Category: Szaron

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 11, 2024 • 6:45 am

Well, I’m off this evening traveling on cat Sabbath to Amsterdam, as it’s Saturday, May 11, 2024, and Eat What You Want Day.  This video tells you what I want to eat today:

It’s also American Indian Day (should be “Native American Day”), Mother Ocean Day, International Migratory Bird Day, Sun Awareness Day, National Babysitter’s Day (when will they learn to put the apostrophe in the right place?), National Train Day, and Windmill Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*Hamas has been rewarded for attacking Isral by a UN vote (largely symbolic) granting Palestine a kind of quasi-statehood.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring that Palestinians qualify for full-member status at the United Nations, a highly symbolic move that reflects growing global solidarity with Palestinians and is a rebuke to Israel and the United States.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining. The Assembly broke into a big applause after the vote. The United States voted no.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group. The 193-member General Assembly took on the issue of Palestinian membership after the United States in April vetoed a resolution before the Security Council to recognize full membership for a Palestinian state. The majority of Council members supported the move, but the United States said recognition of Palestinian statehood should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The U.S. is right. This is one of the stupidest moves the UN has made yet, and that’s saying a lot. But wait! There’s more!

“The U.S. is resigned to having another bad day at the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. But he added that the resolution “gives the Palestinians a boost without creating a breakdown over whether they are or are not now U.N. members.”

The U.N. charter stipulates that the General Assembly can only grant full membership to a nation-state after the approval of the Security Council. Examples of that include the creation of the states of Israel and South Sudan. The resolution adopted on Friday explicitly states that the Palestinian issue is an exception and will not set precedent, language that was added during negotiations on the text when some countries expressed concern that Taiwan and Kosovo might follow a similar path to pursue statehood, diplomats said.

Sorry, but why is Palestine an exception and Taiwan is not? At any rate, this is symbolic (though of course will incite more people against Israel) because the Security Council has to approve full statehood, and the U.S. won’t let that happen, despite Biden’s current waffling and weaseling.  Besides, neither Israel nor Palestine want a state. Try again in another 40 years or so.

*Glenn Loury has published an autobiography called Late Admissions, a tell-all book reviewed in today’s NYT by Pamela Paul. (It’s archived here.)  I didn’t know that Loury’s past was that checkered!  Note that now he says he’s a conservative:

This is far from the first reversal, political or personal, for Loury, 75, one of the most celebrated and reviled Black intellectuals of the past half-century. While public debate has too often devolved into lobbing grenades from entrenched positions, Loury’s tumultuous life, his swings from the right to the left and back again, his remarkable, barrier-busting successes and his considerable frailties and failures, have taught him to always recognize that he could be wrong and to keep an open mind, no matter how vehement his opinions. He outlines this ragged road to wisdom in his remarkably candid memoir, “Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative.”

He was a star Ph.D. graduate in economics from M.I.T. and the first Black tenured professor of economics at Harvard. He was a darling of the neoconservative movement and was tapped to be deputy secretary of education during the Reagan administration.

But that was before he was charged with assaulting his ex-mistress. Before he was arrested for drug possession. Before he was exposed as both a serial philanderer and a crack addict. He’d left two daughters from his first marriage back in Chicago; he barely acknowledged a son born to a former girlfriend, until the son was fully grown.

A 1995 New Yorker profile described Loury’s first public downfall thus: “Loury was emerging as exactly the kind of person he had warned Black America to avoid: a violent, irresponsible, drug-using womanizer who put his own pleasure above the demands of his career and the needs of his family.”

In recounting all that’s happened since, “Late Admissions” does something that is rare in fiction but almost unheard-of in memoir: It presents both an unlikable and an unreliable narrator.

In an unusual introduction, Loury explains that he hopes to build trust with the reader by exposing his obfuscations and prevarications, warding off anything terrible a reader might say about him by saying it all, himself, first. One title he considered for the book, he told me, was “The Enemy Within.”

He goes into the controversy that’s arisen about the Death of George Floyd, which I’ve written about and now watched the movie saying Floyd wasn’t murdered and read the counter-narrative arguing that Floyd was indeed murdered (see here).  I have to say that I’m coming down on the latter side, but haven’t had time to review the very long rebuttal and write something. This may be as far as I get.  You can find the book, which comes out on May 14, here.

*Like many of us, Andrew Sullivan is peeved that Trump keeps delaying his trials, forestalling whatever day of reckoning is to come. The title of his piece this week,”Getting away with it, yet again“, tells the tale.

I really don’t want to be a Debbie Downer yet again, but it seems pretty clear to me at this point that the legal resistance to Donald Trump’s deep corruption, pathological recklessness, managerial incompetence, and outrageous attempts to steal an election and then prevent a peaceful transfer of power … have, well, failed.

By “failed” I don’t mean, of course, that Trump will definitely not be convicted in his current trial, or that the other cases — from the January 6 insurrection to the classified documents to the Georgia pressure campaign — won’t proceed at some point. I mean something more salient: none of this is likely to happen or seriously dent Trump’s popularity before the looming election this November. His antagonists had four years to prosecute and delegitimize him, and it wasn’t enough time. (Bill Maher chiefly blames Merrick Garland for preternatural dithering — “Attorney General Barney Fife.”)

Judge Cannon has now indefinitely postponed the Florida trial for Trump’s grotesque and dumb mishandling of classified documents. It looks fishy to me, but her pre-trial shenanigans do not appear outside her judicial prerogatives. If the DOJ had wanted to prosecute Trump in this complicated case — involving national security, executive privilege, the limits of discovery with classified information — they might have begun a little sooner than last year.

The Georgia case just got upended by Fani Willis’ hubris, as her romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors gave Trump’s lawyers a chance to delay the trial by asking the Georgia Appeals Court to rule on whether Willis should be disqualified. The federal January 6 case is suspended mid-air as SCOTUS ruminates on the question of presidential immunity.

Which leaves us with one case likely to be decided before the November election: the current, patently political prosecution of Trump for alleged violations of federal campaign law in concealing hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. Technically, it seems pretty clear to me that Trump is guilty as sin, and may even be convicted by a New York City jury. Michael Cohen, after all, went to jail for the same crime. But the case itself is a stretch by Alvin Bragg, straining to elevate state financial misdemeanors into multiple federal felonies. Worse, the coverage this week is likely, if it has any political impact, to help Trump in his framing of the prosecution as personal persecution.

. . . So did Trump wear a condom? Boxer shorts? Was the fucking fully consensual? Yes, some of this was necessary because Trump, absurdly, is still denying he ever met the broad alone. But icky is icky, and humiliating people with the details of sexual encounters, even if they are scummy people like Trump, tends to backfire. And it’s hard to see how he politically loses from this trial. If the jury hangs, Trump wins. If he is convicted, he has an obvious appeal option, especially given the racy irrelevance of some of the testimony allowed by the judge this week. If he’s acquitted, we’ll never hear the last of it.

. . . it seems unlikely to me that an electorate that breezed past “grab ‘em by the pussy” is going to stop short at a federal financial fiddle. A recent poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe that the Stormy case is irrelevant to Trump’s fitness for the presidency — up a bit from 39 percent last summer. The slippage seems to come mainly from one demo:

[A]mong independents who lean Republican, the share calling those charges not relevant to Trump’s fitness has climbed from 57 percent to 73 percent, and the share of true independents saying the same has risen from 29 percent to 45.

Oy, gewalt! Whether Trump is a philanderer is not the issue, but whether he was involved in covering up financial dealings, which speaks to his honesty. Granted, its not a capital crime, but it does seem to me “relevant to his fitness” as President.

*Instead of a TFIF today, Nellie Bowles’s (whose new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, got shellacked in the Washington Post) has published an excerpt from her new book in a column called, “The Day I Stopped Canceling People.” Nellie’s first cancellation was when she decided not to interview a white friend who had written a book in which a black woman was made to look bad in a quote.  Apparently the quote was accurate and kosher, but Nellie didn’t want bad optics.  Her words (article is also archived here):

To do a cancellation is a very warm, social thing. It has the energy of a potluck. Everyone brings what they can, and everyone is impressed by the creativity of their friends. It’s a positive thing, what you’re doing, and it doesn’t feel like battle, but like tending the warm fire of community. You have real power when you’re doing it, and with enough people, you can oust someone very powerful.

The easy criticism of a cancellation is: You went after someone who agrees with you on almost everything except some tiny differences? Some small infraction? It seems bizarre. But that’s the point. The bad among us are more dangerous to the group. Mormons don’t excommunicate a random drag performer. They excommunicate a bad Mormon.

I watched all the presidential debates in 2016 with some family members who are conservatives. After Hillary lost, I couldn’t stomach going over there for a few months. I was too upset, and I couldn’t handle seeing them happy. But that’s not a cancellation. I had no power over these family members, or sway in their community. I couldn’t make them apologize for being happy that Trump won.

A cancellation isn’t about finding a conservative and yelling at them. It’s about finding the betrayer in your midst. They look and talk like you. They blend in perfectly. But they’re not like you.

The author I canceled existed in my community. She went to the parties I went to and showed up at the same events as me. The goal was to slice her carefully out, and I was thrilled to do my part. By showing where I stood, I felt closer to my friends. But also, in some ways, doing what I did is the price of admission to the club. To ignore the drumbeat was to suggest that I didn’t care. I definitely did care.

I saw later that the event was canceled altogether after I withdrew. Her book tour didn’t work so well. The book didn’t sell so well. I never saw her at another party, and I never heard from her again—and I was fine with that.

Nellie’s gloating about cancellation disappeared when she fell in love with someone with whom she had political disagreements (Bari Weiss, whose hiring at the NYT Bowles had argued against), and she goes on to discuss the topic of cancellation in general.

*MIT and Penn, two schools involved in those disastrous Congressional hearings, with the President of Penn losing her job, have both had their encampments cleared.

Police on Friday cleared pro-Palestinian encampments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, the latest efforts by colleges across the country to rein in escalating protests.

. . .On MIT’s Cambridge, Mass., campus, police arrested 10 graduate and undergraduate students, the school said Friday. None resisted, and the students were taken off campus by MIT police officers to be booked, a spokeswoman said.

“The escalation of the last few days, involving outside threats from individuals and groups from both sides, has been a tipping point,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said. “It was not heading in a direction anyone could call peaceful. And the cost and disruption for the community overall made the situation increasingly untenable.”

MIT said police also arrested several protesters on Thursday after they marched to a campus building and blocked a garage.

. . . In Philadelphia, Penn said police arrested about 33 protesters who were cited for “defiant trespass” after repeated warnings. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a day earlier that it was “past time” for the school to disband the encampment on Penn’s College Green, which had grown in recent days.

Videos posted to social media by news outlets showed helmeted officers, with riot shields and zip ties, detaining people after Penn’s public-safety department warned protesters to leave.

And Harvard’s in for trouble, too:

At Harvard, a spokesman Friday said administrative referrals to place encampment protesters on involuntary leave continue to move ahead.

“The encampment favors the voices of a few over the rights of many who have experienced disruption in how they learn and work at a critical time of the semester,” said Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president.

Garber at a meeting late Wednesday offered protesters a chance to meet with university officials to address their questions about the university’s endowment, but only if they first voluntarily ended the encampment, the Harvard spokesman said. Garber also reiterated that Harvard wouldn’t use its endowment as a political tool.

The school said protesters declined by deciding to continue the encampment.

So far quite a few of these things have been taken down, including ours, and there have been, as far as I know, no injuries. Only two cowardly schools—Brown and Northwestern—have bargained with the encampers, and that’s to their shame. 2,000 protesters have been arrested. Harvard’s tactic of allowing a “questions meeting but only after disbanding the site seems reasonable, but even that won’t work. And so the Schmarvard protesters will go the way of the others.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has yet another reason to hate Kulka:

A: What are you looking for?
Hili: I left something there but Kulka probably ate it.
In Polish:
Ja: Czego tam szukasz?
Hili: Zostawiłam tu coś, ale chyba Kulka to zjadła.
And a picture of the affectionate Szaron:

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From The Dodo Pet:

I can’t remember where I found this, but it was somewhere on Facebook:

From Jesus of the Day. I guess they take the money out of your estate:

From Cate: Stickers found on the north side of Chicago. The one on the left is particularly good:

From Masih; quotidian life in Iran. Note that there’s now a ten-year sentence for Iranians sending a video to Masih!

From Scott, who notes, “I’ve never cared in the slightest about the Eurovision contest. But I think I’ll tune in this time to support Eden Golan, the 20-year-old Israeli who’s now in notoriously antisemitic Malmö, Sweden to perform, surrounded by a convoy of a hundred police cars and helicopters trying to stop the crowds from pulling another 1972 Munich Olympics.”

Here’s Golan being booed at her dress rehearsal. It’s simply because she’s Israeli. Morons. But she stuck it out as she’s a stalwart Israeli:

The demonstration that keeps Golan in her hotel!

And a relevant tweet:

From Luana; look at this impeccable encampment!

