokeness, is derived from postmodernism, and is explicitly antiempirical.

7.) “Equity, not equality”. Equity used to refer to the value of shares issued by a company. Now it refers to equalising outcomes rather than opportunities. The switch transformed Martin Luther King’s dream into its nightmare opposite.

That’s a terse entry but a true one.  One has to be careful not to mistake the terms.  The problem with ensuring equity is that different groups may have different preferences, which will create inequities despite equal opportunities. Therefore, if you see uneqaual representation of groups, you have to suss out the causes before you start mentioning bigotry, misogyny, and other causes based on prejudice.

8.) “Decolonizing the curriculum.” “Decolonising the curriculum” is largely about treating Western knowledge as inherently suspect because it’s Western. Ideas are judged not by whether they’re true but in terms of their provenance. Plato or Locke are “problematised” rather than argued with. Rejecting classical liberal principles in favour of progressive ones is “challenging power”.

In short, “decolonising the curriculum” is a licence to swap scholarship for grievance. It tells students what they’re meant to feel about the civilisation that built the university they’re attending.

That’s a strong statement, but again largely true.  Certainly non-Western material is unduly neglected in some courses, more often in the humanities than the sciences, but beware of calls to “decolonize” an entire curriculum, particularly in STEMM.

9.) “Be an ally.” Allyship used to mean supporting a cause. Now it means performing endless penance for demographic characteristics you can’t change. The progressive ally must publicly confess privilege, declare solidarity, and accept instruction from activists without question.

It’s the “without question” part that bothers me. I am in agreement with the aims of many “progressive” causes, but don’t necessarily buy into the whole ideology or bag of tactics that go along with them. I prefer just to state where I agree or disagree rather than saying, “I’m an ally” or telling someone else to be one.

10.) “Impact over intent.” A lesser-known phrase, these words ensure your guilt is inescapable. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are; only how others feel about your actions. What’s that you say? You meant no harm? Irrelevant. Someone felt harmed, and that’s all that counts.

I’ve not heard that exact phrase before, but I’m well familiar with what it means and how it would be used. Two examples are the suspension of Professor Greg Patton for saying a Chinese word that sounded superficially like a racial slur, and the firing of an art-history professor at Hamline University who showed her students (with warnings) two famous Muslim paintings that depicted the visage of Muhammad.

I don’t have much to add to what Alexander and I have said above, but wanted to add Alexander’s pessimistic ending, noting first Alexander’s arguable claim that the phrases are the provenance mostly of the privileged.

. . . . much of the language persists because the people who use it pay no price for the harm it causes. HR directors still have jobs and diversity consultants still bill by the hour. The costs are absorbed by those with the least ability to navigate the new moral codes.

A decade from now, these phrases will sound dated, and eventually they’ll fade away. But others will take their place – a vocabulary already incubating in universities and carrying the same assumptions.

This is how ideology colonises institutions in a post-religious age: through a moral language that redefines virtue, reshapes norms, and renders dissent unspeakable long before it becomes the object of cancellation.

Note the emphasis on the moral certainty of the progressive ideologues, something we’ve talked about recently.

Why I stopped donating to Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

January 11, 2026 • 9:40 am

Years ago I was a big fan of Doctors Without Borders (originally MSF for “Médecins Sans Frontières”, since the group’s origin is French). Supposedly apolitical, MSF, provides medical care to people in regions where it’s scarce—a mission I like. I gave them a fair amount of dosh, including all of the $12,000 or so I got for auctioning off a copy of WEIT signed by many notables and illuminated by Kelly Houle.

Then I began hearing rumors that MSF was anti-Israel, which disturbed me because it’s not supposed to favor one country over another.  The rumors were not unfounded, and MSF’s dissing of Israel increased during the war with Hamas, when it not only bought into the “genocide” narrative spread by antisemites, but also promulgated false rumors about Hamas, Israel, and hospitals in Gaza.  Eventually I took MSF out of my will, diverting those funds to other humanitarian organizations. Yes, MSF is still doing good work in other places, but it will no longer have my support.

This 11-minute Quillette video, narrated by Zoe Booth, summarizes the reasons why I have cooled on MSF. (It’s largely taken from a Qullette essay on MSF called “The humanitarian mask: How activists at Médecins Sans Frontières shape disinformation“.)

