Questions you probably never asked:
On the treatment of Henry Nowak: it didn’t happen in a vacuum
Yesterday I wrote about Henry Nowak’s murder and his terrible treatment by the British police. But here are some thoughts on the bigger picture of disparate treatment, of which his death is emblematic.
Britain is even further along on this “the brown minorities are always right” road than we are here. For example, one of the first things that came to mind for me were the Rotherham rapes in which Muslim (mostly Pakistani) men groomed and raped underage white British girls. I recalled that not only was the situation allowed to continue for decades, despite constant reports, because British authorities feared upsetting the Muslim immigrant communities by pointing the finger at them, but also that some of the Rotherham victims were themselves arrested. Checking to see if that memory was accurate, I found this sort of thing [emphasis mine]:
On a number of occasions, victims of sexual abuse [in Rotherham] were criminalised – arrested for being drunk – while their abusers continued to act with impunity. Vital evidence was ignored, Jay said, with police apparently trying to manipulate their figures for child sexual exploitation by removing from their monitoring process girls who were pregnant or had given birth, plus all looked after children in care.
Blame the victims, not the perpetrators, if it was racially woke to do so.
Also, we could go all the way back to the post-9/11 emphasis in the US on a backlash “Islamophobia” which really didn’t even exist to any extent. There was a bending over backwards to make Muslims in the US the potential victims.
In Britain, there’s also the phenomenon in which Jews are being told not to wear symbols of their religion so as not to inflame or enrage their persecutors, rather than punishing the demonstrators harassing them. And some Jews have been arrested; for example these cases:
(1) Niyak Ghorbani:
Niyak Ghorbani, 37, waved the sign in the middle of last Saturday’s rally before protesters turned on him leading to a confrontation.
Police said he was arrested for assault before being de-arrested after officers reviewed footage. …
Ghorbani said that he would make a complaint after the incident and that he was not given back his sign.
He said: “[Police] told me that it is a danger for [my] life and for the people when they see maybe attack [me]. I told the police they attacked me and I want to complain and they say go to police station near your home.”
(2) Gideon Falter:
London’s police force has been forced to issue two apologies after officers threatened to arrest an “openly Jewish” man if he refused to leave the area around a pro-Palestinian march because his presence risked provoking the demonstrators.
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was wearing a traditional Jewish skullcap when he was stopped by police while trying to cross a street in central London as demonstrators filed past on April 13.
One officer told Falter he was worried that the man’s “quite openly Jewish” appearance could provoke a reaction from the protesters, according to video posted by the campaign group. A second officer then told Falter he would be arrested if he refused to be escorted out of the area because he was “causing a breach of the peace.”
Here’s another article on the phenomenon. Fortunately, none of those incidents caused serious physical harm, but they are indicative of the same trend of placating the country’s Muslim population at the expense of white British natives and of Jews.
As I said, it’s not quite as bad in the US; at least, not yet. But there is the MSM believing Hamas reports on the Gazan conflict, which exploit this same “brown people are automatically the truthful victims” mentality. This is in line with fake hate crimes here (Jussie Smollett, take a bow), a tactic which began long ago (Tawana Brawley, for example). The belief in the veracity of a once-persecuted group came originally from the desire to correct what used to be the opposite – the automatic belief in the white person even if that person was lying. But what started out as a needed correction ultimately became a dangerous overcorrection.
Will the same dynamic be at play in the Karmelo Anthony trial now beginning? He will be pleading racism on the part of the victim, whom he allegedly stabbed and killed with little to no provocation.
Then we also have the coverup – until recently, anyway – of various kinds of government aid fraud perpetuated by Somalis and allowed to go on for fear of being called a racist if it were to be exposed and prosecuted. Officials would rather lose billions of dollars than be called racists.
California dreaming
Although California is doing its usual counting of votes in geologic timeframes, it looks as though Republicans Steve Hilton (governor’s race) and Spencer Pratt (LA mayor’s race) will be on the ballot against Democrats Becarra and Bass, respectively.
In the blue state of California, one can assume that the Democrats will win (by hook or crook, as it were). But hey, you never know. The irrepressible Pratt wants to put up a fight:
Spencer Pratt has confidently claimed he’s already looking ahead to a November runoff as election results Tuesday night showed him comfortably in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
“She knows it’s on. I hope she’s ready,” Pratt said on Tuesday. “I literally could not be more excited.”
