I don’t need to know what Tablet is


It’s some online magazine, but I don’t need to ever read it. They just came up with something they call The Sinai Awards, given to the 36 people who have made the world freer for the rest of us, and the list of award recipients will make you gag a little bit.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali • Masih Alinejad • Marc Andreessen • Julian Assange • Olivier Assayas • Nayib Bukele • Ted Cruz • George Deek • John Fetterman • Stephen Friend • Michel Houellebecq • Coleman Hughes • Jon Huntsman • Martin Kulldorff & Jay Bhattacharya • Mark Laita • Bernard-Henri Lévy • Conor McGregor • Douglas Murray • Elon Musk • Anonymous UPenn Student • J.K. Rowling • Christopher Rufo • Salman Rushdie • Natan Sharansky • Michael Solomonov • Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik • Thomas Sowell • Amar’e Stoudemire • Nadine Strossen • Quentin Tarantino • Ritchie Torres • Tu Youyou • Michael Walzer • Bari Weiss • Ruth Wisse

I don’t know half of them, but given the company they keep, I’d rather not know more.

Comments

  1. Akira MacKenzie says

    Sorry, my fat fingers hit “Post” instead of “Preview.” Let me try that again:

    Salman Rushdie

    Did he become a right-wing chud as well? Or are they only adding him because he got attacked by a Muslim zealot?

  2. UnknownEric the Apostate says

    Quentin Tarantino

    I guess they needed someone familiar with the agony of de feet.

    /rim shot

  3. robro says

    That seems like quite a hodgepodge of folks. I would wonder what their criteria was, but not enough to go dig it up. Something else to forget about almost immediately.

  4. rabbitbrush says

    Nadine Strossen?? She was president of the national ACLU for years, and a well-known feminist. Wonder what she thinks about this award and the august group of co-awardees. Weird.

  5. Akira MacKenzie says

    Right-wingers: “J.K. Rowling ‘s books teach Satanism and childhood rebellion…”

    Rowling: “I hate transsexuals.”

    Right-wingers: “As I said, a hero of free speech and defender of Western civilization!”

  6. numerobis says

    Fetterman is senator from PA, after being mayor of a heavily disadvantaged town that’s basically a neighbourhood of Pittsburgh.

    He’s a staunch leftist, beat Dr Oz in the elections despite literally having a stroke during the campaign, and is also all in favour of genocide in Gaza. I bet the last part is how he got on this list.

  7. cartomancer says

    Behold! I too can come up with a list of names off the top of my head of 36 people I think are good and deserve credit:

    Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, David Graeber, Richard Wolff, Naomi Klein, Andrew Feinstein, Peter Tatchell, Cornell West, Michael E. Mann, Terry Pratchett, Chelsea Manning, Vijay Prashad, Tariq Ali,
    Jeremy Corbyn, Judith Butler, Owen Jones, Thomas Piketty, Caroline Lucas, Chris Hedges, George Monbiot, Amy Goodman, Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Mate, Ken Loach, Mick Lynch, Tom Hartmann, Alexei Navalny, Arundhati Roy, Roger Hallam, Greta Thunberg, Ilhan Omar, Lula da Silva, Alan Moore, Harry Belafonte, Bernie Sanders, Ai Weiwei

    Clearly this exercise is valuable and in some way productive! Also my lot would be much better company at dinner, so I win.

  8. numerobis says

    Reading through the list, basically it’s just people who are pro-genocide. That includes Rushdie and McGregor.

    The only one I can’t figure out how she gets on this list is Tu Youyou.

  9. andywuk says

    People approved of from the point of view of someone from a weirdly specific ethno-religious-nationalist-political background.

    As such it says far, far more about the person(s) assembling the list than any of the people on it.

  10. Athaic says

    A (very) few good names, people I may feel like meeting. Some others, less so.

    “Julian Assange” – well, right at the start, that spoiled the list a bit. It did not stop there.
    Let’s not mention the mustelid in the middle of the pack.
    “Martin Kulldorff & Jay Bhattacharya” – covid minimizers, anti-lockdown in the largest meaning, “vaccins are useless or deadly” adjacent or proponents…
    “Michel Houellebecq” – French author, filmmaker. Some success. Occasionally harsh critic of Islam. Lost a friend during the Bataclan, had friends at Charlie-Hebdo. As he got older, didn’t got better. Now anti-woke. Whatever that means. Colleague and friend of the next:
    “Bernard-Henri Lévy” or BHL – French has-been. Got an overblown reputation as a thinker, philosopher, journalist. A sure way to know if a social movement is… exaggerating, is to find him among the supporters. Strongly suspected to have used ghost writers for his highly acclaimed books. Regularly publishes some essay or report from a country at war and some actual experts quickly point out some… inaccuracies. Out of shallowness rather than malice.