I consider the “genocide” canard, the dumbest of all the Big Lies about Israel, as a manifestation of antisemitism. If you want to see why, read Maarten Boudry’s Substack article, “They don’t believe it either,” arguing that even those groups like MSF that accuse Israel of genocide are completely wrong: there’s no evidence that the aim of the IDF is to kill Gazan noncombatants or wipe out Palestinians. An excerpt:

Why then did this war have such a terrible toll on civilians, despite Israel’s efforts? There are two major reasons, both consistently ignored by all the genocide reports: Hamas’ cult of martyrdom, and the perverse incentives created by its unwitting enablers. Hamas is not just indifferent to civilian casualties; it actively solicits them as part of its military strategy. It has constructed hundreds of kilometers of tunnels for its fighters, while failing to build a single shelter for its own women and children. It deliberately fires rockets from hospitals, schools, UN buildings, mosques, and in the vicinity of humanitarian zones. Fully aware that it is no match for the Israeli army on the battlefield, it possesses one secret weapon to bring Israel to its knees: the moral conscience of the international community. If they sacrifice enough innocent women and children and then broadcast the harrowing images and casualty figures all across the international media, they can push Western nations to ostracize, delegitimize, and boycott Israel.

In fact, to any reasonable observer, it is undeniable that the Israeli army cares more about the lives of Palestinian civilians than Hamas. While Hamas invites civilian deaths as part of its strategy, Israel attempts to avoid them. Whereas the Israeli government urges Gazan civilians to evacuate combat zones, Hamas prevents them from escaping or from seeking shelter in their tunnel network. When Israel set up its own system of humanitarian aid, Hamas threatened anyone who dared to collaborate, killed multiple humanitarian workers, and punished Gazans who collected GHF food packages.

Note that those who promulgate the “genocide” myth, including MSF, never accuse Hamas of genocide, despite the fact that the terrorist organization is overtly genocidal, bent on destroying Israel by wiping out all Jews, not merely ones with guns. This Big Lie comes from willful ignorance, and, for MSF, makes their claim of ideological neutrality worthless.  Yes, a few members of IDF may have aimed at civilians, but that is vanishingly rare. The majority of Gazan civilian deaths came from Hamas’s strategy of hiding behind civilians, including their tunnel system (built at huge expense with money diverted from Gaza) and embedding themselves within schools and hospitals. As Maarten notes, the death of Palestinian civilians is part of Hamas’s plan, and the more who are killed the more the world blames Israel.

Further, those who cry “Israeli genocide” never seem to mention the kidnapping of Israeli civilians on October 7, a war crime that was followed by shooting or even strangling some of the hostages. What does MSF say about this?  Nothing. They have, as the video shows, “never issued a single condemnation of Hamas.” That is reprehensible but shows MSF’s own bigotry.

As far as buying into Hamas propaganda goes, MSF has, as the video shows, accused Israel of deliberately striking the Al-Ahli Hospital, despite subsequent investigation having convinced all rational observers (and yes, even the New York Times) that the “strike” was an explosion of a rocket misfired AT Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad—a rocket that landed in the hospital’s parking lot. There is in fact video showing the path of the misfired rocket, as well as photos of the damaged parking lot itself. As the Quillette article notes (and I’ve appended a tweet):

On 17 October, Abu-Sittah was working at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City when a major explosion rocked the compound. MSF immediately quoted him in a press release: “We were operating in the hospital; there was a strong explosion, and the ceiling fell on the operating room. This is a massacre.” Abu-Sittah was one of six Palestinian doctors who held a grotesque press conference from the hospital parking lot surrounded by the bodies of those allegedly killed in the blast. His testimony was broadcast globally, and presented as the objective account of a medical professional who bore witness to a devastating Israeli air strike. With the added credibility bestowed by MSF’s endorsement, his words were used to support international condemnations of Israel for the alleged perpetration of systematic war crimes.

Shortly afterwards, Israel and the US produced evidence showing that the explosion occurred in the hospital parking lot and that it was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike. The New York Times and a number of other major news platforms admitted that their initial coverage had relied on unverified claims and amended their reporting as new information became available. Even Human Rights Watch—hardly an impartial observer of Israeli combat operations—conceded that “the possibility of a large air-dropped bomb, such as those Israel has used extensively in Gaza, [is] highly unlikely.” MSF, on the other hand, refused to correct the record. More than two years later, it has still not retracted or corrected Abu-Sittah’s false testimony.

