10/5/2026

 Monday, October 5, 2026

1947 Harry Truman delivered the first presidential address televised from the White House

1951 Jackie Gleason debuted the character of bus driver Ralph Kramden in 1st "The Honeymooners" skit (Cavalcade of Stars)

1988 Chile voted in a referendum 56-44 against extending Augusto Pinochet's regime by 8 years, thus ending the dictator's 16½ years in power

2015 California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill giving terminally ill patients the "right to die"

2025 At least five people were killed in Lviv, Ukraine, during an overnight Russian attack involving 53 ballistic and cruise missiles and 496 drones.

2025 Donald Trump authorized the deployment of 300 National Guard personnel to Chicago, IL.

In bed around 9, up around5; 0525 202.2 117/74/69 132; 47/39/60/47, sunny all day

Morning meds at 7:45 a.m.  Entresto at 5:50 a.m. and p.m.

Holy smokes, I'm a misanthrope!  Wikipedia says of misanthropy: 

Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, or distrust of the human species, human behavior, or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. 

We, misanthropes, don't think much of humankind as a species.  We're not stupidly unaware of the scientific and technological achievements that have been made by many members of our species since its creation, or its evolution from hominoidea or apehood, like the beneficial uses of fire, water, and many minerals, homo faber, but we are also never unaware of our history of using our achievements to prey on one another and on other species, homo hominis lupus, and to despoil the earth even to the point of risking its destruction or radical metamorphosis, the nuclear arms race, mutally assured destruction, climate change, and the AI race.  I am one of only 1.8% of the world population who were born before the Atomic Age, before the United States dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima.  More than 98% of my fellow humans have lived their entire lives under the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction and of a Nuclear Winter, perhaps our species' most effective way to reverse global warming.  I lived almost 4 years before that bit of "progress" entered my life.  Now, as I approach the exit doors, I am in or about to enter the era where the whole species may be annihilated before the end of this decade, another 4 years of grace.

Is the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction behind us? Hardly.  There are nine nuclear-armed states today: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. SIPRI and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) both put the global total at about 12,200 nuclear warheads as of early 2026. Of those, roughly 9,700 are in military stockpiles and potentially available for use, while the remainder are retired but not yet dismantled.  The most reliable estimates tell us there are about 3,900 deployed strategic warheads worldwide. Those are the long-range weapons associated principally with ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. Roughly 2,100–2,200 deployed warheads are kept on high operational alert.  FAS’s current estimate is about 1,794 Russian non-strategic warheads in its military stockpile. The United States has roughly 100 deployed non-strategic B61 bombs, with additional bombs in reserve.  Countries continuously work on improving their nuclear arsenal.  For the United States, deployed strategic warheads range from the 8-kiloton W76-2 to the 90-kiloton W76-1, the 300-kiloton W87, and the 455-kiloton W88. Russia likewise deploys warheads ranging from roughly the low hundreds of kilotons up to several hundred kilotons on many of its strategic missiles, with some older systems carrying still larger yields.  For perspective, the Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons. A single modern 300-kiloton warhead has about 20 times Hiroshima’s explosive yield; a 455-kiloton W88 about 30 times.  Most of mankind has lived under the threat of these deployed and ever-on-operational-alert weapons for their entire lives.  

The AI scientists are even scarier than the nuclear guys, with warnings of annihilation of our entire species within the current decade, or perhaps a little later.

If I had the energy to spend the day thinking about it, I would compare my pessimistic views with Reinhold Neibuhr's in Moral Man and Immoral Society, Jonathan Swift's in Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, and with John Calvin's theology of mankind's total depravity.

And, BTW, tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of Joseph Stalin's announcement that the Soviet Union had its own atom bomb.  I suppose October 6, 1951 should be considered the birthday of Mutually Assured Destruction.

In this morning's NYTimes, an op-ed: How AIPAC Failed — and How It Can Recover, by Eric Alterman:

After the 1995 assassination of Rabin and the subsequent collapse of the peace process, AIPAC resumed its steady march rightward. The lobby also began to embrace the support of far-right Christian Zionists. At a public interview in 2021, Ron Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians” rather than American Jews, who he said were “disproportionately among [Israel’s] critics.” AIPAC followed suit.

The specific challenges the organization faces today can be traced to Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to appear before Congress in March 2015 at the invitation of Representative John Boehner, then the Republican speaker of the House. In an unusual move for a foreign ally, Mr. Netanyahu publicly aligned himself with the Republican Party’s attempts to undermine President Obama, a Democrat and a leader who happened to be supported by a majority of American Jews. In his address, Mr. Netanyahu denounced the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts toward the nuclear disarmament in Iran, better known as the Iran deal. AIPAC and an affiliate spent nearly $30 million on a failed campaign to prevent the deal’s passage.

AIPAC’s increasing identification with both the methods and the goals of the Republican Party has become ever more evident over the past decade. In early 2020, it produced a Facebook ad accusing “radicals in the Democratic Party” of “pushing their antisemitic and anti-Israel policies down the throats of the American people.”

AIPAC’s annual conference was once a way station for all presidential hopefuls, but in 2019 Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as former Representative Beto O’Rourke, among others, all declined to attend, a decision that would have been hard to imagine just four years earlier.

In December 2021, AIPAC created a super PAC that also swung right. The group immediately amassed an enormous war chest and announced endorsements of over a hundred Republicans, many of whom had voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. By 2022, its high-profile donors included conservative Republican billionaires such as the Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus and the hedge fund manager Paul Singer.

Using right-wing Republican money to defeat liberal candidates in Democratic primaries exposed AIPAC to considerable anger on the part of progressives, and further alienated the lobby from the mainstream opinions of American Jews. This was especially true of young American Jews whose views of Israel had been shaped by an ever more oppressive occupation of the West Bank and Gaza well before Oct. 7, and the mass killing of Palestinians that followed in its wake. . . . 

