Canaanites

On this day:

1122
Pope Calixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V agree to the Concordat of Worms to put an end to the Investiture Controversy, essentially a struggle between the church and the European ruling houses over who could appoint local religious leaders. The state controlling the church!
1409
Battle of Kherlen, the second significant victory over Ming China by the Mongols since 1368.
1459
Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is fought at Blore Heath in Staffordshire.
1641
The Merchant Royal, carrying a treasure worth over a billion US dollars, is lost at sea off Land’s End.

1780
American Revolution: British Major John André is arrested as a spy by American soldiers, exposing Benedict Arnold’s change of sides.
1806
Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
1821
Tripolitsa, Greece, falls and 30,000 Turks are massacred during the Greek War of Independence.
1857
The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.

***

Let us start with the obvious moral problem that the money in question does not belong to those to whom Trump is promising it. --cooke

***

According to leaked documents released by Edward Snowden, British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats and military officials in 2008 and 2009, warning that "the Israelis constitute a true threat to regional security, notably because of the country’s position on the Iran issue."

***

"During the 2023 U.S.-China nuclear talks, America proposed missile-launch notifications, a nuclear crisis hotline, and processes to limit the use of outer space for military conflict. China declined all of those. Blame the U.S. if you wish (do we always keep our word?), but that is what happened.

China also broke off meaningful arms control talks. You may think it is their right to play catch-up, and to be cynical of our motives, but that is what happened.

How well did China share timely information about Covid and cooperate to stop its initial spread?

Get the picture?"--cowen

***

Large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics.

***

Jaxson Dart could miss the rest of the season after tests showed that the New York Giants quarterback's knee injury is more severe than initially anticipated

***

The typical house cat kills somewhere between 50 and 139 animals a year.

***

Two University of Mississippi students died this week and packaged kratom was found during the separate death investigations, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

***

Can we just agree that mendacity and egomania are simple facts of modern politics and our first job as citizens is to limit their impact, not look for a 'purer version '?

***

Canaanites

In the Bronze Age, between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago, a diverse group of people called the Canaanites lived in the Middle East. Despite their culture and influence — one of the only golden calf idols discovered was found in the Canaan seaport of Ashkelon — they left behind little information about themselves. Other civilizations made records of them, such as the Greeks, Egyptians, and the authors of the Hebrew Bible. But, without Canaanite texts to cite, scholars view the ancient people as a bit of an enigma. The Hebrew Bible offers one explanation for the destiny of the Canaanites: annihilation. The Israelites, per Deuteronomy 20:16-18, were commanded to “utterly destroy” the cities of various tribes, including the Canaanites.
Some information has emerged from the petrous bone, a region of the skull behind the ear that's also the densest bone in the body. It protects DNA like a strongbox and has, in recent years, advanced the study of ancient DNA.
DNA was taken from the petrous bone of five Canaanite people who lived 3,750 and 3,650 years ago. Though the skeletal remains were buried in a hot and humid region along the Mediterranean, the scientists were still able to extract genetic material.  
They sequenced the Canaanite genome and compared it to genomes of modern people, including Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and others from around the world. The comparison revealed that 90 percent of the genetic ancestry of people in Lebanon came from the Canaanites. (The other 10 percent was of a Eurasian steppe population.)
There was more genetic continuity in Lebanon than in England.

Is Hormuz, Suez?

 On this Day:

1099
First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege
1381
John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England.
1685
Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, is executed at Tower Hill, England, after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685.
1799
The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign.
1806
Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the west.
1815
Napoleonic Wars: Napoléon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon
1838
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.

1975
Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft and the last launch of a Saturn family rocket.

***

Socialism is "the result of an unrelenting negativity, carping spirit, and lack of appreciation for achievement and greatness." (cowan)

***

The Keres people, who occupy seven pueblos (villages) in New Mexico, speak a language totally unrelated to that of their neighbors, and their origins have been frequently disputed.
Aliens.

***

Replacing the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Mamdani is going to straighten New Yorkers' ties and cancel their subscriptions.

***

Roughly 27% of Americans — and 52% of men ages 18–49 — say they have an active account with an online sportsbook

***

Researchers at the University of Linz in Austria demonstrated that the color red significantly decreases cognitive functioning in men. The combination of the colors red and yellow together can induce hunger, which has been capitalized on by several chain restaurants.

***

Charitable gifts by individuals, bequests, foundations and corporations to U.S. charities increased 5.7% in current dollars (3.0% adjusted for inflation) to an estimated $617.20 billion in 2025.

***

U.S. Treasury has borrowed $155 billion every month of this fiscal year—and is now paying $24 billion a week in interest on its debts.

***

Is Hormuz, Suez?

A short history of the modern Middle East conflict and what Dalio in Fortune thinks is its direction and destructive outcome:

In late October 1956, Britain and France — alongside Israel — invaded Egypt after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the vital trade artery connecting Europe to Asia. Militarily, the operation was a success. Within days, Anglo-French forces controlled the northern portion of the canal, but it unraveled off the battlefield.

The United States, alarmed by the unilateral action and unwilling to allow its allies to destabilize the Cold War equilibrium, applied crushing pressure. Washington threatened to withhold emergency IMF loans as the British pound came under speculative attack. It was financial warfare, and it worked. Eden, facing a currency crisis, withdrew from Egypt in humiliation within weeks.

The military had won. The empire had lost. And what followed was a cascade that Dalio, in Bridgewater’s research, describes as the classic sequence of imperial decline: allies stopped deferring to London; creditors reassessed British debt; the pound sterling — which had served as the world’s reserve currency for over a century — began its long retreat. Within four years of the Suez Crisis, Britain had granted independence to Ghana, Malaya, Nigeria, and Cyprus. Within a decade, Harold Macmillan’s “winds of change” speech had formalized what Suez had revealed: the British Empire was in managed retreat, not strategic expansion.