  11. JM says

    Their comments on Elon Musk pin his importance on his buying Twitter as an expression of free speech. Failing to recognize either that his buying it was an accident or that it is less free now then it was previously.

    The list as a whole is obviously right wing and religious with a Jewish bent.

  12. Walter Solomon says

    How did any of these people make the world “freer” for anyone? Are any of them activists who fought for freedom? Perhaps Assange and Strossen could be considered activist-adjacent but it’s not clear how the world is any more free because of their work.

  13. Hemidactylus says

    Don’t know many of them. The ones who stand out are Masih Alinejad and Salman Rushdie for wondering what negative stuff they’ve done to get on this list alongside the ones I know are crap like Douglas Murray, Elon Musk, and Christopher Rufo. Alinejad and Rushdie are both in the cross hairs of the Iranian authorities I think.

    What did Anonymous UPenn Student do?

    And Conor McGregor is some MMA guy. Don’t know much else about him.

  14. John Morales says

    Hemidactylus,

    The ones who stand out are Masih Alinejad and Salman Rushdie for wondering what negative stuff they’ve done to get on this list

    Wondering without clicking, eh?
    Here, for you, I’ll do one:

    “In August of 2022, Salman Rushdie was rushed on stage by an assailant and stabbed numerous times. He lost an eye, but not his courage or, hallelujah, his commitment to the humanistic tradition that has always urged mankind to appeal to the better angels of its nature.

    Rushdie’s memoir of the attack and its aftermath, Knife, does more than merely tell the story in a deeply moving way; it reclaims literature’s power to shape and elevate our lives, the exact same power his feverish would-be assassin sought to deny him. That alone would have been enough—dayenu. But Rushdie also remains, nearly alone among our faddish literati, staunchly committed to standing up for what matters, from supporting Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of the murderous attack on that publication to speaking out clearly against Hamas’ murderous marauders.

    Having a facility with words may make one a good writer, but truly understanding why books matter—and the price we must pay for great art to thrive in inhospitable political climates—is what makes Rushdie a writer for the ages.

  15. John Morales says

    The logic is impeccable, after all: if bad people are on that list, then all the people on that list are bad people.

    (oh, wait)

  16. says

    No, John, that’s not the logic we’re using here and you know it. The logic we’re using here is: “There’s quite a few truly awful people on that list; and that casts serious doubts both on everyone else on the same list, and on the criteria used to determine who gets on the list.”

  17. Acacia Eocene says

    Rowling is certainly a choice for the list. She’s not a politician, pundit, journalist, activist or intellectual – she’s a childrens’ author whose last significant work was nearly two decades ago. The only things of note she’s done in that time are become extremely rich and hate trans people on public media, and yet they consider that to be “making the world freer”. I guess their definition of freedom doesn’t include freedom to control one’s own body.

    It’s also amusing that she gets the credit for speaking out, despite the fact that she’s a comparative latecomer to the UK organised transphobia movement. Apparently all those other people who were saying the exact same things years prior to her don’t count because they’re not as rich as her.

  18. John Morales says

    RB:

    No, John, that’s not the logic we’re using here and you know it. The logic we’re using here is: “There’s quite a few truly awful people on that list; and that casts serious doubts both on everyone else on the same list, and on the criteria used to determine who gets on the list.”

    :)

    Sure, let’s go with that “logic”. Surely it’s nothing like what I wrote.
    Reasonable guilt by association via a list someone concocted on people they commend.

    I grant that there’s a form of inference called ‘abduction’ in which, absent any other information and the likelihood of acquiring more information (like, you know, clicking on the link provided) that would be the preferred inference.
    So, I suppose that if one is lazy or ignorant or incompetent, that makes sense, sorta.

    It makes sense to you.

    (Or, one could avoid committing to some such judgement absent any need for it, given the sole discriminant is that the list contains some bad people, but might just be weird)

  19. imback says

    #12 cartomancer, excellent list! A few may be dead now (e.g., Belafonte, Navalny, and Pratchett), alas.