By sticking to its long-held, inflexible, “Israel right or wrong” line and allying itself with a party whose views on race, immigration, economics — and, these days, democracy — are anathema to most American Jews, AIPAC has effectively forfeited the role it enjoyed in the days when Israel was a genuinely bipartisan cause. . . . 

While no doubt a traditional flavor of antisemitism occasionally attaches to pro-Palestinian arguments on the left, more recently it has been the right’s increasing tolerance of widespread antisemitism among its most influential voices — from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes — that has morphed into a particularly fervent form of anti-Zionism. MAGA anger over Iran (and Israel’s role in the war) has hardened that space.

Were AIPAC to commit itself to the battle against this fusion of old-fashioned right-wing antisemitism with its new, virulent anti-Zionism, it could serve the interests of Israel, American Jews and the United States simultaneously. It might also rescue its own reputation in the process. 

I wonder how many times I have opined that Israel and the Israeli electorate passed the tipping point in 1995 when Yigal Amir shot and killed Yitzhak Rabin because of his role in agreeing to the Oslo Accords, which ultimately contemplated the creation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza.  The Israel we thought we knew before then, at least up to 1967's occupation of those lands, was the land of hearty, brave, innocently victimized refugees from Europe's long history of antisemitism and oppression, from the Holocaust, even after the end of the war and so-called Jewish "liberation," from having no homes to return to, a people with no land.  It was a land in which the Peace Process was not a mirage, but a real hope.  After Rabin's assassination, as Israel turned hard right, and especially after Netanyahu's rise to power, the peace process became a mirage, as did any realistic hope for a "two-state solution" for the Jewish/Palestinian problem that had existed for longer than half a century.  A big part of the problem has been and remains the conflation of opposition to Israel's right-wing, expansionist, apartheid government with antisemitism, so that guys like me, who have benefitted from most of a lifetime's friendship with Jews, are smeared by being called antisemites.

Blue Velvet.  Speaking of total depravity, as I did discussing my misanthropy, I watched David's Lynch's 1986 very weird movie Blue Velvet over the last couple of days.  Holy moly, I had forgotten how strange it is, especially Dennis Hopper's character as Frank and Isabella Rossellini's Dorothy Valens.

10/4/2026

 Sunday, October 4, 2026

1931 Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould debuted

2023 Kevin McCarthy became the first Speaker of the House of Representatives to be removed from office after fellow Republican hardliners  voted for his ouster

2025  Day 7 of the last 8 as an inpatient at Zablocki VA Medical Center

In bed at 9, up at 6:35; 126/76/67 133 201.2; 53/45/66/51, sunny

Morning meds at 10 a.m.   Entresto at 7:15 a.m. and p.m.  I missed my evening heart med again last night.  Ugh.  I was hardly able to walk to the bathroom this morning when I got up - lower back ferkrimpter.  Lower weight this morning probably attributable to small breakfasts and dinner yesterday, and no lunch.  

The Cornell Rape Case is the lead story in today's Sunday New York Times.  Seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity were accused of participation, in one manner or another, in the gang rape and/or sexual abuse of Jane Doe, a female Cornell student.  Chi Phi is a social fraternity, one of the oldest in the US.  The Cornell chapter is as old as Cornell itself, established in 1968.  

The story made me wonder about the identities of all the students involved, not just their names, but their backgrounds.  How did they get to be students at Cornell, which has an undergraduate acceptance rate of only 8.4%?  What were their majors and career goals?  Were any "legacy admissions"?  Did any or all of them 'come from money'?  Who were these elites, la creme de la creme of America's college students?  How many were Tom Buchanan of The Great Gatsby and how many were Richard Papen of The Secret History?   How did Jane Doe happen to know and seek out Matthew Ingalls, whom she sought at the fateful Chi Phi party?  Is Matthew related to Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House novels? to John James Ingalls, a former resident pro tem of the US Senate?  

Cornell reports that about 1/3 of its students belong to one of about 50 Greek chapters on campus, with Chi Phi being the oldest.  Where did it rank in number of applicants, or "rushes"?  How exclusive it among the fraternities?  What were or are the relationships between Greeks and non-Greeks like on campus?   

So many questions come to mind.

Am I the only person who is reminded of the charges against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Dr. Christine Blasey, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick?  And to recall that Kavanaugh came from a highly privileged background, including Mater Dei Catholic elementary school, Georgetown Prep high school, and Yale?  Not surprising, I suppose, that I think of Gatsby and The Secret History when I think about the Cornell case.

Sarah left for her mother's house and then to Madison about 2 this afternoon.  She flies back to Germany on Tuesday.  Her 57th birthday is Thursday.

10/3/2026

 Saturday, October 3, 2026

1990 Reunification of East and West Germany. West German flag was raised above the Brandenburg Gate at the stroke of midnight.

1992 Irish pop singer Sinéad O'Connor ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday  Night Live"

2008 The $700 billion bailout bill for the US financial system was signed by President George W. Bush

2021 Pandora Papers investigation revealed the secret wealth of 30 current and former world leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Czech PM Andrej Babis, and former UK PM Tony Blair

2025 The US Navy conducted a strike targeting an alleged drug smuggling boat on the Venezuelan coast. According to U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, at least four crewmembers were killed in the attack. 

2025 Day 6 of the last 7 days as an inpatient at Zablocki VA Medical Center [cellulitis]

In bed at 9:20, up at 4:15; 117/69/68 202.6; 50/63/48, sunny.

Morning meds at a.m.  Entresto at 5:30 a.m. and p.m.