Yet certainly Britain had exceeded anyone's expectations. A tiny island ruled the waves and the world as a military leader, a commercial powerhouse.

And it still is. Today, Britain is a prosperous, mid-sized economy of nearly 70 million people, with a GDP that ranks fifth globally — behind the United States, China, Germany, and Japan. It is a respected member of NATO and the G7, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and home to London, one of the world’s great financial centers. But its “special relationship” with the U.S. is not the same as it was before the Suez Crisis.

Dalio compared the Hormuz standoff directly to the Suez crisis in March. “We are in the early stages of a world war that isn’t going to end any time soon,” he wrote on his Substack — arguing the Iran conflict was not a standalone episode but a systemic reorganization of global power, one in which the financial and military contests are inseparable.

Two key factors behind the decline are the “petrodollar” system and the national debt. To get the former, you have to flash forward to a 1974 handshake that the public wouldn’t learn about for another 42 years.

President Nixon had dispatched Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia to strike a secret arrangement. Riyadh agreed to price and trade its oil exclusively in U.S. dollars and channel its petroleum windfalls back into U.S. Treasury bonds; in return, Washington promised military aid, equipment, and security guarantees. Other OPEC members followed, locking in the dollar as the indispensable currency of the modern world and giving rise to the “petrodollar” system.

Britain’s pound had been the anchor of global trade since the Napoleonic era; it took two world wars, a Great Depression, and a humiliation in Egypt to finish it off. The dollar’s own arc runs roughly 80 years, from the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, where the victorious United States anchored the postwar monetary order to a simple promise: every dollar was redeemable for gold at $35 an ounce. It mutated again in 1971, when the costs of Vietnam and the Great Society had so strained American finances that Nixon unilaterally slammed the gold window shut — ending dollar convertibility overnight and untethering the currency from any hard constraint. What replaced the gold anchor was something more abstract and more fragile: the credibility of American power itself, significantly boosted by the forthcoming secret Petrodollar deal.

What is different now — what makes the Iran war more than just another Middle East misadventure — is the convergence: a $39 trillion debt load, a 30-year low in the dollar’s share of foreign reserves, a physically threatened petrodollar chokepoint, and a domestic political climate that has made endurance nearly impossible.

7/15/26

Report from Hell's Heart

 On this day:

109
Roman emperor Trajan inaugurates the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channels water from Lake Bracciano, 40 km north-west of Rome.
637
The Battle of Moira is fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is the largest battle in Irish history. The high point of Irish warfare.
1374
A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. In the modern day, this is called Middle East Negotiations.
1916
World War I: The Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line.
1947
Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.

***

Equality of outcomes or opportunity is the hope of simple denial--or worse, ambition.
Equality of permission, in contrast, is quite feasible. Achieving in practice something close to such equality requires only that the state abandon all efforts to dispense privileges.--McClosky

***

The socialist success in New York yesterday does not simply rearrange the landscape of political personalities, it resurrects the age-old question of the competence of the agent of democracy, the voter.

***

Stephanie Hockridge is still not in jail.

***

The Five Eyes cybersecurity alliance, which includes intelligence agencies from the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, warned that AI models capable of taking down businesses and governments are mere months away. But the assumed global government-business conspiracy has control of all this, right? Right?

***  

According to the DSA website, there are about 95,000 dues-paying DSA

members. That's the size of the American Institute of Architects.

***

France-based Prix Versailles announced this week that PIT was named to its World’s Most Beautiful Airports list, joining only six other airports from around the globe. The honor is one of the most prestigious architecture and design recognitions in the world, presented in association with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO. PIT is one of only two airports in the U.S. to make the list.

***

Report from Hell's Heart

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

                                                    *

Fight for peace. Buy more, save more. We blockade your ports; no, we blockade our own ports. Our world reverberates with Orwellian weirdness, but nowhere as much as the Middle East, where the intensity of feelings overrides all logic and practicality. Iran has had the very purpose of its government removed by the American air attack. The nuclear destruction of the hated Israelis is no longer possible, and the inability to recreate the circumstances necessary to attempt it again has been revealed.

Now Iran is fighting off its back, violating ceasefires, and allowing Israel to rationalize restarting Iran's punishment. Iran must be convincing even the dithering Press of the danger they present. Iran's willingness to suffer for an unachievable goal should be alarming to all. But their enemies are paralyzed by success. Battered, leaderless, smoldering in smoking defeat, Iran arrives at the negotiating table trim, powered, cologned, and with a condescending smile, like Caesar requesting his daily calendar after his final wound. 

If anything, it proves Trump's point and justifies his actions. Iran is beyond all restraint in its obsession. The sensible argument that Iran would not destroy the Straits of Hormuz because that would destroy their own economy and their own people clearly does not apply.

Conniving Israel may be the only reasonable player in the field: Iran cannot be hurt too much.

Ahabism is not in the OED, so we are not constrained by a definition. Our definition of Ahabism: narrow, focused, monomaniacal, tyrannical, homicidal, and single-minded pursuit of a goal that results in self-destruction and risks the ruination of all.

Ahab's destruction is probably deserved, but he does take the Pequod with him.

Some Thoughts in the Eye of the Iranian Storm

On this day:

1820
The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
1832
Black Hawk War: Around three hundred United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
1904
British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the first chapter of The Book of the Law.

1942
World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
1952
U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.

