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Two obituaries in one day. . .

Dicky Betts, one of my favorite rock guitarists of all time, died in Florida last Thursday. He was 80, and had been plagued by illness (exacerbated by drugs, drinking, and smoking) for some time. When he was at his height with the Allman Brothers, especially when playing with Duane Allman before Duane’s untimely death, he was incomparable, and had a sound that could be identified immediately.  You can read the NYT obituary by clicking below, but I’d to memorialize him with his music rather than with words. From what I hear, he was probably somewhat of a jerk, and often didn’t get along well with his bandmates, but of course many great artists, musical or otherwise, weren’t exemplary people. I know virtually nothing about Betts as a person (look him up on Wikipedia if you want information), but I know his music, and I’ve put four great examples below.

You can read the NYT obit—in line with house style, they call him “Mr. Betts”—by clicking on the headline below, or see it archived here.

An excerpt:

Despite not being an actual Allman brother — the band, founded in 1969, was led by Duane Allman, who achieved guitar-god status before he died in a motorcycle accident at 24, and Gregg Allman, the lead vocalist, who got an added flash of the limelight in 1975 when he married Cher — Mr. Betts was a guiding force in the group for decades and central to the sound that came to define Southern rock.

Although pigeonholed by some fans in the band’s early days as its “other” guitarist, Mr. Betts, whose solos seemed at times to scorch the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul, proved a worthy sparring partner to Duane Allman, serving as a co-lead guitarist, rather than as a sidekick.

With his chiseled features, Wild West mustache and gunfighter demeanor, Mr. Betts certainly looked the part of the star. And he played like one. Nowhere was that more apparent than on the band’s landmark 1971 live double album, “At Fillmore East,” which was filled with expansive jams and showcased the intricate interplay between Mr. Betts and Mr. Allman. It sold more than a million copies.

“The second half of ‘At Fillmore East’ is as vivid and exhilarating as recorded rock has ever been,” Grayson Haver Currin of Pitchfork wrote in a 2022 appraisal.

A centerpiece of the album was “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” a haunting, jazz-influenced instrumental written by Mr. Betts whose title was taken from a headstone at a graveyard in the band’s hometown, Macon, Ga. That track’s “textural interplay,” Mr. Currin continued, “resembles Miles Davis’s then-new electric bands, organ and guitar oozing into one another like melting butter and chocolate.”

“Duane and I had an understanding, like an old soul kind of understanding of let’s play together,” Mr. Betts said in a 2020 interview with The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida. “Duane would say, ‘Man, I get so jealous of you sometimes when you burn off and I have to follow it,’ and we would joke about it. So that’s kind of Duane and mine’s relationship. It was a real understanding. Like, ‘Come on, this is a hell of a band, let’s not hot dog it up.’”

Mr. Allman made his feelings about his bandmate clear. “I’m the famous guitar player,” he once said, “but Dickey is the good one.”

Note that last sentence.  Yet on Rolling Stone‘s bizarre list of “The 250 greatest guitarists of all time,” Betts ranks at only #145 (sandwiched between Mike Bloomfield and Odetta), while Duane Allman comes in at a respectable #10. (#1 is Jimi Hendrix, while Eric Clapton is only #35.) That list is just wonky. Hendrix’s position makes sense, but to put Clapton at #35 and Betts at #145 is insane. Best to ignore that list!

Although the NYT and others name “Ramblin’ Man” as Betts’s biggest success, I still find”Blue Sky” preferable, and it’s my favorite song of his (he wrote it, sang it, and played it, alternating with Duane Allman). Here is “southern rock”—I’ve never been sure what that is—at its finest. I heard the Allman Brothers, sans Duane, play this song live, and was only about 10 feet from the stage in a standing crowd. After playing “Blue Sky,” Betts threw his pick into the audience, and I’m sad that I didn’t catch it.

The solo on this piece is incomparable, and you can hear the original recording here. Warren Haynes alternates with Betts, but Betts outshines him. (Dickie is, of course, the one with the cowboy hat and boots.)

Another favorite of mine, the instrumental “Jessica“.  This was also written by Betts, who does a great job playing it live in 1982. I love Betts’s great solo that starts with a big guitar whine at 3:39, slows and then speeds up at 4:51. The original is here.

This song, “Whipping Post,” was written by Greg Allman, but it’s one of the few examples on video of Betts playing with Duane Allman. Duane is the star here, but Betts gets his licks in starting about 5:40.  You judge who’s best. This is the full original band, and the original recording is here.

I’m throwing in this version of Gregg’s song “Melissa‘ because it’s all-acoustic performance and shows Betts’s skill on acoustic guitar, especially in the final solo with Haynes. Greg wrote this song out of frustration, feeling unable to write any good songs. He finally succeeded with this one, despite the lameness of some of the words. The original recording is here.

Well, this is unexpected, and details will be forthcoming. He was 82.

Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett has died https://t.co/Dbk0VgBZnY pic.twitter.com/q22ug7sYSv

— Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) April 19, 2024

I have lots of stories about Dan, and found him amiable and charitable, though sometimes he could be domineering, especially when I professed a lack of belief in free will. But I once jumped in his lap and asked for a hug after I was attacked by Robert Wright at a conference lunch. Being enfolded by a replica of Santa was the best thing I could think of.

There will be a lot of obituaries, I’m sure, and if you want to read about his life he wrote an autobiography called I’ve Been Thinking.  I’ve read it, and you can see that he was far more talented and into far more things than you could ever imagine.

RIP, big guy!

Some photos from 2012 and 2019 (this is Rockwell’s original “Freedom of Speech” painting:

Perplexed at a symposium with Reza Aslan. Dan was NOT happy here!

Going to the Moving Naturalism Forward conference at Stockbridge, MA.

I hope John McWhorter’s latest column, which I see as misguided, doesn’t show that he’s running out of gas. His point is to show that substantial progress in racial relations between blacks and whites has occurred over the years. But who could deny that? African-Americans are represented far more in the media than they were when I was a kid, they are beneficiaries of Civil Rights Acts passed in the Sixties, there is affirmative action so that universities and businesses are far more integrated, and one sees and hears far less bigotry than was evident to me as a kid. Do we need more evidence.

McWhorter has given ample evidence of this progress before, and gives more in this column, including a bit on how Mother Jefferson (Zara Cully, a black woman), despite being a better actress on television than was Mother Dexter (Judith Lowry, a white actress) on “Phyllis”, was given short shrift. That wouldn’t happen today, and black actors are getting far more roles, and good ones, than they used to.

Despite this palpable progress in racial relations—progress that, if you listen to some black activists, is illusory—McWhorter says, correctly, that overall black people are treated worse than white people by the police, and have been for years:

For Black people in Los Angeles recalling how the L.A.P.D. had treated them for decades, for Black people in Philadelphia not long past the all but open racism of the police force there under Mayor Frank Rizzo, for Black people in Chicago remembering the racist profiling and abuse by the cops called the Flying Squad, the sheer fact of a Black man getting off on a murder charge was of epic significance. If anything, the fact that he was obviously guilty only amplified the victory.

For all the statistical discrepancies between Black and white Americans, interactions with the police may be the central driver of how many Black people experience racism. I noted this in my research and conversations in preparation for my book “Losing the Race” in the late 1990s, when I was sincerely trying to figure out why so many Black people spoke of racism almost as if it were the 1890s rather than the 1990s. There is a reason that the main focus of the Black Panthers was combating police brutality, that anti-cop animus was central to gangsta rap and that today Black Lives Matter may be more influential than the N.A.A.C.P.

Well, I won’t comment on whether the differential influence in the last sentence is true, or, if true, is a good thing; but differential police treatment of races surely accounts for the different reactions of blacks and whites to O. J. Simpson’s acquittal of murder in 1995. And to McWhorter, that difference would be reduced today. McWhorter calls this “progress in race relations”. I think that, if it were true, it would be progress in performative antiracism, but not genuine progress.  But read his column by clicking on the headline, or find the article archived here:

 

First, McWhorter makes it clear, as it is be to anyone with neurons, that O. J. was guilty as hell of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. McWhorter makes that view clear several times, including in the first paragraph, where he describes the racial differences in reaction to Simpson’s acquittal (all bolding is mine):

Among the signature images of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend was the contrasting tableaus of Black people grouping in front of television screens applauding while white people watching it were shaking their heads — appalled, perplexed and even disgusted by a verdict that flew in the face of obvious fact. Those contrasting perspectives have gone down as demonstrating a gulf of understanding between the races.

That gulf persists, but it narrows apace, and if the verdict came down today, it would be a lot less perplexing to many white people than it was back then. Many would understand why the jury acted as it did. We might even see some of them applauding along with Black people.

To McWhorter, that last sentence instantiates racial progress, but more on that later.  More on his opinion of Simpson’s guilt:

The evidence of Simpson’s deed was overwhelming despite the ineptitude of the prosecution team. The verdict and the response to it among the Black community weren’t signs of support for Simpson; they were protests against a long legacy of mistreatment and even murder at the hands of the police.

. . . the sheer fact of a Black man getting off on a murder charge was of epic significance. If anything, the fact that he was obviously guilty only amplified the victory.

I agree with McWhorter. I was on Simpson’s defense team, and the DNA material I got must be kept confidential. But I will say that it’s my personal opinion, from all the evidence that came out during the trial and thereafter, that Simpson was guilty as hell. But the prosecution apparently could not convince the jury that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, so he walked. (DNA evidence, for one thing, seemed to only confuse the jury. And then there was the glove and the racism of Mark Furman.)

So a black man, in the face of all the evidence (and yes, the prosecution was inept) was acquitted of murder. Black people applauded because, though perhaps many thought him guilty, his acquittal represented a black man beating a racist system. White people groaned because many also thought him guilty, and there may also have been some racism in that reaction.

I can fully understand these reactions. But understanding them doesn’t mean I approve of them.. A man was on trial for his life, yet he was apparently being judged by the public on his pigmentation and historical racism by cops. If you thought he was guilty but applauded the verdict because Simpson was black, you’ve judged the system, not the man.

And now McWhorter avers that if the trial took place today, it’s likely that, because of improved racial relations, many white people would also judge the system and join blacks in applauding the verdict:

Today I see white people far more aware. That’s why when I fast-forward the Simpson verdict to 2024, I picture some white people getting the news on their phones and doing high-fives and group hugs, some of them in tears. They would be no more likely to see Simpson himself as a hero than were the jurors of 1995, especially given that modern America is more sensitized not only to racism but also to abuse of women. But they would be more likely to see the acquittal as a kind of payback for all of the white cops who have been exonerated for murdering Black people. It would be processed, I imagine, as a teaching moment of sorts.

This smacks strongly of Robin DiAngelo. High-fiving and group hugs as a reaction to Simpson’s acquittal is a performative act: it’s saying, “Look, I understand that black people are mistreated by the cops! I’m not a racist!”  But if you’re celebrating and still thought Simpson did the crimes, then you’re happy because a guilty man went free—and only because that guilty man was black. To me, that’s making Simpson stand for all blacks, though, as McWhorter notes, Simpson really wasn’t considered part of the black community,and was not an activist. A verdict should be judged on the content of the man’s crime, not on the color of his skin.

Others may agree with McWhorter, but I think this hypothetical scenario, if it occurred, would be evidence not of real racial progress, but of performative antiracism by whites. If you see that as progress, so be it. I can give a lot of harder evidence that there’s been racial progress in the past three decades, and especially in the past six decades. You don’t need to make up some dumb scenario to show this, just as a way to mark Simpson’s death.

As for me, I am a white man who always thought Simpson guilty. His acquittal was bad for society (look what happened to him afterwards), and that was the last trial in which I acted as an expert witness for DNA.  I didn’t see the acquittal as a sign of improved racial relations, but as a miscarriage of justice largely due to the incompetence of the prosecution. I ran out of gas at the moment he was acquitted, and from then on turned down all requests by defense lawyers to use me as an expert witness.

If the acquittal happened today, I would not be high-fiving others, crying, or engaging in group hugs. That doesn’t prove that I’m a racist, because I agree that cops treat blacks worse than whites. But I also believe in evidence, and the evidence adduced in the Simpson case, and revealed soon after by reporters, is not a reason to celebrate his acquittal.