From Malcolm; a demonstration of the “Mercator Effect“: the unrealistic size of land as it gets farther from the Equator:

From Simon; Larry the cat is being a bit ribald:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a ten-year-old girl gassed upon arrival at the camp:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb; the first part of his findings when researching Crick’s life. Can you see why “80 CG” would have been better?

A great idea: a milk bottle for multiple kittens. And yes, look at their ears:

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 10, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, May 10, 2024, and National Shrimp Day. Here’s a lovely mantis shrimp, not for eating:

Silke Baron, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 10 Wikipedia page.

It’s also Clean Up Your Room Day, National Liver and Onions Day (my dad loved the stuff and we couldn’t even stand the smell; it baffles me that some people like it), National Lipid Day, and Golden Spike Day at Promontory, Utah. Wikipedia explains:

The golden spike (also known as The Last Spike) is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The term last spike has been used to refer to one driven at the usually ceremonial completion of any new railroad construction projects, particularly those in which construction is undertaken from two disparate origins towards a common meeting point. The spike is now displayed in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

Here’s a photo:

Andrew J. Russell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Da Nooz:

*The big news for Israel supporters is Biden’s claim that he will not sell any weapons to Israel (save for rockets used in the Iron Dome) if Israel makes an all-out assault on Rafah.

A threat by US President Joe Biden that some arms shipments will be frozen if Israel launches a planned offensive in Rafah was met with swift denunciation from government figures in Jerusalem on Thursday, who indicated that the military would push ahead regardless.

The comments from Biden also sparked harsh criticism against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by chief opposition rival Yair Lapid for what he said was the government’s “failed management” of ties with Washington.

In the US, some American Jewish groups and US lawmakers spoke out against the move and others indicated it was unlikely to go beyond words. Former US president Donald Trump accused Biden of siding with terrorists.

In what appeared to be a response to Biden’s decision to suspend key weapons shipments to Israel and his threat that more could follow, Netanyahu on Thursday shared footage of his speech at Yad Vashem earlier this week, in which he said that Israel will stand alone against Hamas if it must.

“Today, we again confront enemies bent on our destruction,” Netanyahu said in the clip posted on X, formerly Twitter, from a Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Jerusalem. “I say to the leaders of the world — no amount of pressure, no decision from any international forum, will stop Israel from defending itself.”

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he pledged, adding, “We will defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now.”

*Stormy Daniels finished her testimony against Trump yesterday, and apparently it was quite seamy, though I’d prefer not to hear the details. There’s little doubt they had a liaison, but Trump’s accused not of philandering, but of hiding the hush money.  Some details:

During more than seven hours of searing testimony spread over two days, Stormy Daniels recounted a one-night sexual encounter she said she’d had with Donald J. Trump, described taking a $130,000 payment in return for her silence, and swung between defiance and vulnerability in the face of combative questions from his lawyers.

“You made all this up, right?” a lawyer for Mr. Trump asked, to which Ms. Daniels responded with a forceful “No.” And when the lawyer suggested that Ms. Daniels, a porn star, had experience with “phony stories about sex,” she responded that the sex in such films is “very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

Yes, porn is “phony stories about sex,” but nobody is going to be fooled by that lawyer’s implications.  Whether Daniels’ reply was a good one is unclear, for if it was as real as porn, that seems to say that Daniels wasn’t really into it as sex qua sex.  But there’s more:

Ms. Daniels was at times defiant during her testimony, including when the defense attacked her for hawking merchandise to supporters and she responded by likening it to Mr. Trump’s own merchandising. But at other times, Ms. Daniels spoke quietly, seemingly on the verge of tears. Asked by a prosecutor after cross-examination about the effect these events had on her life, Ms. Daniels said she had to hire security, move a couple of times and take extra precautions because of her daughter. Asked if publicly telling the truth has been a net positive or net negative, she responded, “Negative.”

The 34 felony counts of falsifying business records against Mr. Trump stem from his repayment of Mr. Cohen after he became president, and the recording of the checks as “legal expenses” at the Trump Organization. Mr. Trump, 77, has denied any wrongdoing. If convicted, he could face prison or probation.

. . . . During her first day on the stand on Tuesday, Ms. Daniels described — sometimes nervously, sometimes graphically and often hastily — having a liaison with Mr. Trump in 2006, which Mr. Trump denies. She testified that she met Mr. Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nev., and accepted an invitation for dinner that led to sex in his penthouse suite. “I didn’t know how I got there,” she recalled thinking as she lay on the bed with him. “I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there.”

* Here’s an op-ed the NYT arguing that divestment demands by college students are ineffectual and performative ( Sernovitz is identified as “a managing director of Lime Rock Management, a private equity firm that invests in oil and gas and clean energy companies and whose investors include colleges and universities.” The article is called Elite colleges walked into the Israel divestment trap.”

College endowment managers no doubt feel beleaguered that pressing moral questions regularly end up on their desks. For that desk is already covered with spreadsheets on another question: how to generate returns for universities that are nonprofits, unfathomably expensive, and desperate to not be just finishing schools for the rich. Last fiscal year, endowments over $5 billion provided 17.7 percent of their university’s budgets. This school year, Williams College charged $81,200 in tuition and fees. But spending per student was $135,600. The endowment helps make up the difference.

Yet activists view endowments with a sense of ownership. They are part of a community that owns this money. They also go after endowments because they lack better targets. It says something about the authority of ideas in our age that students lobby institutions dedicated to the advancement and propagation of knowledge mainly over what they do with their excess cash.

Sernovitz then mentions that the anti-apartheid divestments may have been successful (it’s still debated), but the same isn’t true in his area:

Unlike the effects of the South Africa movement, the early impact of oil and gas divestment by colleges and others has been negligible, or even counterproductive: Oil and gas companies have needed little external financial capital, and hostility to the divestment movement has led Republican-led states such as Florida to restrict E.S.G. investing, which focuses on environmental, social and governance factors. (Note that Florida’s State Board of Administration manages almost exactly the same amount of money as the 10 largest private college endowments combined.)

What the fossil fuel divestiture did establish, however, was that university leaders can be made to concede that their endowments will, in certain circumstances, be guided by the school’s collective values, and that current students can shape those values. And by getting endowments to not invest in the sector in some way, the protesters hardened an abstract moral judgment: that the oil and gas business, and the faceless bureaucrats who work for it, are wrong. Divestment champions hope the symbolic removal of an industry’s “social license” can take on its own power, emboldening government policymakers to regulate that industry or dissuading students from seeking jobs in it.

. . . and there are yet more problems with divesting from Israel:

University leaders could follow the same playbook as they did on fossil fuels and find ways to symbolically divest without disrupting their endowments in any notable way. Based on the size of G.D.P., not investing is Israel directly would be like not investing in Colorado. And despite the chants that charge otherwise, many endowments appear to have little to no direct exposure to Israel or to many of the American companies protesters want to blacklist.

But there’s a key difference between avoiding fossil fuels and shunning Israel. The institutions that divested from oil and gas made sure to describe it as financially prudent, albeit sometimes with shallow investment logic. This time, Israel’s social license is the only thing that is on the table. And if Israel is on the table, what other countries should lose their social license? How many years must pass since what some believe to be a country’s settler colonialist period or messy wars that kill innocent civilians to make it investable?

And if divestment against Israel is carried out, when should it end? Oil and gas divesting is meant never to end; oil and gas consumption is meant to end. Divestment from South Africa ended with apartheid. So university leaders will be forced to ask an often heterogeneous group of students what would earn Israel its social license back. A cease-fire? A new Israeli government? A two-state solution? The end of Israel as a Jewish state?

. . .Listen to the protesters on divestment. They will not stop. They will not rest.

But neither will the markets. They open every morning, Monday through Friday, and university budgets’ demands on endowments never go away. Tuitions are rising. Costs always go up. Colleges should debate deep moral issues and discuss the hard compromises to solve the world’s ills. But we should move those efforts to the lecture halls, away from the investment offices. Divesting is an easy chant. Investing is hard enough as it is.

Well, that’s not entirely convincing. My opposition to divesting in Israel is that it’s performative, and, most of all, wrong, for Hamas is on the wrong side of this war. Nevertheless, the cry is for more investment in Palestine, even those the vast majority of Palestinians back Hamas. As my friend in Berlin wrote (see below), “These are crazy times.”

*Hospitals are now asking patients to pay in advance for surgery and other procedures, forcing some to put off procedures that they can’t yet afford. This is why we need some form of national, affordable health care.

Heather Miconi has seven weeks to come up with $2,000 to pay for surgery her daughter needs to breathe more easily.

Merritt Island Surgery Center in Merritt Island, Fla., billed Miconi in advance of the adenoid and tonsil surgery. If she can’t pay for the surgery before it is scheduled to take place next month, the procedure will be put off.

Miconi, whose insurance won’t cover the cost because she has a high deductible, works three jobs and doesn’t have savings to cover the cost. She is now appealing to strangers through a GoFundMe campaign for help.

For years, hospitals and surgery centers waited to perform procedures before sending bills to patients. That often left them chasing after patients for payment, repeatedly sending invoices and enlisting debt collectors.

Now, more hospitals and surgery centers are demanding patients pay in advance.

Advance billing helps the facilities avoid hounding patients to settle up. Yet it is distressing patients who must come up with thousands of dollars while struggling with serious conditions.

Those who can’t come up with the sums have been forced to put off procedures. Some who paid up discovered later they were overcharged, then had to fight for refunds.

Among the procedures that hospitals and surgery centers are seeking prepayments for are knee replacements, CT scans and births.

Yes, I can understand why hospitals are concerned with repayment, but to endanger patients who can’t pay up at the moment? That’s mean-spirited. I’m actually surprised because some hospitals, despite the law requiring it, refuse to specify charges for procedures, preventing comparison shopping. I’m surprised they don’t ask for tips after it’s all over!  Would you go to a restaurant that made you pay upfront before serving you any food?

*A friend wrote me from Berlin this morning saying that these were “crazy times”. Now I understand what she meant: German politicians are getting physically attacked left and right:

A prominent Berlin politician was violently assaulted and suffered injuries to her head and neck, police said Wednesday, in the latest attack on elected officials that raises concern over rising political violence in Germany.

Franziska Giffey, the city’s top economic official, a former mayor and an ex-federal minister, was attacked at an event in a Berlin library on Tuesday by a man who approached her from behind and hit her with a bag containing a hard device, police said.

Giffey was taken to a hospital and treated for head and neck pain, police said. A 74-year-old man was detained and police searched his home, police said. They said the suspect was known to police, but did not give any indication for a motive.

. . .Last week, a candidate from the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz was beaten up in the eastern city of Dresden while campaigning for next month’s election for the European Parliament and had to undergo surgery.

Police detained four suspects, aged between 17 and 18, and said that the same group had apparently attacked a Greens party worker minutes before they attacked Matthias Ecke. At least one of the teens is said to be linked to far-right groups, security officials said.

Also on Tuesday, a 47-year-old Green Party politician was attacked by two people while putting up election posters in Dresden, dpa reported.

The incidents have raised political tensions in Germany.

Both government and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months, and have called on police to step up protection for politicians and election rallies.

In February, the German Parliament said in a report there were a total of 2,790 attacks on elected representatives in 2023. Representatives of The Greens were disproportionally affected in 1,219 cases, those from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, in 478 cases and representatives of the SPD in 420 cases.

The country’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, who is a member of The Greens, was prevented from disembarking a ferry for hours by a group of angry farmers in January, and the vice president of the German Parliament, Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also from The Greens, was prevented from leaving an event in the state of Brandenburg last week when an angry crowd blocked her car.

The causes? Many are suggested: Scholz’s government isn’t popular in the eastern part of the country, neo-Nazis are making trouble, and there is a lot of anti-immigration sentiment. Here’s a self portrait she took in Berlin yesterday, which at least expresses a reasonable sentiment. Yes, what’s written on the sidewalk is “F*ck Hamas.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  the two cat friends are on the prowl:

Szaron: We have to be very observant.
Hili: What for?
Szaron: So that no mouse will sneak through.
Polish:
Szaron: Musimy bardzo uważać.
Hili: Na co?
Szaron, Żeby się żadna mysz nie prześlizgnęła.

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From Things with Faces:

From the 2024 Darwin Awards:

. . and from Science Humor:

From Masih: Justin Trudeau has a decision to make:

Sci Am goes political again. . .but the takedown is good. (Have you seen Teen Vogue?)

JCO weighs in:

Speaking of ideology corrupting science, Colin Wright tells us how Yale’s medical students are fed lies. Be sure to click “show more” as it’s a long and disheartening tale. (h/t Luana).

From Barry, who says, “The cat doesn’t know what to make of it.” It’s clearly some kind of toxic insect, but readers might weigh in:

From Malcolm: a bike escalator in Norway.  Now there’s a country with panache!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a French girl (Jewish of course) gassed to death upon arrival.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a lovely fossil that took 18 years to prepare!