Did MSF retract its accusations?  Of course not, even though Human Rights Watch—itself anti-Israel—did.

As the video above shows, MSF has distanced itself from some of the more extremist people it once endorsed, but it has not publicly retracted or even modified its claims. That too is reprehensible.

I found a 2016 article in the Forward, an Israeli newspaper, that is telling. Already stung then by accusations of antisemitism, the executive director of MSF USA denied “institutional antisemitism.”. The bolding is mine:

We are perceived by some as taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when communicating about the West Bank and Gaza, where MSF has been operating medical programs for more than 20 years.

. . .MSF does not work in Israel — not because of any bias, but because Israel can cover its medical needs. While MSF has offered medical support at various times, including during the 2006 Lebanon war, these offers were respectfully declined, given Israel’s strong emergency medical capabilities. We are therefore not in a position to make medically based observations regarding Israeli suffering. To be clear, Palestinians are by no means the sole victims in this conflict. Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, other factions and so-called lone-wolf attackers are in no uncertain terms responsible for crimes and violations of the laws of war, such as indiscriminate attacks.

Palestinian leaders bear direct responsibility for their actions, including firing into civilian areas rockets that have killed and wounded Israelis and perpetuated fear and psychological trauma among so many.

While not witnessed directly by MSF teams, allegations of Hamas and other fighters placing weapons or command centers near or inside health facilities and other civilian structures would amount to grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. Such tactics directly endanger noncombatants, including medical personnel and patients, and are explicitly forbidden under international law. Responsibility for other obstacles to health care must also be forthrightly assigned.

How that tune has changed! The same “crimes” of Hamas given in bold somehow were neglected by MSF after October 7, 2023.  Hamas is apparently seen as the innocent victim of Israeli genocidal aims. In an undated statement after the current war began, MSF tries to exculpate itself again. An excerpt (bolding is theirs):

Why are your statements so critical of Israel? Why are you not talking about Hamas?

As humanitarians, we grieve for all civilian lives lost [JAC: except for Israeli ones], and the vast majority of the victims of this conflict are civilians, including many elderly people, women, and children. Violence against civilians is never justified, and all civilians deserve protection. [JAC: what about the Israeli hostages?]

Our statements and reporting are rooted in the experiences of our patients and staff on the ground, and the actions we directly witness in the areas where we work. In Gaza, Israeli armed forces’ activities are central to the challenges civilians face, particularly in terms of access to medical care and the safety of health workers and facilities. We report on these realities because they directly impact our ability to provide care.

That is about as weaselly as it comes.  By placing tunnels and combatants in and under hospitals, Hamas itself is impeding “access to medical care and the safety of health workers and facilities.” That’s not to mention their theft of food and supplies intended for Gazan civilians.

As Hamas refuses to lay down its arms, and MSF refuses to condemn their terrorism, I am closing my wallet to MSF and directing considerable resources to alternative groups like Helen Keller International, the Malaria Consortium, and Peter Singer’s organization the Maximize Your Impact Fund.

I haven’t told MSF how much money they’re going to lose because of their ideological position.  They wouldn’t care anyway.  I believe I told them, after they kept begging me for more after our initial donation, that they could expect no more donations from me.  As for others reading this site, where you donate is of course up to you, but be sure to check out whether recipients are politically and ideologically neutral.

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 11, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos of one of my favorite birds comes from Neil Dawe. Neil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Skomer Island Puffins – Neil K Dawe

We visited a second seabird colony on our UK trip in 2025: Skomer Island off the Pembrokshire, Wales coast. Skomer Island has around 40 bird species that nest on the island but the seabirds are the big draw and the primary reason it is preserved as a National Nature Reserve. Just over a kilometre (0.67 miles) from the mainland and a 20 minute boat trip from Martin’s Haven, Skomer Island is accessible to visitors for 5 hour stays on the island where you can wander the trails and see some of the over 40,000 Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) that nest there. There are a number of other nesting seabirds there as well, most notably 350,000 Manx Shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus; Skomer Island holds the largest Manx Shearwater colony in the world), 10,000 Razorbills (Alca torda), 29,000 Common Murres or Guillemots (Uria aalge), 5,000 Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus fuscus), and a smaller number of other species including shorebirds, songbirds, and owls. But it’s the puffins that most people come to see.