***

Long-run political policies are almost a contradiction in terms in societies where politicians are elected in the short run.--sowell

***

Is the AI detecting software, AI?

***

With birthright citizenship, will a two-tier system of citizenship develop?

***

The attack on Markwayne Mullin is a fascinating and unashamed revelation of his critics. He left school to take over his father's business after his sudden death. Mullin built that business into the larhest of it kind in the state. But his critics were not ideological; they objected to the business being a plumbing business. Their objection was social. It was, in their minds, class.

***

Aleister Crowley was a British mystic and goofball whose philosophy was “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” The French author François Rabelais had expressed this more than 300 years earlier in Gargantua and Pantagruel—but Crowley made it the basis of a new religion he called Thelema, thelēma being the Greek word for “will.” He went through a large inheritance with travel and excess. He was a great chess player and mountaineer. He attracted a lot of interesting young people early in their lives, including J.F.C. Fuller, later a well-known military strategist and historian. He was an opponent of the poet William Butler Yeats within the London Golden Dawn occultist group. The Beatles put his picture on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

***

Some Thoughts in the Eye of the Iranian Storm

Trump is fascinated with himself as the center of attention. One wonders if this obsession will influence policy.

*

Trump's understandable anger with those opponents who seemed to have publicly and secretively lied and manipulated in efforts to undermine him is total. One wonders if this obsession will influence policy.

*

One wonders if changing monikers like Operation Epic Fury to something like Operation Mad as Hell or Operation Pretty Damn Angry would lead to different results.

*

Trump's support of Orbán in Hungary is peculiar, especially since the only other leader who has supported him is Putin.

*

The atmosphere of Europe is despair. Things are simply beyond them: economic decline, immigration, loss of identity, public bullying by people and events, and, especially, the understanding that it is all self-imposed.

*

The great problems of the West are the direct result of inaction in the face of obvious threats. The National Debt and the Iranian Holy War are 

predictable problems rising and flowering exponentially in our lives that will eventually dissolve into a chaotic resolution or be solved in the U.S. by desperate, unconstitutional acts. That action will not be chosen but imposed upon a wide-eyed leader, like the final moments of musical chairs.

It could be horrible. But the real question is, what does it say about representative democracy?

Diego Garcia

On this day:

1603
James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England.
1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.
1765
American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
1832
In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.
1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl of petroleum after running aground.
1998
Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
2000
S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

***

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."--Thomas Jefferson

***

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smartphone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

***

Rainer Zitelmann, a German historian and sociologist, received a letter from Berlin police informing him he was under investigation for violating Germany's criminal code by using "symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations."

The post in question, which Zitelmann reshared, showed a side-by-side image of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hitler's speech bubble read, "Give me Czechoslovakia and I won't attack anyone else!" and Putin's read, "Give me Ukraine, and I won't attack anyone else!" It was not the quote that put Zitelmann in trouble with the law, but Hitler's swastika armband.

Under Section 86a of the German criminal code, it is illegal to distribute Nazi symbols and related expressions.

***


In the Jonesboro massacre, Mitchell and Golden killed four students and one teacher and wounded nine students and one teacher. All 10 injured survived. The two shooters were convicted of murder, and both were sentenced under the juvenile statutes of Arkansas. 

They were both released back among the unsuspecting public at the age of 21.

***

Diego Garcia

Before it became a pseudonym for college kids in bars all over America, Diego Garcia was, and is, part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The United States has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa.

The four-decade conflict between the U.S. and Iran has centered around the Americans insisting that Iran is building a nuclear warfare program and Iran's insistence that they are not. The Americans fear that Iran will eventually attack its political and religious enemies with nukes, destroy the Middle East, destroy the world's petroleum industry, and make much of the Mediterranean uninhabitable for several millennia.

As proof of its good intentions, Iran has previously put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers).

Iran has, however, developed a space program that, theoretically, prepares it for long-range missile flight. If they have not developed a nuclear weapon, Iran would be the only nation with a space program that hasn't.

U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and this month, Iran fired several missiles at Diego Garcia. At about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran. Diego Garcia is well outside Iran's promised range of 2000Km. Other cities within that radius include Bonn, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and New Delhi.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to hit Diego Garcia may have involved the improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

Mendacity, aggression, and mistrust with Extinction-Level-Weapons on an international level, controlled by suicidal lunatics and morons. 

So, how are reasonable men of good will supposed to live and raise their children in that kind of world? And what kind of responsibilities do the grownups in the room have?

  

The Middle East Minuet of Death

On this day:

180
Marcus Aurelius dies leaving Commodus the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.
624
Led by Muhammad, the Muslims of Medina defeat the Quraysh of Mecca in the Battle of Badr.
1776
American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts, ending the Siege of Boston, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.
1780
American Revolution: George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence”
2008
Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becomes New York State governor.

***

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.--Lincoln

***

The Pens-Colorado game last night was terrific. Colorado is really big and fast.

***

There is some talk that Russia's Shahed drone with its self-guidance system can be jammed--or even taken over and pirated to be redirected against its original user--and Russia is turning to control them better by using Starlink.

***

Fernando Tatis Jr., Ketel Marte, Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Junior Caminero, and Manny Machado. That's part of the batting lineup of the Dominican World team.

***

Is there some sort of gene coupling in politicians, like fair skin and red hair? Do they all act with just a little bit of Spitzerism? And how do they know, like Stalwell, that the electorate will rarely hold them responsible for their bad judgment? Or compulsion?