And I’m wondering why McWhorter had to confect this hypothetical, performative scenario to demonstrate that racial relations have improved in America.

McWhorter:

All that leads me to think that America has a problem with police violence in general. But here’s the thing: I am accustomed to vigorous resistance to that argument from not only Black but white people, too.

It is in this context that the stark racial divide in the reception of the Simpson verdict three decades ago seems rather antique. There has been, regardless of the disagreements that inevitably persist, progress.

There are, I’m sure, better ways to show progress.

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

“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”:

 

 

Today’s photos come from reader Bill Dickens, whose notes and IDs are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them, and don’t miss the eclipse photo at the bottom.

I’ve been camping at Flamingo, Florida in the Everglades National Park. April is a good time of year to visit with warm temperatures and before the rains arrive and turn much of the coastal prairie into mud. (The mosquitoes though are a constant.)

Here are some wildlife shots taken along the Coastal Prairie Trail – a 13-mile round-trip along a historical trail once used by local cottonpickers and fishermen. It’s now a part of the Everglades National Park. The trail winds through an open prairie of succulents and buttonwoods both leaved and dead, presumably from constant inundation by flooding.

It was the dragonflies that are the real star at this time of year. Swarms of them.

Plus a bonus shot taken of the eclipse. I drove from my home in Florida to the Texas Hill Country to view it from Tow, Texas. The weather was cloudy most of the morning leading up to the eclipse. Then the cirrus clouds were headed one way, lower-level clouds the other and five minutes before the eclipse it cleared and stayed clear.

The Wildflowers were out in the Hill Country and this makes it a pretty time of year to visit.

Coastal Prairie Trail:

Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) – there are actually two in the frame:

Osprey (Pandion haliaetus),:

Osprey with Fish tail:

Halloween Pennant Dragonfly (Celithemis eponina):

Blue Bonnets, the official flower of the Lone Star State, at Lake Buchanan in Tow, Texas  (there are 5 different species of Blue Bonnet. I’m not going to guess):

The 2024 eclipse viewed from The Texas Hill Country:

I’ll write more about this tomorrow, perhaps, but here’s what I was going to put in tomorrow’s Nooz:

*One day after Columbia University’s President and some of its trustees testified before Congress on endemic antisemitism at the University, and after President Shafik promised to double down on antisemitism, the school has started arresting lots of pro-Palestinian demonstrators engaged in illegal protests.  I guess those nasty Republicans put the fear of God (literally) into Shafik, who doesn’t want to go the way of Liz Magill.

The authorities moved Thursday afternoon to quell a protest at Columbia University, arresting dozens of demonstrators who had constructed an encampment of about 50 tents on campus. The arrests, which drew a new crowd of students to support the protesters, came the day after university leaders pledged to Congress that they would crack down on unauthorized student protests tied to the war in Gaza.

Police officers, clad in riot gear and prepared with zip ties, began taking protesters into custody just before 1:30 p.m. as scores of demonstrators gathered in front of Butler Library. “Since you have refused to disperse, you will now be placed under arrest for trespassing,” a man repeatedly called through a loudspeaker. “If you resist arrest, you may face additional charges.”

The scene played out less than 24 hours after Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, and other top officials insisted to Congress that they would take a harder line in handling the protests that have embroiled campuses across the country since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. Leaders at two other elite schools, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, lost their jobs after similar appearances last year.

Here’s what else to know:

• Hundreds of students and others rallied with the protesters inside and outside of the school overnight and through the morning. “They can threaten us all they want with the police, but at the end of the day, it’s only going to lead to more mobilization,” said Maryam Alwan, a senior and pro-Palestinian organizer on campus, speaking from the tent encampment.

• Police officers loaded at least three buses with demonstrators, who cooperated as they were taken into custody, though other protesters shouted “Shame! Shame!” Organizers had said they expected to be arrested.

• Dr. Shafik angered some students and professors during her appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday, when she largely conceded that she felt some of the common chants at pro-Palestinian protests were antisemitic. In a letter sent on Thursday afternoon as the arrests began, Dr. Shafik said she “took this extraordinary step because these are extraordinary circumstances.”

About time, I’d say.  Without punishment there is no deterrent, which is my own University’s problem with protestors like these. And foreign students are especially liable, as they could lose their visas if suspended (that’s why MIT didn’t arrest any of its protestors). Colleges are loath to suspend foreign students, or have them arrested, because foreign students pay pretty much the full fees at colleges, whereas Americans often get big breaks on tuition.

And, mirabile dictu, one of the students who has been both arrested and suspended (from Barnard), is Isra Hirsi, the daughter of none other than Congresswoman and notorious antisemite Ilhan “Follow the Benjamins” Omar. (Omar was in fact on the House committee that grilled the Columbia people.

Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, is among several Barnard students who have been suspended for participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University.

The camp, which includes dozens of tents pitched on the campus’s South Lawn in protest against Israeli actions in Gaza, has created a standoff between administrators and students on the Ivy League campus. Dozens of students were arrested on Thursday, after the university notified them that they would be suspended if they refused to move and the students vowed to remain in place.

Ms. Hirsi posted on social media around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday that she was one of three students suspended so far for participating in the protest, which began on Wednesday, the day the university’s president, Nemat Shafik, appeared before Congress to discuss antisemitism on campus.

At the congressional hearing, Dr. Shafik told lawmakers that she would enforce rules about unauthorized protests and antisemitism. Ms. Omar, who is on the committee that held the hearing and who did not mention that her daughter was among the pro-Palestinian protesters, was one of several Democrats who questioned Ms. Shafik about her actions toward Palestinian and Muslim students.

Ms. Hirsi, 21, said on social media that she was an organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that has been pushing the university to cut ties with companies that support Israel. Such divestment is the key demand of protesters in the encampment. She is also involved with the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of two student groups that was suspended in November for holding unauthorized protests.

“I have never been reprimanded or received any disciplinary warnings,” she wrote. “I just received notice that I am 1 of 3 students suspended for standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide.”

Ms. Hirsi is a junior majoring in sociology. Two other Barnard students, Maryam Iqbal, 18, a freshman, and Soph Dinu, 21, a junior majoring in religion, were also suspended, protest organizers said.

Who would have thought that testifying before a hostile group of Republicans in Congress would make college presidents straighten up and fly right? I disagree with the hostile treatment of Presidents, but it’s time to start enforcing the “time, place, and manner” aspects of protests, speech, and demonstrations. It’s also time to enforce behavior codes (and speech codes, if schools have them, which they shouldn’t) uniformly, for it was the lack of uniformity that got Liz Magill fired from Penn and started the process that resulted in Harvard’s Claudine Gay being let go.  My preference is the Chicago Free Expression principles, but those don’t allow you to say anything, anywhere, and at any time on campus.

Pro-Palestinian protestors have been coddled too long (even at the University of Chicago), and unless they get serious discipline from their colleges, they’ll just keep disrupting everything.  This is a lesson that Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, learned, perhaps from being Provost here first.  What a pity that threats like those of Congress are what make colleges reform and apply their rules uniformly!

Now if only the University of Chicago would listen. . .

I used to think that the “decolonization” of STEM was strongest in New Zealand and South Africa, which of course is a movement to dethrone so-called “Western” science in favor of indigenous science. But now I’m beginning to wonder if the “indigenization/decolonization of science” isn’t making its way deep into Australia as well.  I have followed developments in New Zealand far more closely than these other places, because I hear often from Kiwi scientists who beef about the dethroning of modern science (which hasn’t been “Western” in a while) in favor of Mātauranga Māori (MM), the “way of knowing” of the indigenous Māori people. Also, I have visited New Zealand, love the place, and would be devastated if science were watered down with superstition, myth, legend, and morality.

And that’s the first issue with “decolonizing” science. Usually those movements intend to either defenestrate modern science or at least teach “indigenous science” alongside it as an equally valid “way of knowing”. Yet indigenous science, like MM, is a grab-bag of empirical knowledge based on trial and error (the premier example is the navigation of Polynesians, the ancestors of Māori; another is how to catch eels), but is also imbued with superstitions, myths, legends, word-of-mouth tales, and “rules for living”, including morality. And rarely is indigenous science vetted with the same rigor as is modern science, because modern science has many features missing in indigenous “ways of knowing” (double-blind testing, deliberate replication, hypothesis testing, and so on).  One result is that “indigenous science” can be wrong more often. One example is the insistence of some New Zealand researchers that Polynesians discovered Antarctica in the early seventh century. This is based on oral legend combined with mistranslation; in fact, the Russians were the first to glimpse the continent—in 1820.

Now trial and error methods can indeed produce empirical knowledge in the sense of “justified true belief”, but that is practical knowledge, designed to help people where to find things to eat, how to navigate, how to herd bison, when to plant food, and the like. Its ambit is far narrower than that of modern science, and examples of “indigenous science” that have made valuable contributions to modern science are thin on the ground.

Which brings us to the second issue with indigenous science. Although it’s touted loudly and passionately, examples of indigenous knowledge making substantial contributions to modern science are either scant or missing. Most of the written defenses of enthroning indigenous science I’ve seen are based on a need to pay attention to marginalized people as oppressed victims, whose knowledge must be elevated precisely because they were victims.  But that’s no way to judge science.

And that is precisely the content of this puff piec, coming from Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, touting the dethroning of “mainstream European-based mathematics” in favor of mathematics produced and used by “Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world.” The article highlights Professor Rowena Ball of ANU’s College of Science, who lists these as her research interests:

Mathematics Without Borders, Truth-Telling in Mathematics History, Decolonisation of STEM, Indigenous and Non-Western Mathematics, Emergence of life, Nonlinear and complex dynamical systems, Thermochemical instabilities and oscillators, Thermodynamic analysis, Railways and trains, Country pub lunches

What is mathematics? What is included in mathematics? Who gets to say? How and why did Western mathematics exclusively colonise minds and curriculums over the whole world? Should that situation continue unabated?

It will not escape your notice if you read the piece, heavy with quotes from Dr. Ball, that she neglects the contributions of anything other than “mainstream European-based mathematics” to modern mathematics, leaving out the contributions of the Egyptians, Greeks, Arabs, Romans, and Babylonians to modern mathematics. Those people were apparently not “indigenous” and at any rate were not “colonized”. But Ball goes on and on, proffering only one tepid example of how a group of Australian aboriginals in Mithaka Country (an area of east-central Australia) had a form of mathematics that was useful. It turns out that it wasn’t mathematics at all, but practical knowledge that we wouldn’t recognize today as “math” at all.

Click the screenshot to read this short piece (h/t Peter Forsythe):

First I’ll give some of her quotes from the ANU piece (indented) and then her holotype specimen of indigenous math.

What constitutes mathematical knowledge? What is included in mathematics? Who gets to decide? These are some of the questions being asked in a growing decolonisation movement.

“Mathematics is a universal human phenomenon, and students of under-represented and minority groups and colonised peoples are starting to be more critical about accepting unquestioningly the cultural hegemony of mainstream European-based mathematics,” says Professor Rowena Ball from the ANU Mathematical Sciences Institute.

Professor Ball leads a research and teaching initiative called Mathematics Without Borders, aimed at broadening and diversifying the cultural base and content of mathematics.

“Mathematics has been gatekept by the West and defined to exclude entire cultures. Almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based,” she explains. “We would like to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics.”

“Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world are standing up and saying: ‘Our knowledge is just as good as anybody else’s − why can’t we teach it to our children in our schools, and in our own way?’

“And this is happening in New Zealand, North and South America, and Africa, and also in a great movement in India to revive traditional Indian mathematics.”

But wait!  There’s more:

. . .“There is a lot of gatekeeping going on,” Professor Ball says of having to justify Indigenous maths. “One effect of colonisation of the curriculum is defensive protection of what is thought to be an exclusively European and British provenance of mathematics.”

“Like most mathematicians I was educated in European and British mathematics,” says Professor Ball, “and it’s fine stuff – I still love my original research field in dynamical systems.” But that mathematics did not develop in isolation, she says, and now there’s even more to learn about how non-Western societies have been seeing the world mathematically that many of us haven’t yet tuned into.