I shared a FB post this morning about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, with this comment:

I'll be there in a few days, accompanied and looked after by my son Andy.  It will be my first visit to Arlington National Cemetery and to the Marine Corps Memorial depicting the flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, which my Dad saw in person from the landing beach below.  This tribute's focus on the absence of rank insignia on the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier reminds me of my countless visits to Wood National Cemetery here in Milwaukee, with its thousands of headstones, all of the same dimensions, as are all the headstones at all the national cemeteries.  None is larger or smaller than the others based on the rank of the dead service member.  Each is respected alike simply for having served, for having answered the call for service.  The same is true of the medical care provided to former service members at the neighboring Zablocki VA Medical Center.  No one is asked what his or her military rank was, when or where he or she served, whether during war or peacetime, in combat or in support.  All receive the same attention simply because they served; they went when called.  The national cemeteries and all the VA facilities around the country are the country's response to Abraham Lincoln's call to the nation in his Second Inaugural Address 'to bind up the wounds,' and 'to care for him who shall have borne the battle.'  We who have received the benefits Lincoln called for are grateful for them.  We're also mindful of those who considered us "suckers" and "losers" for having answered the call and of the one, in particular, who treats the men and women now in military and naval service like toy soldiers and sailors, playthings to be moved about according to his whims.  It's enough to make a grown man or woman cry.- and rage. 

Not a day for writing.  I spent most of it with Sarah, including a lovely drive up to Hilltop Road in the northwest corner of Ozaukee County, and a stop at Total Wine on the way back home.   She bought me a bottle of Federalist zinfandel, and I had a carefully measured 3 ounces after dinner.  Two ounces, sipped and savored, and I was very dizzy when I stood up.  Almost scary.  Very out of practice.  Geri spent the afternoon with Ellis and one of her friends at David and Sharon's house. 

Lake Park, foggy morning, crabapple tree, no longer there.  A photo taken 50 (?) years ago, lying on my belly on the downslope of the hill down to Lincoln Memorial Drive.  My best photo.

10/2/2026

 Friday, October 2, 2026

1904 German General Lothar von Trotha issued an order to exterminate the native Herero and Namaqua peoples of German South West Africa (present-day Namibia); the 1st genocide of the 20th Century, killed 65,000 Herero and 10,000 of the Namaqua tribe

1919 US President Woodrow Wilson had a stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed

1928 "Prelature of the Holy Cross and the Work of God", known as Opus Dei, was founded by the Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá in Madrid, Spain

2020 President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19; Trump was hospitalized later that day

2025 Two people were killed and 4 others injured in a vehicle-ramming and mass stabbing attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England. The perpetrator and a victim were shot dead by police

In bed at 9:30, awake at 3:30, up at 4; 0410 202.2 112/66/67. 124; 52/45/62/49, mostly sunny day ahead.

Morning meds at 5:45 a.m.  Entresto at 5 a.m. and 5:20 p.m.  Trulicity injection at 12 p.m.

Text exchange with Andy last night:

Hi, Son.  I received a polo shirt and jacket from the Honor Flight folks in today’s mail and I’m wondering if you’ve heard from them.  I can hardly believe it’s only about a week away.  I’m still a little anxious about it, wondering if I made a mistake accepting the invitation.

Yes, we had guardian training last week to go over what to expect and get our own polis and jackets so we are easily identifiable. I’ll be taking a backpack with us to carry things and I’ll also bring a pad for your wheelchair, unless you have one you want to bring and I’ll carry that when n 

I hadn’t thought about a pad, but now that you mention it, it’s great.  I’ve had to use a wheelchair a few times at the VA and they are hard on the butt.  I’m afraid I will be spending quite a bit of time on a chair in D.C. so a pad may be a real butt-saver. I do have a couple of pads that are pretty good, but we’d have to check this weekend or next week to see if they would fit in your backpack,.  BTW, Sarah is here this weekend, in from Austin.  I found out today also that we’ll be with the 6 a.m.group rather than the 5 a.m. group.  Hallelujah!

Yes, so I’ll plan on picking you up around 5:30 AM. I can drop you off at the departure area and a volunteer there will take you up to the upper level where I can meet you after parking.

Great.❤️

Early morning blues.  Another insufficient night's sleep.  It took me extra long to get to sleep after I hit the sack at (:30. I ended up turning on the Torch Songs playlist on my iPhone, on low volume, and eventually fell asleep at some unknown time, but woke up with a head full of unwanted thoughts sometime after 3 and got out of bed before 4.  I got to wondering whether a mild tranquilizer might help, though I am loathe to take any prescription-strength psychotropic drug.  I've taken NyQuilPM twice and had decentnights's sleep afterward, but I know that can become habit-forming and ineffective after some time.  The Honor Flight a week from tomorrow has me a bit worked up, indeed too worked up.  As I sat in Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix in 2022 waiting to return to O'Hare and then it was Milwaukee, I told myself that would be my last airline travel,l and it was, until this Honor Flight thing came up.  I probably should have just declined the invitation, but it's too late now.  I'd have a hard time living with the guilt of having deprived some other old vet of the opportunity by backing out late.

More on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism.  There is a long review in the current New York Review of Books titled Where Hatred Lies by Omer Bartov, a "nuanced new history by Mark Mazower [that] reminds us that antisemitism, an age-old threat to Jewish life, can be warped into a political tool—as we see today, when any criticism of Israel can be deemed antisemitic."  Mazower's book is titled On Antisemitism, A Word in History.  In Bartov's review, he reminds us that until the 1970s and 1980s, antisemitism was largely a phenomenon associated with right-wing politics.

At that time [the inter-world-wars period]no one would have disputed that antisemitism was a specifically right-wing and fascist hatred, intent on reversing Jewish emancipation and all that it stood for as a symbol of humanism, enlightenment, and the equality of all members of humankind.

None of this would need stating if, several decades after the end of World War II, the meaning of antisemitism in the West had not undergone an odd transformation. In the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the US and Western Europe, ever more commentators and intellectuals started maintaining that, in Mazower’s words, “antisemitism was the same as opposition to Israel, and that it was therefore chiefly a problem of the Left rather than the Right.” To many in the American Jewish establishment, “a new form of antisemitism” seemed to have arrived on the scene, constituting, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would later put it, “vicious efforts to demonize the Jewish state and deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination.” 