  20. raven says

    I recognize maybe half the people on that list.
    Some of them are monsters. No other way to describe them.

    Martin Kulldorf is both a monster and a medical quack.

    IN MARCH 2021, a Twitter user asked Martin Kulldorff if everyone needed to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Kulldorff, then a professor at Harvard Medical School, had spent 20 years researching infectious diseases and contributing to the development of the country’s vaccine safety surveillance system.

    “No,” he responded. The vaccines were important for some high-risk people, he wrote, but “those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

    This is stupid and has long ago been proven to just be flat out wrong.

    Kulldorf BTW, is not an MD, he has a BS in Biostatistics.

    Wikipedia: In March 2024, Kulldorff announced that Harvard had dismissed him.”
    Took them long enough. The pandemic is all but over with now.

    Wikipedia:

    During the pandemic Kulldorff has opposed COVID-19 disease control measures.[13] The measures opposed include lockdowns, contact tracing,[36] vaccine mandates, and mask mandates.[7][37][12] He has spoken out against vaccine passports, stating they disproportionately harm the working class.[38] Kulldorff and Bhattacharya opposed broad vaccine mandates, stating that the mortality risk is “a thousand fold higher” in older people than in younger people.[39][7][37] He has argued against COVID vaccinations for children, saying that the risks outweigh the benefits.[9]

    Kulldorf doesn’t believe we should fight disease outbreaks and pandemics.

    Even during the Dark Ages, the people did what they could with some success. They realized that infectious diseases were spread from one person to another and invented the procedure and named it quarantine in the 1300s.
    These days we still use it and also a similar term, social distancing.

  21. StevoR says

    @ numerobis – 10th June 2024 at 5:29 pm :

    Reading through the list, basically it’s just people who are pro-genocide. That includes Rushdie and McGregor.

    Is Salman Rushie really pro-genocide?

    The only one I can’t figure out how she gets on this list is Tu Youyou.

    Co-incidentally, her name came up last night in a facebook meme noting how confusing singing Happy Birthday. to her would be. No, I can’t really figure out why she’s there either – will need to check and see. But what what I’ve seen – admittedly not that much :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou

    She seems like a good person and chemist who worked on anti-maleria drugs who saved a lot of lives.

    Julian Assange for all his flaws did reveal war crimes and whilst a mixed bag is popular ina lot of left wing circles. He seems more an anti-establishment figure.

    Ted fucking Cruz?! WTF! Dunno how he has “..made the world freer for the rest of us,” Quite the reverse so that makes no sense to me.

    Then I note they have Fetterman (Democratic party arguably or often classified as left wing at least in Amercian terms albeit what #11 numerobis wrote) and also Jon Huntsman. If that’s who I think it is – the less extreme “moderate” (perceived as such by many anyhow) former Presidential candidate for the Repug nominee I wonder where this is an attempt to cover bases for bias and include people on “all” sorts of positions on the political spectrum type deal? Fetterman – left, Huntsman -centre, Cruz – reichwing. Except, of course, Cruz is way off at the reichwing fringe, Huntsman is also a Repug or was unless that’s changed and Fetterman is not all that much of a “lefty” so they fail at that.

    Anonymous UPenn Student – huh? That sounds odd and no idea what that’s referring to. Indeed, I’ll be honest and admit that alot of those names are ones’ I really don’t know or only know in the vaguest terms.

  22. StevoR says

    (Now goes and checks the link in the OP, which, yeah, probly shoulda done first.)

    Yes, it is that Jon Huntsman. Oh and from the link ..

    In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Huntsman, a University of Pennsylvania alumnus and former university trustee whose family foundation has donated tens of millions to the school, sent a scorcher of a letter to university President Liz Magill. … (snip).. The Huntsman family had given its last dollar to Penn, Huntsman informed her. .. (snip) … Magill isn’t president of Penn anymore: Her resignation on Dec. 11 was one of the few convincing pieces of evidence post-10/7 that things really can change for the better. It wouldn’t have happened without Jon Huntsman.

    Source : Tablet, The Sinai Awards,

  23. raven says

    Jay Bhattacharya is another monster, quack, and plague rat.
    He was the one who claimed if we do nothing and let the Covid-19 virus run wild, that we would end up quickly with herd immunity.
    Everyone who could use Google figured out that wouldn’t work in 15 minutes.