This doesn’t look like a tasty meal, but great blue herons will eat anything aquatic:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

May 8, 2024 • 6:55 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Letsatsi la Hump” in Sesotho), May 8, 2024, and and National Coconut Cream Pie Day, an estimable pie if made well.  Here’s one from Wikipedia, titled “Photo of a slice of coconut cream pie. Taken at the Golden Nugget Restaurant, Chicago, Ill.”  I haven’t been there!

Kim Scarborough, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Bike to School Day, Root Canal Appreciation Day (!), National Give Someone A Cupcake Day (I’m willing to take some), National Have a Coke Day, National Outdoor Intercourse Day (yes, you’re supposed to copulate al fresco), Truman Day in Missouri (Truman was born on this day in 1884), , Furry Dance in Helston, UK. and Victory in Europe Day (Germany surrendered on this day in 1945), and Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War, which continues to May 9.

Here’s a Furry Dance from Helston, in Cornwall:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Stormy Daniels, the porn star given hush money by Trump and his minions, testified today in his trial for misreporting transactions.

Daniels testified that the two later had sex but she was in shock afterward, saying her hands shook nervously as she tried to buckle her high-heeled gold shoes. Before she left Trump told her he wanted to see her again, “Let’s keep in touch, honey bunch,” she recalled him saying.

The brief sexual encounter is at the heart of the trial, in which Manhattan prosecutors allege Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to buy her silence. Prosecutors said the payment came during a critical moment in his first presidential campaign. At the time, Trump was under scrutiny after an “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced of him describing how he groped women.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has denied the affair and any wrongdoing and has said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat whose office brought the case, charged him out of political spite.

For prosecutors, putting Daniels, 45 years old, on the stand was a gamble. Her testimony helped to bolster the account of her former lawyer, Keith Davidson, and gave jurors a firsthand look at her efforts to sell her story and negotiations around her silence. But throughout Tuesday morning, Trump’s lawyers raised objections over what she told the jury and by the afternoon they demanded a mistrial. They accused Daniels of changing her story and of providing details outside the scope of the trial.

Daniels said at one point that she blacked out during the encounter, but clarified she wasn’t drunk or drugged.

Todd Blanche, a Trump lawyer, said Daniels’ testimony was meant to inflame the jury and wrongfully raise questions about whether the sex was consensual.

“There is no way to unring the bell in our view,” Blanche said.

The judge denied the motion but acknowledged that some of Daniels’ testimony was “probably better left unsaid.” He also granted the defense’s request for a limiting instruction, curbing what Daniels could say going forward.

Daniels said that in October 2016 she learned that Trump and his then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, were willing to pay her to sign a nondisclosure agreement. She said she thought the agreement was the best scenario because she didn’t want her husband at the time to find out. She also said she wasn’t concerned about getting paid.

“It’s money but the number didn’t matter to me, and I didn’t pick the number,” she told jurors.

But how would her husband find out if she didn’t want him to? The only person who would “disclose” anything would be Daniels herself.  I wonder if there’s any Republican,  much less any American, who believes Trump’s denial that they had an affair.

*Surprisingly (at least to me), President Biden gave a speech in which he strongly decried antisemitism in America—without mentioning Islamophobia (perhaps that’s because he was speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum). The NYT reports:

President Biden declared on Tuesday that hatred of Jews “continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people,” saying there has been a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States following the attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.

Speaking at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance, Mr. Biden demanded that Americans learn the lessons of what he called one of the “darkest chapters in human history” by opposing attacks on Jews.

“People are already forgetting, are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror,” Mr. Biden said from Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill. “It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas that took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten.”

Mr. Biden’s address came during weeks of protests on American college campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza, with students demanding that the Biden administration stop sending arms to Israel. In some cases, the demonstrations have included antisemitic rhetoric and harassment targeting Jewish students.

“I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world and America,” the president said, referring to the protests. But he added “there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.”

He said destroying property does not constitute a peaceful protest.

“It’s against the law,” he said. “We’re a civil society. We uphold the rule of law, and no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.”

The president vowed that his commitment to the security of Israel “and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad. Even when we disagree,” a reference to the arguments his administration has had with Israel’s right-wing government about the death of tens of thousands of people in Gaza.

The Republican Speaker of the House issued similar sentiments:

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday compared the protests unfolding on American university campuses to what happened at institutions of higher learning in Germany during World War II.

It was the “same elite centers of learning” from which “Jewish faculty and students were suddenly expelled” in Germany, Mr. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in pointed remarks at a Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony at the Capitol. Today, he said, American universities have become “hostile places for Jewish students and faculty.”

*Israel has begun a serious assault on Hamas in Rafa, having taken control of the border crossing with Egypt. (Contrary to the NY Times’s claim, Egypt had already closed that crossing to humanitarian aid, so all the aid is coming through the Israel crossing to northern Rafa, a crossing that Israel repaired after it was destroyed by Hamas’s rockets. Here’s what the NYT says:

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had sent tanks into Rafah and established control over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation. The move halted the flow of aid into the enclave, drawing immediate condemnation from international officials.

No, no, no. The flow of aid into southern Gaza was halted yesterday by Egypt. Aid is starting to flow it (at a higher rate than before the war) through Israel. Now, from the ToI:

Israeli tanks rolled into the southern Gaza Strip early Tuesday, capturing the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing on the Egypt border, in what the military called a “pinpoint operation” against the Hamas terror group.

The ground incursion in the eastern part of the city of Rafah came after Jerusalem said a truce offer from Hamas the previous day did not meet its demands, and announced that it had okayed moving ahead with the long-threatened offensive.

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that it was a “limited operation” aimed at pressuring Hamas to accept a deal.

I’m not sure about that bit, as the “deal” would have to include the complete surrender of Hamas and release of all the hostages. Hamas still wants Israel to release 1000 terrorists in return for an unknown number of hostages (many are dead). But to continue:

Israeli tanks rolled into the southern Gaza Strip early Tuesday, capturing the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing on the Egypt border, in what the military called a “pinpoint operation” against the Hamas terror group.

The ground incursion in the eastern part of the city of Rafah came after Jerusalem said a truce offer from Hamas the previous day did not meet its demands, and announced that it had okayed moving ahead with the long-threatened offensive.

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that it was a “limited operation” aimed at pressuring Hamas to accept a deal.

t was not the broad Rafah offensive that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly promised Israel would carry out, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with Israel’s plan.

The Israel Defense Forces said its 401st Armored Brigade captured the Gazan side of Rafah Crossing on Tuesday morning, apparently with little resistance. Israeli flags were raised by troops at the border crossing, footage showed.

The crossing, located some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Israeli border, was captured amid a “pinpoint operation” against Hamas in “limited areas of eastern Rafah,” the IDF said. It is located along the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, separating Egypt and Gaza.

As of Tuesday morning, Israel controlled all of the known overground crossings with Gaza.

The new proposal put up by Hamas for consideration was apparently intended to keep the IDF out of Rafah, but it didn’t work. Hamas is, I suspect, getting desperate.

*Our encampment removal made the NYT (click headline to read original, or see it archived here):

The bit:

When pro-Palestinian protesters put up tents on a University of Chicago quad early last week, administrators initially took a permissive view.

But that changed on Friday when the university’s president, Paul Alivisatos, wrote a letter saying that demonstrators had violated policies and that the encampment “cannot continue.” Four days later, on Tuesday morning, the university police moved in before sunrise to forcibly disperse the camp.

“The university remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves, but we cannot enable an environment where the expression of some dominates and disrupts the healthy functioning of the community for the rest,” Dr. Alivisatos wrote on Tuesday.

The encampment at the University of Chicago, a highly selective private institution, was among dozens across the country that have tested campus leaders and posed thorny questions about the balance between free speech and safety. But the Chicago camp took on added significance because the university is the home of the Chicago statement, a set of free speech standards adopted in 2015 that has become a touchstone and guide for colleges across the country.

. . .After 4 a.m., Dr. Darrow said, she saw two vehicles with bright headlights pull onto the quad. Soon, she said, more vehicles arrived and University of Chicago police officers in riot gear exited and started tearing down barricades.

“They started very, very quickly ripping and throwing the barricades that were protecting the camp,” Dr. Darrow said. “They started destroying the tents and throwing them. They were both yelling over bull horns and also just yelling very loudly that everyone needed to get out.”

Protesters were told to leave immediately, Dr. Darrow said, and they complied. She said she did not witness any physical contact between protesters and officers while the camp was being cleared. A student protester, Kelly Hui, said she was pushed by a police officer and witnessed contact between other officers and protesters. Demonstrators have been asking the university to disclose its investments in weapons manufacturers and divest from companies involved in Israel’s war effort.

I’ll show one photo from the article because it’s so good; the photographer is Jamie Kelter Davis and the caption is “Police officers blocked protesters from returning to the University of Chicago’s quad, where an encampment created by pro-Palestinian protesters was dismantled on Tuesday morning,:

The protestors on the street were chanting away and asking the cops, “Why are you here?”, which bespeaks a remarkable display of ignorance since they’d been told several times what was going to happen to them and why.

In the end, despite the delays and the rumors that the administration was negotiating with the protestors (as happened at Northwestern), I think we came out looking pretty good on this one. I just hope the protestors don’t try to come back and en-tent themselves again, which seems to have happened at MIT. But I think the admin and cops know enough now to respond immediately when the first tent stake is driven into the ground.

Finally, in the AP’s ever-amusing “oddities” section, we discover that a Pennsylvania man has lost his emotional support alligator.

A Pennsylvania man who credits an alligator named Wally for helping relieve his depression for nearly a decade says he is searching for the reptile after it went missing during a vacation to the coast of Georgia.

Joie Henney has thousands of social media users following his pages devoted to Wally, the cold-blooded companion that he calls his emotional support alligator. He has posted photos and videos online of people petting the 5 1/2-foot (1.7 meter) alligator like a dog or hugging it like a teddy bear. Wally’s popularity soared to new heights last year when the gator was denied entry to a Philadelphia Phillies game.

Now Henney said he is distraught after Wally vanished while accompanying him on an April vacation in Brunswick, Georgia, a port city 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Savannah. He said he suspects someone stole Wally from the fenced, outdoor enclosure where Wally spent the night on April 21.

In social media posts, Henney said pranksters left Wally outside the home of someone who called authorities, resulting in his alligator being trapped and released into the wild.

“We need all the help we can get to bring my baby back,” Henney said in a tearful video posted on TikTok. “Please, we need your help.”

There’s a photo at the link: the gator isn’t big, but Henney will have a hard time hugging it when it gets big. I do hope he finds his lost reptile, as it’s not every alligator that can provide the requisite emotional support.  Here’s a news story on the loss, and the video of Henney and Wally is adorable.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron takes down Hili’s puffery:

Hili: I have the nature of the lynx and the spirit of the lion.
Szaron: And imagination like a lizard.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam naturę rysia i duszę lwa.
Szaron: I wyobraźnię jaszczurki.

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

From Rosemary, who calls the encampers “gerbils.” She made this using AI and a U of Chicago background:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Mark:

This tweet from Masih says that she not only had to sell her house, since Iran is trying to kill here, but also left the United States. I have no idea where she lives now.

x

Here’s a recording of the IDF warning inhabitants of Rafah to leave because of an imminent bombing—and the defiant response:

From Simon, a tweet from the Republican but anti-Trump Lincoln Project:

From Barry: in the second tweet, a fish is an Uber for a frog (the loud frog tweet that’s first was posted yesterday)

From Susan: J. K. Rowling makes a snarky and hilarious reply:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a post I retweeted:

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. First, he found out something new about the history of DNA:

 

And yes, this is a monster alligator:

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 7, 2024 • 6:45 am

Note that our Encampment was removed at about 5 a.m. this morning. It’s an ex-Encampment, singing with the Choir Invisible.

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 7, 2024, and National Roast Leg of Lamb Day. Here are two photos from my last trip to Paris, where, at the restaurant Sébillon, we got all the roast leg of lamb and white beans we could eat (I had three helpings).  Slices are carved at your table from a rolling tray

It’s also National Teacher Day, World Asthma Day, National Concert Day, National Tourism Day, National Cosmopolitan Day (a “cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice,” popularized in the t.v. show “Sex and the City”), and, finally,Radio Day, commemorating the work of Alexander Popov (Russia, Bulgaria)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*At his NYT trial for hiding hush money, Trump was again cited for contempt and threatened with jail (I think the judge is too timorous to jail him!).

The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan rebuked the former president on Monday for mounting “a direct attack on the rule of law,” holding him in contempt of court for a second time and threatening to jail him if he continued to break a gag order that bars him from attacking jurors.

In a moment of remarkable courtroom drama, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, addressed Mr. Trump personally from the bench, saying that if there were further violations, he might bypass financial penalties and place the former president behind bars.

Justice Merchan acknowledged that jailing Mr. Trump was “the last thing” he wanted to do, but explained that it was his responsibility to “protect the dignity of the justice system.”

The judge said that he understood “the magnitude of such a decision” and that jailing Mr. Trump would be a last resort. He noted: “You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well.”