Since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, and the genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza that followed, the association between criticism of Israel and antisemitism has become ubiquitous. A growing range of scholars and other observers seem to agree with Mazower that even if “some anti-Zionism masks anti-Jewish sentiments, much of it does not.” But most major American Jewish organizations have stayed attached to the assumption that the main source of antisemitism in the world today is the anti-Israel left. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) contends that “anti-Zionism is antisemitic, in intent or effect.” The American Jewish Committee (AJC) defines anti-Zionism as “inherently bigoted” and claims that, because its “end goal…is to undermine and eliminate Jewish rights,” the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is driven by “antisemitic motivations.”

Various factions of the political right, meanwhile, have been quick to turn these assumptions to their advantage. Some have used allegations of antisemitism as a cudgel against the left in order to, in Mazower’s words, “police the universities, end long-standing anti-discrimination and diversity initiatives, reassert ‘Western values,’ and reaffirm the role of religion in American life.” Others have conscripted anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine rhetoric into the service of a notion of “Western values” rooted explicitly in Christian nationalism, expressing suspicion and hostility toward American Jews rather than opportunistically claiming to protect them.

There can be no doubt that, as Mazower puts it, “Jews continue to be among those groups who are targeted these days for who they are.” [Many exammples are cited, including the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018.]

Precisely because it remains “an ongoing problem,” Mazower writes, “anyone who takes antisemitism seriously” ought to be “dismayed by the confusion that exists around the term, not to mention the overuse that threatens to strip it of meaning.” How did it “come to seem unassailable common sense to a lot of people” today that a prejudice once central to the ideology of far-right anticommunism now resides primarily on the left? And if that common sense is wrongheaded, how might we better understand the workings of this all-too-present bigotry?  (My emphasis added.]

Is that "common sense wrongheaded"?  Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?  I can't accept that without damning myself, but what does Zionism mean today, and what does anti-Zionism mean today?

 Israel has been in existence as an independent state for 78 years. All other countries recognize it, except the 15 Arab League countries, 11 other Muslim-majority countries, and North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.  It has been a member of the UN since a year after its declaration of independent statehood. It is home to millions of people.  Out of more than 7.5 million Jews in Israel, more than 3/4 were born there. Of the more than 2 million Arabs in Israel, virtually all were born there.  Israel is not just the dream of Theodor Herzl and the early Zionists; it is a long-existing de facto and de jure nation.   Zionism today means, therefore, at least that the country has the right to exist in its historic form as a Jewish-majority, Jewish-dominated, and governed state.  Anti-Zionism means a belief that Israel does not have a right to exist as is.  What it means beyond that is hard to ascertain, and I'm reasonably confident I'm not up to defining it.  

Anti-Zionism cannot mean the expulsion of Jews "from the river to the sea," any more than the notion of the expulsion of Arabs "from the river to the sea" can be justified.  No "ethnic cleansing."  It can only mean, I suspect, some form of a "one-state solution" to the seemingly intractable "Palestine Problem."  One state with equal rights for all inhabitants, where full citizenship is not based on ethnicity or religion. Jews and Palestinian Arabs would constitute two populations of approximately equal size within a single country of about 15–16 million people. Neither would have a decisive demographic majority.  Looking at how such a state would be constituted politically, however, leads one into seemingly an endless morass.

Could the one state be a reconstituted Israel, or must it be a completely new state?  Even in an expanded Israel sovereignty to include all of post-Mandate Palestine, several different citizenship arrangements are conceivable, ranging from full citizenship for all residents to permanent residency without national voting rights or continued differentiated legal regimes. Demographic parity would become especially consequential if every Palestinian resident received citizenship and the franchise.  Alternatively, if millions of Palestinians lived permanently under Israeli sovereignty without equal national voting rights, the arrangement would raise fundamental questions about political equality, representation and the character of the state, the same vexing problems that exist now.

Another option could be a bi-national state which would recognize Jews and Palestinians as two distinct national communities within the same sovereign country. Each would enjoy collective rights as well as individual citizenship. This model would confront two distinct problems: how to protect each people's national identity and how to preserve the individual rights of citizens who reject communal identification or belong to neither group.   It would also have to decide which constitutional matters require agreement between both communities and which can be settled by ordinary majority vote.

Another option would be a new, single democratic state with equal citizenship for all.  Under this arrangement, Israel and the Palestinian territories would be united in one sovereign country. Every citizen, Jewish or Palestinian, would have the same voting rights and civil liberties.  The central institutions might look something like those of an ordinary parliamentary democracy: one parliament, a government responsible to it, an independent judiciary and a constitution prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion or ethnicity.  Demographically, Palestinian and Jewish citizens would begin at approximately equal strength. However, equal population shares would not necessarily mean equal parliamentary representation: age distributions, citizenship qualifications, turnout, political alliances and electoral districts would all matter.  This model would raise a fundamental question about the state's identity. A constitution based on equal individual citizenship would not automatically preserve Israel's existing legal preference for Jewish immigration or its definition of Jewish national self-determination.

In all of these one-state solutions, the question of the "right of return" for both Jews and Palestinians looms large, a probable poison pill for Israelis.  Jews could quickly be substantially outnumbered and outvoted by Arabs, with a loss of any kind of ethnic, "racial" sovereignty.  Thus, the most-favored solution has long been the "two-state" solution, an option long rejected out-of-hand by the dominant political parties in Israel, either for security reasons, or for dreams of a "Greater Israel," or for other reasons.   In any event, I'm too weary to discuss this topic any further, at least today.  

Sarah arrives later this evening from her business meetings in Austin, TX, for a weekend with us.

My only mural, on my studio wall in Shorewood, 30 (?) years ago.  I had some heartache when I had to paint over it when we sold the house to move to the Knickerbocker condo.

10/1

October 1, 2026

1867 Karl Marx published "Das Kapital" in Berlin, a description of the capitalist system, its instability, and its tendency toward self-destruction

1918 World War I: Combined Arab and British forces under T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, captured Damascus from the Turks

1932 Oswald Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists

1946 12 Nazi war criminals were sentenced to death in Nuremberg

1949 People's Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao Zedong and the Republic of China (Taiwan) formed on the island of Formosa

1955 Jackie Gleason's sitcom "The Honeymooners" debuted on CBS, replacing his variety series

2019 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was taken to a hospital after suffering a heart attack

2021 US COVID-19 death toll passed 700,000, with daily deaths averaging 1,900 a day

In bed at 9:30, up at 4; 0425 202.8 116/67/66; 65/67/58, rain all day.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.   Entresto at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m.

