Science

A distant black hole shredded a companion star that got too close. The star was torn to pieces and the explosion was an extremely powerful event, more energetic than a supernova. At its peak, the energy released was 400 billion times brighter than the Sun.

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

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

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

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

Why the banning in paces like America?  EoZ explains:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hizb ut-Tahrir operates comfortably within that space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For centuries, the principle of symmetry has guided physicists towards more fundamental truths, but now a slew of shocking findings suggest a far stranger idea from quantum theory could be a deeper driving force

Sexual behaviour among same-sex pairs is common in apes and monkeys, and a wide-ranging analysis suggests it does boost survival

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has discovered the fastest-spinning asteroid ever over 500 meters in size.

The world’s most powerful supercomputers can now run simulations of billions of neurons, and researchers hope such models will offer unprecedented insights into how our brains work

Florida State University scientists have engineered a new crystal that forces atomic magnets to swirl into complex, repeating patterns. The effect comes from mixing two nearly identical compounds whose mismatched structures create magnetic tension at the atomic level. These swirling “skyrmion-like” textures are prized for their low-energy behavior and stability. The discovery could help drive advances in data storage, energy-efficient electronics, and quantum computing.

Combining data from different telescopes is one of the best ways to get a fuller picture of far-off objects. Because telescopes such as Hubble (visible light), the James Webb Space Telescope (infrared), and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (radio) each collect data in different wavelengths, they are able to capture distinct features of objects like galaxies that other telescopes cannot observe. A new paper by a large group of authors, headed by Andreas Faisst of Caltech, presented at the American Astronomical Society Meeting last week and published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement tracks eighteen early galaxies in as broad of a spectrum as those instruments can collect, and most significantly found that they seem to “grow up” faster than expected.

Mathematicians rely on numbers, but finding words to explain different levels of certainty has stymied everyone from the ancient Greeks to the most famous modern philosophers. Maths columnist Jacob Aron tells the story of how a CIA analyst finally cracked it

Scientists observing the red giant star R Doradus have found that starlight isn’t strong enough to drive its stellar winds, overturning a long-standing theory. The dust grains around the star are simply too small to be pushed outward by light alone. This raises new questions about how giant stars spread life-essential elements through space. Researchers now suspect dramatic stellar motions or pulsations may play a key role instead.

Scientists observing the red giant star R Doradus have found that starlight isn’t strong enough to drive its stellar winds, overturning a long-standing theory. The dust grains around the star are simply too small to be pushed outward by light alone. This raises new questions about how giant stars spread life-essential elements through space. Researchers now suspect dramatic stellar motions or pulsations may play a key role instead.

I had hoped to let this cup pass, but, after a week and a half, I found that I couldn't. Eminent oncologist and cancer researcher Dr. Wafik El-Deiry is back and doubling down on the unproven claim that COVID vaccines cause "turbo cancers," this time with an added dash of conspiracy theory. What happened to him?

The post And so 2026 begins…with a resurrection of the myth that COVID vaccines cause “turbo cancers” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists at Fermilab’s MicroBooNE experiment have ruled out the existence of the elusive sterile neutrino, a particle proposed for decades to explain puzzling neutrino behavior. Their high-precision measurements showed neutrinos behaving exactly as expected—without any sign of a hidden fourth type. While this closes off a popular theory, it marks a turning point for the field, pushing researchers toward new ideas and more powerful experiments. The result also lays critical groundwork for the massive upcoming DUNE experiment.

Beginning in the 1980’s, another physicist, Roger Penrose, came up with what he called the Triangle of Reality, which sounds like the nerdiest cult in history (and when later I get to talk about the Pythagoreans you’ll see that I’m right).

NASA has announced that it and SpaceX will return the Crew-11 mission team to Earth from the ISS (due to medical concerns with a crew member) no earlier than 5 p.m. EST (2 p.m. PST) on Wednesday, Jan. 14th.

Astronomers have uncovered a barred spiral galaxy that existed over 2 billion years after the Big Bang, potentially making it the earliest barred spiral galaxy ever observed.

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

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

Part of the intro:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

English translation of doctors from the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza hold a press conference among the bodies of those slaughtered by Israel in an airstrike. pic.twitter.com/GJB17tQoA2

— Mahmoud Al-Qudsi (@mqudsi) October 17, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skomer Island Puffins – Neil K Dawe

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

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

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

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

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

 Standing guard amongst the bracken:

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

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

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

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

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

The accelerating expansion of the universe is usually explained by an invisible force known as dark energy. But a new study suggests this mysterious ingredient may not be necessary after all. Using an extended version of Einstein’s gravity, researchers found that cosmic acceleration can arise naturally from a more general geometry of spacetime. The result hints at a radical new way to understand why the universe keeps speeding up.