Unlike the Bempton Cliffs, where you have to patiently search the cliffs to find a puffin, this is the scene that greets you as you walk up the trail from the boat. Scores of birds standing near their burrows, flying out to sea, or returning from the sea:

A number of trails lead past the colonies allowing excellent viewing of the birds. Perhaps the best area to view the puffins is a place called the Wick. Here, scores of puffins have honeycombed the grassy slope with their burrows, the ground sloping gently to the sea making it easy for the puffins to get airborne:

Puffins prefer burrows in the extensive open grass-herb slopes; they use the bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) areas (foreground) to a lesser extent. If they find an empty European Hare (Lepus europaeus) burrow they will readily make use of it, sometimes even sharing the burrow with the hare. Note the hare in this image. (Photo: Renate Sutherland):

Puffins nest up to and beyond the visitor footpath at the Wick, and visitors can find themselves on the path along with the puffins (Photo: Renate Sutherland):

 Standing guard amongst the bracken:

 The area around the Wick is busy with puffins flying to or returning from the sea:

Puffins practice nest maintenance throughout the nesting period; here one is bringing more nesting material to the burrow:

Puffin burrows average a metre in length and contain side chambers they use in which to defecate. Puffins at the Wick can often be seen close up at burrows near the trail:

Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus fuscus) station themselves near the puffin burrows and attempt to steal the puffin’s catch upon their return from the sea:

During our visit, puffin eggs were just beginning to hatch so not many adults were seen bringing food to the nest. When they do return they usually run to the burrow to avoid having any nearby gulls steal their catch. Fortunately, this bird tended to take its time. While foraging, puffins are able to catch several fish at a time that are then held against the roof of the mouth by their tongue.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

January 11, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, January 11, 2026, and National Hot Toddy Day. Here’s one, followed by some informative text from Wikipedia:

Patrick Truby, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Some etymology:

The word toddy comes from the toddy drink in India, produced by fermenting the sap of palm trees. Its earliest known use to mean “a beverage made of alcoholic liquor with hot water, sugar, and spices” is from 1786. It is often referred to as a ‘Hot Toady’. However, a few other sources credit Robert Bentley Todd for his prescription of a hot drink of brandy, canella (white cinnamon), sugar syrup, and water.

It’s also National Milk Day, National Sunday Supper Day, No Pants Subway Ride Day, and Learn Your Name in More Code Day.

Here’s my name in Morse code: .— . .-. .-. -.– / -.-. — -.– -. .     You can learn yours at the site, too.

. . . and the “official” announcement of the 17th Annual No Pants Subway Ride:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: the death of Bob Weir, guitarist for and founding member of The Grateful Dead, was announced yesterday. He was 78 (article archived here). Although I wasn’t a Deadhead, I did like several of their songs, especially “Friend of the Devil,” which wasn’t written by Weir. The NYT lists “10 essential songs” of Weir: ones he co-wrote or sang lead on, including “Sugar Magnolia” and perhaps the band’s most famous song, “Truckin'”, which I’ll put below (song article archived here). From the NYT:

Bob Weir, a guitarist and songwriter who was a founding member of the Grateful Dead, which rose from jug band origins to become the kings of psychedelic rock, selling millions of records and inspiring a small nation of loyal fans, has died. He was 78.

His family announced the death in a statement on Saturday, saying that Mr. Weir had “succumbed to underlying lung issues” after receiving a cancer diagnosis in July. The statement did not say when or where he died.

The band, which was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, blended rock, folk, blues and country, with mellow ease and a gift for improvisation that became its trademark. In a rock milieu that was still based on short songs and catchy hooks, the Grateful Dead created a niche for meandering, exploratory performances that each seemed to have their own personalities.

The band became the pied pipers of the wider hippie movement, providing the soundtrack for 1960s dropouts and LSD dabblers.

Here’s a live version of “Truckin'”, performed by the Dead in 1972; Weir sings lead. The NYT take:

With its lyrics by Robert Hunter and music written by Garcia, Weir and Lesh, the slippery shuffle “Truckin’” was a group effort all around. Hunter’s lyrics take the listener on a tour of various Dead misadventures, including a bust in New Orleans, but it’s Weir’s disbelieving delivery on the verses — navigating tricky couplets like “Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street” — that is the glue that holds the song together.