I'm feeling a bit wiped out today.      I haven't slept very well the last 3 nights, and I'm feeling it.😴😪 

Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser.  I'm making slow progress with this book, but not because it isn't interesting and informative, just because I don't even have the energy to read the last couple of days.  I'm almost a third of the way through it, having finished the most interesting chapter so far, which deals with the history behind the (in)famous Balfour Declaration.  Most interesting to me has been the degree to which Herzl's Zionism was much more supported by anti-semitic Christians than it was by largely assimilated European Jews.  

Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary who issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, had a documented record of expressing anti-Jewish prejudice and supporting restrictions on Jewish immigration.  In 1905, when Balfour was prime minister, his government enacted the Aliens Act, Britain's first modern immigration restriction. Although the legislation was not explicitly directed at Jews, its principal targets included impoverished Eastern European Jews fleeing persecution, particularly in the Russian Empire. In parliamentary debate, Balfour argued that even industrious, patriotic Jewish immigrants might remain a distinct community that would be difficult to assimilate into British society. The legislation and his remarks have been cited by historians as evidence of the anti-Jewish assumptions underlying his immigration policy.

The idea that Jews constituted a distinct people, rather than simply British, French or German citizens who practiced Judaism, was shared by many Zionists. But it also reinforced the prejudices of people who regarded Jews as perpetual foreigners.

Several considerations shaped British support for Zionism, including wartime diplomacy, Britain's strategic interests in the Middle East and sympathy for Jewish national aspirations. Historians differ over the relative importance of these motives and the extent to which Balfour's personal attitudes toward Jews influenced his position, but it seems clear that it wasn't based on any love by the British elites for Jews.  Indeed,  a prominent Jewish member of Balfour's own government accused it of antisemitism. 

Edwin Montagu was Secretary of State for India and one of the few Jewish members of the British Cabinet.  In August 1917, during the deliberations preceding the Balfour Declaration, he circulated a memorandum titled The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government.  Montagu feared that declaring Palestine the national home of the Jewish people would undermine the position of Jews who regarded Britain as their homeland. Other countries might use the declaration as justification for treating their Jewish citizens as foreigners.  He insisted that British Jews were entitled to be regarded as Britons, not as members of a foreign nationality residing in Britain.

The fight over whether Jews constitute a separate nation, a separate "people", or even a separate "race," seems to be an eternal one.  Many right-wing anti-Semites in America include Jews among those they smear as not "real Americans," that mystical group that Sarah Palin could identify as distinct from the rest of us.  We may be forgiven for wondering whether J. D. Vance includes Jews in New York or Los Angeles among those he seems to see as more American than the rest of us.  The more basic question of Jewish identity - who is a "real Jew"? - still divides people.  Yeshayahu Leibowitz devoted some very serious writing to it.  Leibowitz was himself a Zionist.  He supported Jewish political independence as a means of freeing Jews from foreign rule.  What he rejected was the assertion that modern Jewish nationhood necessarily continued the religious identity that had historically constituted the Jewish people.   He therefore distinguished between two understandings of collective Jewish identity.: historical Jewish peoplehood based on observance of Jewish Law (halakah) and modern secular Jewish nationalism.  For Leibowitz, the existence of the second did not make it identical to the first. Nor did Jewish sovereignty endow the state with religious sanctity.  This raises a particularly interesting implication of his thought: if Jews no longer share religious observance, language, territory, or a common political allegiance, on what basis do they continue to constitute one people?  He regarded that as a genuine problem of modern Jewish identity, rather than a question conclusively settled by invoking either common ancestry or the State of Israel.   Leibowitz was concerned not only with the state's authority to define an individual Jew, but with the much more fundamental question of what, following the separation of Jewishness from Judaism, continues to bind Jews together as a people.  For me, it raises the question of by what "right" do Jews from Russia, Singapore, New York, Liverpool, Buenos Aires, or East Chibichiland, any of whom may be Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, atheist, or agnostic, have a right to their own sovereign state in the land in which their very remote ancestors resided millennia ago, and to exclude from it people who lived on the land as recently as 1948?  I cannot come up with any satisfactory answer to that root question.

In any event, I wonder whether it isn't Zionism and the actions of the State of Israel, at least as much as any other factor, that contribute to modern anti-Semitism, at least since the occupation of the conquered territories after 1967 and the near-total dominance of right-wing political parties, and Benjamin Netanyahu, since the assassination of Rabin in 1995.  For most people worldwide, Netanyahu has become the face of Israel.  He never misses a chance to suggest that he is the spokesman for all Jews in the world, and to conflate anti-Zionism or opposition to his government's racist and oppressive policies with anti-Semitism.  

 

9/30/2026

 Wednesday, September 30, 2026

1938 Treaty of Munich forced Czechoslovakia to give territory to Germany. Chamberlain infamously declared "Peace for our time" upon his return to London.

1946 Twenty-two Nazi leaders, including Hermann Goering, were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death or prison at the Nuremberg war trials

2022 In defiance of international law, Vladimir Putin announced Russia's annexation of  four Ukrainian provinces: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia

2023 Bipartisan deal to avoid US government shutdown is signed just hours before the midnight deadline and provides funding for 45 days 

In bed at 9:20, awake at 3, up at 3:20; 0335 203.4.  119/72/67; 62/69/61; rain expected most of the day.

Morning meds at 6:30 a.m.  Entresto at 5:30 a.m. and p.m.