As the judge delivered his admonition and imposed a $1,000 fine, Mr. Trump stared straight at him, blinking but not reacting, and when the remarks were over, the former president shook his head.

Lock him up!

The paper also reports that after Trump was President, he reimbursed Michael Cohen, his “fixer”, giving Cohen $420,ooo out of Trump’s personal account to pay the hush money.

A former Trump Organization employee who handled a key payment at the center of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan told the jury on Monday that much of the money had come from the personal bank account of Mr. Trump, who was by then the president of the United States.

The testimony of Jeffrey S. McConney, the business’s former corporate controller, provided jurors with their first look at some of the documents that prosecutors say were falsified by Mr. Trump in his effort to conceal a porn star’s account of a sexual encounter. Mr. McConney described how he was ordered by his boss, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, to reimburse Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, for the $130,000 he paid out of his own pocket to buy her silence.

To me this last bit doesn’t sound illegal, but it’s not the only money that Cohen received, and somehow business records were falsified to conceal this payment. That, I guess, is the illegal bit. Readers who know a little bit of law might explain below.

*Over at The Free Press, Abigail Shrier writes about how “There are two sets of rules for free speech” on college campuses. Her narrative sounds familiar:

In the last two weeks, self-proclaimed pro-Palestinian protesters have set up encampments at dozens of American universities. Heedless of university restrictions against intimidation and harassment, they demonstrate where, when, and how they like. They cry “Go back to Poland,” “baby killers,” and “globalize the Intifada” at Jewish students. They wave the flags of designated terrorist groups, like Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and hold up signs that beckon “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,” with an arrow pointing at Jewish counterprotesters. (Al-Qassam is the wing of Hamas that carried out the October 7 massacre.)

On campuses that have—for a decade or more—repeated ad nauseam that priority onewas the creation of a “safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair” community, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave Hezbollah flags, wear Hamas headbands, and conceal their faces with masks. They ignore all time, place, and manner restrictions on student demonstrations set by their schools, and refuse all demands from the universities to take down their tents or to move their protests elsewhere. And at Columbia, until April 30, when protesters took over Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and the NYPD was at last called in, they almost got away with it.

At UCLA, protesters blocked students from entering the library during the midterms, asking those who wished to enter: “Are you a Zionist?” After a Jewish girl was reportedly beaten unconscious by pro-Palestinian protesters, pro-Israel counterprotesters at UCLA arrived in masks and hoodies, shooting off fireworks, firing tear gas, and throwing objects at the pro-Hamas protesters and attempting to physically destroy the encampments. Only then did UCLA call in the police to remove the encampments.

Instead of immediately suspending the pro-Hamas protesters for breaking university rules, for weeks, university administrations instead chose to “negotiate” with the rule-breakers. At Columbia, the administration offered to review its policy on “socially responsible investing” (read: divesting from the world’s only Jewish state), and offered to “make investments in health and education in Gaza.” At Brown, the administration promised protesters that they would put divestment from Israel on the agenda. At Northwestern, the administration meekly tossed rewards, including the promise to establish a full-ride scholarship for Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics.

At Columbia, protesters rejected the offers, knowing they had the upper hand. When police arrived to break up the encampments, Columbia faculty in orange vests linked arms to form a human wall against the police, shielding the rule-breakers.

The lengths administrators have gone to placate, encourage, and embolden the pro-Hamas protesters in the past weeks provide a signal reminder that there are at least two sets of rules governing elite universities today: one for the favored, protected class; the other for everyone else. And in case anyone has any doubt which category Jewish students fall into, the unwillingness of universities to enforce their own codes of conduct against pro-Hamas protesters in the months since October 7 should disabuse them.

Shrier then gives examples of similar speech that was immediately squelched by American University, including a man who put up flyers displaying Confederate flags and saying “Hurrah for Dixie!” on them; or use of the “n word” scrawled on walls or even uttered. That can’t possibly be free speech. But it is!

. . .In the abstract, if “Huzzah for Dixie” is worth the full mobilization of university resources and law enforcement, then waving the flag of a terrorist group, or writing “burn you filthy zio” to a student chat, or telling Jewish students to “go back to Poland” where millions of Jews were murdered in gas chambers, or pulling down the American flag over a statue of John Harvard and replacing it with the Palestinian flag, or painting “Ziosgetfuckt” on UPenn’s statue of Ben Franklin, or calling Jews “Hitler’s children”—all insults hurled at Jews on campus—are at least as menacing.

But in practice, the two types of incidents—rather, the two targets of the incidents—are treated entirely differently. Punishment is meted out swiftly and mercilessly, and with no consideration for free speech principles, any time Confederate flag flyers are posted, any time students hold culturally insensitive themed frat parties, any time colleges uncover student use of the N-word while in high school (or even a word in Mandarin that sounds like the N-word), or even when students or faculty make the familiar conservative argument that affirmative action sets black students up to fail. Rinse and repeat and repeat.

. . . But watch the marble carefully as university administrators spin the cups. When a favored group is attacked, they discover a “community safety” concern with remarkable alacrity. When it’s a disfavored group, suddenly the cup reveals “free expression.” The game is fixed, and the administrators show their hands. “Community safety,” or was it “free speech”? Surprise! They don’t believe in either.

What is odious here, and what brought down Liz Magill at Penn and contributed to the downfall of Claudine Gay at Harvard, is not free speech, but the violation of “time, place and manner
restrictions, and especially the unequal treatment of similar cases.

*This is sad: Columbia University canceled its main graduation ceremony.  I remember when I got my Ph.D: several of us “too cool for gowns” students were sitting around the Museum, and all of a sudden decided we really should go to graduation, especially because Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was speaking. Three of us ran to the Coop to rent caps and gowns, only to find out that there were hardly any left, and the one I got was so big it dragged on the ground. But we rented them and went to graduation. Solzhenitsyn gave a famous speech, and I was very glad I went. I’m sad for the Columbia students who will miss their Big Moment.

Columbia University canceled its main commencement ceremony but will still go ahead with smaller-scale graduations, the school said Monday, after weeks of pro-Palestinian demonstrations disrupted campus.

The ceremony, which was scheduled for May 15, has taken place outdoors on its New York City campus where students had set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was taken down by police last week.

The protests over the Israel-Hamas war that have swept campuses nationwide have prompted university administrators to rethink commencement plans with a goal of protecting students and guests from potentially ugly and violent political disputes.

“Holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable,” Columbia said in a statement Monday.

The university said it looked for another venue but couldn’t find one that could hold the more than 50,000 people who normally attend its graduation ceremony.

“Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome,” Columbia said.

What do you think? Is “safety” a valid concern that would warrant this cancellation? There might be a few vocal protests, but couldn’t they have enough security there to give any protestors the bum’s rush?

*It looks like the IDF is about to begin its Rafah operation. Israel and Hamas have failed to reach a cease-fire agreement, and Israel is gearing up to attack the last bastion of Hamas, beginning by evacuating civilians to a secure area (they’ve also dropped notes with maps on the Gazans)

Channel 12 quotes Israeli officials saying Israel’s negotiating team has just received Hamas’s response from the mediators.

The report says Israel is now carefully evaluating the Hamas response and will issue orderly comments later this evening.

It says the Israeli officials are already saying that “this is not the same proposal” for a deal that Israel and Egypt agreed upon 10 days ago, and that served as the basis for the indirect negotiations since then. “All kinds of clauses” have been inserted, the TV report says.

These new clauses, among other issues, relate to the cardinal questions of if, how and when the war would end, and what kind of guarantees are being offered to that effect.

Hamas, the report notes, had been toughening its demands in recent days, and demanding that the war end during the first, 40-day phase of the deal, rather than in the second or third phases.

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly rejected ending the war as part of a hostage deal at all, instead insisting that it will resume fighting once the deal is implemented, in accordance with its twin war goals: returning the hostages and destroying Hamas’s military and governance capacities.

The evacuation:

The IDF has begun evacuating civilians from eastern Rafah to a new expanded humanitarian zone which includes al-Mawasi and parts of Khan Yunis and central Gaza, the IDF announced on Monday morning. The evacuation comes ahead of planned IDF operations in the Rafah area.

The new humanitarian zone includes field hospitals, tents, and increased provisions of food, water, medicine, and other supplies.

Additionally, the IDF is working in cooperation with international organizations and several countries to allow an increase of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

The IDF, in accordance with a decision made by the political echelon, is calling on the population currently under Hamas control to evacuate temporarily from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to the new zone. The evacuation will be conducted in a phased manner in accordance with continuing situation assessments.

The call to evacuate is being made through leaflets, text messages, phone calls, and statements in Arabic.

“The IDF will continue to operate in order to realize the goals of the war, including the dismantling of Hamas and the return of all the hostages,” said the IDF.

Hamas is getting desperate now that they realize Israel means business. But despite the orderly and planned nature of the evacuation (there are food and tents in the new secure area), the U.S. is still telling Israel not to invade Rafah.  This means, as I’ve always said, that the U.S. wants Israel to lose the war. This is not acceptable to the vast majority of Israelis.

*Good news for Chicago-area biology fans. The Field Museum has acquired a specimen of Archaeopteryx that’s now on display, and, says reader Neil Shubin, “it’s arguably the best specimen yet.”

In front of gathered dignitaries and the press, the Field formally announced to the world what had become a not-so-well-kept secret: The museum had acquired just the 13th specimen known to exist of Archaeopteryx (ar-key-AHP-ter-icks), a fossil often described as the “missing link” between dinosaurs and birds.

“It’s a spectacular example … teeth like a dinosaur, a tail like a dinosaur, but it’s a bird,” said Julian Siggers, Field Museum president and CEO. “The top-level message is that dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, they actually evolved into birds.”

Actually, it’s not a bird, at least according to the taxonomist I consulted. While birds are a subgroup of dinosaurs, Archaeopteryx  apparently belongs to a non-avian dinosaur lineage close to birds (h/t Phil Ward).

The acquisition is a coup not just for the museum and O’Connor, but for Chicago, with the Field becoming the only public institution outside of Europe to have an Archaeopteryx in its collection.

“It’s definitely the most important scientific specimen we’ve ever acquired, beyond a doubt,” Siggers said. “It takes first place. … For us here, it’s an enormous opportunity for science. But there was an incredible exhibition opportunity, too. Because it’s then on us to explain to the public why this is so important.”

. . .All of the specimens of Archaeopteryx unearthed to date — including the Field’s — have come from this single deposit of Bavarian rock, known as Solnhofen Limestone.

The first Archaeopteryx fossils were excavated around 1860 (exact dates of a fossil’s discovery versus its announcement versus its identification are often murky). The timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous, occurring shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking “On the Origin of Species,” the foundational text of evolutionary biology.

Darwin knew the biggest criticism of natural selection, his theory of evolution, would be the lack of supporting proof. There had not, as yet, he admitted, been a single discovery of a fossil demonstrating an organism’s gradual change from one form to another.

“He points out, in the first edition of his book … we have no transitional forms or missing links that we can point to and go ‘Boom, right there,’” O’Connor said. “And then two years later Archaeopteryx is found. It’s the perfect missing link.”

Well, it’s not a transitional form from dinos to birds, and it’s not really a “missing link”, which is generally a misnomer because the “missing link” between dinos and birds would be the one dinosaur species that split into two species, one of which gave rise to all modern birds and the other to all dinosaurs. It would look like a dinosaur, and you wouldn’t recognize it as a missing link. What it does show is that some groups of dinosaurs (including probably T. rex) evolved feathers, and one group, of which Archaeopteryx is not a member, evolved into all modern birds.

Still, it was an early example showing that there were viable animals with traits intermediate to those of dinosaurs and birds, and that was good enough at the time. Here’s a picture of the specimen taken from the WTTW site:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szardon is on the desk, displacing the displeased Editor:

Hili: Tell him that this is my place.
A: I told him that it’s my desk but you know how it is with cats.
In Polish:
Hili: Powiedz mu, że to jest moje miejsce.
Ja: Już mu mówiłem, że to jest moje biurko, ale wiesz jak to jest z kotami.

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

From Debra, a stingy restaurant! And look at the comment at the bottom.

This was on Facebook, but I can’t remember where:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih: an Iranian man sentenced to death for criticizing the regime on social media. His crime? “Corruption on earth.” Those students who are currently extolling Iran would never want to live there.

From Iranian-American attorney and activist Elica Le Bon: an analysis of non-Muslims engaged in Islamic prayer at the University of Texas (h/t Rosemary, who says the Le Bon is “the intellectual voice of Iran’s dissident women”.)

What happens when policing drops:

A good one from Simon:

From a colleague: you do the crime, you do the time. To this ASU student’s credit, she does say she’d encamp again.

From Malcolm, who. referring to the second tweet below says, “This is just a beautiful clip.”  And so it is! As for the sound in the first clip, what do you think it is?

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a woman who died in the camp at about 30.

A tweet from Dr. Cobb. Yes, “Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is indeed the name of a newly-discovered gene. (I also like “Groucho”, a mutation that gives flies extra bristles over its eyes.)