***

The Middle East Minuet of Death

Is the "conventional weapons shield" of Iran's nuclear production that so demanded American interference a new concept? A new moniker, a new buzzphrase to capture the Press's imagination? Or is a shift afoot? Was the mother-of-all-bombing-raids inadequate? Or is there a true policy shift? Or, as it looks, did the Israelis unearth new information that made them decide to attack Iran, and did the U.S. tag along to give the appearance of calling the tune?

Certainly, the resulting Iranian response must have been a surprise to most. The international spiteful suicide bomber was felt to be the sole default setting of Israel; to have Iran unmask itself as willing to destroy as much of the world as it could in defeat was unexpected.

And why, while brandishing their indiscriminate, destructive threats, do they want to appear so thoughtful and precise?

Iran Musing

On this day:

241 BC
First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands – The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet, bringing the First Punic War to an end.
1629
Charles I of England dissolves the Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.
1762
French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
1804
Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
1814
Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France.
1831
The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.
1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican-American War.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
1891
Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1906
The Courrières mine disaster, Europe’s worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
1922
Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
1945
The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting firestorm kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.
1952
Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the “provisional president”.
1959
Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent his removal
1980
Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower
2006
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.

***“

"It does not sound crazy to a Silicon Valley executive that maybe they could be in charge instead of you,” AI alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky warned politicians. “If they actually could control superintelligence, they’d discard you like used toilet paper.”
Great. Politicians as an abused group.

***

On 13–14 October 1761, one of the Calas sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family's home. Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he intended to convert to Catholicism. When interrogated, the family initially claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged. Because suicide was considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son's suicide to look like a murder. The law thought the boy had been killed because of anti-Catholic fanaticism.trial/torture description is quite grim.
French philosopher Voltaire, after initial suspicions of anti-Catholic fanaticism were dispelled by his investigations, began a campaign to get Calas's sentence overturned, claiming that Marc-Antoine had committed suicide because of gambling debts and not being able to finish his university studies due to his denomination.

Voltaire's efforts were successful, and King Louis XV received the family and had the sentence annulled in 1764.

***

Two famous brothers who worked as real estate brokers have been convicted of drugging and raping dozens of women over the course of decades.
Tal Alexander, 39, and Oren Alexander, 38, rose to prominence from their sales of luxury real-estate properties in New York and Miami. Along with a third brother Alon, 38, a jury found all three guilty of sex trafficking by a jury in New York.

***

Is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen overreaching?

The diplomats who spoke to POLITICO argued that von der Leyen’s flurry of tweets and conversations with Gulf leaders did not formally represent EU foreign policy positions. Critics also voiced skepticism about what von der Leyen, who has no military means at her disposal and has no mandate to shape EU-wide foreign policy positions, could be offering Gulf states under missile and drone attack from Iran.

“What exactly is she promising when she says we will support them?” asked Loiseau. “Who is ‘we’? For now, the support is the Charles de Gaulle [French aircraft carrier], Rafale jets in Abu Dhabi, and defense agreements with some countries.”

“What we’re seeing is role-play with nothing behind it,” said Loiseau, who belongs to French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. (Politico)

Ambition fills any vacuum.

***

Iran Musing

What was the impact of the B-2 bombing? Wasn't it supposed to make another attack unnecessary? What was the revelation that made this attack a next and necessary step? Have you ever heard of the "conventional-weapons-shield-of-nuclear-weapons thesis" the Americans used to justify it?

An unsubstantiated theory, i.e., out of whole cloth: Israel, for some reason (and their intel is very good), had decided to attack Iran again, and the Americans thought the appearance and power of the two together created a better public relations picture and gave them the appearance of control. America followed them in. (Warning: Made up.)

Iran had their own strange war moment. When it was clear they were getting clobbered, Iran began to attack everybody, old friends and foes alike.

There is a theory, the Sampson Theory, stating that Israel has no minor fight. Every struggle threatens their very existence. Any vulnerability was a step toward their eventual destruction. Every fight was a fight to the death. There would never be a compromise; there would never be a standing-eight count. They would never sue for peace.

And if it was clear that events had gone against them, that the tide was running in their enemy's favor, they, like Sampson, would pull the whole building down around their ears. They would put their 53 or so nukes in the air against every living target they could reach and turn the Middle East--and its oil--into a lifeless, useless husk of a place.

Perhaps that is what Iran planned too.

Post Iran

On this day:

1876
Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
1906
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania millionaire Harry Thaw shoots and kills prominent architect Stanford White.
1910
The United States Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”; the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.
1950
The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.
1960
Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.

***

The NYT called Mamdani, the socialist running for NY mayor, a "rising star."

***

In the top of the seventh in the game against the Brewers, Cruz ended the frame by hitting into a 5-6-3 double play. One of the fastest players in baseball, he was seen slowing up on his way to first base, resulting in an out that would’ve likely been avoided had he maintained his speed out of the box.

Pirates manager Don Kelly confirmed after the loss that Cruz’s effort on the play led to his removal from the contest.

***

Post Iran

*

The Defense Intelligence Agency continues its strange relationship with the nation. It has had several leaks in 2019, with Henry Kyle Frese arrested for leaking classified information to reporters.

Nathan Laatsch, a 28-year-old IT specialist, was accused of trying to pass sensitive intelligence materials during a sting operation conducted by the FBI. He stated his reason for his treason was he doesn’t “agree or align with the values of this admin,” so he was willing to divulge secrets.

A slew of leaks have been stimulated by the decision to cancel DEI programs.

And there are the strange connections between the government and the Clinton campaign calumny.

*

Only in America could an anonymous opinion be published so eagerly around the world. There are some reasonable conclusions:

--Many in America who work for the government are rooting against its success. The source of this animosity is sometimes ideological, sometimes simple hatred of Trump.