Some additional thoughts on Anti-Zionism-A Jewish History, Rabbi Aaron Tamares, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz.  Yesterday I mentioned what Rabbi Tamares said about Jewish statehood and its effect on Jewish people, and what Leibowitz said about the effect the occupation of Palestinian land would have on the Jewish people and on the State of Israel.  Both men could hardly have been more authentically, proudly, and lovingly Jewish.  Neither can rationally be considered a "self-hating Jew."  Leibowitz was a Zionist Jew, and Tamares an anti-Zionist Jew.  Both reject the proposition that Jewish nationhood itself is redemptive or holy.  Both, however, are deeply suspicious of turning political power into a religious absolute.  In that sense, Tamares and Leibowitz belong to the same broad Jewish critique of nationalist idolatry, even though Leibowitz accepts the political state and Tamares is much closer to principled anti-nationalism.  Benjamin Moser’s framing of Tamares fits that distinction: Moser presents Jewish anti-Zionists as arguing that Judaism is “older and larger than any single political project,” and Tamares is one of the clearest early examples of that ethical-spiritual critique of nationalism.  The shortest way to put it is: Leibowitz says, “Have a Jewish state, but do not worship it.” Tamares says, “The very drive to become a state-centered nation may itself deform Judaism."

I do not believe in Judaism any more than I believe in the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised, or in the Protestant religions that consider Catholicism an Anti-Christ and 'the Whore of Babylon."  I do believe, however, that all the major religions have some real value, call it what we may: spiritual, emotional, psychological, salvific, or redemptive.  That certainly includes the profoundly rich depths of Judaism every bit as much as it includes Christianity, Islam, and even Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Baháʼí. and probably other "offshoots" of the majors.  I certainly include Buddhism also, though it's not at all clear that Buddhism is a religion.  

Have Judaism and the Israeli Jews been corrupted by the creation of the State of Israel, as Rabbi Tamares predicted, or by the occupation of the Palestinian territories, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted?  People will have very differing views on those questions, largely depending on where they stand, sit, or live, but I do note that the Jews in Palestine/Israel have been living with strife, warfare, and existential precarity for more than 100 years now, since the Jerusalem riots of 1920, the Jaffa riots of 1921, and the much more lethal riots across Palestine in 1929.  I note too that it was precisely the arrival of the European Jews that precipitated the deadly strife.  The long-established Jews in Palestine, mostly religious, had lived in peace with the Arabs pre-Balfour, as had the Arab Christians.  

Israel has become, to a great many throughout the world, a pariah state, an apartheid state, an aggressive and oppressive state, and a chronic abuser of human rights.  Its people have never truly lived in peace and safety.  Every militant move intended to increase the security of its people has resulted in more strife, jeopardy, and precarity down the road.

This morning's NYTimes reports that all the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, save one, voted to force Trump to deliver a Human Rights assessment of Israel's behavior on the West Bank.  All the Republicans, save one, voted against it.  There is an ever-growing movement within the American population, especially among the young, to sever America's intimate relationship with Israel, to cut off military and economic assistance, and to punish its human rights abuses against Palestinians.  If American allegiance ends, who will be in Israel's corner?

I know I am a pessimist (Being Irish . . ., etc.), but I long ago lost hope for Israel, at least since 1995, when Yigal Amir,  the religious nationalist supporter of the settlement movement and opponent of Palestinian statehood, assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, and the people elected Benjamin Netanyahu to become leader.  He has served as leader of Israel for 19 of the last 30 years, Israel's longest-serving prime minister.  With the death of Rabin, and effectively, of the leftist Labor Party in Israel, all hope for any kind of statehood for the Palestinians ended.  Excluding East Jerusalem, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank was about 138,600 at the end of 1995. By the end of 2024, Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics data show about 511,100 settlers. That is an increase of roughly 372,500 people, or about 269%. Put another way, the settler population is now about 3.7 times what it was when Rabin was assassinated.

The growth has continued since then. A 2026 report based on settler-group data says the West Bank settler population grew another 2.2% during 2025, again excluding East Jerusalem.

If we include East Jerusalem, the numbers are larger still. Peace Now estimated about 230,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem by 2023, compared with about 140,000 in 1993. So by the mid-2020s, the combined settler population of the West Bank and East Jerusalem was on the order of three-quarters of a million people, depending on the exact year and counting method.

The West Bank has been carved up like a turkey.  How do you realistically form a state out of what Israel has left of it? (I say nothing of Gaza, and what Israel has left of it.)

I write all these thoughts in the hours before daybreak, hoping for some coherence, but in any event trying to understand my ultimate thought that Zionism has been a bad idea, an unjustifiable goal from the beginning.  I've read only the Introduction and first chapter of Benjamin Moser's book, but my thought on this matter preceded my purchase of the book.  I expect my thoughts on this matter will become only more embedded as I read on.   (I haven't addressed the question of whether being an anti-Zionist makes me an anti-semite, which is what Benjamin Netanyahu would charge, as he always does.  But that's another subject.)

Quo tandem, Catalina?  From this morning's NYTimes:

After Two Decades, U.S. Forces Leave Iraq to an Uncertain Future

U.S. forces formally withdrew from Iraq on Wednesday, ending a two-decade military presence that stoked years of devastating bloodshed, and leaves behind a battered nation struggling to unshackle itself from its two most powerful, and now warring, allies.

After toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, the brutal dictator who ruled Iraq for nearly 24 years, American forces are making their second withdrawal from the country.

The U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation, which ended in 2011, left a country reeling from sectarian bloodletting and militant insurgencies that cost nearly 4,500 U.S. lives and killed more than 115,000 Iraqis, according to the most modest counts.

American forces ultimately returned three years later — this time to lead the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, the jihadist force that once seized swaths of Iraq and Syria and became notorious for its slaughter of Shiite Muslim Iraqis, public killings of hostages, and torture and enslavement of women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority. 

Why am I reminded of King George's song from Hamilton? 

You'll be back like before

I will fight the fight and win the war

For your love, for your praise

And I'll love you 'til my dying days

When you're gone, I'll go mad

So don't throw away this thing we had

'Cause when push comes to shove

I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.

 Tom Friedman reminds me of why I live with doom and gloom.  From his latest column:

President Trump is such an awful human being that just writing about him feels degrading. . . . 