Monday: Hili dialogue

April 22, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, April 22, 2024, and the beginning of Passover (or Pesach), the Jewish holiday that begins this evening and ends on sundown Tuesday, April 30.  There will be seder dinners with the usual bland food, and people will gather to chat, consume matzos, swill Manischewitz (oy!) and bond.  Even the cats are participating!  Here, from Reader Patricia, is a Passover Cat, presumably a Jewish moggie since it’s named Ziva. The difference is that instead of making biscuits, it makes matzos (visible on the table)!

This is a typical Jewish holiday, with the theme “They tried to kill us; we won; let’s eat!”

I’ve got some, too, thanks to my friend Peggy. They’re great when slathered with sweet butter.

Foodwise, it’s National Jelly Bean Day.  If you Google “Jelly Bean Day” by itself (use the preceding link), you’ll get a surprise. Jelly Bellies are of course the best brand, and they make 15 billion beans every year, which works out to more than 1,000 beans per second. This short video shows you how they make them, using “natural ingredients whenever possible.”

It’s also “In God We Trust Day” (on this day in 1864, a bill passed Congress allowing “In God We Trust” to be put on U.S. coins), a day of commemoration in the UK for the murdered 18-year-old black man Stephen Lawrence, and, finally, it’s Earth Day, celebrated in this Google  Doodle with “Google” spelled out in features that represent attempts to save the Earth (read here). 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Wall Street Journal has an intriguing article called “Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at World’s Busiest Airports,” with the subtitle, “The Heathrow-to-Dubai flights have two big money-laundering features: One airport doesn’t scan outbound luggage for cash and the other welcomes sacks of it“.  Unfortunately, it’s not archived.

Jo-Emma Larvin wheeled a baggage cart piled with suitcases through London’s Heathrow Airport in August 2020 and handed her passport to an Emirates Airline agent for a flight to Dubai.

Larvin was traveling business class with another woman and together they heaved seven heavy suitcases onto the conveyor belt. She exchanged texts with her boyfriend en route to the security line.

“Do you feel ok?” he asked.

“Yes phew,” Larvin wrote. The suitcases carried millions of dollars worth of British pounds wrapped with rubber bands and bundled in plastic.

The money was headed to an international money launderer who charged a hefty fee to clients to exchange cash for gold or other currencies. His preferred route was to Dubai from Heathrow, Nos. 1 and 2 of the world’s busiest airports for international passengers.

The U.K. requires passengers to tell customs authorities if they are leaving the country with more than the equivalent of around $10,000, but Larvin didn’t, risking arrest. The seven suitcases entered Heathrow’s baggage handling system and slid through a 3-D scanner that checked only for explosives and other potentially dangerous items.

The next morning, the women collected their luggage in Dubai without having too much to worry about: Any amount of cash is allowed to enter the United Arab Emirates, as long as it is declared. The women followed signs to customs and told authorities they had brought the equivalent of $2.8 million.

Most airports worldwide, including in the U.S., don’t scan passenger luggage for cash, a costly undertaking in equipment and personnel. Countries where all money is welcome have no obligation to report about suitcases full of cash arriving from abroad. The loopholes allow billions of dollars worth of cash to fly out of the U.K. and elsewhere to countries with fewer rules, law-enforcement officials said.

Money launderers surreptitiously introduce more than $2 trillion in proceeds from illegal enterprises to global financial systems every year, according to estimates. International airplane passengers likely ferry hundreds of billions of dollars worth of that in cash, according to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental agency that develops anti-money-laundering standards for countries.

One reason for so much airline smuggling is that penalties and scandals over customers engaged in money-laundering have prompted more banks around the world to report suspicious transactions. “You just can’t walk into a bank with this much money without being flagged,” said George Voloshin, of ACAMS, an industry group for financial crime-fighting professionals.“You will be arrested at the next branch.”

. . . “How the hell did they get away with it—so much money in such a short space of time?” said Ian Truby, a senior investigating officer at the U.K. National Crime Agency. One answer, he said, is that airport security isn’t for crime detection, only flight safety.

I wonder where the money came from in the first place, but many of these people are simply couriers. The article does report that some people get caught, but Larvin has apparently gotten off.

*This is pretty amazing. Fatah, the ruling party of the West Bank, headed by Palestine’s President for Life Mahmoud Abbas, has admitted—as most sane people suspected—that Hamas has killed aid workers and stolen food. Yes, FATAH!

In an incredible and rare admission, Fatah has corroborated what Israel has been saying all along: that Hamas is responsible for turmoil connected to distribution of the humanitarian aid sent into Gaza. A Fatah TV anchor reported that throughout the war, Hamas has been committing what is essentially a triple crime—it has attacked and killed aid workers in order to control aid distribution, stolen the food and water for itself, and caused food prices to skyrocket.

. . . This is a damning indictment by Fatah, exposing Hamas’ heinous actions against humanitarian aid workers and Palestinian civilians in need of food. World powers were quick to decry Israel for an inadvertent tragedy that killed several World Central Kitchen personnel. These same authorities and media outlets must now condemn Hamas with equal vigor for its intentional murder of aid workers. A failure to condemn Hamas for intentional murder by the countries and frameworks who condemned Israel for accidental killing would expose once again a glaring double standard by international bodies, and especially the media, that unfortunately has accompanied this entire war.

Here’s the video of the news report:

*The ever-accommodating government of Justin Trudeau is exploring ways to placate Canadian Muslims, whose religion technically forbids them to pay interest, by thinking of ways to put “halal mortgages” in place. From the CBC:

Federal budget references to mortgage products aimed at Canadian Muslims have members of the community celebrating, along with the mortgage providers that look to serve them, despite a lack of detail from the government on what is to come.

In Tuesday’s budget documents, the federal government indicated that it’s “exploring new measures to expand access” to financing methods such as “halal mortgages.”

The budget provided few details about the plan, other than to say the government had been consulting “financial services providers and diverse communities” and that an update would come in the 2024 fall economic statement. Despite no specifics, it was a welcome addition to the budget for the Muslim community.

“It was very happy news for me,” said Abdullah Mohiuddin, who has already taken out an Islamic, or halal, mortgage to purchase a home in the Edmonton area. He said he welcomed the government’s announcement that it would be finding a way to increase access to a financial product he believes his community needs.

Several firms in various Canadian provinces offer halal mortgages. Halal is an Arabic word that translates in English to “permitted” or “allowed” under Islamic law.

These mortgages are deliberately structured to adhere to both Canadian law and the belief systems of many Muslims. Interest, which is referred to in many Islamic texts as “riba,” is forbidden.

But of course there’s a catch, though I’m not quite sure what it is.

Although interest isn’t charged, there are still costs associated with halal mortgages. In many cases, the costs are higher than those associated with conventional mortgages, and the mortgages are often not available at the branches of mainstream financial institutions.

“It seems like it’s a little bit expensive,” Mohiuddin said, adding he believes the lack of established legal definitions for a halal mortgage in Canada is behind the higher costs.

Muslims looking for a halal mortgage are still going to be paying carrying costs for a loan to purchase their home.

Providers in the industry said these costs can be higher because while there is demand, there are fewer providers — and some halal mortgage providers are unable to foreclose due to religious restrictions, which can increase what some financiers assess as risk.

What is gained here? More woke credits for Trudeau, but no savings for Muslims, except that they can pretend that they’re adhering to the dictates of their faith.

*As if you need further evidence of The Decline and Fall of the ACLU, here’s some from their national Instagram page (h/t Debra) showing their yearly symbol of Arab American Heritage Month. The ACLU and Tlaib: a match made in heaven!

They’re celebrating her!

*According to Greg, “Brian Leiter is collecting recollections and comments about Dan Dennett” at his blog, adding, “The first batch yesterday were all full of praise. I was surprised to read so many calling him one of, or even the greatest, philosopher of our time. I didn’t realize how highly thought of he was among philosophers. I recognized the names of some leaving tributes.”  Go here to see the tributes. I’ll put a few below:

I loved Dan, and I loved his work. By any measure he must qualify as one of the greatest philosophers in the last century. I personally owed him a great deal, and dedicated a recent book to him (fittingly, it was on consciousness) with the words, “Whose work awoke me from my Wittgensteinian slumbers.” The world is now a duller place.

Professor Dennett was an inspiration for me. Along with the Churchlands, he opened my eyes to an empirically informed way of doing philosophy. I had the opportunity to see him in action once during a conference in San Sebastián (Basque Country). I was still doing my doctorate, I was young and shy. But I will always regret not having asked him for a photo together. May he rest in peace.

Tom said…

It’s a rare treat to find a philosopher with whom one profoundly disagrees, yet wants to read more and more of. Most of my thinking about religion and the mind has developed in dialogue with, and opposition to, Dennett, who was simply a brilliant and original writer. My favourite passage from him, skewering analytic pretensions in McGinn:

‘” A type of mind M is cognitively closed with respect to a property P (or theory T) if and only if the concept-forming procedures at M’s disposal cannot extend to a grasp of P (or an understanding of T).” (p.3) (Don’t be misled about the apparent rigor of this definition; the author A never puts it to any use U in any formal derivation D.)’

Cade Mosley said…

One of my early formative moments in philosophy was visiting Craig Waterman’s Metaphysics office hours at U. Texas (where is he now, I wonder?) & talking through Dennett’s Consciousness Explained & other works, learning how to think and argue philosophically.

Aside from making very good philosophy, engaging with his work made good philosophers.
He sharpened people’s thinking and framed so many issues well, even (especially) for those taking an opposing line, which is always one of the best measures of a great philosopher, I think.

Beyond that, he provided a way of thinking about naturalizing so many philosophical problems, which has gone on to ground so much of the most active work happening in philosophical thinking these days.

Those are I think two of his biggest contributions.
I give my respects.

Cade Mosley said…

One of my early formative moments in philosophy was visiting Craig Waterman’s Metaphysics office hours at U. Texas (where is he now, I wonder?) & talking through Dennett’s Consciousness Explained & other works, learning how to think and argue philosophically.

Aside from making very good philosophy, engaging with his work made good philosophers.
He sharpened people’s thinking and framed so many issues well, even (especially) for those taking an opposing line, which is always one of the best measures of a great philosopher, I think.

Beyond that, he provided a way of thinking about naturalizing so many philosophical problems, which has gone on to ground so much of the most active work happening in philosophical thinking these days.

Those are I think two of his biggest contributions.
I give my respects.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is on the veranda roof and wants a nosh:

Hili: Małgorzata is in the kitchen.
A: So what?

Hili: I have to check whether she happens to be cutting meat.

In Polish:
Hili: Małgorzata jest w kuchni.
Ja: No to co?
Hili: Muszę sprawdzić, czy przypadkiem nie kroi mięsa.
And here are Szaron and Kulka on opposite sides of the window:

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

From All You Can Eat:

From Things With Faces: a scary muffin!

A text conversation from Ducks In Public. Someone needs to bone up on their biology. Are penguins not birds, either?

From Masih: More Iranian women resisting the misogynistic theists:

From Muffy: Things are heating up at Columbia, and they’re so hot that Jews got advice from the rabbi to stay off campus. Such is higher education.

From Barry, who says, “This cat looks comfortable.” In fact, this is how Hili sleeps on Malgorzata every night!

From Malcolm. This baby turtle doesn’t seem to enjoy its bath.

Rowling strikes back. She won’t lose because Klinefelter Syndrome (an XXY sex chromosome complement) produces only MALES. She deleted the original tweet to avoid identifying the sender:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Matthew loves Buster Keaton, who was a comedic genius. And he did all his own stunts, like those here:

Matthew and I have a lot of questions about this bird. . . .

Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 20, 2024 • 6:45 am

Good morning on CaturSaturday, April 20, 2024, Jewish cat shabbos and National Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day. My mom used to make these, and oy, do I love them. But I haven’t had one in years. Look at this beauty from Wikipedia!:

Kimberly Vardeman from Lubbock, TX, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Posting will be light today and I’m still working on my talk for Amsterdam (I spend a lot of time preparing). Bear with me; I do my best.

Today’s Google Doodle (click to read) celebrates the NBA playoffs:

It’s also National Cheddar Fries Day, National Cold Brew Day, Lima Bean Respect Day (I have no respect for these odious legumes), UN Chinese Language Day, and, of course, it being April 20, it’s 420 (cannabis culture).  Where did 420 come from? Wikipedia tells you:

In 1971, five high school students in San Rafael, California, used the term “4:20” in connection with a plan to search for an abandoned cannabis crop, based on a treasure map made by the grower. Calling themselves the Waldos,  because their typical hang-out spot “was a wall outside the school”,  the five students—Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich—designated the Louis Pasteur statue on the grounds of San Rafael High School as their meeting place, and 4:20 pm as their meeting time. The Waldos referred to this plan with the phrase “4:20 Louis”. After several failed attempts to find the crop, the group eventually shortened their phrase to “4:20”, which ultimately evolved into a code-word the teens used to refer to consuming cannabis.