*The media has started reporting more about Iran as the protests go into their second week and more people get killed. Unfortunately, the regime seems to want to tough this one out.

Iran’s army vowed Saturday to join the crackdown on protesters, one of a number of stepped-up warnings from the country’s security services as demonstrations against the regime continue to grow and the death toll mounts.

The army said Saturday it would “firmly safeguard national interests, strategic infrastructure, and public property,” blaming Israel and what it called terrorist groups for the unrest and vowing to “thwart the enemy’s plots.”

The military’s pledge to intervene represented an escalation by authorities that had initially taken a more conciliatory tone with protesters. The early demonstrations mainly aired complaints about the country’s economic crisis but are now demanding an end to Iran’s theocratic system itself.

Until now, only the police and paramilitary security forces had been involved in cracking down on the protests. The regime faces a difficult calculation in responding to their growing intensity. It has little ability to address an economic crisis brought on by crippling sanctions, but President Trump has warned several times this week that he will intervene to stop a bloody crackdown.

Trump administration officials have had preliminary discussions about how to carry out an attack on Iran if needed to follow through on Trump’s threats, including what sites might be targeted, U.S. officials said.

One option being discussed is a large-scale aerial strike on multiple Iranian military targets, one of the officials said. Another of the officials said there wasn’t a consensus on what course of action to take, and no military equipment or personnel had been moved in preparation for a strike.

Iran has also enforced an internet blackout so that the outside world doesn’t get news of what’s going on (a futile attempt!) and that the protestors can’t communicate with each other or hear how the protest is playing in the rest of the world.

Again, this is an internal matter and I don’t think Trump should be attacking Iran, even to overthrow a blatantly oppressive theocracy. If we’re going to do that, we should be attacking North Korea (of course that would lead to the destruction of South Korea). But the principle remains that we shouldn’t use our military to resolve disputes that are purely within another country. However, if Israel and the U.S. wants to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities given that they’re certainly resuming production of bombs, that might be enough to tip the country into democracy.  Many chants by protestors, though, are calling for the return of Iran’s Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, and there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t run the country like his father (the last Shah)—as a dictator.

*Trump’s narcissistic renaming mania is highlighted in the Washington Post’s morning newsletter (no link):

I don’t have the right credentials to get into the real reasons President Donald Trump adds his name to things. But he has a long business history of doing just that — notably buildings but also products and even a for-profit real estate seminar called Trump University.

Here in the D.C. area, he has a golf course in Virginia and had the Trump International Hotel, near the White House, during his first presidential term. The money-losing hotel changed hands (and names) after he left office.

Since moving back into the White House nearly a year ago, Trump has taken a more aggressive approach to putting his stamp on the city and, more broadly, the federal government.

And we’re only one year into Trump’s term. I can’t figure out which is the worst—either the Trump coins (I don’t think a living President has ever been depicted on money) or making Trump’s birthday a free-free day at National Parks while deep-sixing Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

*The Dispatch contemplates a J. D. Vance Presidency (possible now that Trump doesn’t look well and is still scarfing down burgers) in an article called “A Demagogue’s Demagogue.”

The nicest thing one can say about the vice president is that he’s not the worst or even second-worst person in the White House, and that will remain true as long as Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are on the job.

Which is a problem for him politically.

J.D. Vance is supposed to be the answer to the question, “What does Trumpism look like without Trump?” Postliberal intellectuals adore him because his ascension to the presidency portends an “America First” agenda unburdened by Trump’s demented, erratic, off-putting viciousness. Imagine having a fascist leading the country who can resist the impulse to celebrate the murder of Rob Reiner.

With a disciplined man like that in charge, there’s no telling what marvels MAGA might achieve.

The potential hiccup for authoritarian technocrats is that it’s not clear Republican voters share their priorities.

. . .And so you can see the problem for J.D. Vance [This is Trump’s repeated claim that “MAGA is me.”] If MAGA is Trump, and if what it chiefly prizes in him is his ruthless will to dominate his enemies rather than any specific agenda, a 2028 Vance campaign premised on professionalizing postliberalism will not make the right-wing heart flutter.