“What the general public think of as mathematics tends to be whatever they learned (or, more likely, did not learn) at school. But in many Indigenous societies, mathematics is lived from when you are born to when you rejoin your ancestors,” Professor Ball says.

Rejoin your ancestors? Does she mean as underground worm food? I don’t think so. But I digress.  Ball argues that indigenous math is largely non-numerical, though in her one unpublished paper that is mentioned in the article (see below), numbers and counting figure largely.

At any rate, here is the single example Ball gives of valuable indigenous mathematics. I am not making this up: it involves the direction of smoke signals.

“One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time,” Professor Ball says. “If you light an incense stick you will see the twin counter-rotating vortices that emanate − these are a chiral pair, meaning they are non-superimposable mirror images of each other.”

A memoir by Alice Duncan Kemp, who grew up on a cattle station on Mithaka country in the early 1900s, vividly describes the signalling procedure, in which husband-and-wife expert team Bogie and Mary-Anne selected and pulsed the smoke waves with a left to right curl, to signal “white men”, instead of the more usual right to left spiral.

Mithaka country is southwest Queensland − Kurrawoolben and Kirrenderri (Diamantina) and Nooroondinna (Georgina) river channel country − and for thousands of years this region was a rich, well-populated cultural and trade crossroads of the Australian continent.

To create and understand these signals, you have to be a skilled practical mathematician, Professor Ball says.

“Theory and mathematics in Mithaka society were systematised and taught intergenerationally. You don’t just somehow pop up and suddenly start a chiral signalling technology. It has been taught and developed and practised by many people through the generations.”

At that time in the early twentieth century, British meteorologists were just beginning to understand the essential vortical nature of atmospheric flows.

“Imagine if the existing Indigenous Mithaka knowledge of vorticity had been recognised, nurtured and protected? In what ways may it have fed into the high performance, numerical weather forecasting capabilities that we all rely on now?” she asks.

I don’t find this at all convincing. First, Bogie and Mary-Anne sound like white oppressors to me. But even if they weren’t, is the “reverse curl” something the locals actually used to signal “white people around”? It couldn’t have been going on for thousands of years because the first European people arrived in Australia in the early 17th century. So was there an elaborate system of smoke signals before that? Perhaps, but how are they based on mathematics? Patterns of smoke, like drumbeats, is a kind of language, and how to make the patterns and get them understood correctly is based on trial and error. Where does the math come in?

Further, the claim that the Mithaka knowledge of vorticity—I’m not sure what that knowledge is beyond empirical ways to make smoke signals—would have revolutionized “high performance numerical weather forecasting” long before now is simply risible.

Well, that’s enough. But I’d be remiss not to at least mention a paper by Xu and Ball that defends the thesis above. It’s called “Is the study of Indigenous mathematics ill-directed or beneficial?“, and appears at Arχiv.org, which means it hasn’t been published or peer-reviewed. There are a few examples of indigenous mathematics, which I put below. In some cases you’ll have to look up the references given to check on which people they’re referring to:

Much of ordinary day-to-day arithmetic and geometry performed by ‘illiterate’ women, artisans, carpenters and many other workers are unwritten and even unspoken (Wood, 2000). The apprentice learns by watching carefully then doing the mathematics themselves. The use of tools–an unwritten approach–to support arithmetic has a long history; there are different media for recording and computing with numbers, including stones, twigs, knots and notches (Hansson, 2018). People of many Indigenous Pacific and Australian nations can use parts of the body to count quickly and accurately (Goetzfridt, 2007; Owens & Lean, 2018; Wood, 2000), communicating methods, operations and results through speaking, listening and gesture. Weaving skills were taught unwritten to next generations to construct the numerical relationships that give rise to the desired complex geometrical designs with symmetries (Hansson, 2018). Knotted quipus were used by ‘illiterate’ Inca people of South American
Andes regions to allot land and levy taxes (Ascher & Ascher, 2013). The quipu (Figure 1), with its columns of base-10 numerical data encoded as knots, can be thought of as a spreadsheet, and it seems likely that the Inca knew and applied some array and matrix operations.

Dan, an Indigenous language of central Liberia, is non-written but Dan speakers can carry out arithmetic operations orally, including addition, subtraction and division, play games that require fast counting, tracking and calculating skills, and practice geometric principles in constructing buildings (Sternstein, 2008). Fractal geometry, developed to a high art in Western mathematics from the late 1960s and executed in silico, has non-Western antecedents that were implemented in the built environment in Africa (Eglash, 1998). Chaology and fractal geometry have also been a part of traditional Chinese architectural and garden design for thousands of years (Li & Liao, 1998).

Clearly some indigenous people could count and calculate, though the calculating seems to fall largely to the Chinese, not usually considered indigenous. At any rate, what’s above doesn’t jibe with the claim and quote in the article:

Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.

“In fact, as most mathematicians know, mathematics is primarily the science of patterns and periodicities and symmetries − and recognising and classifying those patterns.”

A lot of the above sounds like counting and accounting to me.  Regardless, it’s clear that some indigenous people could count and figure out patterns that involved counting.  I’m not so sure about the Inca “matrix” operations,  but one can hardly carry out some kind of commerce or taxation without being able to count. At any rate, yes, indigenous people had a form of “counting and pattern mathematics,” but to put them on a par even with what the ancient Egyptians and Greeks accomplished mathematically is to give indigenous people too much credit.

The final version of the Cass Review (formally the “Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People”) was issued on April 10. Here’s a brief summary by the CBC, noting that doctors and others have griped about it:

A long-anticipated — and contentious — national review of gender-affirming care for youth in England was released last week, resulting in headlines across the U.K. saying that gender medicine is “built on shaky foundations.”

The Cass Review, chaired by pediatrician Hilary Cass, was commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS) in 2020.

Even before the final report was published, the review has led to significant changes for youth gender medicine in England, where the debate over transgender care has become increasingly heated, with complaints of both long waiting lists and medical treatments being too readily available to youth.

Last month, the Cass Review findings led to a ban on the prescription of puberty-suppressing hormones except for youth enrolled in clinical research.

That’s a move away from the standard of care supported by many international medical bodies, including the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS), the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Though several European countries including Sweden have also restricted access to puberty blockers and other medical treatments for youth.

The report cites a systematic review of evidence, commissioned as part of the Cass Review, which found “a lack of high-quality research” that puberty blockers can help young people with gender dysphoria.

While experts in the field say more studies should be done, Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC News disagree with the finding that there isn’t enough evidence puberty blockers can help.

I had no time to read the long report, and didn’t think that just regurgitating a summary for the readers was sufficient. But reader Jez told me he was going through it, and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind writing his take for this site. He kindly agreed, and so, without further ado. . . .

First, though, Jez notes

“The Cass Review’s final report (and its other publications) are available here.

 

THE CASS REVIEW: A READER’S TAKE

by Jez Grove

Since around 2014, the number of children and young people presenting at gender clinics in the Western world has surged and the patient profile has switched dramatically from predominantly pre-pubertal males to teenage females. Both changes are unexplained. The treatment offered to these patients has also significantly shifted: a psychosocial and psychotherapeutic approach has given way to many being offered medical treatment with puberty blockers (gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, GnRH) and cross-sex hormones.

In September 2020, Dr Hilary Cass, a retired consultant paediatrician and former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was appointed to undertake a full review into how NHS England* “should most appropriately assess, diagnose and care for children and young people who present with gender incongruence and gender identity issues [and] to make recommendations on how to improve services […] and ensure that the best model/s for safe and effective services are commissioned”. [Cass Review Final Report, henceforeth “CRFR”, Appendix 1: Terms of Reference]

The Cass Review’s Interim Report (2022) highlighted that a lack of evidence on the medium- and long-term outcomes of the treatments that children and young people were receiving was limiting the advice that the Review could give. In response, it commissioned an independent research programme to provide “the best available collation of published evidence, as well as qualitative and quantitative research to fill knowledge gaps” and set up a Clinical Expert Group to help it interpret the findings. [CRFR, p. 25]

The Interim Review also warned that social transitioning (changing, name, appearance and pronouns, etc.):

. . . .“may not be thought of as an intervention or treatment, because it is not something that happens within health services. However, it is important to view it as an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning. There are different views on the benefits versus the harms of early social transition. Whatever position one takes, it is important to acknowledge that it is not a neutral act, and better information is needed about outcomes”. [Cass Review Interim Report, henceforth”CRIR”; pp 62-63]

The findings of the Interim Report led to the closure of the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) last month.

Last week, the Cass Review published its Final Report. Dr Cass begins it with an apparent effort to placate her critics; her opening sentences read:

“This Review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves, or rolling back on people’s rights to healthcare. It is about what the healthcare approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the NHS in relation to their gender identity”. [CRFR, Foreword from the Chair, p. 12]

However, she is not blind to the problems that have developed in this area of healthcare:

“It often takes many years before strongly positive research findings are incorporated into practice. There are many reasons for this. One is that doctors can be cautious in implementing new findings, particularly when their own clinical experience is telling them the current approach they have used over many years is the right one for their patients. Quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children. Based on a single Dutch study, which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence, the practice spread at pace to other countries. This was closely followed by a greater readiness to start masculinising/feminising hormones in mid-teens, and the extension of this approach to a wider group of adolescents who would not have met the inclusion criteria for the original Dutch study. Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations. They deserve very much better”. [CRFR, Foreword from the Chair, pp. 13-14]

The problems with the evidence base that sparked the Review persist, with Cass writing that the independent research programme she had commissioned

. . . .“has shown that there continues to be a lack of high-quality evidence in this area and disappointingly […], attempts to improve the evidence base have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation from the adult gender services.  The Review has therefore had to base its recommendations on the currently available evidence, supplemented by its own extensive programme of engagement”. [CRFR, p. 20]

The failure of the UK’s adult gender services to cooperate is perhaps the most shocking revelation in the report. As Cass notes,

“When clinicians talk to patients about what interventions may be best for them, they usually refer to the longer-term benefits and risks of different options, based on outcome data from other people who have been through a similar care pathway. This information is not currently available for interventions in children and young people with gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, so young people and their families have to make decisions without an adequate picture of the potential impacts and outcomes”. [CRFR, p. 33]

A quantitative data linkage study was intended to

. . . “use existing data held by the NHS, including data from GIDS, hospital wards, outpatient clinics, emergency departments and NHS adult GDCs, to track the journeys of all young people (approximately 9,000) referred to the GIDS service through the system to provide a population-level evidence base of the different pathways people take and the outcomes. This type of research is usual practice in the NHS when looking to improve health services and care received.  However, this has not been the case for gender-questioning children and young people and the hope was that this data linkage would go some way to redress this imbalance”. [Cass Review Final Report, p. 190]

Despite its “not particularly unusual” methodology, it took more than a year for the study to receive ethics approval from the Health Research Authority (HRA); Cass considers the “robust scrutiny and consideration [to be] entirely appropriate given the sensitivity of the subject matter”. [Ibid.] The independent research team “undertook stakeholder engagement and developed the patient notifications and communications resources to explain the research and provide information about how to opt-out of the study should an individual choose to do so. […] In January 2024, the Review received a letter from NHS England stating that, despite efforts to encourage the participation of the NHS gender clinics, the necessary co-operation had not been forthcoming”. [Ibid.] Appendix 4 of the Review sets out the details and history of the “thwarted” study.

The proposed linkage study had been complicated by the fact that, uniquely, GIDS patients are issued new National Health Service (NHS) numbers when registering their new gender identity. Cass notes:

“From a research perspective, the issuing of new NHS numbers makes it more difficult to identify the long-term outcomes for a patient population for whom the evidence base is weak”. [CRFR, p. 229]

The UK government had to bring forward a special legislative instrument to facilitate linking the patients’ new and old NHS records; NHS England had vowed to pursue the thwarted research before the special instrument’s powers expire in 2027.

There are other serious unintended consequences of allowing young patients to change their NHS numbers. Cass writes,

“Safeguarding professionals have described a range of situations where this has put children/young people at risk. These include young people attending hospital after self-harm not being identifiable as a child already on a child protection order; records of previous trauma and/or physical ill health being lost; people who do not have parental responsibility changing a child’s name and gender; children being re-registered as the opposite gender in infancy; children on the child protection register being untraceable after moving to a new area”. [CRFR, p. 229]

While Cass has been unable to use a stronger evidence base, she has provided a valuable service in bringing together an independent and thorough assessment of the existing research in areas related to the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of gender-confused children and young people and suggested a way forward.