“I am ready for whatever God puts in front of me,” he said. …
“We have five months to put the best team the city could ever dream of,” Pratt said. …
As election officials continued counting ballots, Pratt made clear he was already looking to the months ahead and a potential showdown with Bass.
“We can do debates every Friday if she’d like,” Pratt repeated. “As many debates as Mayor Bass would like.”
I bet she would like zero; she didn’t do well against him in the first debate. What are his chances of winning? I’d say very very slim, but not zero.
In other California news, this loathsome character won his primary and almost certainly will win the election:
San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener dominated early returns in the bitter showdown to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, claiming victory in the primary contest.
Wiener won 43.4% of votes in the first batch of returns posted Tuesday night — with Pelosi’s pick Connie Chan and lefty tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti trailing behind at 28.5% and 13.5%, respectively.
Why do I call him “loathsome”? He’s one of the most far-left politicians in California, and that’s saying something. I’ve written about him before, for example in this post. And as the Democratic nominee in that particular district, he will win and be going to Congress.
The news about Iran is worthless at this point
I haven’t written about Iran for the past few days for a very simple reason: the news is unreliable. I’m not just talking about the MSM, which is almost reflexively consistently unreliable on a host of things. I’m talking about all sources to which I have access, and that includes the blowing hot and cold messages from President Trump.
Of course, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about what’s going on there and even having opinions. But my opinions probably aren’t worth all that much, either. But here are a few anyway.
For example, I saw the reports to which commenter “Richard Aubrey” refers here:
Saw a report a day or so ago with what remains of the, more or less, civilian government saying they have no more say; the IRGC is in complete control.
Presuming this is the case, with whom do we negotiate? How much more killing does it take to convince the IRGC? Bering at least superficially military in structure, they no doubt have lines of succession well known and probably generally accepted.
As I said, I saw those reports, too. They usually include the idea that the people in control now are real “hardliners,” compared to the civilian government. The thing about that, though, is that for decades I’ve read and believed that the civilian government of Iran was mere window-dressing with little to no power, and that the hardliners (mullahs, IRGC) were really in charge anyway. So I conclude that if the pretend civilian leaders are gone now and the hardliners in control, that only changes the superficial appearance of things.
Then there’s the other problem Richard Aubrey mentions, “with whom do we negotiate? How much more killing does it take to convince the IRGC?” But that’s been the problem from the start of the negotiation phase. That’s been the problem even before the war began; you may recall that the war was preceded by fruitless and frustrating negotiations as well.
You may also recall that, at the start of the present negotiations, Trump kept saying we’re not sure if the people with whom we’re negotiating have any power over much of anything. At some point, they “proved” they did by letting some ships through the Strait or something of that sort, but that hardly proves much of anything in terms of the big picture. We know – and Trump knows, and Rubio surely knows because he’s talked about it at length – that the IRGC are fanatics who are uninclined to give up. And so we are left with the same question we’ve had from the start: what’s the point of these negotiations?
Your answer depends on your opinion of Trump, and if you think he’s a clueless idiot then that covers it. I don’t think he’s a clueless idiot – and I certainly hope I’m right about that – and I wrote recently about the possible tactical reasons for the negotiations, so I’ll just repeat here what I said then:
I strongly suspect (without actually knowing) that the reasons for the negotiations are as follows: (1) to reset the clock on the war for purposes of the need for Congress’ approval (2) intelligence gathering and planning (3) turning up the economic screws and letting the Iranian leadership fester in the problems that result (4) giving the Gulf States a needed rest; and (5) waiting to get what we want – the open Straits and the nuclear material – and then following up with more regime-weakening moves.
The IRGC could not care less about the Iranian people and their wishes. Then again, the regime never has. They have killed many many thousands for merely opposing them, and they’ve been doing that for decades. When the regime first came to power, they marked it by mass executions of their opponents and their rivals (including the leftists who had helped them). Periodically, there were incidents like this one in 1988:
Between late July and September 1988, the Iranian authorities forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed thousands of prisoners for their political opinions and dumped their bodies in unmarked individual and mass graves. Minimum estimates put the death toll at around 5,000.
This source says it was more than 30,000 in 1988, but who knows? The link was written in 2019, and it included the following:
Iran is among those governments that execute their opponents. 120,000 people have been executed in Iran since 1981 for their opposition to the government, at-least one-third of whom have been women. According to the international laws, pregnant women must not be executed, whereas in Iran, at least 50 pregnant women have been executed in the 1980s. …
Iran holds the world record in number of executions per capita. According to Amnesty International: “more than half (51%) of all recorded executions in 2017 were carried out in Iran.”