    It was just wrong then and wrong now.
    Here it is, June 2024, 4 years later, and how is that herd immunity coming along?
    It isn’t.
    We still have Covid-19 virus circulating, people are still getting sick, and tens of thousands of Americans are still dying from the virus.
    As long as the virus produces antigen escape mutants, it is going to be endemic.

    Wikipedia:

    With Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, he was a co-author in 2020 of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions on lower-risk groups to develop herd immunity through widespread infection, while promoting the fringe notion that vulnerable people could be simultaneously protected from the virus.[8][9][10] The declaration was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom the director-general of the World Health Organization.[11] Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.[11]

  24. StevoR says

    So Huntsman got the award for writing a letter saying the Penn University won’t get any more donations and working to see the President fired.

    Tu Youyou’s seems pretty medically and scientuifically legit and reasonable to award tho’

    Each year malaria afflicts hundreds of millions of people, mostly in poor countries, and kills nearly 3 million. But countless numbers have been saved from the disease in recent decades, thanks to the contribution to medical science of a Chinese scientist, Tu Youyou. With its origins during the Vietnam War and Mao’s violent Cultural Revolution, her painstaking study of traditional Chinese medicine led to the development of artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin to treat malaria and a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2015.

    Long known as the “Three-Without Scientist”—without a postgraduate degree, without foreign study, and without membership in a prestigious scientific academy—Tu Youyou, now 93, is one of the Tzadikim Nistarim (one of 38 special people without whom the world would end and we should thank god for -ed) of this generation, without a doubt. With America in the throes of its own cultural revolution, Tu shows the power of being an outsider.

    Source : Tablet, The Sinai Awards.

    That anonymous UPenn student :

    One of the greatest American Jews of the modern era, a hero of our people, is a young man whose name we still don’t know but whose face, immortalized in a viral video, will be remembered as a symbol of Jewish strength through mitzvot. As kaffiyeh-clad protesters at UPenn marched through campus a week after Oct. 7, this young man, though visibly shaken, stood outside with a Chabad rabbi to put on tefillin and recite the words of the Hebrew prayers while the marchers passed behind them chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” Each of us can be like this young man. And now we have him to help light the way.

    Source : Ibid.

    Julian Assange has been targeted by the U.S. government for the past 15 years for doing the most basic thing that journalists are tasked with doing in a democratic society, a responsibility which the press has now by and large completely abandoned—which is to make the actions of our government public, and to let the public judge whether or not they are right. The fact that in doing so he earned the hatred of U.S. security establishment goons, establishment journalists, right wingers in Congress, and fans of Hillary Clinton alike is further proof that he was doing his job.

    It horrifies us that, as a consequence of doing his job, Assange has been deprived of his liberty for over a decade on flimsy pretexts that clearly violate prior legal norms. Even more horrifying is the knowledge that the type of official lawfare inflicted on Assange is now common treatment for anyone, from “insurrectionists” and “COVID-deniers” to FBI whistleblowers and Donald Trump, who oversteps the bounds of what the country’s hypersensitive elite is willing to tolerate. Standing up to tyranny is the bedrock on which our republic was founded. If we don’t want to lose it, we should start by demanding freedom for Julian Assange.

    Source : Ibid.

    Oh fer fucks sake. Yeah..

    Anyone want more or more than enough? (Always the link in the OP.. ) Yeah, I was curious and yeah, very far right religious agenda and bias here. Tu Youyou seemingly the exception at least so far. Curiosity rapidly turning to disgust here.

    At least its finally raining outside here. Drought breaking albiet much more rain still badly needed.

  25. John Morales says

    In fact, what’s your problem with the entry you quoted?

    How is it not truthful?

  26. beholder says

    They have Assange in the list, that’s a promising start (Free Assange!). Strossen, too, has said a lot of things about free speech I agree with. I don’t necessarily agree with Rushdie on everything, but I respect his courage to continue to be an intellectual and make public appearances when lots of people want to murder him. There are probably a few other people in there who deserve credit who I am unaware of.

    The list overall sounds like “36 People Who Have Made The Libs Cry”, though.

    @12 cartomancer

    That would be an interesting dinner party, I suppose. Especially after Navalny calls all the Muslims “cockroaches” and advocates for shooting them.

    I too can come up with a list of names

    You’re right. It says less about the people on the list and more about the person — or possibly the machine — who came up with it.

  27. chrislawson says

    @34– The whole ‘herd immunity’ argument was made by people who have zero understanding of the concept.