The Review gives:

• An overview of the patient profile, including mental health and neurodiversity, adverse childhood experiences, theories about the rise in referrals and the change in case mix, and the weak evidence with regard to suicidality.
• An important appraisal and synthesis of the available international guidelines. Cass notes,

“For many of the guidelines it was difficult to detect what evidence had been reviewed and how this informed development of the recommendations. For example, most of the guidelines described insufficient evidence about the risks and benefits of medical treatment in adolescents, particularly in relation to long-term outcomes. Despite this, many then went on to cite this same evidence to recommend medical treatments.

Alternatively, they referred to other guidelines that recommend medical treatments as their basis for making the same recommendations. Early versions of two international guidelines, the Endocrine Society 2009 and World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare (WPATH) 7 guidelines influenced nearly all the other guidelines. These two guidelines are also closely interlinked, with WPATH adopting Endocrine Society recommendations, and acting as a co-sponsor and providing input to drafts of the Endocrine Society guideline. WPATH 8 cited many of the other national and regional guidelines to support some of its recommendations, despite these guidelines having been considerably influenced by WPATH 7. The links between the various guidelines are demonstrated in the graphics in the guideline appraisal paper (Hewitt et al., Guidelines 1: Appraisal).

The circularity of this approach may explain why there has been an apparent consensus on key areas of practice despite the evidence being poor.” [Cass Review Final Report, p. 130]

• An overview of the existing clinical approach and clinical management and recommendations to improve them.
• Recommendations for a new service model for NHS England, including follow-through services for 17-25 years-olds to ensure continuity at “a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey” and “allow clinical and research follow-up data to be collected”. [CRFR, p. 225] She also stresses the needs for detransitioners to be supported and warns of the dangers of private healthcare providers outside the NHS not following its policies.
• Finally, she cautions that, while innovation in healthcare is important, there must be a “proportionate level of monitoring, oversight, and regulation that does not stifle progress, but prevents creep of unproven approaches into clinical practice. Innovation must draw from and contribute to the evidence base”. [Cass Review Final Report, p. 231]

To critics who say the Cass Review tells us nothing new, surely the onus is on them to justify continuing to provide children and young people with “gender-affirming care”, care for which we already knew there is no reliable evidence on the medium-and long-term outcomes.

______________________

* Health is devolved in the UK; Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (and indeed all other  healthcare services) are free to ignore the Cass Review’s findings, but may be unwise to do so.

I forgot that Columbia University officials are being grilled in Congress about anti-semitism on its campus. You can watch it live below, and things are getting heated, as they did in the House hearings involving the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn. The Republicans are loaded for bear, but I think I’ll have to watch most of this later. CNN has an article, with a live feed, about what’s going on. Here is some of their news:

All four Columbia officials testifying before Congress unequivocally stated that calls for the genocide of Jews violate the university’s code of conduct.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici asked Columbia President Minouche Shafik, board co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman and David Schizer, co-chair of a task force on antisemitism, for a simple yes or no response. All four said “yes,” calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Columbia’s code of conduct.

The response offered a stark contrast to the lawyerly answers that university presidents provided during the December hearing before the same committee. That moment went viral, sparking an uproar that eventually contributed to the ousters of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Of course, the Columbia officials had the advantage of having months to prepare for that question.

Days after the December hearing, Columbia issued a statement saying: “Calls for genocide against the Jewish community or any other group are abhorrent, inconsistent with our values and against our rules.”

Columbia certainly has learned from what happened in the last hearings! But apparently Columbia doesn’t adhere to the First Amendment, under which calls for genocide are, under many circumstances, legal. This means that their code of conduct does not completely comport with the First Amendment.

Here, quickly, are the YouTube notes:

The Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC), will hold a hearing to call on the leadership at Columbia University to answer for the rampant antisemitism engulfing their campuses and threatening their Jewish students.

 

Here’s FIRE’s free-speech ranking for Columbia University. It’s below average: #214 out of #248 schools (Harvard was the lowest). Click to look it up:

As Luana Maroja and I wrote in our paper on the ideological subversion of biology, some of that subversion involves a fallacy that we called the “reverse appeal to nature”, an inversion of the naturalistic fallacy:

All the biological misconceptions we’ve discussed involve forcing preconceived beliefs onto nature. This inverts an old fallacy into a new one, which we call the reverse appeal to nature. Instead of assuming that what is natural must be good, this fallacy holds that “what is good must be natural.” It demands that you must see the natural world through lenses prescribed by your ideology. If you are a gender activist, you must see more than two biological sexes. . . . .

In other words, people tend to justify something they consider morally desirable by seeing the phenomenon (or something like it) in nature. As we noted, the claim that sex is a spectrum in nature is a conclusion meant to buttress the value of people who consider themselves neither female nor male—those who are “nonbinary”. The problem here is twofold. Most important, biological sex is indeed binary in nature: all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes: males, making small motile sperm, and females, making large immotile eggs. I won’t defend this binary-ness now, as I’ve done it many times before, as have others. For a quick refresher, see this piece by Colin Wright.

The second problem is that the existence of something in animals or plants doesn’t buttress human morality.  Trans-identifying people should have all the same rights as other people, except that in some sensitive settings like sports, prisons, etc., segregation should be based on biological sex rather than gender. And that is regardless of what we see in nature. After all, we don’t think that theft, murder, and cheating are justifiable because we can point to these phenomena in various animals. (See my quote at the bottom.)

And yet there are still those, like gender activist Peter Tatchell, who fall victim to this fallacy.  In his tweet below, Tatchell claims to point out 18 animals that are transsexual (i.e., can change biological sex) and also show that “gender is not a simplistic binary, male & female”. This is a doubly incorrect instance of the reverse appeal to nature.

First, most of the animals in Tatchell’s litany of example do not change sex, and none of them are “transsexual” in the human sense (i.e., transgender humans who change their gender identity, not their biological sex, because they suffer from gender dysphoria).  And none of the animals that do change sex are mammals, since we know of no example of a mammal that can change from producing eggs to producing sperm or vice versa. (There are no examples, either, of human hermaphrodites that are fertile as both sexes.)

Second, not a single of Tatchell’s 18 examples shows that sex is “not a simplistic binary.” Every one of the animals shown instantiates that there are two sexes: males and females (or both combined in one body as simultaneous hermaphrodites). There are no third, fourth, or fifth sexes shown by Tatchell, for none exist.

His tweet:

18 animals you didn’t know were biologically trans

Gender diversity in the (tr)animal kingdom blurs the lines of “biological sex”

These animals show that gender is not a simplistic binary, male & female

Trans & intersex are real. Get used to it!https://t.co/QqhacYgi4u

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) April 7, 2024

In an earlier post I showed how Emma Hilton attacked Tatchell’s claims in jer twitter feed, with one tweet for each of Tatchell’s examples. Now she and Jonathan Kay have teamed up for a complete demolition job at Quilette, which you can read by clicking the headline below.

 

First the authors show the prevalence of using nature to justify nonbinary and transgender people:

Anyone who’s followed the debate about transgender rights will immediately understand why this type of fish now has a starring role in advocacy materials designed to convince the broad public that sex-switching is a common feature in the natural kingdom, including among humans [JAC: The preceding link goes to a Vice article by Diana Tourjée called “Yes, there are trans animals.”] In Canada, for instance, the publicly funded CBC is airing a documentary titled Fluid: Life Beyond the Binary, in which the self-described “non-binary” host, Mae Martin, invokes the existence of clownfish, and various other creatures, to argue that “each of us are on the gender spectrum.” Not surprisingly, Martin is explicitly promoting the documentary as a paean to social justice, and as a rebuke to anyone seeking to put limits on “gender-affirming health care” (such as the double mastectomy that Martin publicly announced in 2021).

This week, British human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell tried to advance similar arguments in a widely read tweet referencing—as the linked Gay Times article put it—“18 animals you didn’t know were biologically trans.”

“These animals show that gender is not a simplistic binary, male and female,” Tatchell gushed. “Trans and intersex are real. Get used to it!”]

Indeed, the article that Tatchell cited goes further, denouncing the very idea of “biology” as a “pseudo-intellectual” fixation of “lesbian separatists” and “right-wing lobbyists.” The author, one Fran Tirado, warns that even mentioning terms such as “biological sex,” “biological male,” and “biological female” is a problematic affront to the supposedly non-binary, gender-bending nature of life—which, the author claims, has been in evidence since “the earliest recorded histories of the earth.”

Then comes the promised 18-point catalogue of “animals you didn’t know were biologically trans”—starting with the above-pictured clownfish (often described by scientists as anemonefish).

Hilton and Kay then run through the list, which I won’t repeat here. I’ll just say that none of the examples show that there are more than two sexes, though individuals of some species can embody both sexes in a single individual, like slugs (a ” simultaneous hermaphrodite”), or, like clownfish, can switch over time from one biological sex to another (“sequential hermaphrodites”). But that is a switch from one biological sex to another, something not seen in mammals, and of course not seen in humans (transgender people do not change biological sex, but switch from one gender identity to another).

That leaves us with the so-called “trans” animals, most of which don’t really change sex. Tatchell needs to bone up on his biology.  Here I list some of the biological phenomena cited by Tatchell

• Real changes of sex (sequential hermaphrodites like clownfish, jellyfish, oysters, sea bass, sea snails).  That constitutes five species in his list.
• Simultaneous hermaphrodites (banana slug): individuals can produce both sperm and eggs. There are a fair number of animals that do this, but no mammals and only a few fish (e.g., some gobies and serranid sea bass) There are no simultaneous or sequential hermaphrodites known in mammals or birds.
• Rare cases in which a single individual is known to have swapped testes for ovaries or vice versa (Boyd’s forest dragon, mandarin duck). These are rare exceptions to species in which there are two biological sexes that do not change.) They are developmental anomalies.
• Parthenogenesis: species in which females can produce offspring without her eggs being fertilized (e.g., some Komodo dragons). Some animal species in which females can do this also have males (sometimes copulation is required to produce eggs, but there’s no fertilization). But all of these species are either completely female or have both males and females. They do not violate the sex binary
• Species in which males look different from females (“sexual dimorphism”). The example Tatchell gives is a swallowtail butterfly. It doesn’t switch sex and there are only two sexes. Sexual dimorphism is widespread but doesn’t exemplify either changing sex or nonbinary sexes.
• Species in which males can behave like females to get copulations (the ruff, a bird) or avoid predation (e.g., marsh harriers, a bird).  Again, it’s just a sneaky behavior; there is no sex-switching and all individuals are either male or female
• Species in which males can get “pregnant”, like seahorses. Females stick their eggs into a the pouch of a male who fertilizes them and releases the newly-hatched seahorses. This is a reversal of sex roles, but not of sex: males still produce sperm and females eggs, and there is no changing of biological sex.
• Hyenas (yawn). Females have long penis-like clitorises through which they give birth. There is no change of sex and individuals are either male or female. It baffles me why these animals are considered either “trans” or “nonbinary”
• Gynandromorphs: individuals that, through a developmental accident, are part male and part female. Often the animal is split right down the middle with one half being one sex and the other being the other. I’ve seen them in fruit flies, and they are not all that rare in birds (see a gynandromorph cardinal here). These animals are developmental anomalies, not part of the regular constitution of a species, and most are sterile though some can be fertile.

So yes, some animals can switch sex, though none of those are birds are mammals. Those might be considered “trans” animals, but hardly (and shouldn’t) justify the existence of trans humans, which don’t change biological sex but gender identity.  And none of the species proffered by Tatchell show that there is a spectrum of sex.  As Hilton and Kay conclude:

Do some creatures change sex? Absolutely. But this isn’t new information. It’s a fact that biologists have known about for a long time.

What is also well-known is that none of these sex-changing creatures are mammals, much less human. Rather, they’re insects, fish, lizards, and marine invertebrates whose biology is different from our own in countless (fascinating) ways.