And here’s the Pasteur Statue that served as the meeting place:

Photograph: Sapphic, (Sculptor – Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano (1898–1970)), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I just checked the news from Columbia, and the protestors, previously removed, have moved back into the quads, illegally again. But the administration is doing nothing about it. They are calling for the killing of Israeli soldiers and similar acts of butchery. 

Dozens of activists denouncing Israel’s war in Gaza remain camped out on the West Lawn of Columbia University on Friday, a day after New York City police arrested more than 100 people on suspicion of criminal trespass during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on the campus.

Now, students at several other universities are planning rallies in solidarity with the Columbia University demonstrators.

The University of North Carolina Students for Justice in Palestine is holding a solidarity rally Friday. The Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine announced an “emergency rally.” The Students for Justice in Palestine at The Ohio State University announced an “emergency protest supporting Gaza solidarity encampment.” And the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee announced a student walkout “in solidarity with steadfast Columbia students.”

Good old SJP; you can always count on them to support terrorism. Colleges are turning into ideological raves rather than places of learning.

*Well, Israel retaliated for the drone and missile attack from Iran, but it appears to have been a pretty tepid retaliation, which is fine with me. I’d prefer Israel to defeat Hamas than start a war with Iran.

Israel and Iran backed away from the brink Friday.

After a small-scale Israeli overnight strike on Iran—a response to Iran’s far broader missile and drone assault on Israel last week—leaders in Tehran signaled it was time to de-escalate.

But while the foes appear intent for now on returning to the shadow war of covert strikes and counterstrikes that has characterized the conflict for years, the past week’s pair of direct attacks on each other’s territory have raised the stakes and increased the risks of miscalculation.

Israel’s limited strike near the city of Isfahan appeared to provide an off-ramp from the recent cycle of direct conflict. No serious damage was reported, and it was played down by both sides, neither of which are seen as having an interest in going to war.

Israel, which is still deeply entangled in its war against Hamas in Gaza, is also under pressure from the Biden administration to tamp down tensions. Iran, because its less capable air force and air defenses would leave it at a disadvantage in a full-scale conventional war with Israel or the U.S., also has an incentive to defuse the current crisis and return to its previous strategy that centered on asymmetrical warfare.

The stand-down has stopped for now the back-and-forth strikes that the U.S., Europe and Gulf nations feared could send the region spiraling into war.

Still, the attacks have raised the risk that one side or the other could miscalculate as they feel their way to the new rules of their conflict. The animosity that has driven the two countries to fight a long-running shadow war hasn’t diminished. But it will now play out in a context in which both sides have demonstrated a willingness to come out of the shadows and escalate to direct bombardment, security analysts said.

“We’re in a new stage that is much more dangerous and precarious than we used to be in,” said Brig. Gen. Assaf Orion, who is a senior researcher with Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, referring to Friday’s attack. “It’s a long game with a lot of moving parts with several frontiers.”

Indeed, and Iran will, sooner or later, get nuclear weapons. Things aren’t back to where they were before.

*The bills in Congress to give military help to Ukraine and Israel appear, mirabile dictu, to be on their way to being passed, and believe me, Ukraine needs the help very badly. And it was the Democrats who provided the momentum.

The House took a critical step on Friday toward approving a long-stalled package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and other American allies, as Democrats supplied the crucial votes to push the legislation past Republican opposition so that it could be considered on the floor.

The 316-94 vote cleared the way for the House to bring up the aid package, teeing up separate votes on Saturday on each of its parts. But passage of those measures, each attracting bipartisan support from different coalitions, was not in doubt, making Friday’s action the key indicator that the legislation is all but certain to prevail.

Should that happen in votes set for Saturday afternoon, the Senate was expected to quickly pass the measure, and President Biden has said he would sign it into law.

On Friday, the rule for considering the bill — historically a straight party-line vote — passed with more Democratic than Republican support, but it also won a majority of G.O.P. votes, making it clear that despite a pocket of deep resistance from the far right, there is broad bipartisan backing for the $95.3 billion package.

The vote was an enormous victory in the long effort to fund to Ukraine as it battles Russian aggression, a major priority of President Biden. It was a triumph against the forces of isolationism within the G.O.P. and a major moment of consensus in a Congress that for the past year has been mostly defined by its dysfunction.

But it came only after Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line by turning to Democrats in a significant breach of custom in the House, further imperiling his position even as he paved the way for the legislation to be voted on and approved.

Zelensky will be exuberant, I expect, as he’s been begging for help for several months. And of course Israel, too, now apparently back in good graces with Biden, will also consider it a mitzvah.

*Meanwhile, the fracas continues at Columbia University, despite the fact that Hamas Tent City was removed and three busloads of protestors arrested, with some students suspended (including the daughter of Ilhan Omar).

The new tents popped up — one, two, three — on Columbia’s campus. It was a defiant gesture on Thursday afternoon by student activists, who were furious about the university’s decision to call in the police to clear an encampment used to protest the Israel-Hamas war.

If university officials thought that getting rid of the encampment, or arresting more than 100 protesters, would persuade students to give up, they may have been very wrong.

By Thursday night, the tents had disappeared. But scores of students took over a campus lawn. Planning to stay all night, they were in a rather upbeat mood, noshing on donated pizza and snacks. An impromptu dance party had even broken out.

“The police presence and the arrests do not deter us in any way,” said Layla Saliba, 24, a Palestinian-American student at the School of Social Work, at a news conference organized by Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups.

. . .Other schools have also turned to tougher measures. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Brown University have recently acted against student protesters, including making arrests.

And the leaders of schools like Vanderbilt and Pomona have defended suspending or expelling student protesters, saying that they are not interested in dialogue, but disruption.

Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the free speech and legal defense group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said “there can be good reasons” for removing students if they are violating neutrally applied policies.

But, she added, Columbia compromised itself when Ms. Shafik suggested to Congress, among other things, that the university may have investigated students and faculty for protected speech. “That’s very troubling,” Ms. Morey said, adding that consistently applied and viewpoint-neutral policies were the way out of this mess for Columbia and other universities.

“If anything,” she added, “all of their repression towards us — it’s galvanized us. It’s moved us.”

Tear down those tents, President Shafik. But I am bothered by her apparent willingness to ditch the First Amendment by prohibiting certain forms of hate speech.

*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s incomparable weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week, “WWIII may come tomorrow. But.”

→ Biden continues paying off successful young voters: Sorry, I mean “forgiving student debt.” Biden this week paid off another $7.4 billion in student loans, making his total student loan cancellation something like $153 billion. And by cancellation, I mean tax dollars were used to make the ledger go to zero. How much exactly? From Penn Wharton’s analysis: “We estimate that President Biden’s recently announced ‘New Plans’ to provide relief to student borrowers will cost $84 billion, in addition to the $475 billion that we previously estimated for President Biden’s SAVE plan.” But that goes to really needy people, right? Well, actually, at least 750,000 of those households are “making over $312,000 in average household income.” Meanwhile, to anyone who questions this allocation of resources, the White House answer is to shame them from official White House accounts by listing how much in pandemic loans were forgiven for House Republicans who own individual small business, which is weird because the reason businesses needed pandemic relief was because the White House banned them from operating. It’s a trap! And the only answer is to pay off every Media Studies PhD student’s loan. Colleges, for their part, are now charging up to $100,000 a year. Yes, literally. And since that’s ultimately going to be paid for by the taxpayers, why work to make it less expensive? Why cut corners when you need to remodel the cafeteria?

→ “Alleged threats”: An activist in Bakersfield, CA, named Riddhi Patel, 28, threatened the city council when it installed metal detectors at City Hall and refused to back a cease-fire resolution. She said: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherfuckers. . . . You guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors? We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.” Thoughtful stuff. Real reaching across the aisle rhetoric here. She worked at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Perfect.

But it turns out you can’t actually tell someone you’re going to murder them, specifically. As soon as she was done speaking, she was arrested, in one of the more dramatic videos of the week. She now faces 18 felony counts for what the LA Times refers to as “alleged threats.”

→ Men, if you want that job, simply re-identify as gender-fluid: At the University of Waterloo in Canada, there are certain professorships you can apply for only if you meet a very unique set of requirements. Mostly sexual. From the job posting for a position in the mathematics department: “eligible candidates for this search are required to identify as a woman or gender minority, which is defined to include individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender-fluid, nonbinary, and Two-Spirit people.” One computer science professor position must be filled by another sexually open-minded candidate; another must be filled by “a member of a racialized minority.” Is this ridiculous? Of course it is. Is it the end of civilization? Probably. But until then, men, put on some nail polish and call yourself gender-fluid. Have a single night of transgressive sex you’re not at all interested in, but do it, because then you can get back to computational theory. Okay? Is that so hard? Pierce one ear. Now you can teach physics.

*A while back Texas banned all DEI initiatives in higher education, and it’s having an effect, at least jobwise.

A ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education has led to more than 100 job cuts across university campuses in Texas, a hit echoed or anticipated in numerous other states where lawmakers are rolling out similar policies during an important election year.

Universities throughout Texas rushed to make changes after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law last year. On April 2, the president of the 52,000-student University of Texas at Austin — one of the largest college campuses in the U.S. — sent an email saying the school was shuttering the Division of Campus and Community Engagement and eliminating jobs in order to comply with the ban, which went into effect on Jan. 1.

More than 60 University of Texas at Austin staff members were terminated as a result of the law, according to the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. The group said it compiled the list based on affected employees who had reached out and that the number could be greater. University officials declined to confirm the number of positions eliminated.

Officials at other schools, in response to inquiries from The Associated Press, indicated that a total of 36 positions were eliminated between Texas A&M University in College Station; Texas Tech University in Lubbock; Texas State University in San Marcos; The University of Houston; Sam Houston State University in Huntsville; and Sul Ross State University in Alpine. Officials said no one was let go; people were assigned to new jobs, some resigned and vacant positions were closed.

Earlier this week, University of Texas at Dallas officials announced that approximately 20 associate jobs would be eliminated in compliance with the law. University officials declined to comment on how many of those positions are currently filled.

Texas House of Representatives Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, applauded the University of Texas actions in a post on the social media platform X. “It is a victory for common sense and proof that the Legislature’s actions are working,” Phelan wrote.

Texas is among five states that have recently passed legislation targeting DEI programs. At least 20 others are considering it.

This is all to the good; DEI is divisive, stifles speech, makes people pledge fealty to preferred ideologies, and has led to an increase in antisemitsm by considering Jews to be “white adjacent” as well as colonialists.  Schools can have people who police bigotry and ensure all community members are treated equally, but that’s not what DEI does.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron need OUT!:

Szaron: The window seems to be open but I can’t go out.
Hili: Call the servants.
In Polish:
Szaron: Okno niby otwarte, a wyjść nie można.
Hili: Zawołaj służbę.

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

From Not Another Science Cat Page:

Trapped! From Science Humor via Sheri Hensley, photo by Charlie Mackinnon

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih: another puritanical hijab cop gets confronted by Iranian women, who are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it any more:

I had no idea there was a vote. Who are these far left lawmakers? I can guess.  Ceiling Cat bless Senator Fetterman.

Yep, I guess right. Here’s the list from the article:

Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), Greg Casar (D-TX), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Summer Lee (D-PA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Delia Ramirez (D-IL) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) joined Massie in opposing the resolution.

From Simon: the oppressed clean up after the privileged Columbia students:

From Malcolm: a cat otherwise engaged brushes away a Roomba:

From my feed. Yes, it’s troublesome, but still the world’s best job!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a German Jewish woman, born on this day in 1921, died in the camp at age 21.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, listen to the male woodcock on the prowl. PEENT!

. . . and a genuine Ceiling Cat!

Friday: Hili dialogue

April 12, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, April 12, 2024, and National Grilled Cheese Day, a sandwich that MUST be accompanied by tomato soup, comme ça:

DonES at English Wikipedia, Public domain,via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Big Wind Day, National Dive Bar Day (I honor Anthony Bourdain), Walk on Your Wild Side Day, and the Commemoration of first human in space by Yuri Gagarin:who flew for 108 minutes into space on this day in 1961.  The holiday incorporates Cosmonautics Day in(Russia and the interntional holidays Yuri’s Night and International Day of Human Space Flight.

Below: Gagarin, who died at 34 in a crash of a MIG plane during a training flight. He wrote that his space flight didn’t give him any religious feelings (from Wikipedia):

. . . in his book Gagarin denied God and wrote: “Man’s flight into space dealt a crushing blow to the churchmen. In the streams of letters coming to me, I was pleased to read the confessions in which believers, impressed by the achievements of science, renounced God, agreed that there is no God and everything connected with his name is fiction and nonsense.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yuri_Gagarin_(1961)

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

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first. O. J. Simpson died at 76 from cancer.

O.J. Simpson, who ran to fame on the football field, made fortunes as a Black all-American in movies, advertising and television, and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 76.

The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media.

The tweet:

More from the NYT:

The jury in the murder trial cleared him, but the case, which had held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, ruined his world. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.