--The success of the bombing attack is unknown, but the impression so far is that it appears very successful. It is likely the Israeli assessments will be more accurate than anonymous leaks from Washington armchairs.

--The image of a successful America is important in the world. One can only wonder as to the mindset of government and media employees to undermine it using such unverified, superficial, and uncredited declarations.

*

The voters have advanced a Socialist as the Democrat nominee for mayor of NYC. Is socialism compatible with the Constitution? He campaigned on a platform that looked like it was stolen from The Onion.

*

SpaceX Dragon Axion4 launched successfully to ISS for 2 weeks.

*

The vice-mayor of a small LA town has gone on social media and asked local criminal gangs to stand up for themselves and fight for their territory against ICE intrusion.

*

Iran's last-minute gratuitous bombing was an attempt to wring the last few drops of death out of the conflict before the ceasefire. 

*

One wonders how the circumstances arose to guarantee Iranian oil flow (particularly to China), despite war and bombing, and the tremendous leverage it offered. 

From Hell's Heart

On this day:

109
Roman emperor Trajan inaugurates the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channels water from Lake Bracciano, 40 km north-west of Rome.
637
The Battle of Moira is fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is the largest battle in the history of Ireland.
1374
A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
1916
World War I: the Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line.
1947
Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.

***

Stephanie Hockridge, a former Phoenix news anchor-turned-fintech entrepreneur, has been convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a federal case involving hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID relief funds.

***

If Iran has hidden some Uranium, Israel will find it. And steal it.

***

Did the diffident Obama administration and the ineffectual Biden Regency teach the Iranians false lessons?

***

From Hell's Heart

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

                                                    *

Fight for peace. Buy more, save more. Our world reverberates with Orwellian weirdness, but nowhere as much as the Middle East, where the intensity of feelings overrides all logic and practicality. Iran has had the very purpose of its government removed by the American air attack. The nuclear destruction of the hated Israelis is no longer possible, and the inability to recreate the circumstances necessary to attempt it again has been revealed.

Now Iran is fighting off its back, has violated the ceasefire, and allowed Israel to rationalize restarting Iran's punishment. Iran must be convincing even the dithering Press of the danger they present. Iran's willingness to suffer for an unachievable goal should be alarming to all. If anything, it proves Trump's point and justifies his actions. Iran is beyond all restraint in its obsession. The sensible argument that Iran would not destroy the Straits of Hormuz because that would destroy their own economy and their own people clearly does not apply.

Conniving Israel may be the only reasonable player in the field: Iran cannot be hurt too much.

Ahabism is not in the OED, so we are not constrained by a definition. Our definition of Ahabism: narrow, focused, monomaniacal, tyrannical, and single-minded pursuit of a goal that results in self-destruction.

Ahab's destruction is probably deserved, but he does take the Pequod with him.

Attack on Iran

On this day:
1633
The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.
1848
Beginning of the June Days Uprising in Paris, France.
1898
Spanish–American War: United States Marines land in Cuba.
1941
Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
1944
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.
1945
World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.

***

About 300,000 people in Israel are American citizens.

***

Gunfire broke out at a Juneteenth celebration Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing one person and wounding seven others, according to police and the organizers of the event.


***

Attack on Iran

The Americans delivered an astonishing, precise, obliterating attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran. Some notes on the attack:

The attack was done with remarkable efficiency and secrecy for such a complex project. The planes entered, bombed, and left Iran without being detected. A mammoth undetected military strike, complete with fake "ghost" radar readings. That, as a modern possibility, must be a frightening realization for the world.

Where does the U.S., or any country, get the authority to determine the internal workings of another state? We are reasonably afraid of the implication of a maniacal, homicidal theocracy that has threatened its neighbors and the U.S. and periodically killed our citizens. They are, without question, a malignant threat to the U.S. and the world. The world will rejoice at the effort, albeit probably silently. But where does the justification for such a huge military action come from?

The government boasts of the fact that no shots were fired. There is a bizarre element here. Certainly, it is notable that the attack was carried out without extraordinary risk to American soldiers. However, there is the implication that this attack would be less warlike if fewer people were killed. Certainly, this seems an attack on material is less invasive and less serious than an attack involving people. But it does look like war.

Trump has made this a defensive act to protect a friend; a limited act with limited aims. Like an older brother, he asks only that his smaller brother not be hurt or killed. Iran and their agents are more clearly defined as the vicious maniacs they are. Being America's friend might become desirable again. His requests for a compromise here seem sincere. Interestingly, his stance on his peculiar tariff policies supports this sincerity.

Limited warfare is not new and can be very strange. The War of the Flowers and Mourning Wars seem to have been taken with the agreement of the victims. Even if the victims were not of the same culture.

Pakistan has suggested that Trump get the Nobel Prize for his actions in the Pakistan-India conflict. Will this strike decrease or raise the value of this claim?

Gabbard's comments on Iran's nuclear willingness and readiness in the Senate will haunt this event. She is an attractive, commanding presence, but, like Hollywood, may not be terribly bright.

Trump is decisive, which makes him particularly jarring as president. Iran has attacked American personnel and interests for forty-five years. Obama became a "red line" punch line. Biden was addled and incoherent. Indulgence has been the watchword, as if the Democrats were the parents of bad kids. But these kids are heavily armed.

If this raid was as successful as it looks, the political geometry of the Middle East has radically changed. It has become safer and more optimistic. The U.S might be seen again as a positive internal force.

How is that conference between Iran and the European governments going? Has any conference been sillier, a cease-fire discussion between non-combattants?