What’s more, in every single case described above, there are always (at most) just two distinct sexes at play—no matter how those two sexes may switch or combine. One of those sexes is male, a sex associated with gonads that produce sperm (testes); and the other is female, with gonads that produce eggs (ovaries). There’s nothing else on the menu. It’s just M and F.

Yes, there’s a “spectrum.” But it’s not the imaginary sex spectrum that activists such as Martin, Tatchell, and Tirado are trying to conjure. Rather, it’s the extraordinary spectrum of traits, behaviors, and evolutionary adaptations that all of these creatures exhibit as part of nature’s grand pageant.

I swear that people like Tatchell need to learn some biology. If I hear about sexual dimorphism, gynandromorphs, or hyena citorises again, I’m going to lose it.  And people really need to learn not to scan through species in nature to buttress what they see as moral or “right”. That way lies considerable danger, as I wrote in my Times Literary Supplement review of Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow several decades ago:

But regardless of the truth of Darwin’s theory, should we consult nature to determine which of our behaviours are to be considered normal or moral? Homosexuality may indeed occur in species other than our own, but so do infanticide, robbery and extra-pair copulation.  If the gay cause is somehow boosted by parallels from nature, then so are the causes of child-killers, thieves and adulterers. And given the cultural milieu in which human sexuality and gender are expressed, how closely can we compare ourselves to other species? In what sense does a fish who changes sex resemble a transgendered person? The fish presumably experiences neither distressing feelings about inhabiting the wrong body, nor ostracism by other fish. In some baboons, the only males who show homosexual behaviour are those denied access to females by more dominant males. How can this possibly be equated to human homosexuality?

In the new Jesus and Mo strip, called “Whoa,” the barmaid compares modern-day versions of Christianity and Islam, and judges Islam as palpably worse for humanity. In that she agrees with Richard Dawkins, though not with those sophists who simply cannot admit that one religion can have more pernicious effects on the modern world than another.

The artists’s comment in the post: “It is worse.”

x

Here’s a fun video with a range of sounds from an alligator to the loudest sound we know of, which you’ll have to watch to find out—and you’ll want to. (I have heard a white bellbird, and it was LOUD!)

There’s a wallet commercial from 3:00 to 4:00, so you can skip that minute.

I cannot vouch for any of the information given!

What a life! First I defend the speech rights of pro-Palestinian student who may well favor the elimination of Israel, and now I’m back again at Vanderbilt University, where, according to both the student newspaper and the Jewish paper The Algemeiner, students have rejected precisely one out of 11 student groups that applied to joint the school’s Multicultural Leadership Council (MLC): Students Supporting Israel. Wouldn’t you know it!? (One other group, Vanderbilt United Mission for Relief and Development, is awaiting a vote.)

There are two articles that say largely the same thing, so I’ll quote from the shorter Algemeiner piece.  But let us not forget that Vanderbilt become an “Our Hero” school when its Chancellor, Daniel Diermeier (Chicago’s former Provost) had students removed and arrested after occupying the administration building for nearly a whole day, protesting Vandy’s supposed complicity in supporting Israel against Gaza. Many of the students were also given interim suspensions, and there’s no sign that those suspensions will be lifted.  It was not free speech that Diermeier was opposing, for he’s a big advocate of such speech (after all, he’s from the University of Chicago). He was enforcing “time and place” regulations for protest, and it’s simply against Vandy’s rules to sit inside the administration building.

According to these two articles, the rejection of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) was a decision of Vanderbilt students, not the administration, and I guess they just don’t like Israel. After all, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, both hate-filled groups favoring the elimination of Israel, are already members of the MLC (so is a subgroup from Hillel, but I bet it’s been a member forever).

Click below to see the piece from the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper:

Click below to go to the Algemeiner piece:

I’ll quote from The Algemeiner, but you can check the other piece, too:

According to The Vanderbilt Hustler, [Students Supporting Israel] is the only one to be rejected from this year’s applicant pool, an outcome that SSI president Ryan Bauman said is evidence of febrile opposition to dialogue and coexistence among some segments of the student body. The only Jewish group to be admitted, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), is a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.

Among the nine groups to be admitted to the MLC this year were the Taiwanese American Student Association, Vanderbilt Pride Serve, the Vanderbilt Association for South Asian Cuisine, and the Vanderbilt Iranian Student Association. One of the 11 total organizations that applied, Vanderbilt United Mission for Relief and Development, is still awaiting an upcoming vote.

As a requirement of its application, SSI was told to deliver a presentation to the MLC but given only a few minutes to do so. Afterward, the group was cross-examined by the MLC — of which Students for Justice in Palestine is a member organization — about their opinions regarding “genocide” and “apartheid,” an apparent attempt to use the proceeding as a soapbox for anti-Zionist propaganda.

“We told them that we didn’t show up to discuss politics,” Bauman told The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday. “We told them we were there to celebrate Israeli culture and further the pro-Israel movement and invited them to have other dialogues at another time. We were then told to leave, and they held a closed session. And as you can see, it resulted in us being rejected by a wide margin.”

Is there any reason besides antisemitism or anti-Zionism that SSI would be the only group to be rejected? If you know Jewish Voice for Peace and especially Students for Justice in Palestine, you’ll know that they’re to a large extent hate groups who favor the abolition of Israel (SJP also celebrated Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel). Is it too much to ask for a group supporting Israel to be added to the mix? Apparently so.

One more note from The Algemeiner:

This is not the first time that Students Supporting Israel has been denied membership in a student organization. In 2021, the president of Duke University’s Student Government vetoed a vote approving recognition of SSI, an incident which set off volleys of criticism and a sharp rebuke from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

“Grant them the same access,” Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin said at the time, warning of potential civil rights violations. “Treat them no differently than any other student recognized organization. If the university chooses not to intervene and does not make sure that SSI gets equal access and it is understood to be no different than any other organization, there could be potential legal liability for the university.”

That also holds for Vanderbilt, whose reputation for fairness could be besmirched by this act. As I said, I don’t blame the administration, which has been exemplary. Chancellor Diermeier also adopted the position of institutional neutrality as embodied in The University of Chicago’s Kalven report, making Vanderbilt one of only a handful of schools to take this essential position. Pity his efforts are being tarred by a bunch of hypocritical students.

This is a true test of people like me who are pro-Israel in the current conflict but are also in favor of free speech. But it’s not a hard decision, for if you’re a hard line free-speech advocate, you must accept the fact that it’s most important to allow freedom of speech when what the person says offends you or many others.

And that is the situation in the case of Asna Tabassum, the valedictorian of the University of Southern California (USC), who, apparently because she might talk about (Israeli) genocide or advocate for a Palestine “from the river to the sea”, isn’t going to be allowed to speak at graduation. (Of course, the USC administration uses other excuses for censorship, like “safety”.)

I was alerted to the situation by this tweet sent to me by Luana:

Incredible story. USC offers a minor in “resistance to genocide”, this girl minored in it, was named valedictorian, and then they cancelled her speech because she might talk about genocide https://t.co/Ivk9LFwjAC

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) April 16, 2024

Is this the case? Does USC really have a minor in genocide? Did the valedictorian minor in genocide?  And did USC also prevent its valedictorian from speaking because of the possibility she might discuss genocide? The answer to all four questions appears to be “yes”. But I think it’s wrong to prevent her from speaking—not if USC has a tradition of having valedictorians speak, which there is.

First, yes, USC does have a minor in genocide, or rather “resistance to genocide”. Here are part of the details of that minor (click to read), but if you look at the the courses, there’s nothing about Israel/Palestine: most of them are about the Shoah (Holocaust of Jews during WWII), Native American genocide, the Armenian genocide, and genocide and the law. It seems like a creditable minor.  Of course one suspects that Tabassum might have minored in this because of a belief that Palestine is undergoing genocide, but we don’t know that, and at any rate it’s irrelevant to this kerfuffle.

This article from the school’s site USC Today (click headline below to read) confirms that Tabassum was indeed the valedictorian:

USC’s 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, was also recognized. Tabassum, who is graduating with a major in biomedical engineering a minor in resistance to genocide, has studied how technology, immigration and literacy affect the type of medical care people receive. She has also been an advocate for the community through her service with the Muslim Student Union and the Mobile Clinic at USC.

 

And here are two articles, the first from the Los Angeles Times and the second from USC Annenberg Media, both confirming that Tabassum has indeed been banned buy USC’s administration from speaking. Click both to read, though the quotes below come from the L.A. Times.

From the L.A. Times:

And from the USC Annenberg site:

Quotes from the LA Times:

Saying “tradition must give way to safety,” the University of Southern California on Monday made the unprecedented move of barring an undergraduate valedictorian who has come under fire for her pro-Palestinian views from giving a speech at its May graduation ceremony.

The move, according to USC officials, is the first time the university has banned a valedictorian from the traditional chance to speak onstage at the annual commencement ceremony, which typically draws more than 65,000 people to the Los Angeles campus.

In a campuswide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that have poured in shortly after the university publicized the valedictorian’s name and biography this month. Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views have reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”

. . .“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. … There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period,” Guzman wrote.

The student, whom the letter does not name, is biomedical engineering major Asna Tabassum. USC officials chose Tabassum from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher.

But after USC President Carol Folt announced her selection, a swarm of on- and off-campus groups attacked Tabassum. They targeted her minor, resistance to genocide, as well as her pro-Palestinian views and “likes” expressed through her Instagram account.

Here’s an Instagram post quoting Tabassum and calling for her deplatforming. Her own Instagram site is now private, but note that the words are probably not hers, but from a link in her own Instagram biography.

And even if the words quoted above were hers, do they promote imminent violence (presumably towards Jews)? Nope. It’s not a First-Amendment exception to call Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology, nor to call for the complete abolition of Israel. If it were, half of Twitter would be taken down.

As expected, Tabassum didn’t like this decision, and issued a mature but passionate statement:

In a statement, Tabassum opposed the decision, saying USC has “abandoned” her.

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” said Tabassum, who is Muslim.

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“This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns,” she wrote.

“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice. I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me.”

And of course the university issued a weaselly decision:

In an interview, Guzman said the university has been “in close contact with the student” and would “provide her support.” He added that “we weren’t seeking her opinion” on the ban.

“This is a security decision,” he said. “This is not about the identity of the speaker, it’s not about the things the valedictorian has said in the past. We have to put as our top priority ensuring that the campus and community is safe.”

A screenshot from Provost Andrew Guzman, who singlehandedly decided to ban Tabassum (he doesn’t even have the guts to name her in the letter):

Some of those who objected were, of course, Jewish groups:

We Are Tov, a group that uses the Hebrew word for “good” and describes itself as “dedicated to combating antisemitism,” posted Tabassum’s image on its Instagram account and said she “openly promotes antisemitic writings.” The group also criticized Tabassum for liking Instagram posts from “Trojans for Palestine.” Tabassum’s Instagram bio links to a landing page that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.”

The campus group Trojans for Israel also posted on its Instagram account, calling for Folt’s “reconsideration” of Tabassum for what it described as her “antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” The group said Tabassum’s Instagram bio linked to a page that called Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”

Well, I have little doubt, based on the above, that Tabassum is pro-Palestinian, may feel that Israel is committing genocide, and has made social-media posts that may smack of antisemitism and perhaps a desire to eliminate Israel.  But none of that is relevant here. The only consideration is whether Tabassum’s words are calculated and intended to promote imminent and lawless violence—something that would violate her First-Amendment freedom to speak. And, as a private university, USC doesn’t need to adhere to the First Amendment. They could ban Tabassum without citing freedom of speech. But, like any decent university, public or private, USC should follow the First Amendment. The only exception is that universities should allow “time, place, and manner” expressions of speech that don’t disturb the mission of the university. That means no disrupting speeches or blocking access to university facilities like classes.

Further, USC promotes First-Amendment-like freedom of speech on their website.  Here’s one bit from USC’s Policy on Free Speech:

As the Faculty Handbook declares, the University recognizes that students are exposed to thought-provoking ideas as part of their educational experience, and some of these ideas may challenge their beliefs and may lead a student to claim that an educational experience is offensive.  Therefore any such issues that arise in the educational context will be considered in keeping with the University’s commitment to academic freedom.