Alas, though, when someone as morally warped as Trump — whose first secretary of state called him a “moron” — assumes this much unchecked power at the dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence, he can’t be ignored. Because right now Trump is leaving America exposed to dangerous viruses: digital, biological and diplomatic. Something bad is going to happen to us as a result. We and our children are going to pay for this, and not only at the gas pump.

He goes on to show how we are suffering and will continue to suffer under the incompetent, malign, delusional, and misanthropic leader we have placed in the White House, but I don't have the strength to carry on.

Still more on why I live with doom and gloom.  I asked an AI chatbox this morning a series of question composed to determine to what extent, if any, I was correct in thinking that we may have already "passed the tipping point' in terms of losing practical human control over AI models:  Here is a pared-down, but verbatim, record of the exchange, with my questions in italics and the responses in roman type:

Are AI "models" separate entities? How is one differentiated from another?  A model is not normally a single physical machine sitting in one data center. Copies of the same model can run on many servers at once.

Could there be an almost infinite number of individual "models" of AI extant?  Yes—at least in principle, the number of distinct AI models that could exist is astronomically large.

Once a model is created, can it be killed or destroyed?  Yes . . . But “destroyed” is trickier than it sounds. Once a model has been copied, backed up, downloaded, replicated across servers, or distributed to other organizations or individuals, eliminating every copy may be very difficult or impossible. Deleting one deployed copy does not destroy the model if another copy of the same weights still exists somewhere else.

Could models be created that are indestructible? Could models, once created, create other different models?  Yes to the second question; only approximately to the first. . . . But a model could be made extremely hard to eliminate by replicating itself widely across many independent servers, jurisdictions, devices, and storage systems. . . And yes. a model can be used to help create other models.  That is already happening in several forms.

Would the increase in the number of data centers around the world increase the practical possibility of the creation on practically indestructible models? Not in absolute or mathematical terms, but as a practical matter, a matter of likelihood?   Yes. As a practical matter, more data centers increase the possibility that a model could become extremely difficult to eliminate, though the increase is indirect rather than automatic. . .  ,A model that exists only on one company’s servers can be shut down relatively easily. A model whose weights have been copied to hundreds or thousands of independently controlled systems in different countries is a very different problem. . .  . For software, copying is much easier than biological reproduction, so distribution can happen extremely rapidly.

Is it thus possible even now that an ill-aligned model already exists, is very difficult to identify, and iwould be very difficult to erase, destroy, or control?  Yes. It is possible now that a poorly aligned or deliberately modified model exists somewhere outside public view and would be difficult to identify or eliminate. . . . So a model could already exist that has been deliberately stripped of its safety training, fine-tuned for harmful purposes, and stored on private servers. . . . There is also now evidence that advanced models can behave in unexpectedly agentic ways under certain conditions. . .   The unsettling feature of digital systems is that detection and destruction are asymmetric. Creating one copy is easy; proving that all copies have been found is extremely difficult.  In that limited sense, your intuition is correct: we may already have crossed the point at which humanity can guarantee that every unwanted AI model could be found and erased.  (The bolding emphasis added by me.)

 And even "in that limited sense", I find that exchange "unsettling" indeed.

9/29/2026

 Tuesday, September 29, 2026

1567 War of Religion breaks out in France as Huguenots try to kidnap King Charles IX

1835 The Treaty of New Echota was signed between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction to cede all lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States

1890 US 7th Cavalry massacred 200+ captive Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota

1908 A patent was granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville, Wisconsin

1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act was signed by President Richard M. Nixon

2020 First debate between US Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden was held, widely criticized as chaotic and ill-tempered

2023 More than 50 people were killed in two suicide attacks in Pakistan, during celebrations for the birth of the Prophet Muhammad

2025 German airline Lufthansa announced they would cut 4,000 administrative positions by 2030 and replace them with artificial intelligence and digitization processes. 

In bed at 9:20, up at 4; 0410 204.2 119/67/68 111; 52/70/51, cloudy

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Entresto at 5:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

The handsome fellow in the photo is a Cooper's Hawk, of which we have many in our neck of the woods.  One of them landed on the ground under our bird feeders yesterday, and I suspect that he has been hanging around the neighborhood lately.  I neglected to fill the bird feeders last night and filled them this morning.  Normally, some of our neighboring birds show up not long after I fill the feeders, but not this morning.  A beautiful little chipmunk is in the grass under the feeders, stuffing his cheek pouches with some of the safflower and/or sunflower seeds I spread on the ground whenever I fill the tube and tray feeders.   He competes with the mourning doves, which also like to ground-feed, when they aren't 'setting up shop' on or near the tray feeder above.  I've read that chipmunk cheeks can grow to 3 times the size of their heads when filled with food,  This explains, in large measure, why I don't have to worry about a large accumulation of seeds under our feeders; they are either eaten quickly by the birds or hauled away by the chipmunks.  Yesterday I watched what appeared to be a fight between two chipmunks competing for pride of place in the feeding ground.  The aggressor appeared to jump on the other before they got involved in the more normal chasing activity.  Although Cooper's hawks feed normally on smaller birds, I suspect a chipmunk would be a welcome snack for one, so the little guy I'm watching is running a risk by filling up.  . . . The birds stayed away all day.

Anti-Ziomism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser.  I was struck by this passage in Chapter 1, titled The Sensitive Rabbi - Aaron Samuel Tamares, Poland:

For Aaron Samuel Tamares, the rabbi of the tiny shtetl of Milejczyce, the controversy would define his life and his ministry. Located on the edge of the ancient forest of Białowieża, on what is today the Polish side of the border of Belarus and Poland, even tiny Milejczyce, for Tamares, was sometimes too big. Nearly every day, weather permitting, he would head into the forest, where he composed most of his works. These were not, at first, intended to be read. “Whenever he became upset by an impure event that took place in society,” he wrote in a third-person memoir toward the end of his life, “he fled to the forest and poured his heart out before the innocent trees—and, with their help, put pen to paper.” When he began to publish, he adopted a pseudonym, “One of the Sensitive Rabbis.” It was under that name that he became known throughout the Jewish world. (p. 36).