And those are the official executions.
So, the hardliners are in control now? They’ve been in control since 1979.
Open thread 6/3/2026
The murder of Henry Nowak: outrageous
There are so many elements of this case it’s hard to know which one to emphasize. What’s more, it’s not easy to get the facts straight. I read many many articles and listened to many many videos before feeling I had any sort of a handle on it, and there are still missing facts.
I’ve found a good summary here. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the others. In particular, I’m referring to the judge’s statement, which you can locate by scrolling down there; it’s outlined in a pale blue box.
My own summary is as follows: In Southampton, England, 18-year-old Henry Nowak crossed the path of 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh wearing a ceremonial knife. A verbal exchange ensued (described by the judge, but somewhat cryptic), part of which was recorded by Nowak on his cellphone. Digwa stabbed Nowak multiple times, and one of the wounds caused fatal bleeding into his chest area. Digwa’s brother – who did not witness the incident but came upon the scene shortly after – called police to report it as a racial aggression by Nowak, and said no one was badly injured and no weapons were used. When the police arrived, despite Nowak’s obvious declining state (previously explained by the Digwas as Nowak’s being drunk, trying to climb a fence, and falling onto a car), and the fact that Nowak kept telling them multiple times that he’d been stabbed and couldn’t breathe, they didn’t believe him and didn’t examine him for wounds. Digwa’s brother had told the dispatcher there were no weapons involved, but had said an ambulance was probably needed for Nowak because of the supposed fall. And meanwhile, while the brother was on the phone, the killer passed the knife (bloody?) to the mother, who hid it; both parents had apparently come onto the scene perhaps because Vickrum had called them.
The website also contains an important audio, that of the emergency call made by the brother. I can’t embed it, but here’s a link. The key moment occurs almost at the outset, when the brother (Gurpreet) frames the problem this way:
Yeah, we’ve just been attacked racially. Yeah, this f***er. Yeah, we just got attacked racially by some white person.
Many people are outraged that the brother wasn’t tried as well as Vickrum and their mother, but I think it’s pretty clear why. The brother never witnessed the altercation and is merely repeating the lies that Vickrum has told him. I believe it’s only later, when Vickrum is jailed and the two speak in Punjabi (a discussion that’s recorded), that Gupreet learns what actually happened.
There is also a police bodycam, which I think isn’t the entire thing, but here’s the link. Among other things, Vickrum lies to police about being injured himself, pointing to a nonexistent eye injury he says he got – while meanwhile, Nowak is dying in front of everyone and the killer says nothing about the stabbing. A female officer asks the male officer. “We have to check that out, don’t we?” referring to the possibility of stab wounds that Nowak is describing in labored breaths. The male officer appears to respond, “No.”
This, in a nutshell, is what is so terrible about the police response. Whether Nowak could have been saved even with prompt medical attention is unclear (the medical examiner says he could not have) but irrelevant. The mindset of the male police officer was set in stone by the brother’s phone call, by Vickrum’s silence about what he’d done, and almost certainly by intensive training in sensitivity to the needs of “brown” racial groups. To question Vickrum’s story and to credit Nowak’s would have opened the officer up to charges of racism, but I doubt it even occurred to him to go that route, so deep was his indoctrination.
Putting it all together – the judge’s statement, the brother’s phone call, and the police video – and you get something of the story. It’s a terrible one, and people are right to be deeply outraged.
But my main question is this, and I have yet to see an answer: why did Vickrum stay at the crime scene? He could have escaped; he already had taken Nowak’s phone with the evidence of the verbal exchange, which did not contain any racial slurs or any attack by Nowak. Vickrum apparently realized there might be other video or photographic evidence of what really had occurred, but there were no actual witnesses other than Nowak and Vickrum himself. Maybe he thought running away would implicate him, and he was gambling that his lies would work to set the scene. So he stayed, and told his brother to make the call, and furnished the lies to his brother, and watched Nowak die – thus, ending the possibility that Nowak would be able to tell police a different tale than Vickrum was relating.
Apparently Vickrum would rather watch Nowak die than confess to stabbing him, either to his brother or to the police arresting Nowak. In service of these self-serving lies, Vickrum involved and implicated his family. His mother almost certainly saw the blood on the knife and was knowingly covering up the crime, but I doubt the brother knew anything other than the lies Vickrum had told him.