Except, of course, when the issue arises in a graduation speech!

Yes, there may have been threats, but it’s up to USC to have enough security on hand to both protect Ms. Tabassum and also allow her to speak without heckling. The mere citation of threats and palaver about “security decisions” is simply a way that USC can ban a controversial speaker without having to provide the conditions where and when she can speak freely.

Tabassum is a valedictorian, valedictorians traditionally speak at USC, and her speech is almost certainly not designed to incite imminent lawless violence. Even if she accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, that is not sufficient grounds to ban her. (If USC is worried about First-Amendment exceptions, they can vet her speech in advance, but they better have constitutional lawyers look at it, too!).

In my view, USC is cowardly and censorious in preventing Tabassum from speaking at graduation.  The school is, as she notes, robbing her of her big moment: her reward for working hard over four years to become the best student in her class. I urge USC to change their minds and let her speak, but of course it’s too late.  The gutless wonders, fond of selective censorship, appear to be running USC. And the great irony here is that although the school offers a minor in genocide, it prevents someone from speaking because they might bring up the subject.

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Full disclosure: I was the valedictorian in my college class, too, and was also prevented from the traditional (short) speech because the administration knew I was an antiwar activist. Thus they announced my award from the stage while I was in the audience. I got to stand up when I was recognized, but I was wearing a black armband and made the “Black Power” fist salute. (That cost me a summer job.)  I, too, felt a bit cheated, and for reasons similar to those of Tabassum. But I think that  the censorship of Tabassum is a much bigger deal than mine given that she was supposed to make a full speech and not just an elongated “thank you”. And, of course, free speech is especially important to emphasize these days.  Too many schools are using “safetyism” as a reason to cancel speakers, which merely empowers those who are encouraged to give the “heckler’s veto” and make threats. If a speaker isn’t going to violate the First Amendment, it’s up to the university to protect her and remove those who try to shout her down.

h/t: Luana Maroja

Thanks to the readers who sent in photos at my behest. And today we have one of most faithful contributors, Mark Sturtevant, with some lovely photos of arthropods. Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Last summer I chose to go back to Ohio to spend a few days “bugging” the local parks with a camera. I had gone late the previous summer, but this trip was done much earlier. Here are some of the critters that I had found, beginning with moths.

Here is a Tulip Tree Beauty Caterpillar (Epimecis hortaria). This will become an intricately patterned Geometrid moth with variable color patterns, as shown in the link:

A Orange-patched Smoky Moth, Pyromorpha dimidiate. Larvae feed on decaying leaves in oak woods. The moth is clearly a mimic of one the toxic Net-winged Beetles, but I don’t know if this is a case of Batesian mimicry, where the beetle is the only one with a defense, or Müllerian mimicry, where both are unpalatable and so they mimic one another:

Deep in the woods, these boldly marked moths were quite common on the low vegetation, although they seldom allowed me to get close. It is one of the Haploa Moths (which is in the Tiger Moth family), but there are perhaps three species that are similar and I can’t be sure of the exact species. I can say that it is a dead ringer for Haploa lecontei:

Next up is a bumble-bee mimicking Robberfly Laphria sp. These robust predatory flies are always interesting to watch since they can swivel their heads around to look for prey. When I found this one, it had recently hauled in a Golden-backed Snipe Fly (Chrysopilus thoracicus), and it was still struggling. 

Next up are a pair of Leaf-footed Bugs, Acanthocephala sp. The female is feeding on bird poo, which is a thing that these bugs often do:

I was quite happy to see this Cocklebur Weevil, Rhodobaenus quinquepunctatus. Larvae bore into cocklebur stems and in other members of the sunflower family. I presume it is a Batesian mimic of the toxic milkweed bug:

Here is a pair of black-headed Ash Sawfly larvae, Tethida barda. Although they resemble Lepidopteran caterpillars, sawfly larvae actually grow up into stingless wasps:

There were quite a few of these Stoneflies near a river. I cannot even begin to ID these further with any confidence. The immature stages of these archaic-looking insects are aquatic:

The terrain gets quite hilly farther south in the state, and so the park trails there would send me down deep gorges. Along these trails the rocks and trees were generously festooned with large millipedes (the size of pencils) that I think belong to the Narceus americanus/annularis species complex. The taxonomy in the group appears to be messy and someone needs to sort them out:

Lastly, here is an interesting spider, the Humpbacked Orbweaver Eustela anastera with an unknown moth as prey. I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen one before:

What do you suppose the U.S. would do if, say, Russia launched an attack on the West Coast with several hundred non-nuclear missiles, justifying that attack by saying that the U.S. had given weapons and money to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia?  Imagine further that U.S. planes and anti-missile defenses managed to fend off all the Russian missiles, and then the Russian attack stopped.

Would the U.S. then refrain from all further action, avoiding all retaliation by proclaiming that we had won a “great victory” over Russia? Would we listen to, say, Canada if they told us to avoid retaliating because Russia had stopped attacking and we’d only promote a “wider war”?  I doubt it.  We might not attack Russia with nukes, but you can bet that we would do something, even though we’ve put about as many sanctions on Russia as we can.

But, after Iran’s attack on Israel Saturday night, an attack to which Israel didn’t retaliate (but has contemplated doing so), and an attack in which Israel’s planes did not leave Israeli airspace, Biden has butted in,once again, preventing Israel from retaliating against an attack. It’s reported in this NYT piece (click to read, or find it archived here):

 

An excerpt:

President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The interception of nearly all of the more than 300 drones and missiles fired against Israel on Saturday night demonstrated that Israel had come out ahead in its confrontation with Iran and proved to enemies its ability to protect itself along with its American allies, meaning it did not necessarily need to fire back, the officials said.

Whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his government will agree to leave it at that was not yet clear as the country’s war cabinet met for several hours on Sunday to make decisions about its next steps.

The leaders of the Group of 7 major industrial democracies echoed Mr. Biden’s message on Sunday morning, condemning Iran for the attack and warning that it could provoke what they called an “uncontrollable regional escalation” in the Middle East.

“This must be avoided,” the joint statement said. “We will continue to work to stabilize the situation and avoid further escalation.”

Although damage from the attack was relatively light, the scope of the strikes went well beyond the small-bore tit-for-tat shadow war between Iran and Israel in recent years, crossing a red line with the firing of weapons from Iranian territory into Israeli territory. Had defenses not held, scores or hundreds could have been killed.

American officials said it was clear to them that wide-scale death was Iran’s intent, despite the fact that its leadership telegraphed the attack well in advance, publicly and privately. Officials said that even as the attack was underway, Iran’s government sent word through Swiss intermediaries that it considered the matter closed.

As the Elder of Ziyon remarks acidly,

Saying that Israel should regard this as a victory is shortsighted. As others have pointed out, surviving someone shooting at you many times because of your bulletproof vest is not a victory. The shooter can reload and only needs one bullet to make it through. Israel cannot afford to remain in a purely defensive posture forever, especially as Iran has proven that it is now willing to directly attack Israel.

If Iran fired a lot more missiles and drones at once, and Hezbollah launched a gazillion Iranian missiles, which it has, it might overwhelm the Iron dome completely and destroy considerable parts of Israel.

Yes, wide-scale death was Iran’s intent, and if you think it’s going to stop with that one attack, I’d argue that you’re wrong. Iran continues to supply its proxies, including Hezbollah and Yemen, not to mention Hamas, with money, material, and rockets. And of course Iran is developing nuclear weapons, one of which can easily destroy nearly all of Israel. (For some reason the U.S. doesn’t worry about that, though Israel tried to stop the program earlier by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities or assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.) And yet Biden tells Israel to keep its hands off Iran, which, if there’s such a thing as an “axis of evil” in the Middle East, surely qualifies for the title. Even many Iranians dislike their oppressive theocracy, and there was some celebrating in Iran when its attack on Israel failed.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to the U.S.—and to Britain, France, and Jordan—for defending Israel against the Iranian attack. And indeed, an Israeli retaliation could destabilize the Middle East and create a wider war—for now. But if I’m not wrong, that wider war is coming anyway. Iran will keep supplying countries who attack Israel, and if you think that its failure has deterred it from further attacks on Israel, all I can say is “I doubt it.” Someday, and it won’t be long now, Iran will have nuclear weapons and a delivery system. Further if war comes from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which might as well be an extension of Iran’s military, that can also be put on Iran. I guess I should add that I am not a big fan of Netanyahu and believe he needs to go as soon he can without his departure hurting Israel’s war effort.

What bothers me is not so much as America being a buttinski in this case, but its tendency to be a buttinski about everything that Israel does. And that includes the U.S.’s constant pressure on Israel not to go into Rafah. At best, Israel is told to evacuate its civilians (which it surely will) but then engage in targeted strikes rather than a big attack. (Is the U.S. an expert in that?) The U.S. doesn’t like any civilians being killed, despite the fact that the way Hamas operates is to ensure that Gazan civilians will be killed, for that gains them the world’s sympathy. Those who doubt that are dead wrong.  “Collateral” deaths of Gazan civilians are not on Israel but Hamas. Further, the ratio of Gazan civilians killed to Hamas terrorists killed is on the order of 1.5:1 or even 1:1, and no country has achieved that in modern warfare.  Does that placate the U.S.? Of course not, even though our own ratios are far worse than Israel’s. (Again, I am not by any means celebrating the tragedy of dead Gazan civilians, just noting who bears the responsibility.)

In the end, I can’t help but believe that a huge factor in Biden’s buttinski behavior about Israel involves boosting his own chances of re-election. The Muslim vote may be key in some states like Michigan, and younger Americans are more pro-Palestinian than older ones as well as far less approving about how Biden is dealing with the Israel/Hamas war. Biden needs those young voters.  It seems to me unethical—indeed, reprehensible— to interfere in other countries’ affairs of state so you can buttress your own chances of re-election.  If you imagine that America were in Israel’s shoes, as I tried to in my clumsy scenario above, I seriously doubt that we’d pay attention to other countries who tried to prevent us from defending ourselves.

To quote the learned Elder of Ziyon again:

After all, Iran has to defend its honor. And the US understands that – unlike Israelis, they are irrational Muslims who cannot live with themselves unless they project power and force millions of Israelis into shelters. Risking Israeli lives is a worthwhile bargain to let Iran feel victorious. Then, the bargain goes, the US will stop Israel from responding, because no one died (rumors that the Bedouin girl in the Negev hit with shrapnel died were not true) and Iran is happy.

Iran can announce that its operation is over, vengeance is theirs, they can return to their proxy war through Hezbollah and Syria and Iraq and  Yemen, and warn the US to do its part of the bargain and not allow Israel to do anything against them.

Iran is not deterred in the least.

Any self respecting nation would respond harshly to such an open attack on its territory. Israel should be striking at every drone factory and every missile site in Iran, at the very least, and those attacks should have started as soon as Iranian aircraft crossed Iran;s own borders towards Israel.

At the moment, with the US constraining Israel’s ability to respond, Iran pays no price at all for its blatant aggression. Which means it has a green light to do it again.

The entire Middle East sees that this is what the US means when it says its support for an ally is “ironclad.” Which strengthens Iran a lot more than its drones do.

I still plan to vote for Biden this fall, and of course there’s no way I’d ever vote for the narcissistic disordered personality embodied by Trump. But my enthusiasm for voting at all has waned quite a bit, not only because Biden seems old and out of it, but because of his self-aggrandizing behavior towards Israel. If I didn’t vote at all, Biden would still win this Democratic state and all its electoral votes, so I wouldn’t be helping Trump in the least. We shall see.

Natasha Hausdorff is a British barrister (lawyer) specializing in international law, and also the legal director of the UK Lawyers for Israel. She’s also smart as hell, eloquent, and never loses her cool. I see her as the female equivalent of Douglas Murray: what a team they’d make in a debate over the war in Gaza!  Treat yourself to an hour or so of perusing her videos on YouTube, especially when she’s engaged in a debate and gets heckled because she’s pro-Israel and Jewish.

Here is a ten-minute video on Sky News in which Hausdorff discusses why she refused to sign a letter from UK lawyers, academics, and judges (there are now  1101 signers) asking, among other things, for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The moderator, as she should, asks tough questions, but Hausdorff answers them cooly and accurately. The material about aid trucks, as far as I know, is spot on.