That’s not to say he’ll lose a primary—a sitting VP is nearly unbeatable, especially if he earns the president’s endorsement—but it risks inviting a challenge from some charismatic upstart who speaks demagoguery as a first, not second, language. And if Vance does land in the White House, it suggests his support among Republican voters won’t be nearly as “sticky” in office as Trump’s has been.

To make right-wingers fall in love, not just fall in line, J.D. Vance needs to be the biggest fascist scumbag he can be. And that’s tricky, since he happens to hold the one job in the administration with practically no duties. Apart from casting the occasional tiebreaking vote in the Senate for some grossly unfit Trump nominee, he has few opportunities to demonstrate ruthlessness through official actions.

All he can do is talk. So, on Thursday, that’s what he did. As part of his ongoing effort to impress the MAGA faithful, he went out in front of the White House press corps and was the biggest scumbag he could be.

And that was his strong, unevidenced, and rather cruel statements about the death of Renee Good, when he, like most of us, should STFU and simply wait to see what an investigation reveals—if there is an investigation.

But yes, to return to the point, the VP was passionate at the podium on Thursday. Specifically, he was passionate about smearing Renee Good, the woman killed by the ICE agent, as a terrorist in league with radicals whose death was “of her own making.”

“I’m not happy that this woman was there at a protest violating the law by interfering with the law enforcement action,” Vance added. … “We’re not going to give in to terrorism on this and that’s exactly what’s happened.”

Vance also asserted that the media has failed to cover that Good was “part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”

“I think it’s really irresponsible for you guys [in the media] to go out there and imply or tell the American people that a guy who defended himself from being rammed by an automobile is guilty of murder,” he said. “Be a little bit more careful. We’re going to talk about toning down the temperature, which I know the president wants to do, and I certainly want to do. One of the ways we tone down the temperature is to have a media that tells the truth. I encourage you all to do that.”

Well, yes, Good is part of such an organization, as the tweet below shows, and some of the recommended actions are illegal. But the issue is not these instructions, but whether the ICE agent was acting recklessly and murderously when he shot her.

from the article again:

If you haven’t watched one of the many videos of her death, do so now so that you can appreciate the filthiness of the vice president telling a national audience that Good tried to “ram” the ICE agent with her vehicle. What she tried to do is pull away and flee—but couldn’t without momentarily pointing her car at the agent, who had positioned himself in front of the SUV in violation of standard procedure. That led to her being shot through the windshield; as for why the agent felt entitled to fire twice more at her through her side window after he was already clear of the front of her car, neither Vance nor anyone else in the administration seems to care.

“If you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist,” Adam Serwer wrote, identifying a key takeaway from the press conference.

ICE protestors aren’t terrorists, even when they’re engaged in illegal activities: they are protestors breaking the law.  It could be construed as civil disobedience, but right now I am engaged in STFUing, though I have to say that I’m bothered by the two seemingly gratuitous shots through the window, and the agent saying, “Fucking bitch” after he shot Good. Right now, Vance should STFU too instead of hewing to the government line. Yes, he will run, and likely he will win, and we’ll have another four (or even eight) years of misery. Maybe i should take up knitting.

*Over at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan calls the Trump administration’s foreign incursions examples of “A Viking foreign policy”, with the subtitle, “The logic of Trump’s entire approach: deploy superior force to plunder the weak. Repeat.” His first quote, from Trump, bothers me a lot:

“Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” – Donald Trump, asked about any limits on his war powers.

In one way, the last couple of weeks have been clarifying.

Ten years ago, I went back to Plato to try and understand Trump’s meteoric rise in our decadent polity. The essay remains unnervingly prescient in its portrayal of late-stage democracy’s yearning for tyranny, and more accurate about Trump’s second term than the first. But one key thing was always missing from seeing Trump as a tyrant in Plato’s schema. For Plato, tyrants always, always, always go to war. And yet, as I noted last year, in a piece that now seems a touch naive, Trump “lacks a core feature for every tyrant: he doesn’t seem interested in launching wars.”

Score another one for Plato, I guess. But his analysis doesn’t quite work. For Plato, the purpose of war for a tyrant is domestic control: “The first thing he will do, I imagine, is to be constantly stirring up some war or other, so that the people will need a leader.” But Trump doesn’t need a foreign enemy to rally support. He already has that enemy at home: leftists, illegal immigrants, trans people, Rosie O’Donnell, et al. His base hates the other half of America more than any foreign power.