In 2006, he sold a book manuscript, titled “If I Did It,” and a prospective TV interview, giving a “hypothetical” account of murders he had always denied committing. A public outcry ended both projects, but Mr. Goldman’s family secured the book rights, added material imputing guilt to Mr. Simpson and had it published.

In 2007, he was arrested after he and other men invaded a Las Vegas hotel room of some sports memorabilia dealers and took a trove of collectibles. He claimed that the items had been stolen from him, but a jury in 2008 found him guilty of 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping, after a trial that drew only a smattering of reporters and spectators. He was sentenced to nine to 33 years in a Nevada state prison. He served the minimum term and was released in 2017.

My involvement with Simpson is shown below in the thank-you letter from his lawyer Johnnie Cochrane after his client was acquitted. I was in fact on Simpson’s defense team, which I joined after spending a few years serving as an exper expert witness in diverse cases involving the DNA “match statistics” of defendants, a statistic that involves population-genetic calculations.  Except for Simpson, I had always defended poor people using public defenders, people whose charges were based on DNA evidence that, at the time, I thought was being used and calculated improperly. (It’s much better now.)

When I was asked to help with this case, I decided that even rich people deserved a proper DNA defense, and agreed to help, but only if I received no fees (except for my very first DNA case, I charged no money to be an expert witness, thinking it would damage my credibility if I were paid—and the prosecution always asks you on the stand.). After O. J. was acquitted, I decided to stop doing any DNA cases because I thought that he was guilty and that his acquittal was a miscarriage of justice. But of course everyone deserves a decent defense and most criminal lawyers do think that their clients were guilty. (Public defenders told me that they thought 80-90% of the clients they defended were guilty.) But the job of the defense is not to set the guilty free, but to make the prosecution PROVE their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I didn’t conclude Simpson was guilty until after the trial ended when I had already done my part and had heard all the other evidence.

I didn’t testify, thank goodness, nor did I help much save give my opinion about the DNA “match” statistics to the defense team. My view in the end was that the jury was simply bamboozled by the confusing DNA evidence, didn’t understand it (try telling a lay jury what DNA is, how it works, and what probability is), and, along with the glove business, decided to let O. J. go because at least some of them had reasonable doubt.

*Here’s a change in gun merchandising that the Biden Administration calls “the biggest increase in gun regulation in decades.” And indeed, it’s an important change and a big improvement in vetting potential gun owners. It used to be that you could buy a gun online or at a gun show on the spot without a background check. No more. I see that as a big deal, though only one small step for gun-owner kind:

In a move that officials touted as the most significant increase in American gun regulation in decades, the Justice Department has finalized rules to close a loophole that allowed people to sell firearms online, at gun shows and at other informal venues without conducting background checks on those who purchase them.

Vice President Harris and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland celebrated the rules and said they would keep firearms out of the hands of potentially violent people who are not legally allowed to own guns.

The rules — which are expected to take effect in 30 days — codify changes outlined in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was signed into law by President Biden in June 2022 and expanded which gun sellers were legally required to conduct background checks on buyers.

“Every person in our nation has a right to live free from the horror of gun violence. I do believe that,” Harris said on a call with reporters. “We know how to prevent these tragedies, and it is a false choice to say you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.”

As part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, officials tasked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is responsible for regulating the sales and licensing of firearms in the United States, with developing rules that would make clear to gun owners how officials will implement and enforce the new gun laws.

The rules clarify who is required to conduct background checks and aims to close what is known as the “gun show loophole” — which refers to the reality that gun-show sellers and online vendors are subject to much looser federal regulations than vendors who sell at bricks-and-mortar stores.

And those vendors should never have looser regulations than apply to those who sell guns from stores.  My view on gun control is well known: it should be at least as strict as it is in the UK or Scotland, and I’ll say no more

*Inflation is up again, and that’s bad news for the Biden Administration and those of us who fear the reelection of Tr*mp.

Inflation ticked up again in March compared with the year before — in yet another sign that the economy doesn’t need high interest rates to come down any time soon.

Fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed prices rose 3.5 percent from March 2023 to March 2024. That’s up slightly from the 3.2 percent annual figure notched in February. Prices also rose 0.4 percent between February and March.

The result: The Federal Reserve is very unlikely to cut interest rates in the next few months. Officials have been looking for a bit more assurance that inflation is steadily falling before deciding it’s time to trim borrowing costs. But since the start of the year, the data has brought unwanted surprises, with economists and the markets now expecting no cuts until later in 2024.

The Fed “is nowhere near where they’re going to need to be,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “March would not give anyone any confidence.”

The Wall Street Journal explains why this is Biden’s most stubborn political problem.

Inflation has emerged as the most intractable domestic policy issue facing President Biden less than seven months before the election—but there isn’t a whole lot the White House can do to fix it.

. . .For now, officials said, Biden and his senior aides aren’t planning any major policy or rhetorical shifts. They plan to continue talking about the president’s proposals to lower the cost of housing and prescription drugs, while slashing student-loan debt and eliminating surcharges tacked on to everything from concert tickets to banking services.

“Our agenda to lower costs on behalf of working families is as urgent today as it was yesterday,” said Jared Bernstein, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “We’re just going to keep our heads down and continue fighting to lower costs.” While a White House official said that inflation doesn’t decrease on a linear path and that there will always be bumps in the road, the administration thinks the trajectory is moving in the right direction.

Some of Biden’s cost-cutting plans will take months to come to fruition and will do little in the short term to slow the rate of price increases. Some stubbornly high prices, such as the cost of groceries, are mostly out of the Biden administration’s control. The president has called on grocery retailers and other companies to lower prices, citing their high profits. But he can’t compel companies to take action.

In the end, voters are going to put a lot of weight on their grocery bills and on how much it costs to fill up their car with gas. And both of those price indices have risen.  Biden’s going to suffer big time if inflation doesn’t drop between now and election day, and even if it does, people are still paying more than they think they should have for their food and gas (and houses!).

*Here’s a headline from the AP: “Trump assails Jewish voters who back Biden: ‘Should have their head examined.’”

Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at Jewish voters who back President Joe Biden and framed this year’s election as a referendum on the strength of Christianity in the U.S., part of his sharp-edged continuing appeal to evangelical conservatives who are a critical element of his political base.

Speaking in Atlanta ahead of a fundraiser, the presumptive Republican nominee renewed his running criticism of Biden’s reaction to the Israel-Hamas war and the administration’s support for the rights of LGBTQ Americans, including transgender persons.

“Biden has totally lost control of the Israel situation,” said Trump, whose rise in 2016 depended heavily on white Christian conservatives. “Any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined.”

Trump spoke after Biden last week warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that future U.S. support for Israel’s Gaza war depends on the swift implementation of new steps to protect civilians and aid workers.

In Trump’s interpretation, Biden “has totally abandoned Israel.”

The Gaza conflict has sandwiched Biden between conservatives – both Christian and Jewish – who want stalwart support for Netanyahu’s government, and progressives. The matter is important to conservative Christians, among Trump’s most supportive constituencies, who see the political state of Israel as the modern manifestation of God’s chosen people, the Israelites of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.

Biden’s left flank, though, is dominated by progressives incensed by Israel’s retaliation in Gaza that has resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths. The president has repeatedly been greeted by protesters throughout his spring travels, and activists have organized votes against Biden in many Democratic primaries, even as he coasts to renomination.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I blame Hamas, not Israel, for thousands of deaths in Gaza, for all Hamas had to do was stop fighting and release the hostages, and they’d still be running the area. But American voters seem to have forgotten that there will be many civilian casualties produced by of an urban war fought among human shields, that Hamas committed real war crimes several times over, and that the mainstream media slants the news because they don’t care about Israel’s existence.

Now about Trump. He may have had, or will have (if, Ceiling Cat forbid, he’s elected) a better policy towards Israel than does Biden. I also think Biden’s conduct of the war has been dire, particularly in telling Israel how it has to fight. I’m no fan of Netanyahu, and am becoming even less of one as the war proceeds, but I am not a one-issue voter. Biden may be pandering to the progressives while still supporting Israel, support he declares constantly. I have no reason to believe otherwise—yet.  But Trump may not only become erratic on Israel but, more important, has the power and the mental instability to drive the democracy right out of America. I will never vote for the man; if Biden shows himself irredeemably stupider on Israel than he has to date, or seems to be getting dementia, I might not vote at all (it wouldn’t matter in a Democratic state like Illinois). But as things stand, I guess I’m one of those Jewish voters that, according to Trump, should have his head examined.

*The U.S. firmly believes that an Iranian attack on Israel—justified by Iran after a likely Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing terrorists—is imminent.  And another Times of Israel headline says, “Top U.S. general arrives in Israel for talks amid fears of impending Iran strike.”

From the first article, which was buttressed by a report on last night’s NBC Evening News:

The United States believes a major Iranian attack on Israel is imminent and could happen in the coming days, according to a report Wednesday, as Iran reiterated its vow to retaliate for an alleged Israeli strike in Syria that killed two generals among several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.

Citing people familiar with US and Israeli intelligence assessments, Bloomberg reported Iran could launch strikes involving high-precision missiles and drones targeting military and government sites in Israel.

One of the people quoted in the report said it was a matter of when — not if — Tehran will attack Israel.

. . . The reports came as US President Joe Biden reiterated America’s commitment to Israeli security in the face of threats from Iran.

Speaking at a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in the White House’s Rose Garden, Biden told reporters Wednesday that “[w]e also addressed the Iranian threat, as they threaten to launch a significant attack on Israel.

“As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” said Biden. “Let me say it again, ironclad. We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security.”

Well, that’s good to hear, but I do wonder what the U.S. will do if Iran fires a bunch of missiles at Israel. Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, also has a gazillion high-quality Iranian missiles, and if both fired at once, the Iron Dome simply couldn’t handle them. Would the U.S. really engage in a military strike on Iran? Given that both Israel and the U.S. have nukes, and Iran doesn’t (yet), I think Iran may hold its fire for a while, or perhaps fire a missile at an Israeli embassy in some other country.

About the second article, well, the U.S. military is in Israel plotting joint strategy:

Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of the US Central Command, lands in Israel.

Kurilla is expected to hold consultations with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other officials to discuss the threat of an Iranian attack.

The report added that US and Israeli officials across various agencies have been in contact over the last few days, as the countries prepare for a possible response by Tehran to the alleged Israeli strike on April 1 that hit an Iranian consulate building in Damascus that killed two generals among several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported Iran could launch strikes involving high-precision missiles and drones targeting military and government sites in Israel after Iran reiterated its vow to retaliate.

I have to say that after the tension of the last few weeks, it’s good to see the U.S. and Israel cooperating even a little.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Kulka is trying to take over Listy, but she won’t displace Hili, who is The Editor and occupies The Editor’s Chair.  Szaron looks on.

Kulka: We are occupying the office.
Hili: I rule here.
In Polish:
Kulka: Okupujemy biuro.
Hili: To ja tu rządzę.

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

Trigger warning: JAZZ! From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From The Dodo Pet, a very kind cat owner:

From Not Another Science Cat Page.  Yes, I used to have this experience at night, sometimes walking down the stairs:

Masih comments on calls for violence in Michigan. It’s freedom of speech, but Masih is worried that this speech will promote violence. (That still doesn’t make it illegal.) She also talks about Islamism.

A Democratic congresswoman from Texas, in the Party of Science, makes a bloody fool of herself. A NY Post article on her speech to high school students is here (ht/Rosemary)

From Peter, a blackbird hanging out next to a British police station imitates the new car siren:

From Luana: A hijab-clad law student, invited to a private party at the dean of Berkeley Law School and his wife (a professor), decides to ideologically grandstand at a professor’s home, apparently bringing along a microphone and some like-minded companions.   The hosts try to stop the broadcasting on their private property, but the woman won’t give up. Why are these people so aggressive, especially because it was a celebration in honor of the students?

First, there was apparently a plan because the dean is a Jew. That appears to be his sole crime. That’s enough to get him denounced. See the video below.

And the risible haranguing. Does the physical touching of the person, asking them to leave, constitute any form of assault? Below that, support for the dean from the Chancellor of UC Berkeley.

The pro-Palestinian activists don’t observe either civility or legality here; the woman won’t leave when asked.  I would have called the cops.

The Los Angeles Times has the whole story, including this predictable bit:

Nine activists organized the protest as part of the law school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

Why was the dean targeted? For no reason other than that he’s Jewish.

Reader Barry says that he doesn’t wear caps, but if he did it would be this one:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: a French Jewish girl gassed to death at 12.

Three tweets from Dr. Cobb about the eclipse. He comments on the first one, “Lintott is a lovely bloke, extremely tall, an astronomer and a TV presenter.”

