I have a cold
… and I’m out west, visiting family.
I almost always catch a cold when I visit my grandkids. It goes with the territory. But it’s worth it.
Ireland riots after the stabbing of children
The most riot police in Irish history were deployed to deal with Thursday’s street violence in Dublin, the country’s justice minister has said.
Helen McEntee praised the police response to a riot which began following a knife attack in the city.
Three children and a school care assistant were stabbed outside a primary school several hours earlier.
Sinn Féin – the largest opposition party – criticised the police response to the riot.
While its leader Mary Lou McDonald backed individual gardaí (police), she called for the commissioner of the force to resign.
Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said about 500 people were involved in the disorder, adding that they had “brought shame” on Ireland and promising new laws within weeks to bring those involved to justice.
Officers arrested 34 people after vehicles were set on fire and shops looted.
A large police presence remains in Dublin’s city centre on Friday night and a number of arrests have been made following sporadic altercations on O’Connell Street.
J6, Irish style?
The police don’t seem to be saying anything official about the perp’s identity. Who was it? People don’t like being “protected” from the truth, whatever it may be.
Ireland’s police chief Drew Harris blamed the rioting on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology”.
Two of the five people injured in the stabbings outside a primary school, Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuir, on Parnell Square are critically ill.
They include a five-year-old girl and a school care assistant who “used her body as a shield” in an attempt to protect children from the attacker.
By the way, for what it’s worth, I read somewhere recently – don’t know where – that Ireland has more Hamas sympathizers than any other part of the UK.
More:
The “extraordinary outbreak of violence” had come after “hateful assumptions” were made based on material circulating online in the wake of the stabbings, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said.
It is understood that included false claims that the attacker was a foreign national.
Sources have indicated to the BBC that the man suspected of carrying out the attack is an Irish citizen who has lived in the country for 20 years.
So why not announce that fact officially? And note the words “Irish citizen” – does that mean a person of Irish ethnicity and typical Irish religious beliefs, who merely flipped his lid? Or does it mean an immigrant who came 20 years ago to Ireland? No way to know right now, so no wonder people fill in the gaps, because the m.o. is reminiscent of jihadis.
This is what I mean about J6:
Police in Ireland are trawling through 6,000 hours of CCTV footage as a major investigation into riots in Dublin’s city centre continues.
The violence in the Irish capital on Thursday – which involved far-right elements and saw Garda cars, buses and trams set alight and shops looted and damaged – flared after a knife attack on three children and their care assistant outside a school in the north inner city.
Justice minister Helen McEntee also told colleagues that officers are trawling 6,000 hours of CCTV footage and vowed that further arrests would follow the 34 already made.
Chauvin stabbed in federal prison by another inmate
This could have easily been predicted:
The Associated Press reports that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, was stabbed by another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Tucson.
In a statement that does not mention Chauvin by name, the Bureau of Prisons says an “incarcerated individual” was assaulted at FCI Tucson around 12:30 p.m. Friday.
It goes on to say that “responding employees initiated life-saving measures for one incarcerated individual” who was “transported by EMS to a local hospital for further treatment and evaluation.”
Recently SCOTUS declined to hear Chauvin’s appeal; apparently it was too hot to handle, or perhaps it was just a case of how difficult it is to reverse something once a verdict is rendered. The Court was mum about why it refused to hear the case, and about whether any of the justices voted differently.
One would think that Chauvin should have been protected while in prison. But apparently he was not. It sounds like the attack was very serious. I haven’t seen anything about Chauvin’s attacker’s identity, nor about what happened to the attacker in terms of punishment, or how he got (or made) a knife. However:
The attack happened at the Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. …
Chauvin’s stabbing is the second high-profile attack on a federal prisoner in the last five months. In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by a fellow inmate at a federal penitentiary in Florida.
It is also the second major incident at the Tucson federal prison in a little over a year. In November 2022, an inmate at the facility’s low-security prison camp pulled out a gun and attempted to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the inmate shouldn’t have had, misfired and no one was hurt.
Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.
Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he’d be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement “largely for his own protection,” Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
Solitary confinement is no joke, either. Not many good options for Chauvin’s incarceration.
If you have followed my many posts about Chauvin and his trial, I strongly believe that the trial was unfair and subject to intense public pressure to convict, and that Chauvin was not guilty of murder. But it was a foregone conclusion that he would be convicted.
Meanwhile, back in the West Bank: lynchings
Some supposed Israeli collaborators have been lynched by the West Bank crowd:
Two alleged collaborators were publicly hung before a cheering crowd with so many cell phones held high you’d think you were at a rock show. The bodies were mutilated then dismembered, just like Hamas did on a massive scale on October 7.
Such a lovely bunch of people. There really does seem to be a special blood lust and love of sadism among this group.
Were these men actually collaborators? Who knows; they might just have been people someone didn’t like for whatever reason, and this was a way of settling scores. It does appear, however, that lately there may have been more people giving the Israelis information – whether because of payments or threats or the desire to be free of the yoke of the terrorist oppressors of the Palestinian people themselves, I don’t know. But the Palestinians have been so trained in hatred and violence that I see no good future for them or for anyone with the misfortune to be in their neighborhood.
The hostages’ return – and some predictions
Hamas has stalled on today’s hostage return – of course – accusing Israel of blah blah blah.But this very recent news is that the return is going ahead. Hamas doesn’t miss an opportunity to wring the last drop of psychological suffering from the entire episode.
As far as yesterday’s exchange goes – this is very strange, IMHO: Hamas has released the following footage of the hostage transfer. What is their goal? Perhaps there’s something for everyone, depending on the point of view of the beholder. Hamas sympathizers can see the guys with the green headbands as oh-so-solicitous and kind, which of course is absurd under the circumstances. Gazans can glory in the frightened looks on the faces of the frail-looking elderly women, and feel all puffed-up with power over Israelis.