    Very few infections can ever reach true herd immunity by natural spread through a population. For most infections, we will never achieve herd immunity just by letting it rip through a community, which is why most of the awful diseases of the past, smallpox, diphtheria, pertussis, etc., were rampant throughout human history…until mass vaccination programs started.

    Even when natural herd immunity is possible, such as for influenzas, the pathogen often mutates long before it is eradicated and suddenly herd immunity is lost. Even for relatively evolutionarily stable viruses, natural herd immunity requires a large proportion of the population (>90% for measles) to suffer the wild infection with all the complications that entails: deaths, brain injury, permanent lung injury, scarring, reactivated shingles etc., etc. where the serious complication rate from vaccination is usually 100x or more less frequent.

    Finally, almost all those who argued for natural herd immunity were doing so long before we had enough data to calculate whether it would even apply to COVID-19. On current evidence, a 71% vaccination rate is required in an urban setting to achieve herd immunity. That number will obviously change with the evolution of new COVID strains and development of new vaccines. Meanwhile there is zero evidence for COVID-19 herd immunity developing naturally. When comparing across countries, ‘A 10-percentage-point increase in booster vaccination rates was associated with a 33.1% decrease in COVID-19 mortality (95%CI, 16.0–50.2%).’ In that study, some of the countries had vaccination rates below 1% of the population, so if natural herd immunity was achievable, we should have seen it in sub-Saharan Africa. And even if natural herd immunity is possible in some circumstances, it will clearly entail a much worse mortality than vaccinating.

  28. Alan G. Humphrey says

    John Morales @ 37 & 38
    To understand the issue that SteveR had with the quote in his #35 just reread the last paragraph of it. It certainly made my gorge rise when I got to the part beginning with “official lawfare”. I think it wasn’t Assange that set SteveR off, it was the context of that sentence and those other supposed victims.

  29. John Morales says

    Alan, there’s a difference between Assange (the person) and the report about Assange (the narrative).

    Conflating the two is a mistake.

  30. cartomancer says

    Beholder, #39

    I was not aware that Navalny has expressed islamophobic views. This obviously reduces him in my estimation, but I still think he did very brave and valuable work in standing up to Putin and for democracy in Russian politics. I’m sure others can find suitable replacements.

  31. StevoR says

    @42. Alan G. Humphrey & #37.John Morales : Alan G. Humphrey is right. The bit that I found disgusting was this part :

    Even more horrifying is the knowledge that the type of official lawfare inflicted on Assange is now common treatment for anyone, from “insurrectionists” and “COVID-deniers” to FBI whistleblowers and Donald Trump, who oversteps the bounds of what the country’s hypersensitive elite is willing to tolerate.

    IOW Jan 6th denial -a rather remarkable gaslighting phenomenon given we all saw it a few years ago.. Ok , nearly 5 years ago (Yikes, already!) Plus the obvs referenc e toanti-vaxxers, Trump etc.. a s victims rather than the science0-denying toxic perpetrator sthat they are.

    @37. John Morales : StevoR, what’s your beef with Julian Assange? … (snip)..
    BTW, he’s an Australian. Fuck-all help he’s gotten from the government, but, of course, mustn’t piss the USA off too much.
    (A sacrifice the government is willing to take, nevermind the message that sends to other Australians)”

    Yes, I;m well aware of who Assange is and that he ‘s Aussie and I full agree he’s suffered more than enough for his crimes specifically rape and, well, exposing the truth about warcrimes in Iraq.. I think he should be freed.

    I do have a beef with him helping Trump over HRC but that’s well in the past and whilst it reflects poorly onhis judgement, as noted he’s well and truly suffered far more than he deserved for that. Credit where it s due to him for his journalism and revealing of war crimes & blame to him where due too.

  32. StevoR says

    Sigh. Typos, sorry. ^”Him” = Assange ^

    Yes, I’m well aware of who Assange is and that he‘s Aussie and I full agree he’s suffered more than enough for his crimes specifically rape and, well, exposing the truth about war crimes in Iraq..

    To be clear whilst I think Assange was guilty of rape / sexual assault :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_assault_allegations )

    I do NOT think exposing war crimes should be considered a crime – although that’s what Assange & Wikileaks did and is guilty of doing in some people’s eyes. So he did that but its NOT a crime or should not be considered so.