Well, here’s a surprise: the Wall Street Journal reporting on a kerfuffle at the New York Times! You may have heard of the kerfuffle, as it involves an NYT article that’s one of the few to give a sympathetic hearing to Israel in its war with Hamas: an article about how Hamas weaponized sexual violence against Israeli women in its October 7 attack. As far as I know, the data in that article have been confirmed, even by the UN itself, which pronounced that Hamas did that in at least three separate locations.

But apparently the report of sexual violence inflicted on Israeli women didn’t go down well with some Times staffers, and someone leaked the contents of the article to the staff before those contents were going to be made into a podcast. The podcast was canceled, and the staff (which of course doesn’t like article sympathetic to Israel) rebelled.  I’m not sure about all the details, for not even the WSJ makes them clear.

Click to read, or, if paywalled, you can find it archived here.

I’ll be short here. First, let’s review the two other instances in which Times machers got fired because of staff revolts (all quotes from the WSJ)

The current dynamics at the Times stretch back to 2020, when a seed of employee activism took root in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. In June of that year, the staff staged a rebellion after the publication of an op-ed piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton, “Send In The Troops,” that suggested the U.S. military should quell riots. Some staffers said it made them feel unsafe.

Within days the Times had parted ways with Editorial Page Editor James Bennet. In a recent account of those events in the Economist, Bennet said Sulzberger supported the decision to publish it, and said he was forced to resign. Sulzberger has said he disputes Bennet’s narrative.

The company said it conducted a review after publishing the op-ed and found “the piece itself and the series of decisions that led to its publication did not hold up to scrutiny,” said a Times spokeswoman.

The “unsafe” complaint, one frequently made as a synonym for offended, makes me laugh. If staffers clearly thought that Cotton’s article made them feel unsafe, they need therapy. And you’ll remember this one:

In 2019, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a star science and health reporter, was investigated internally over allegations he had used racist language during a Times-sponsored trip to Peru for high-school students. Two years later, in a Medium post recalling the events, McNeil said he repeated the N-word while speaking to a student about a classmate’s use of the slur. Then-editor Dean Baquet told the staff that while McNeil “showed extremely poor judgment” he was given a second chance because “it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.” After 150 staffers protested, the Times and McNeil ultimately parted ways.

“Donald was reprimanded in 2019 and his eventual departure involved more than one issue,” said a Times spokeswoman.

That, too, was risible. McNeil did nothing wrong, as his use of the n-word was in a discussion of whether it was used on a previous occasion.

This takes us to the main point: Times staffers are starting, by the account of editors, to let their personal views dominate their reporting. A few quotes:

Employees were making their voice felt at the Times. At the same time, some editors and reporters were growing concerned that some Times journalists were letting their personal views dictate which stories to pursue—or not pursue.

One way to counter that trend was with the creation of a new beat for reporter Michael Powell to cover issues around free speech and expression. Powell created the beat in coordination with then-Deputy Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan, who had been tasked with safeguarding independence in the newsroom.

One thing Powell noticed, he said, was that coverage that challenged popular political and cultural beliefs was being neglected. Powell’s work includes a story on MIT’s canceling of a lecture by an academic who had criticized affirmative action, and another examining whether the ACLU is more willing to defend the First Amendment rights of progressives than far-right groups. [That lecturer at MIT was my Chicago colleague Dorian Abbot, who was radicalized by this experience into becoming a hard-core free speecher. The lecture he was scheduled to give had nothing to do with the “sin” for which he was deplatformed, which was to put up a couple of videos questioning DEI.]

“We kind of both had a nagging sense that we needed to write in a much more systematic way about these third-rail issues, of identity, gender, speech,” said Powell of his early conversations with Ryan. “The fact that I had all this territory was not a good sign.”

and this:

The publisher of the Times, 43-year-old A.G. Sulzberger, says readers’ trust is at risk, however. Some journalists, including at the Times, are criticizing journalistic traditions like impartiality, while embracing “a different model of journalism, one guided by personal perspective and animated by personal conviction,” Sulzberger wrote in a 12,000-word essay last year in Columbia Journalism Review.

I’m not keen on that “different model of journalism”, as it’s a direct outgrowth of the woke “lived experience.”  That cannot be allowed to trump “impartiality”.  But it’s because the Times is hiring young reporters who have suckled at the teat of wokeness in college and journalism school. If you don’t think professors propagandize students, even at my own university, you need to do some investigation. But I digress; let’s proceed.

But these tensions have particular resonance at the Times, which has long prided itself as a standard-setter in American journalism. Newsroom leaders, concerned that some Times journalists are compromising their neutrality and applying ideological purity tests to coverage decisions, are seeking to draw a line.

[Executive editor Joe] Kahn noted that the organization has added a lot of digital-savvy workers who are skilled in areas like data analytics, design and product engineering but who weren’t trained in independent journalism. He also suggested that colleges aren’t preparing new hires to be tolerant of dissenting views.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

And this is why FIRE detracts points from a college’s free-speech rating when a large number of students say that they feel inhibited about discussing their views on “hot button” issues with others. (This is why my own school dropped from the top four to #13—a tepid “above average” in just a year or so.) If you think only one kind of opinion is tolerable, then that’s the opinion you’ll keep expressing when you go to work for a place like the NYT.  It works regardless of which side you’re on:

Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has become particularly fraught at the Times, with some reporters saying the Times’s work is tilting in favor of Israel and others pushing back forcefully, say people familiar with the situation. That has led to dueling charges of bias and journalistic malpractice among reporters and editors, forcing management to referee disputes.

“Just like our readers at the moment, there are really really strong passions about that issue and not that much willingness to really explore the perspectives of people who are on the other side of that divide,” Kahn said, adding that it’s hard work for staffers “to put their commitment to the journalism often ahead of their own personal views.”

The lesson: colleges should encourage students to not only learn about free speech from their first year in school, but also to apply what they’ve learned.

But I was amazed to learn that a paper rife with internal dissent and so flagrant in its reportorial biases is doing well:

The Times is the envy of much of the news-publishing world, with more than 10 million paying subscribers and a growing portfolio of products like cooking and games apps. But while its business hums along, the Times’s culture has been under strain.

In many ways, it is a story familiar to companies big and small across America, as bosses struggle to integrate a new generation of workers with different expectations of how their jobs and personal lives should mesh—and whose evolving social values can sow discord in the workplace.

I subscribe because, overall, I still think it’s the best (or at least the most readable) paper, but I find myself drawing more on the WSJ’s own news (not their reliably right-wing op-eds), or on the Free Press, which publishes stuff that the NYT would see as “heterodox,” and, for honest news about the war between Hamas and Israel, on the Times of Israel, which is a reliable source for what’s going on.

UPDATE: I forgot one argument of which readers reminded me: the “slippery slope argument.”  To wit:

5. Assisted suicide laws could lead to a “slippery slope” condition whereby shady doctors allow people to be medically euthanized for curable conditions, or even to allow relatives to kill their grandmothers.  Yes, this is a danger, though one that can be ameliorated with sufficient stringent vetting laws.  The “kill your grandmother” argument can be prevented completely, and certifying certain doctors and shrinks for their objectivity in vetting would be another good step. But when weighed against the suffering eliminated by assisted dying laws, I think the slippery-slope argument, while surely worth considering, is outweighed.

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Assisted suicide for people who have severe and incurable mental illness has always seemed a no-brainer to me, but I’m surprised at the number of people who push back when I bring this up.  But, if the procedure is implemented properly, the objections to it don’t seem tenable, and in the end seem to resemble arguments against abortion.  That is, the pusher-backers say that people in tough spots shouldn’t have control over their bodies, that the procedure might spread if it’s allowed, and, underneath the objections of many, we find religious feelings—in this case feelings like “God will take you when He’s ready, not when you’re ready.”

Yet it seems to me undeniable that some cases of mental illness, like the main one documented in the Free Press article below, are so severe that they resemble terminal illnesses—illnesses for which enlightened people would favor assisted suicide (I might use the term “euthanasia”) in this post.  If you’re terminally depressed, in horrible mental pain all the time, constantly thinking about suicide, and have tried every possible remedy without any success, then why aren’t you in a position similar to that of a cancer patient who, having tried all remedies, now faces a finite term of horrible pain ending certain death? (I presume you’re aware that even in states not permitting assisted suicide, doctors often mercifully end the lives of such patients by giving them an overdose of morphine.)

The difference with mental illness is that death is not certain and the pain will last a lifetime. Sure, maybe researchers will come up with a cure for an intractable mental illness, but that also holds for terminal physical illnesses. People with bad prognoses often hope that a cure will be discovered before they die.

Now for the state to effect euthanasia, there must of course be restrictions.  Beyond that, anybody has, in my view, the right to kill themselves by other means, like hanging, shooting, or jumping in front of a train. That kind of suicide is illegal, though I think the illegality is nuts. But for the government to help you die, it’s not proper to provide anybody with the means of euthanasia. There are many reasons, but I won’t enumerate them.

Naturally, in places where euthanasia is officially legal (see the map below), there are such restrictions for the physically ill:

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some countries, under certain circumstances, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, parts of the United States and all six states of Australia. The constitutional courts of Colombia, Germany and Italy legalized assisted suicide, but their governments have not legislated or regulated the practice yet.

In most of those states or countries, to qualify for legal assistance, individuals who seek a physician-assisted suicide must meet certain criteria, including: they are of sound mind, voluntarily and repeatedly expressing their wish to die, and taking the specified, lethal dose by their own hand. The laws vary in scope from place to place. In the United States, PAS [physician-assisted suicide] is limited to those who have a prognosis of six months or less to live. In other countries such as Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, a terminal diagnosis is not a requirement and voluntary euthanasia is additionally allowed.

Below is a map of where assisted suicide is legal throughout the world, and there aren’t many places. The states in the U.S. where it’s legal include Maine, Hawaii, Washington D.C., Washington State, Colorado, New Mexico, New Jersey, Vermont, and Oregon. But in no state is assisted suicide permitted for those with mental illness. For physical illnesses or other conditions that are likely to kill you in a few months, here are the general criteria in the U.S.:

• an adult as defined by the state
• a resident of the state where the law is in effect
• capable of using the prescribed medications without assistance
• able to make your own healthcare decisions and communicate them
• living with a terminal illness that is expected to cause death within 6 months as verified by qualified healthcare professionals

Places where assisted dying is legal (see the key for variations):

Vgonzalez630, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Places that permit euthanasia for those with mental illnesses include only the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and—perhaps after 2027—Canada. I haven’t looked up the criteria for state assistance for euthanasia for the mentally ill in all four countries, but here are the criteria for the Netherlands given in the Free Press article below by writer Rupa Subramanya.

Dutch law requires those seeking assisted suicide to show they are in great pain, have no alternative, and are acting of their own volition. They also must get sign-off from at least two doctors, including a psychiatrist. The process can take a few years, culminating with a doctor giving the patient a fatal medication or, if done by oneself, a cup filled with poison to drink. When it’s over, a government panel reviews the case to ensure everything was above board.

Click below to read the article. The woman pictured, Zoraya ter Beek, suffered her whole short life from depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder, and said she was in constant pain. Nothing helped, and eventually the doctors and shrinks said there was nothing more that they could do for her. Tired of living, she applied for and qualified for assisted suicide. She is still alive but scheduled to die in May. (That isn’t final, of course, for I’ve read of such patients who change their minds at the last minute, willing to go on but heartened by the fact that at any time they could choose to die.) Her boyfriend loves her, but agrees with her decision.

Here are some of the objections to assisted suicide for mental illness, and my responses (all text is mine).

1.) The patient could get better but, by taking their life, are depriving themselves of a livable and perhaps enjoyable future. Yes, but that’s true of even physical illnesses. Besides, the prognosis must be confirmed by several doctors and examined post facto by the state.  And I would ask those who make this argument, “Who are you to tell someone that they must go on living when they’re in intractable pain?”  For those of us who have been severely depressed, it’s hard to convey to others that this kind of severe and prolonged mental pain is fully capable of making you wish to die.