Another one:

And the eclipse, whose shadow started in Mexico:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 11, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, April 11, 2024, and National Cheese Fondue Day, a day of cultural appropriation from the oppressed people of Switzerland. It’s a pity that you don’t see this served much these days, as it’s very good. Here, from Wikipedia, is a cheese fondue with bread and potatoes. (The original fondue was cheese, but now there are also meat and chocolate fondues.)  Excellent on a cold evening with a good white wine!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Fondue_dish.jpg

It’s also Barbershop Quartet Day, National Pet Day, National Poutine Day (in Canada), International Louie Louie Day (I still remember the first time I heard the 1963 hit version by the Kingsmen), and World Parkinson’s Day.

Here’s some poutine I had in Montreal in 2016; and yes, I know it’s not good for my diet but no, I almost never eat it (after all, I’m in Chicago, not Canada):

Here are the Kingsmen lip-synching to their version, the biggest cover of the song (written by Richard Berry).  From Wikipedia:

The “extraordinary roller-coaster tale of obscurity, scandal, success and immortality” and “remarkable historical impact” of “Louie Louie” have been recognized by organizations and publications worldwide for its influence on the history of rock and roll. A partial list (see Recognition and rankings table below) includes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, National Public Radio, VH1, Rolling Stone Magazine, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Recording Industry Association of America. Other major examples of the song’s legacy include the celebration of International Louie Louie Day every year on April 11; the annual Louie Louie Parade in Philadelphia from 1985 to 1989; the LouieFest in Tacoma from 2003 to 2012; the ongoing annual Louie Louie Street Party in Peoria; and the unsuccessful attempt in 1985 to make it the state song of Washington.

 

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

Da Nooz:

*The Torygraph has reported that Russia is using illegal chemical weapons against Ukraine. (archived link)

Russian troops are carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Telegraph investigation.

The Telegraph spoke to a number of Ukrainian soldiers deployed in positions across the front line who detailed how their positions have been coming under near daily attacks from small drones, mainly dropping tear gas but also other chemicals.

The use of such gas, which is known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ihor, the commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance team who is deployed near the front line city of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk Oblast, told The Telegraph: “Nearly every position in our area of the front was getting one or two gas grenades dropped on them a day.”

He said that because of how embedded many Ukrainian troops are now it was difficult for the Russians to attack with conventional artillery or drones firing missiles, adding: “The only way for them to successfully attack us was with gas.”

Even when not lethal or immediately incapacitating, these gas attacks usually cause panic. “Their first instinct is to get out,” Ihor said. They can then be attacked with more conventional weapons.

. . . One of these CS gas grenades was provided to The Telegraph for verification by Rebekah Maciorowski, an American combat medic and a qualified nurse serving in the Ukrainian army.

Marc-Michael Blum, a chemical weapons expert and former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons laboratory, confirmed the recovered munition was a K-51 gas grenade, which are typically filled with tear gas.

. . . Marc-Michael Blum, a chemical weapons expert and former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons laboratory, confirmed the recovered munition was a K-51 gas grenade, which are typically filled with tear gas.

A Russian drone dropped two munitions containing an unknown gas that had a “crushed almond aroma” on soldiers in Donetsk Oblast, she said.

Two people were killed and 12 required hospital treatment. In an interview with Le Monde in JanuaryYuriy Belousov, the head of investigations for Ukraine’s prosecutor general, referred to one of the deaths as being caused by an “unknown gas”.

. . . There have also been reports of the use of chlorine and chloropicrin – a substance typically used as a pesticide that was deployed by the Germans as a chemical weapon in the First World War.

The Ukrainian government has reported 626 gas attacks during the war, but the Torygraph says that this is certainly an underestimate. Is anybody going to take Russia (or Bashar al-Assad, for that matter) to the ICJ for war crimes?

*After Iran threatened Israel (and that was after Israel was probably the attacker that killed several Iranian and Hezbollah officials inside the Iranian embassy in Syria), Israel began preparing for an attack coming directly from Iran instead of its proxies. Now Israel is issuing a warning back at Iran.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday both threatened that if Iran launches an attack from its own soil then Israel would strike back inside Iran, amid increasingly belligerent rhetoric between the two countries.

The warnings came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel “must be punished and it shall be” for allegedly attacking an Iranian consular building in Syria’s Damascus, killing two generals among several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers. The IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization.

Khamenei said that in bombing an embassy site, Israel “attacked our territory.”

Speaking to troops at an Iron Dome air defense system battery in northern Israel, Gallant said any attack on the country would face a strong defense, before a “powerful response in its territory.”

“In this war, we are being attacked from more than one front… from different directions. Any enemy that tries to attack us, will first of all be met with a strong defense,” Gallant said.

“But we will know how to react very quickly with a decisive offensive action against the territory of whoever attacks our territory, no matter where it is, in the entire Middle East,” he said.

“We have this ability,” Gallant continued, saying that a potential Israeli response would be “very, very effective, very powerful. One of the things we excel at over the years is that the enemy never knows what surprises we are preparing for it.”

Earlier, Katz posted in Hebrew to his official account on social media platform X that “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will react and attack in Iran.”

Of course Iran is attacking Israel by proxy on several fronts, so the embassy attack was retribution, not initiation. And, as Iran well knows, Israel has nukes. I predict that Iran will not attack Israel directly, for the consequences (including the possible destruction of their nascent bomb-building program) could be dire. In fact, the U.S. may well get involved, and that means Big Time War.

*The negotiations between Hamas and Israel appear to have stalled (some say that Hamas can’t even locate 40 of the hostages), but in the meantime a targeted Israeli strike killed 3 sons of the big Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. He lives in Doha (the capital of Qatar), of course, and, since Haniyeh has seven wives, he has many sons. These, and perhaps his grandsons, appear to be fighting for Hamas, as they’re characterized as martyrs, and the NYT says this:

The Israeli military confirmed that its forces killed Mr. Haniyeh’s sons, saying that the three were all active in Hamas’s military operations. In a brief statement, the military did not say where the strike took place or address reports on Hamas-affiliated media that three of Mr. Haniyeh’s grandchildren also were killed.

From the WSJ:

The head of Hamas’s political leadership, Ismail Haniyeh, said an Israeli airstrike killed three of his sons on Wednesday, the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Fitr, an attack that could complicate a U.S.-led plan for a cease-fire in the six-month-old conflict in Gaza.

The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on the statement.

Hamas said five people died in the strike, which the group said hit a car making social visits for Eid, the holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Haniyeh, in a separate statement, said some of his grandchildren also died.

“I thank God for this honor that he bestowed upon us with the martyrdom of my three sons and some grandchildren,” Haniyeh said in a video statement posted on X by Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera. The Hamas official, who is based in the Qatari capital Doha, didn’t name his children or grandchildren.

The U.S. is pushing Israel and Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, to negotiate on the terms of a temporary cease-fire, but Hamas has largely rejected the U.S. plan, mediators said earlier Wednesday. Hamas said instead it would put forward its own road map for a permanent end to the war with Israel.

The dismissal illustrates the wide disagreement between the two parties on the contours of a deal and reflects Hamas’s growing confidence that diplomatic and domestic pressure on Israel to end the war gives the U.S.-designated terrorist group the upper hand in negotiations.

Hamas is seeking a permanent cease-fire and the full withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza in return for the release of hostages held in the strip. Israel has expressed openness to negotiating on the U.S. proposal for a temporary truce but wants the option of continuing its military campaign afterward.

The problem is that Biden and Blinken are running the war now, and have more or less ordered Israel not to finish their job by attacking Rafah. The IDF could evacuate Rafah, except that Hamas won’t let civilians leave and there’s only one IDF brigade in southern Israel.  With a full force, they could evacuate civilians out of Rafah and then finish off Hamas (some Gazans would of course not leave, but they would be liable to be “collateral damage”).  The biggest problem in this war is the United States and Biden’s ambition to be re-elected.

*Meanwhile Tom Friedman, the absolute worst journalist anywhere covering the war, has his own solution: “Israel: Cease-fire, get hostages, leave Gaza, rethink everything.” One statement from this moron:

Which takes us to this fork in the road. My preference is that Israel immediately change course. That is, join with the Biden administration in embracing that pathway to a two-state deal that would open the way for Saudi normalization and also give cover for the Palestinian Authority and moderate Arab states to try to establish non-Hamas governance in Gaza in Israel’s place. And — as the Biden team urged Netanyahu privately — forget entirely about invading Rafah and instead use a targeted approach to take out the rest of the Hamas leadership.

He’s still on the two-state solution (where would it be? who would run it? Is this numbskull aware that neither the Palestinians nor Israelis want a two-state “solution”?) And what kind of “targeted approach” to taking out the Hamas leadership, which appears to be sequestered in Rafah, work if Israel forgets about invading Rafah? Does Friedman know that Gazans do not want to be rule by the Palestinian Authority?

I have no respect for this chowderhead, who apparently thinks he knows better than the Palestinians, or anyone else, how the area should be governed after the war. I think he’s ruled by the mentality that Hamas and the Palestinians are like little children that have no agency; i.e., he has “the bigotry of low expectations”.  The great tragedy of Thomas Friedman is that anybody listens to him.

*A happy animal story: a mountain goat named Chug, apparently stolen from his original owners, flew the coop and somehow found his way onto a bridge in Kansas City, where people couldn’t figure out how to rescue him. He apparently fell but wasn’t seriously injured, and is going back home:

An escaped mountain goat that somehow got stuck under a Kansas City bridge has survived a rocky rescue effort and now may be reunited with the owners who suspect he was stolen from their farm two months ago.

“It’s the story that captured the hearts of Kansas City,” said Tori Fugate, of the KC Pet Project, a nonprofit that handles animal control for the city and operates shelters. “Forget a solar eclipse. We were on goat watch.”

After Monday’s eclipse, people spotted the animal, believed to be a missing goat named Chug, hopping around on the pillars that support the bridge, high above the ground below.

Hoping to guide it to safety, a driver managed to get a rope around the goat’s neck, but that only added to the danger, Fugate said. When firefighters tried to rappel over the side of the bridge to capture the goat, he spooked and tried to jump to the next platform. But his hooves slipped and the rope caught, causing the goat to hang from his neck, not moving.

Firefighters managed to undo a snag in the rope, creating slack in the line. The goat then fell as much as 15 feet (4.5 meters) to the ground, landing in a spot where crews had added padding in an attempt to soften the impact, Fugate said.

A waiting veterinarian sedated the goat and crews carried him in a sling to the top of a rocky hill, where firefighters gave him oxygen. Then he perked up and was taken for X-rays, Fugate said.

“He miraculously has no broken bones,” Fugate said. The goat had been clambering along bridge supports that are as much as 80 feet (24 meters) above the ground, a fall he wouldn’t have survived, she said.

She said this was just the latest part of the goat’s adventure. He entered the shelter as a stray on March 13, was dubbed Jeffrey and was adopted later that month. But he immediately jumped the fence at his new home, she said.

“Thanks to his media fame, yesterday we had somebody reach out and they said that he is very similar to their goat that went missing back in February,” she said.

The family lives two hours away and plans to came to come to the shelter Wednesday to confirm he is their stolen goat. If he is, they plan to bring Chug home with them, and the goat’s adoptive owners say that is OK with them.

“He seems to be very particular about his living situation,” Fugate said.

I love that last line. Anyway, Chug is okay and here’s a news video giving some details. I also love the fact that they had a vet and rescuers below him, and had cushioned the area lest he fell.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron (inside) tries the impossible: eliminating the mutual hatred between Hili (outside, right) and Baby Kulka (outside, left). Hili’s not having it.

Szaron: Why are they quarrelling all the time?
Hili: Do you have more comments?
In Polish:
Szaron: Dlaczego one ciągle się kłócą?
Hili: Masz jeszcze jakieś komentarze?

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

What I saw on the way home yesterday. It’s legal free speech, of course, and has university permission to be posted, but it still disquiets me. And it will accomplish nothing; it’s pure “virtue” flaunting. If they think U of C will change its investments because of a poster, they lack sufficient neurons.

From Lynne:

From Science, Reason, and Secular Values. Squint a bit to see Jesus:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih: An Afghani woman speaks eloquently of gender apartheid. Did anybody believe the Taliban when they said they’d begin treating women more equally in Afghanistan? And where are the feminist organizations in the West speaking out?

From Barry; one of the puns surrounding the death of Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs. (The NYT headline for his obituary called him the predictor of the “God particle”!).

(The NYT headline via Simon; click to read):

Here’s a tweet, one of many similar ones I’ve seen (go here for a summary) suggesting that Hamas set up the World Kitchen humanitarian workers to be killed by the IDF. It’s a theory that has some credibility, too. (See here for another one in writing.) I asked Malgorzata if this was credible, and she said this:

About the first video tweet: all facts are correct and it could have gone like the man described. But I have one question. When the Hamas fighters left this lone truck, why didn’t people inside call either the IDF or their employer?  Perhaps their phone rang but they were prevented by Hamas from answering. Unless, of course, terrorists took their phones. The missing information is whether any phones were found on the bodies. If not, the scenario looks very convincing. If yes, questions remain.

This is one ominious vulture:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a time-lapse video of the eclipse shadow:

And a lovely swan reunion after the pair was temporarily separated (second video has more info):