A terrible person.
Another issue – this being Britain – is that the carrying of knives (except for folding ones 3 inches or less) is generally banned, but Sikhs are allowed to carry ceremonial ones. A lot of people want to end this exemption. I think that’s a red herring. It’s not the knives themselves. It’s the killer. The knife discussion is similar to the gun discussion in which a focus is on the weapon, as though the knife itself is an agent. It’s not.
It’s California primary time
Here’s a thread to discuss the California primary. Maybe we can take bets on how long it will take to count the votes? California is notorious for its dilatory tactics in that regard.
I’m especially curious about the LA mayoral race and Spencer Pratt. Here’s a poll, for what it’s worth:
A recent poll by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times shows a closely contested race among the top three candidates, while 11 other candidates are trailing significantly. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, has Bass leading with 26% support among likely voters. Raman follows closely at 25%, with Pratt at 22%.
All are within the margin of error. Interesting.
For the governorship, we have this:
Multiple polls found the crowded race has narrowed to a three-way contest between Democrats Xavier Becerra, a former health secretary and state attorney general, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host.
With its lack of cinematic or political stars, California’s gubernatorial race was atypical from the jump. But a mid-April scandal upended it, essentially allowing candidates to restart their campaigns. Still, Tuesday’s primary could bring unexpected results because more voters than usual held on to their ballots until the final stretch of the competitive race.
Polls for that race show this:
Three key polls were released in recent days and all three of them found former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra several points ahead of both Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton and investor Tom Steyer. PPIC has Becerra at 23%, IGS has him at 25% and Emerson shows him 28% of the vote. No other candidate received more than 22% of the vote in any of the polls.
Hilton is at 21% and Steyer at 22%.
Ye olde connectivity problems
I’ve had some connectivity problems today. I think it’s all fixed for now.
I also just had a long conversation with my host about increasing my bandwidth. Fun. Inside baseball.
Open thread 6/2/2026
Here’s a really handy guy:
“Yellow dog Democrat” has become an outdated term now that Platner’s the Maine frontrunner
The term “yellow dog Democrat” refers to the sort of person who would automatically vote for the Democrats’ nominee even if it were a yellow dog. It’s a surprisingly old term:
The term originated in the late 19th century. These voters would allegedly “vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican”, or, “vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket”.[1] The term is now more generally applied to refer to any Democrat who will vote a straight party ticket under any circumstances. The South Carolina Democratic Party and Mississippi Democratic Party, among other state parties, continue to use the phrase to refer to committed members of the Democratic Party in the “Yellow Dog Club”.
I submit that it’s outdated; it’s way too mild. For example, see this:
Susan Collins:
1) Voted to convict Trump of impeachment
2) Voted against Amy Coney Barrett & Pete Hegseth
3) Backed limits on Trump's military power
4) Wants to nuke his "Anti-Weaponization Fund"And more. If *she* is your evil right-wing extremist, words do not mean anything. https://t.co/dLQakRiAkS
— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 1, 2026
Perhaps they should be called “Platner Democrats,” although that doesn’t roll too trippingly off the tongue. But “the messier Platner turns out to be the more I hope he wins,” because Susan Collins (one of the few moderates left in Congress) is evil – well, that is much of the current Democrat Party in a nutshell.
As far as Platner goes, if you haven’t kept up with the latest revelations about him, see this and this at Ace’s.
Another example of a Platner Democrat is Jessica Tarlov and apparently the Democrats of Maine:
“There are Democrats who have concerns, and some of them are speaking out about it,” she conceded. “This was the first weekend that I feel like Democrats were really pushed on the Sunday shows. Dana Bash was doing that as well with Andy Kim from New Jersey, who wanted to talk about what’s going on at Delaney Hall. And she kept bringing it back to this. Listen, Graham Platner, his wife is not a professional political spouse, and Graham Platner is not a professional politician himself. And you’re seeing that come to light.”
I’m not sure how not being a “professional politician” is supposed to absolve you from having a Nazi tattoo for nearly twenty years, for making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments online, for having a sorta-potty fetish, and for maintaining an account on a chat app used by sexual predators, but hey, that’s apparently the argument Tarlov is choosing to make.
“Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills to win,” Tarlov continued. “He got her to jump into this race because someone like a Jared Golden didn’t want to get in. And that didn’t work. Mainers have consistently said, ‘We know who Graham Platner is and this is what our choice is at this point.’”