And the rest of us can watch in sympathy/empathy with the hostages, looking at their stressed expressions and seeing the usual sea of young Gazan men watching, in this case holding up their cell phones to record the momentous transfer.
And now for some happier family reunion photos.
No men were returned, though.
Quite a few MSM outlets also highlighted the celebratory return of Gazan terrorists, as though there is some sort of moral equivalence. But since a lot of people seem to have lost the ability to tell the difference between hostages taken violently from their homes and criminal terrorist perpetrators released from prison, I guess such videos work to engender more sympathy for Hamas and for terrorists. Like this little darling:
Ahmad Manasra was one of the Palestinian teenagers released by Israel today in exchange for Israeli hostages
Seeing the video of him hugging his mother, many pro-Palestinian people claimed Israel arrests innocent kids
He & his cousin stabbed random 13 y/o and 21 y/o Jews pic.twitter.com/OmRXOJIt2a
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 25, 2023
I haven’t seen any interviews with returned hostages; it’s way too soon. But I make some predictions:
(1) Hamas will draw out the return of the men and the Americans as long as possible. The latter are especially precious to Hamas because the Biden administration will continue to pressure Israel for a ceasefire and a deal until they are released, and even after.
(2) Note that none of the young women raped at the rave have been returned. I wonder whether they are alive. Once they could come back to testify about having been raped, there is reason to suspect they were killed to silence them.
(3) Hostages may keep mostly quiet in public, in order to facilitate the return of the others.
(4) Many of these people have been leftist peaceniks, and they may continue to talk about peace and two-state solutions.
(5) Probably Hamas is releasing the people first who were treated the best, so they will report about decent treatment.
(6) As time goes on, Hamas will want more and more vicious terrorists in exchange. And it will play more games with time and with demands.
(7) But as time goes on, Israeli intelligence may also uncover more about where hostages are held, and successful rescue operations might become possible. That would be very risky though; a failed one would give Hamas even more fodder for bragging.
Open thread 11/25/23
Roundup
(1) The story of this three-year-old hostage is heart-wrenching. But please read it.
(2) The new Argentinian president is quite a guy, with quite a girlfriend. Here’s the story.
(4)
(5) This is incredibly perverse and twisted [emphasis mine]:
More information has emerged about Connor Sturgeon, the gunman who carried out a mass shooting in April at the Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, killing five and injuring eight. There were a multitude of issues that pushed the shooter to carry out the act, but his primary motivation was to promote gun control by killing white victims.
Before this latest news had come out, the brother of one of the victims said this:
[The victim] did nothing to deserve this, he simply went to work one day just like all of us do. The fact that anyone can walk in and buy a semi-automatic weapon, its only purpose being to kill many in seconds, is simply wrong.
The shooter’s parents have said their son was having mental health problems. I can well believe it.
(6) Geert Wilders’ party has had an excellent showing in the Netherlands. And here I thought Europe was supposed to hate Trump and Trumpish notions.
But no one is sure whether Wilders will be able to form a coalition government.
Christmas and Chanukah shopping
Yes, it’s Black Friday. If you order from Amazon, I get a tiny percentage and you don’t pay any more.
Thirteen Israeli hostages released
Here’s a list, along with photos and short bios. The list is heavy on elderly women and lighter than I expected on children. One of the released hostages was Hana Katzir, 76, who had previously been reported by Hamas to have died. Also released were ten Thais and one Filipino, almost certainly all of them workers who got swept up in the terrorists’ giddy embrace of power over the helpless.
You may recall that slightly over 20% of the hostages are Thai workers, so most of them remain in captivity or are deceased. I doubt Hamas cares much if at all about holding them, compared to the value of holding Israelis. Why these ten? I have no idea.
Last night I watched video indicating that experts in psychological trauma are waiting for the hostages, including of course the children. The hostages’ trauma is complex, and includes great deal more than “merely” being held in captivity by Hamas. For many, it includes having seen parents and/or siblings murdered in cold blood in front of them. For many, it will include going back to relatives other than their parents, and/or discovering that many of their friends and acquaintances are now dead.
Hamas and Gazans will, of course, call this a victory for Hamas, and celebrate the release of terrorists from Israeli prisons as heroes.
Last night I also watched this Caroline Glick video in which she and a guest discussed the hostages and the deal for their release. She is very critical of the government’s decision, and one of the things she said several times was that the people of Israel were resolute but the government was weak. But I find that curious, since it appears to me that it is the people who have been focusing on the hostages and pressuring the government for their release – which is understandable, considering the sheer numbers, including many elderly people and vulnerable children. It seems to me that the government was between the proverbial rock and hard place – and that’s just where Hamas wanted them.
I actually had expected the government to agree to an even worse deal than this, given the Shalit precedent. Of course, there’s still time, and a great many hostages who remain.
I am hoping these hostages do well with re-integrating into their families and their lives, and that they become an excellent and invaluable source of actionable information for the Israeli government and military.
Welcome home!
Open thread 11/24/23
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year has been rough in many ways, and the future is uncertain. But there are still many things for us to be thankful for despite all that. I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day and feast – large or small – filled with family and/or friends of your choice.
Did you get up early to cook the turkey? (Me: no.) Stuffing, in or out? (I prefer in.) Jellied cranberries or whole cranberry sauce? (Whole, which I usually make myself. It’s very easy.) Marshmallows in the sweet potatoes or no marshmallows? (No, no, a thousand times no.) What kind of pie? (Pecan and apple, and pumpkin only if it’s a very special recipe.)