    Leaking state* secrets and betraying the USA – which Assange is NOT a native or citizen of and thus NOT a traitor to – is what Wikileaks / Assange did. Possibly the leaking of secrets if it did jepoardise lives deserves punishment but what Assange has suffered so far – over 5 years in official jail and nearly a decade unofficially self-detained in the Ecuadorian emabassy. Allof which has damaged his physical and mental helathjand basically already wrecked his life and if he goes to face a partisan kangaroo court over in the states very much seems to put hislife in danger. Assnage has done some admirable things, some criminal things and he’s paid for his crimes many times over already inmy view and does NOt deserve further suffering or legal penalties.

    . * States plural, multiple and many over the time when Wikileaks was a force in exposing crimes and metaphorical national and international “”dirty laundry.” Including, if memory serves, some of Australia’s misdeeds too – but then many of those secrets probly should’ve come out & not been hidden anyhow.

  33. Hemidactylus says

    John Morales @22
    Thank you for expounding on what for me was a very subtle point that did not require clicking on a very questionable link. It’s a variation on an old Sesame Street song: “A few of these are not like the others!”

    Masih Alinejad and Salman Rushdie surely have shown far more courage than Ted Cruz given his bootlicking of Trump, despite the latter insulting his wife, and escaping to Cancun when his state was suffering power grid issues due to a winter storm.

  34. Silentbob says

    @ 44 Morales

    there’s a difference between Assange (the person) and the report about Assange (the narrative)

    I take it you’re claiming to have knowledge of the former.
    <snicker>

  35. says

    chrislawson @40: The whole ‘herd immunity’ argument was made by people who have zero understanding of the concept.

    Actually, many if not most of the people making that argument didn’t (and still don’t) really give a shit about anyone’s lives or welfare. It wasn’t a serious health-policy recommendation; it was just a lot of irrationally-selfish, uncaring Retrumplitarians finding yet another excuse to leave other people to die rather than pay more taxes or suffer any inconvenience for any larger good. Case in point: Jared Kooshner flat-out saying we should let COVID run rampant because it would hit urban populations hardest and thus kill more Democrats than Republicans.

  36. says

    Ted Cruz did do something good for humanity, he damaged his political career sufficiently that he’ll never become President.

    Navalny ideas were always a mixed bag. For example he used to be very hard line against Georgia, including advocating expelling them from Russia during the 2008 war, but later softened his views.

    Conor McGregor sure is an odd choice. It’s probably celebrity privilege that’s kept him out of jail for his multiple run ins with the law. He said he was thinking about running for the office of President of Ireland, and his comments sounded suspiciously like he’s into fiscal conservative nonsense. But not to worry, apparently only 8 percent of Irish voters say they’d vote for him if he ran.

  37. flange says

    A lot of strange bedfellows on that list.
    According to Wikipedia, “Tablet is a conservative-leaning online magazine focused on Jewish news and culture.”
    Further proof that “conservative” means what people want it to mean. To me, it means little, to nothing good.

  38. John Morales says

    @ 44 Morales

    there’s a difference between Assange (the person) and the report about Assange (the narrative)

    I take it you’re claiming to have knowledge of the former.
    <snicker>

    How odd.

    After all, what I wrote was about distinguishing between the person and the narrative some third parties provide about that person and their circumstances, not about personal knowledge of the person.

    So, no. That claim exists purely in your imagination.

    My actual claim is that there’s a difference between Assange (the person) and the report about Assange (the narrative).

    (Do you dispute the actual claim?)

  39. Pierce R. Butler says

    I saw Nadine Strossen “debate” Daryl Gates (then the immediate past Los Angeles Police chief) shortly after riots about the Rodney King verdict tore across LA (which Gates could have mostly prevented).

    She was awful: unprepared, scattered, meek, allowing Gates to mop the floor with her by just rambling to run out the clock. Fittingly, she also allowed the hosting organization to pay her much less for her appearance than they paid Gates.

    Our esteemed host has already opined on the reprehensible M. Houellebecq.

    StevoR @ # 46: I do have a beef with him helping Trump over HRC but that’s well in the past …

    No: the damage persists and continues to worsen to this day, and for years to come. Assange started out with a good idea, but ruined it with his own ego (and consequent susceptibility to Putin’s manipulation). I don’t want him extradited to the US, but would happily go just about anywhere else in the world to piss on him.

  40. Pierce R. Butler says

    Oops @ my # 55: in that link, it’s a commenter dissing Houellebecq, not Prof Myers.