Nonetheless, Plato’s psychological grasp of the tyrant still holds. The core drive is for disinhibited domination, and this is true of Trump. He is only comfortable if he controls everything and everyone in his domain. Equal co-existence without subordination is simply beyond his understanding — hence his sincere bafflement at the Constitution.

And the analogy:

In other words, Trump is a pagan. Two millennia of Christian ideas about war and peace, virtue and wisdom, individual dignity and morality, have passed him by entirely — which is why liberalism of any kind is incomprehensible to him. If you want to find the nearest analogy to his mindset, you have to reach back to a world where Christianity was entirely absent. The Vikings come to mind — resisting morality and Christianity up until the eleventh century. The 2022 movie, The Northman, was brilliant in its utterly unapologetic portrayal of this Viking mindset, with no moralizing at all. If you want to see the id of MAGA in full throttle, check it out.

The Vikings in their prime years had just recovered from a sixth and seventh century population collapse (climate change), followed by a period of widespread anarchy and warlordism that rendered any kind of civil society impossible. The warlordism that became endemic at home soon became warlordism abroad. The goal was relatively simple: use violence and the threat of violence to invade, murder, and plunder. The goal was lucre, which gave them more power to seek more lucre, which led to more glory. There was nothing in their worldview that would ever give them moral pause, even as Christian Europe was incubating the idea of moral restraints on state violence.

. . . In this Viking rubric, there’s no mystery why Trump attacked Venezuela and kidnapped the president and his wife. He did it for the thrill of domination — man does he relish parading his enemies in a perp walk — but mainly for the lucre. He has told us this explicitly — shamelessness is one of his pagan virtues — long before and immediately after the fact.  The idea that he is interested in Venezuelan democracy is ludicrous. He’s a mob boss — that’s all. And a protection racket has now descended over the entire Western Hemisphere, called the Donroe Doctrine. This is what America now is: a global Tony Soprano.

. . . . The only question remaining is a simple one. Who’s next? And how much is he gonna steal next time?

“My own morality”???? What kind of morality is that? And on what grounds should it override the law, especially since Trump (twice) has taken oaths to defend the Constitution. The thought that Trump’s own morality is his only impediment is the scariest thing I’ve heard come out of his mouth. I really should take up knitting. . .

Finally, UPI posted an “Odd news minute” (it’s actually two minutes. Get a load of that escape-artist dg!:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again wheedling for beef:

Hili: My energy’s dispersed.
Andrzej: Off you go, I have to fix the bed.
Hili: A promise of meat could give me just enough strength to reach the kitchen.

In Polish:

Hili: Energia mi się rozproszyła.
Ja: Uciekaj, muszę posłać łóżko.
Hili: Obietnica kawałka mięsa może mi pozwolić na dotarcie do kuchni.

*******************

From The Dodo:

From Comics Kingdom via Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih; another protestor killed (hundreds have died already).  Mehdi Zatparvar was a weightlifter.

From Luana; Alexander Van der Bellen, the idiotic president of Austria, envisages all women wearing hijabs to combat Islamophobia. Oy!

From J. K. Rowling, who really has tried to get arrested, but they won’t do it because she’ll become an über-martyr:

From Malcolm, an adorable pair of trained swans and their cygnets. This has to be either learned each generation from watching other swans or picked up de novo.

One from my feed:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

A Czech Jewish girl, born on this day in 1939, was almost certainly gassed to death with her brother and mother upon arriving at Auschwitz, as the children were young. Vēra was just four years old and would be 86 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-01-11T11:08:39.566Z

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb, emeritus. First, a largely camouflaged ptarmigan. Sound up to hear it cry, “A werewolf!”

A male rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) in winter plumage.Ptarmigan is from Gaelic 'tarmachan' meaning "croaker". The p- was added when people mistakenly assumed it was a Greek word.A bird forever warning people: "A werewolf!" (just in case of werewolves).

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2025-12-06T13:46:58.117Z

A reading and speaking moggy!  (Matthew tells me that “Malm” is an Ikea type of furniture.)

@deborahmcdaid.bsky.social

— Hello, it's Dan McDaid (@danmcdaid.bsky.social) 2026-01-10T17:29:03.097Z