The Death to America crowd might be taken a little less seriously now. It will be interesting to see if the Gaza supporters pivot to support Iran. There will be cries against the attack by lukewarm friends and internal enemies on campus and in Progressive boardrooms. 

They will fret that suicidal Iranian agents--particularly those allowed by the Biden Regency non-administration--will become active and harm us. That might be true. But if it happens,  it will not be because of this attack; it will be despite it. The cause of such attacks will be mental derangement, a disregard for the wellbeing of man, the ineptness of the American system which declares it demands war leadership from a group of people who cannot balance a budget or deal with our debt, Obama's fear of consequence which prefers form over substance, and the republic-threatening Biden Regency which, with the Obama frontrunners, preferred bribery to policy.

The Democrats in Congress have a decision to make. AOC has already moved her dislike for Trump to the astonishingly un-Democrat position of limited governmental power, saying the president has no power to launch warlike actions without Congressional approval. But no one believes in the validity of the War Powers Act. Not even Obama, who attacked around the globe and ruined Libya. This will be interesting to watch, as most of these people essentially oppose America's success and integrity. 

I wonder if the Israelis would be willing to subcontract their intelligence.

The inactivity of the Iranian proxies has been stunning.

A commentator has said that Iran is in the driver's seat now. How is that, exactly? Like a suicide bomber has control over his future? The Pirates, behind by ten runs, decide who's going to pinch-hit?

Some Questions About Iran

On this day:

1269
King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.
1306
The Earl of Pembroke’s army defeats Bruce’s Scottish army at the Battle of Methven.
1586
English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England’s first permanent settlement in North America.
1846
The first officially recorded, organized baseball match is played under Alexander Cartwright’s rules on Hoboken, New Jersey’s Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1. Cartwright umpired.
1953
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.
1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate.
1982
The body of God’s Banker, Roberto Calvi is found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London.

*

Is Caitlin Clark being targeted in the WNBA despite her remarkable impact on fans and on the game's popularity?

*

Karen Read was found not guilty. Very interesting case, essentially, showing 'unanswered question' replacing 'reasonable doubt.' And, of course, the privilege given to white women with good jawlines and high cheekbones.

*

Some Questions About Iran

Iran and Israel are beating each other to a pulp. Iran is particularly damaged and seems to no longer control its airspace. so Israel theoretically could continue air attacks until it runs out of armaments. How come one has declared war on the other? What would war look like if not this?

*

It is said that Iran is months away from a nuclear weapon. This has been the war chant for at least the last decade. Iran is always just a step away from destroying the Middle East. The last version of this was the chant of WMDs in Iraq, which created a military black hole for years. And, of course, we poor citizens are inundated with other imminent crises: global cooling, climate change nee global warming, population growth leading to global starvation, population shrinkage leading to welfare state collapse, social security bankruptcy, falling test scores, and growing adolescent stupidity. These are legitimate concerns for thinking people, but do they deserve a national war footing?

*

Have we become numb to the war drums of crisis? The endless war chants of the Press: Trump is Hitler, threats to democracy, WMDs? How can a democracy make reliable decisions when its information system is as warped as a midnight infomercial? Will we have to rely on outsiders with their own agendas, like Israel?

*

The silence of America's enemies is deafening. No one is supporting Iran in the Middle East. Vicious theocracies are biting their collective tongues. Even China is quiet. What does this mean? Are all these countries aware of the Iranian threat? Is everyone worried?

*

There is also silence from America's friends. The G7 actually voted on innocuous wishes for peace. Ciphers.

*

War does expose the comic. The dithering Europeans, Putin's clownish offer to mediate peace, the American Left's stunned silence. 21% of responding Americans are "unconcerned" over Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

*

What does this say about a nation's internal politics? Is the Iranian theocracy representative of the Iranian citizen? Because they wear clerical robes, do the religious leaders get more of a vote because, presumably, they are closer to God? Does anyone care about the poor Iranian citizen caught in this mess?

*

If Iran is a threat to the world because of their homicidal theocracy, what about North Korea? Should they have a bomb? 

*

Where does the U.S. get the authority to declare who should have a nuclear weapon and who should not?

*

What would be the model for a government that gives up its nuclear ambitions for the betterment of world peace? Libya?

*

Everyone was upset about the Russian attack near the reactor in Ukraine. Is an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facility okay?

Some Questions on Iran/Israel

On this day:

1645
English Civil War: Battle of Naseby – 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers.
1775
American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.
1789
Mutiny on the Bounty: Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km journey in an open boat.
1800
The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.
1807
Emperor Napoleon I’s French Grande Armee defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.
1830
Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Fredj.
1846
Bear Flag Revolt begins – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.
1940
The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence.
1940
World War II: Paris falls under German occupation, and Allied forces retreat.
1941
June deportation, the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, begins.
1947
Roswell UFO incident A supposed UFO crash lands in Roswell, New Mexico

***

Disagreements and protests are inherent to freedom and democracy. But are confrontations inherent to democracy?  Aren't elections the alternative to confrontation?

***

CNN reporter Christine Amanpour stated she was fearful to visit the U.S. to speak at Harvard, comparing her anxiety to that of visiting North Korea. Does that kind of judgment disqualify her opinions elsewhere?

***

Military celebrations are planned in the U.S. to mark the 250th anniversary of the American armed forces. There is also a "Trooping of the Colour" in London, a parade to celebrate the King's birthday.

Demonstrations are planned in the U.S. with the theme "No Kings." Is that a protest against Charles ' birthday? Do the demonstrators think London is in the U.S.? Are the protesters just products of the American education system who think the U.S. is part of Great Britain? Is this a protest against the Biden Regency? Or is this just incoherent?
An additional question has been raised in interviews with Democrats: they are suddenly and inexplicably concerned about the cost of the parade. One can only hope this outbreak of fiscal responsibility seeps into the rest of the national expenses.

