The Guns Are Silent for the Moment
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)
Out of respect for all our shebeen regulars currently enjoying the annual tryptophan coma, to which I intend to return some time very soon, our weekly farewell will be brief this week.
This is unalloyed good news from The New York Times.
Twenty-five hostages held in Gaza, including 12 Thai nationals and 13 other women and children, were released from captivity on Friday, the Egyptian government said, the first people to be freed under a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that took effect hours earlier. The hostages were transferred to Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange that was set to see 39 Palestinian prisoners and detainees released from Israeli custody on the first day of a four-day truce, which could be the longest pause in fighting in the seven-week war between Israel and Hamas. All the released hostages were expected to be swiftly moved to Israel to receive urgent medical care.All the released hostages were expected to be swiftly moved to Israel to receive urgent medical care.
(I was as surprised as you were at the news that there were 12 Thai citizens among the released prisoners. Apparently, they were all agricultural workers employed in southern Israel. Migrant farmwork knows no borders, I guess.)
For the moment, I want to hear no arguments based on the phrase "half a loaf," or on the nature, real or imagined, of the Palestinian prisoners being released as part of this swap. The guns are silent. The rubble does not bounce. Some emergency supplies, not nearly enough, is passing unvexed, to use Lincoln's word, to a devastated population. And have I mentioned that the guns are silent, that the bombs do not fall, that the tanks are idle on the roads? I want the opinion-mongers and the smart guys who live so far from the fields and streets where carnage has reigned to shut up for four days. Post about your cats. TweetX about your grandchildren. Watch a days worth of football games or Hallmark holiday movies. If you must involve yourselves in a war that does not reach your doorways, find ways to do so in humanitarian ways. Support relief movements. Roll bandages, if you have to. Demonstrate over the next four days that the great gift of living far from the combat zone bestows a great responsibility on the people there not to make things worse through vicarious heroism, vainglorious boasting, and, worst of all, allowing the dark forces that brought about this war to infect our own society and our own politics, both of which are weaker in their own defense than any other time I can remember. What can happen in that case was amply demonstrated by the events in Dublin over the past several days, in which a terrible street crime opened up an opportunity for existing hatreds and bigotry to explode in the streets on which Irishmen and Irishwomen once struck for their own freedom. From The New York Times:
The Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, did not reveal anything about the background of the man taken into custody after the attack, who had been tackled to the ground by bystanders. But unconfirmed reports that he was an Algerian migrant began circulating in nationalist and far-right groups, according to disinformation researchers. Alongside those: a call to gather in central Dublin, in what anti-immigrant voices framed as a stand against crime and in defense of Irish children. What started as an online rumor spread to rioters attacking the police, setting police cars on fire and looting stores in the worst unrest to hit Ireland in decades, the authorities said on Friday. Some demonstrators carried banners reading “Irish Lives Matter.” Others vandalized hotels and hostels thought to be housing migrants. Several police officers were injured, one seriously, and 34 people were arrested...
The temptation to bring this war home in the form of intramural civil unrest is strong and it is near and it has proven irresistible in too many cases already. Let us have peace. Four days is not too much to ask.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Passion Dance"(McCoy Tyner Big Band): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1955, is a great idea that died on the vine. Professional confectioners are always ahead of the game in transportation innovation. However, that thing looks like one of those fan-boats they use in the Everglades. And damned if the video doesn't look like a Monty Python sketch. History is so cool.
Well, this is heartbreaking. From the Independent:
Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who fatally shot two Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin, has now gone broke, according to his lawyer... Since then, Mr Rittenhouse has made regular appearances in right-wing media and recently announced the release of his new book, titled Acquitted, which he describes as a “story of survival, resilience, and justice." But, despite his infamy, Mr Rittenhouse’s lawyer has revealed the 20-year-old has lost all his money since his acquittal.
In related news, the two people he killed are still dead. Their families are suing him. Being a wingnut martyr doesn't pay as well as it once did.
Discovery Corner: Hey, look at what we found! From phys.org:
The so-called giant radio galaxies (GRGs) are radio galaxies with an overall projected linear length exceeding at least 2.3 million light years. They are rare objects grown in low-density environments. In general, GRGs are important for astronomers to study the formation and the evolution of radio sources. Many GRGs are double-lobed radio galaxies that have become known as double radio sources associated with active galactic nuclei (AGN), or DRAGNs. They can be difficult to identify in radio surveys as lobes of radio galaxies may be detected as multiple sources. Therefore, many detectable GRGs may remain unidentified. FIRST, utilizing the Very Large Array (VLA), due to its low frequency and good sensitivity to extended sources, has the potential to unveil the presence of many new GRGs.
I don't know what any of that means, but it's great.
Hey, Independent. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!
Paleontologists excavated the skeleton of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur, and made a surprising discovery in the process. Scientists dug up the skull and nearly complete skeleton of the dinosaur from the Gobi Desert at the Barun Goyot Formation in Mongolia, and found that most of the bones were still arranged in the animal’s original death pose, researchers said. The bones appeared to show the animal died in a relatively peaceful sleeping pose, with its head tucked over its limbs and tail snugly wrapped around its body, resembling the death pose of modern-day birds. Researchers said they believe the creature is a species new to science, derived from the alvarezsaurid, a small, bird-like dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period.
I've always wondered why it took so long for scientists to conclude that birds are merely highly evolved dinosaurs. I mean, didn't any of these people ever look at a heron? They live still, to make us happy now.
I'll be back on Monday, hoping that cooler heads have prevailed over the holiday. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline. And wear the damn masks. Take the damn shots, especially the damn boosters, and especially the newest one. And spare a moment for the people of Israel and Gaza, the people of Ukraine, of Lewiston in Maine, and of the earthquake zones in Iraq, Turkey, and Morocco, and in the flood zone in Libya, and the flood zones on the Horn of Africa, and in the flood zones in Kenta, and in bleeding Dublin, and in the storm-battered south of Georgia, and in the fire zones in Australia, especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they're getting.
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