2.) It’s up to God to determine when you die, not you.  As an atheist, or even as a rationalist, I find this argument bogus. Here it’s similar to the religious argument against abortion, assisted suicide for physical illnesses, or, as Peter Singer discusses, euthanasia for newborn babies who have a condition that will cause them to suffer and, ultimately, kill them with certainty in a short time. Besides, are you going to base medical decisions on assuming that there’s a god for which we have no good empirical evidence? Isn’t medical treatment supposed to be based on empirical criteria?  Do you tell a dying atheist that you can’t increase the morphine drip because God doesn’t want that?

Here’s a quote from the article:

All this pointed to a “dystopian view of the future,” said Theo Boer, the healthcare ethics professor.

“Whether or not you’re religious, killing yourself, taking your own life, saying that I’m done with life before life is done with me, I think that reflects a poverty of spirit,” Boer told me.

. . . . Theo Boer, the bioethicist, acknowledged that none of the suicides in the Bible is condemned, but he added that they are not lionized or commemorated either.

“Suicide in the Bible belongs in the realm of the tragic, and the tragic should not be condemned—nor should it be regulated or celebrated,” he said.

This palaver, including the phrases “Life is done with me” and “poverty of spirit” seems to reflect religious belief, but it’s already clear from opposition to euthanasia in many places (especially the U.S.) that we shouldn’t cut short what is up to God to determine. But if God is omnipotent, wouldn’t He be behind a mentally ill person’s decision to have assisted euthanasia?

3.) It’s contagious.  There are several statistics given in the article about assisted dying increasing over time. Most are for physical conditions, with only one for mental illness (my bolding)

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the number of people who increasingly choose to die is startling.

In 2022, the most recent year for which there is data, Dutch officials recorded 8,720 cases of euthanasia, a 13.7 percent increase from 2021, when there were 7,666 cases. To put this in perspective, there were a total of 170,100 deaths in the Netherlands in 2022—meaning euthanasia cases comprised more than 5 percent.

“This upward trend, in both the absolute and relative numbers, has been visible for a number of years,” the country’s Regional Euthanasia Review Committee’s 2022 Annual Report states. What’s more, the number of euthanized people between the ages of 18 and 40 jumped from 77 in 2021 to 86 in 2022. And the number of people with psychiatric disorders who choose euthanasia is rising: In 2011, there were just 13 cases; in 2013, there were 42; and by 2021, there were 115. 

This trend is not limited to the Netherlands. From 2018 to 2021, countries where euthanasia or assisted suicide is most popular saw sizable increases in the number of people signing up to die: In the United States, where ten states and the District of Columbia have physician-assisted suicide, there was a 53 percent jump; in Canada, 125 percent.

But why wouldn’t you expect the numbers to rise as people become aware that they have this alternative? It’s not written about very often, so you have to see articles like this to find out about it.  But even so, this is a question of ethics, not of statistics.  If the regulations are sufficiently rational and stringent that they prohibit spur-of-the-moment suicides or mental conditions for which every possible cure hasn’t been tried, why should we care about the increase? And wouldn’t you want the ability to die a peaceful and painless death if you had a condition that could be terminated in a peaceful way, at a time and place of your choosing, and when you are surrounded by loved ones? (This is, as I’ve learned, the way it usually occurs.)

4.) It hurts those who are left behind.  I’ve heard this argument used often against those who discuss self-inflicted suicide. “If you kill yourself, think of all the people who will miss you and be in pain.” But this seems eminently selfish to me.  Everybody who dies before their friends, relatives, and loved ones (and that means all of us) faces that as a certainty.  If someone’s in intractable physical pain and dying of cancer, would you tell them to hang on for your sake? Of course not! The same holds for incurable mental illnesses. It’s selfish and boorish to ask someone to stay alive for the sake of your—or other people’s—feelings.

For #5, see the update at top. 

For some people, suicide is simply a no-go zone, which is why suicide hotlines exist to talk those who wish to die out of that wish. But that’s different, for someone who calls a hotline has a good chance that they’re simply emitting a cry for help, and want to be talked out of it. (However, some do kill themselves.) That’s why I think those hotlines are great things. But assisted dying with stringent criteria needed to qualify, and the use of drugs that assure a painless death, are not equivalent to a suicide hotline.

I’m sure that ethical philosophers have discussed this issue before, and feel free to cite articles below if you know of them (I don’t).  These are of course tentative ideas that I’ve thought about for a long time (note: I’m NOT a candidate!), and were given shape by the article above, but I’m willing to listen to other points of view. If you have them, or if you agree with what I’ve said, weigh in below. But do read the Free Press piece.

Two readers came through with batches of photos, so I think we’re good until Wednesday. If you have good one, well, I can always use them. Thanks!

Today’s photos of fungi come from reader Rik Gern from Austin, Texas.. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

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A few weeks ago I sent you some pictures of mushrooms from Copper Falls State Park in Morse, Wisconsin. Here are the rest of the species I observed on that hike.

This lone sentry was at the very beginning of the trail. I wasn’t able to identify it precisely, but it may be from the Rhizopogon family, or maybe not; I had a hard time finding any information that could confirm its identity. On a walk of several miles, this was the only mushroom of it’s kind that I saw.

It would be easy to mistake this fungal cluster for an order of fries abandoned by a careless hiker, but in reality it is Clavariadelphus americanus. I couldn’t find a common name for them, so for now I’ll cal them French fry mushrooms.

They weren’t all grouped so tightly together though; there were a few open patches of pine needles bursting with these odd looking mushrooms:

Late in the hike, as the sun was getting low, these Golden trumpets (Xeromphalina campanella) came into view. According to Wikipedia, “The genus name Xeromphalina means “little dry navel” and campanella means “bell-shaped”, respectively describing the mature and young shapes of the pileus, or cap”. You can see an example of that here with the two smaller mushrooms sporting convex caps while those on the larger mushrooms are starting to go concave.

Golden trumpets like to grow on logs and all of these pictures are from the same fallen tree:

Here is a view of their brownish red stalks.

The black and white picture gives the effect of some large plants growing in an underwater cavern. The lower right hand part of the image has a number of little white dots that look like dust spots on the picture, but when you look closely you can see that they are tiny insects trapped and wrapped up in a spider’s web.

The nearly horizontal rays of the setting sun did a nice job of highlighting the gills of these mushrooms and giving them a majestic look. Once again we can see the downward facing caps on the presumably younger mushrooms on the bottom and the upward arching caps on the older mushrooms on the top.

Links:

Rhizopogon.

Clavariadelphus americanus

Golden trumpet (Xeromphalina campanella)

Everybody in the Biden administration is all juiced up to reward Hamas for attacking Israel by giving the Palestinians a state, one presumably run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).  People who make this suggestion, who include Biden and his running dog Anthony Blinken, seen to be ignorant of the fact that the PA is a terror-promoting organization that in some ways is even worse than Hamas, for it produces schoolbooks that have brought up generations of Palestinians to hate and want to kill Jews.

If you want to know why neither Hamas nor the PA (nor even a revised version of the PA) should be running Gaza and the West Bank after the war, read the Tablet piece below, which is reasonably short and full of facts. The author, Gaudi Taub, is also a broadcaster, a screenwritere, and a historian.  Click the headline; it’s a free read:

The title of the article is startling, but it is accurate. For the PA has placed a value on the stipend a terrorist will get depending on how many Jews he’s planned to hurt, actually hurt, or killed. And the more Jews you kill, the more money a jailed Palestinian gets, all through the “Martyr’s Fund” described in Wikipedia.  (It’s often called “pay-for-slay”.) I and others have talked about it before, yet many people still seem surprised that it exists. Not only that, but it’s funded in part by American taxpayers (via fungible money we give to NGOs, which becomes extra money for the PA), and, if the terrorist is killed (and becomes a martyr, or shahid), the terrorist’s family gets a stipend for life.

Now if anything is genocide, a program whereby Palestinians are financially rewarded for killing Jews is that.  Imagine if Jews got paid for each Palestinian they killed! The world would be outraged, and it would properly be called “genocide” (which Israel is not committing now).

The Martyr’s Fund takes up a huge portion of the PA;’s budget: about 7%, and according to Tablet ,the PA considers it the most important item in its budget, one that cannot ever be dispensed with. Below is a table of what dead Jews are worth to a jailed Palestinian; monthly stipends to prisoners (or their families) are calculated based on the time a terrorist is sentenced to jail.  (A New Israeli Shekel is worth 27¢ U.S, so divide by about four to get the monthly salary in dollars.

The PA, as I said, also creates and promotes terrorism through its schools, producing materials that are also used in UN (UNRWA) schools:.

Schools are a critical part of the socialization of Palestinian children into this culture. Not only do Palestinian school books contain direct incitement in the form of explicit murderous antisemitic ideology, but also every subject, including grammar and math, drills the same message into children’s brains. Take the following exam questions that Shemesh cites (p. 20):

“Hamas shoots a rocket which weighs 50 kilos in the direction of occupied Tel Rabia [Tel Aviv], which is 90.25 kilometers away. What speed does it need to fly, what would be the maximum height, and how long will it take it get there?”

Or:

“Two people are carrying on their shoulders a coffin weighing 200 Newton in the funeral of a martyr weighing 800 Newton.” The students are asked to calculate the strength the two men would need.

. . . . In other words, the cult of death reigns everywhere you turn. Regardless of how much well-meaning Israelis tried desperately to imagine otherwise over the years, the Palestinian national ethos is built around a genocidal war to ethnically cleanse Palestine, from the river to the sea, of Jewish presence.

Finally, the PA itself not only encourages terrorism, but also practices terrorism:

By now, moreover, we know that PA security forces personnel are directly involved in terror attacks. In fact, even as the press in Israel and in the West tries to ignore it, PA officials brag about their complicity in terrorism in Arabic to their own people. They cannot stand to lose their competition with Hamas in the national Jew-killing contest.

A Palestinian Media Watch report published in February, titled “Terrorists in Uniform,” quoted a PA spokesperson bragging that “roughly 63-65% of the number of Martyrs in the West Bank … are members of the Fatah Movement. And most of them are members of the [PA] Security Forces or their sons.” The police forces Israel armed and the U.S. military trains are active participants in the terror they were supposed to stop. Using the guns we gave them to stop terror, they instead kill Jews—in the process securing the livelihoods of their families.

There’s more, but just these three aspects of PA-induced terrorism should make Americans very wary of trying to have the organization help run a postwar government in Gaza—or any government ruling entities created in the now-impossible “two state solution. One of the morons who’s been roped into PA corral is Thomas Friedman of the NYT, who seems to have ignored this:

Regardless of this bloody track record, the White House and the State Department, along with pro-Democratic Party Israeli think tanks, former IDF generals nurtured on a woke ideological diet in American universities, and the Israeli press, are careful to maintain a conceptual barrier between Hamas as a terror organization, and the PA. The latter, they maintain, is a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism—the same PA that, in reality, glorifies and incentivizes terrorism.

The last sentence—the “solution” that Thomas Friedman, Biden, and Blinken love so much—is risible. No, the PA will never be “a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism”, for it is an explicit promoter of terrorism.  If you hear somebody touting the PA as a “nicer” version of Hamas, one that can work with America, remember the things above, especially the pay-for-slay program.

 

The Tablet article ends eloquently:

Less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, the PA’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs included an infamous Hadith—a saying attributed in the tradition to the messenger of Islam—in its official guidelines that provided imams with talking points to use in their Oct. 20 Friday sermon in Palestinian mosques. The Hadith says that judgment day will only come after the believers have exterminated the Jews. On that day, it says, even rocks and trees will help in the cause of jihad. They will say, “Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me; come and kill him.”

This horrific image, nature itself partaking in ridding the world of the unnatural Jewish scourge, is even more jarring against the backdrop of the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova nature festival, where partygoers attempted to hide behind rocks and bushes in the Negev desert to escape the slaughter.

The PA, the U.S. partner that Washington wants to put in charge of Gaza, has since added the families of the “martyrs,” the terrorists who were killed while committing the horrors of that terrible Shabbat morning, to the list of pay-for-slay beneficiaries.

Yes, the trees all say to come and kill the hiding Jews.