***

Last month, over 350 academics, clinicians, and activists signed an open letter titled “Biology is not binary.” Addressed to Bridget Phillipson, the United Kingdom’s Minister for Women and Equalities, its purpose was to denounce recent legal and policy developments in the U.K. that reassert the biological basis of sex in law.

***

Some Questions on Iran/Israel

The conflagration in the Middle East raises some serious world questions and some strange domestic ones. 

Despite the proximity of Iran's proxy anti-Israel groups, this is not a border dispute. Iran is 1,000 miles from Israel.

1. This conflict creates a clear confrontation of significantly divergent world views. Israel vs. Iran pits the totalitarian East against the democratic West, unelected religious hierarchy vs. elected representation, homicidal and obliterative motives vs. desire for survival. These appear to be obvious conflicts that essentially involve the old, tribal, authoritarian world against the modern, reflective, individual present. It will be interesting to see how the college-educated street demonstrators and the increasingly peculiar Democrats come down on this question.

As an aside, the Democrat Vice-President candidate, Tim Walz, said the problems between Iran and Israel require mediation, and his idea of the national intermediary with the most "moral authority" is.....China. China. The Democrat VP candidate thinks China is the world's moral leader. Understand, he really thinks this.

2. Israeli planes refueled over Syria. Could that be done without some international agreement?

3. The precision and thoroughness of the Israeli attacks raise the question of how espionage is best done. Israeli success seems much more personal than electronic.

4. The Israelis launched their drones from inside Iran, much like Ukraine's successful attack on Russia. This should raise some serious questions about domestic land ownership. Free property ownership has always been a basic principle in American philosophy, but this technology might challenge that. China has bought a lot of American farmland.

5. Iran is a true menace to the world community. Their hatred for Israel has far-reaching effects even for uninterested parties: their proxies attack commercial ships in international waters and kill randomly. Israel's success so far might well help the economies and stability of countries around the world, even countries that hate them. They have become like a strange, special unit group for the world, perhaps an international mercenary in some future dystopian world. Imagine a Davos strike force.

Owners and Squatters

On this day:
1184 BC
Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes.
1776
The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.
1938
Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Nationalist government creates the 1938 Yellow River flood to halt Japanese forces. 500,000 to 900,000 civilians are killed.

***

James Howells, who lost his hard drive containing $742M in Bitcoin, finally ended his search for the hard drive after 12 years.

***,

"I could end the deficit in five minutes,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in a 2011 interview. “You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”

This is getting some renewed internet action. The problem is with the "pass a law" part.

***

Why are students demonstrating at Harvard over Israel and not in front of the Russian embassy over Ukraine?

***

7% of people over age 65 are regular cannabis users.

***

Owners and Squatters

Israel and its enemies is more complex than simple jealousy, although it plays a part. It is the worst of tribalism, expansionism, greed, unforgiving historical resentment--the Hatfields and the McCoys writ large, armed to the teeth and blinded by righteous fury over something most can't remember.

The West, horrified by the murderous WWII, tried to set aside a self-contained political and cultural entity where Jews could enrich and protect themselves. They chose a desert occupied by ill-defined, wandering nomads who had just lost a war. Losing a war has consequences, usually a lot worse than losing some desert. 

But drawing borders and appointing kings have a lot to overcome. See Korea, Vietnam, the Ottoman Empire, the 100 Years' War, and much of Africa. And while the Jewish claim to the area is well documented, everything in history has a precedent. Jewish claims in the Middle East are more literate than the Irishman's claim to London, but no more valid. And how old is national sovereignty anyway? The Treaty of Westphalia? So, all borders start from 1648?

There should be a statute of limitations on national sovereignty. Everyone has some claim or other if you go back far enough. Right now, publicity and PR trump everything. But, as time goes by, big weapons in the hands of a few will trump everything. If the world thinks Gaza is a problem now, imagine what will happen when Iran has a nuclear weapon. How will these problems be resolved? 

Israel was created out of whole cloth by a sympathetic Britain--ratified by the UN--in a land they conquered, for the benefit of a culture that had suffered horribly. Tough but historically common. (minus the kindness)  And the conquered people were displaced. (unsympathically) So, which injustices will we right? Greece-Turkey? The Falklands? The defeat of the Anglo-Saxons? The defeat of a Stone Age people without the wheel by the European People of Steam?

Do the Picts want Edinburgh back? The Chiricahua want Austin? It was said seriously by a commentator about the LA riots that California was originally Mexico's. That is, they stole it first. 

Putin is a metaphor for this world: cynical, virtueless, grasping, homicidal, self-absorbed ambition. He and people like him will destroy the house to evict the squatters. But in Israel, the squatter is similarly armed. And if Israel can't keep what they were given, they will respond Sampson-like and reduce the Middle East to a smoldering, lifeless radioactive trinitite.

"If everyone lights just one little candle," also starts a zillion small fires. Not seeing the realities here and ignoring the risks is childish. And, on a global scale, life-threatening.

 

Gifts

On this day:
1868
President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate
1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
1969
Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.
2005
Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.

***

A podcaster described Psul Skenes as "a chandelier in a haunted house."

***

City Journal reports on
"a trove of internal documents that reveal Harvard’s racial favoritism in faculty and administrative hiring." More than “unconscious bias” training, they are vectors for systematic discrimination against disfavored groups: namely, white men. As one Harvard researcher said, “endless evidence” suggests that the university continues to discriminate against the supposed oppressor class in hiring and promotions.

***

Gifts

There is debate over Qatar's offer of a plane gift to Trump. Some claim concerns over possible hidden, nefarious motives despite its blatant transparency. Democrats raise their heads from the mire of their corruption and cry, "corruption!" This is especially interesting in light of the enormous financial gifts the Middle East has given American Universities, which no one seems to object to.

A question.

Trump is trying to cobble together a Persian rug of Middle East leaders in hopes of preempting more conflict or, if Iran is a plus one to the party, World War III. Qatar is a principal in that effort.

So, what, in Middle Eastern culture, are the implications of refusing a gift?

One/Two State

The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes. -Mary Renault, novelist

***

One/Two State

David Friedman, Trump's ambassador to Israel, is making the rounds, talking about his book, One Jewish State.

He was one of the leading architects of the historic Abraham Accords,

He argues that while Israel doesn't want a Palestinian state, neither do the Palestinians who fear the incompetence and corruption of their leaders. He gives as an example a dispute that occurred during the Trump administration.

Several small Arab towns in the Israeli section close to the West Bank were complaining about how they were treated over something. The Israeli government sent representatives to speak to them and Friedman, as U.S. Ambassador, was included. Friedman offered that the lines drawing the territory were arbitrary and Trump and the Israelis had agreed they could redraw the boundaries so the unhappy Arab towns could be included in the Arab-administrated West Bank.

The Arabs were horrified by the suggestion. They would never want to live under such a corrupt government. They immediately withdrew all their complaints.

Suleiman the Magnificent

The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman in 1299 and it was ruled for ten successive generations by capable and often brilliant leaders, culminating in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), who led the Empire to its cultural and geographic zenith. He built Topkapi, captured Belgrade and Budapest, and completed the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of central Europe, and except for a quirk in the weather would have taken it. He was well on his way to solidifying the Ottomans as the rising historic star in Europe.

All that changed when he met the redhead.

He was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowrem, who came to be known as Roxelana, as part of his share of a slave-gathering raid into what is now Poland. She must have really been something. He was so taken by her he rejected his hundreds of other harem girls and spent his time with her exclusively. Then he did the unheard of. He married her.

She was soon known as "The Witch." She had a son, Selim II, and she poisoned Suleiman against his favorite, the brilliant and able Mustafa, to the advancement of her son. Mustafa was clearly the man to succeed to the throne but she had Suleiman kill him. Suleiman actually watched as it was done. Selim became the new leader of the Empire and its new genetic father. A drunk and a coward, he brought dissolution to the Empire, personally and genetically. He started the tradition of killing every male in reach that looked to be a competent rival. This negative selective pattern reaped incompetent rewards. The behavior continued into the 20th Century when the Ottoman Empire fell apart in World War One, leaving the rest of the world with the aimless Middle East.

There is a great difference between phenotype and genotype. Its sharp edge can split the world.

Total War

“Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing.” --economist Assar Lindbeck

***

Biden gave an extraordinary speech to the NAACP last night where he angrily proposed two blatantly unconstitutional political promises, term limits for the Supreme Court and national rent controls. The speech was almost comically inept--Biden confused his 5% rent cap with $55.
Perhaps the government's mental decline is more systemic than specific.

***

Total War

From the days of The Waters of Mullalla through the Heroes of Beslan to the Glorious Defeat of Dr. Karen Woo there is nothing more characteristic of the desperate, homicidal and primitive nature of the peripheral, armed ideologue than the precise, savage attack on the helpless. A hospital target is preferable and, if a nunnery is attached, all the better. Rarely a school is available but that, of course, is usually too much to hope (or pray) for. That is the nature of certainty--or sometime the desperate, homicidal, and primitive all by itself: The right --or need--to exploit the greatest leverage possible. Who can forget the wild-eyed terror in the eyes of the children in the Beslan school as hard, experienced guerrillas cut them to pieces. And one can easily imagine the similar fear mixed with an adult incomprehension as Dr. Woo and her companions died because they did not know the protective magic phrases from the Koran that their fellow knew.

War has many causes and the losers also have their reasons, formulated in their minds and conferences. And they are myriad. But a core of every homicidal conflict is inevitability, the belief that the combatants have no other choice. War is the option to their annihilation.

Years ago the Iroquois, pressed on all sides by the relentless European immigrant, decided to go to war. But trapped as they were against the Great Lakes in the northwest by the bulk of white settlers they needed a second front, preferably in the southwest. They turned to the Creek, a large and well-ordered tribe they respected, and sent their famous war chief, Tecumseh, to convince them to join their war. Tecumseh stood at the council for three days, silent until the white government observers left. Then he gave a speech that ended thus: "Make war on their men! Make war on their women! Make war on their children! Make war on their dead!" The Creek rose in a rage, joined the Iroquois, and fought to the death. Many of the battles had 98% mortality rates with only the leaders escaping to raise another force. One of the white leaders, Andrew Jackson, cemented his reputation in these horrific wars.

"Make war on their dead"? But Tecumseh was not mad. His war was not with these settlers and he knew it. His war was with history. His war was with a culture and its progress; no less a victory over the entire movement of history would protect the Iroquois and the Creek. They were doomed and total war was their only answer. They were in the endgame. 

They killed everyone they could find, farmers, traders' wives, settlers' children. And the settlers responded in kind. Every battle was to the death; there was no quarter and no surrender. When the military position was overrun, the camps and villages were next and all the women and children were killed. And then they were gone.

A society, a culture, a people backed into a corner, will fight like a trapped beast to the death. So will an outlaw. It is very important that a society be able to distinguish between the two. No society wants to be in an endgame with an enemy and not know it.