 Rabbi Tamares reminds me of myself, at least early on in his writing endeavors: sitting alone and writing, "whenever he became upset by an impure event that took place in society.  He fled to the forest; I sit in my Lazy Boy recliner with my laptop.  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers gotta write.

It is an interesting experience to be reading this book about anti-Zionism and its distinction from and relation to anti-semitism at this time in history, with the State of Israel now held in such low regard throughout the world, and with the Guardian film, NAZA, about Israel's behavior in its war on Gaza attracting so much attention in Israel and the U.S.  I thought of the writing of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, urging Israel's leaders not to occupy the conquered territories after the Six Day War in 1967, when I read this in Moser's book:

Where other nationalist movements sought to overthrow imperialist powers, Zionism always sought to join them. From the beginning, when Herzl sought a sponsor, the movement had known that it would succeed only if it could find an imperial backer. The movement’s champion would arrive in 1917, when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, a promise to establish a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. This was both undignified and irreligious, Tamares insisted: Judaism was “independent of land, kings, and lords.” He had no doubts where this embrace of statism, militarism, and nationalism would lead: “It is completely incongruous and misleading to use the slogan ‘nationalism,’ inasmuch as it is the complete opposite of ‘The Bible.’ ” The Jews were enjoined to resist the same nationalism that was threatening to swallow up the world: “Even if the ideas of ‘nationalism’ and ‘terror’ had already conquered the hearts of all the nations, even so it would be incumbent upon ‘the people of the book, a nation driven and plucked,’ that nation most expert in matters of justice and compassion, to withhold its assent.” What was at stake was nothing less than the entire moral and spiritual legacy of the Jews. “Perhaps there was one people on earth, the Jewish people, which truly cherished the vision of Isaiah: ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,’ ” he would write, looking back, a year before he died. “But those Jews who would suddenly delight in the beauty of the ‘loin of the warrior,’ girded with sword, must go forth with high hand to revile the prophet Isaiah!”  (pp. 43-44). Kindle Edition. 

In 1968, Leibowitz wrote an essay titled "The Territories" in which he warned what occupation of the conquered lands would mean for the Jewish people in Israel:

“Rule over the occupied territories would have social repercussions. After a few years there would be no Jewish workers or Jewish farmers. The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech, and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the state of Israel. The administration would have to suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.  Out of concern for the Jewish people and its state we have no choice but to withdraw from the territories and their population of one and a half million Arabs.”

We know today what the fruits of Zionism have been, not only for the Palestinians Arabs and the rest of the world, but for the Jews, both in Israel and outside of Israel.

Doom and Gloom.  Yesterday I wrote of the book The Nerd Reich: "It was the scariest book I think I have ever read, about the takeover of government by wealthy tech elites.  That sounds preposterous, but we are partway there already with the election of Donald Trump . . ."  Today I watched and read the interview of Bill Gates by Ezra Klein in this morning's NYTimes.  It was the scariest interview I have ever seen.  Gates said that AI is “by far” the most dangerous technology ever created and that the transition into the AI era could be one of the most turbulent periods in human history. That view is consistent with comments he has made in the past few days in other forums.

What seems to worry him most is not primarily a science-fiction scenario in which AI spontaneously becomes evil. His emphasis is more immediate and concrete: AI can greatly amplify the capabilities of malicious human beings. He pointed to risks such as catastrophic cyberattacks, bioterrorism, attacks on critical infrastructure, and potentially mass casualties on a scale that previously would have required the resources of a nation-state. Recent reporting on his remarks says he has warned that misuse could conceivably lead to a billion casualties or more.  Others speak of a real risk of annihilation of the human species.

Gates also believes the danger is compounded by the fact that AI can increasingly replace or exceed human cognition in important tasks, while advancing faster than governments and institutions are adapting. In his own recent writing, Gates says that AI is the first technology capable of replacing and surpassing human cognitive abilities in this way, and that even under favorable circumstances the transition will be exceptionally turbulent.

He was emphatic about governance. He rejected the idea that the AI industry can safely police itself; the episode description characterizes him as calling self-regulation “insane.” He wants government, law enforcement, academia, and international institutions involved in monitoring dangerous uses and setting enforceable safeguards.

I had Gates' comments in mind as I watched the CNN coverage of Donald Trump's meeting with an abundance of AI and Big Tech executives this afternoon.  (In his role of Lord of Language and Names, Trump has changed the term for Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence.)  Trump continues to assert that no government oversight of AI development is necessary or desirable.  He believes in self-regulation, which means no regulation.  He turns for support to the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, who, to me, appears to be in a distinct minority among tech leaders in minimizing the risks of AI.  Elon Musk was in the back row of the big gaggle of Trump and the execs outside the White House while Trump was questioned by the feckless White House press corps.  Geri and I both noted his disbelieving facial expressions as Trump announced his rosy assessment about the non-risks of AI.  Regarding all the people at this meeting and those at the state dinner for Xi Jinping, I'm reminded of George Carlin's stand-up routine: "They own us" and of Thucydides: The powerful do what they will; the powerless suffer what they must. 

I still wonder whether we have already passed the tipping point on AI.  As Donald Rumsfeld ominously reminded us, “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.”  Even the AI developers, the experts, don't know what they don't know about what's going on, or has gone on, inside their creations.

We are in deep shit.  Our children and grandchildren, the world's children and grandchildren, are in deeper shit.

An anniversary note.  I note that today is the first anniversary of the day the German airline Lufthansa announced it would cut 4,000 administrative positions by 2030 and replace them with artificial intelligence and digitization processes.  

A final note before putting today's journal to bed.  I referred earlier to the highly controversial film NAZA, a neologism referring to collateral damage, or the amount of innocent life sacrificed in the achievement of military objectives.  I look forward to seeing it when it becomes available to me in part for what it will reveal about Israeli war policies respecting Palestinians, but equally for what it will reveal about the use of AI in war targeting.  It won't be pretty.