Not all Democrats feel this way. But of those who are objecting to Platner, is it because he’s a terrible person (in addition to having virtually no political experience) or because they think he may lose?
JImmy Kimmel – the art of offending at least half of your potential audience
One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was this one in January of 2005, entitled, “The fine art of insulting half your audience.” Here’s an excerpt:
It happens nearly every time. I’ll be reading a short story, let’s say, enjoying myself, lost in the experience—when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap at Bush, or at those who support him. It’s not as though the story is even tangentially about politics, either; it can be about anything at all, it doesn’t really matter.
The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know—well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral—oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too—not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush.
Back when I was one of the gang, too, back when I was in with the in crowd (“if it’s square, we ain’t there”), did I notice when authors dragged in their political credentials from left field? Or perhaps it wasn’t quite as commonplace back then for them to do so?
At any rate, now it seems positively obligatory. I’m reading along, sunk deep within the story, bonding with the characters—and then, suddenly, it’s as though the author has reached a hand out of the pages of the magazine (OK, I’ll confess, sometimes it’s the New Yorker—yes, I still read it for the fiction, just as some people claim they read Playboy for the interviews) and slapped me across the face.
Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.
Well, it’s only gotten worse since then. Sometimes it works out for the artist; after all, one-half of the population of the US is still a lot of people. Plus, if the person is offering something of value – is a good singer or actor or writer – people on the opposite side of the political divide may decide to still buy their product rather than boycott them. But what of someone like Jimmy Kimball? Unfunny, unentertaining; all he’s got is dissing Trump and even the way he does that isn’t the least bit clever. Plus, he seems to consider himself some sort of hero.
Therefore, should anyone be surprised at his perhaps-pending cancellation? Of course not. But Jimmy seems to think he’s being persecuted, poor thing:
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host opened up in a new interview with Vulture about the future of the genre following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Show” on CBS and his own run-ins with Trump, including his suspension following comments made about the death of Charlie Kirk.
“I feel a little bit defeated about it,” Kimmel told Vulture after Colbert’s final episode aired on May 21. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future.”
Kimmel went on to say he was assured by the network that his show is still profitable, and yet they only renewed him for a year. Plus:
Asked if he has thought about retirement, Kimmel said he’s still unsure when his time will come. “It’s important to me to be responsible,” he said. “I know I could go out in a blaze of glory and get a lot of applause for it, but it would be a very selfish thing to do.”
That is, if he isn’t ousted first. Trump has repeatedly called for Kimmel to be fired, most recently when he made a joke about Melania Trump having a “glow like an expectant widow.” In that case and that of Kirk, Kimmel said he “had the truth on my side as a defense. What if I actually do do something wrong? I mean, that’s inevitable.”
Of the president, Kimmel said: “I don’t love him. I don’t hate him, either. I feel sorry for him. He obviously didn’t get hugged a lot.”
Sure thing, Jimmy; you don’t hate Trump at all. And that remark about not being hugged is about the typical level of Kimmel’s wit.
Makes one yearn – positively yearn – for the days of Johnny Carson, who must have had his political preferences but kept them to himself while being genuinely entertaining. But that was a long long time ago.
The mountain lion sleeps tonight
This happened [my emphasis]:
A mountain lion forced residents of Santa Monica and their tiny pets indoors as officials scoured the area for the apex predator.
The Santa Monica Police Department descended on the residential area of 14th and Montana Friday morning after someone allegedly saw the animal in the area. …
The mountain lion was first located sleeping in a residential backyard, and did not move from that location for several hours, a SMPD spokesperson told The California Post. …
After about six hours, the animal was reportedly hit with a tranquilizer, sending it running through the neighborhood. Officials were seen in a video chasing after the big cat in an attempt to wrangle and capture it. …
Finally, nine hours after it was first reported, the animal was successfully tranquilized and removed.
Just a few years ago I was staying with a friend in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It was April, and I went for a walk in a very built-up area of many homes. And yet I saw a mountain lion walking through a group of bushes not more than 50 yards away from me. I turned and slowly walked in another direction, heart pounding but trying not to transmit fear although I was quite frightened.
When that happened to me, it made me think of this old Kingston Trio song from my youth. It’s a California song:
And now of course we have to have the song “Wimoweh,” later called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” I prefer this older Weavers version (1955) to the later pop version by the Tokens:
Here is the original South African group who created the song. You can see how closely the Weavers stuck to this version: