The drones launched from Iran were seen flying low as they passed over Iraq, with social media awash with clips of the weapons making a loud buzzing noise.
The unmanned aerial vehicles are believed to be Shaheds – “Witness” in Farsi.
The deadly long-range drone has become known as the “AK-47” of Tehran: cheap, mass produced and ready to be exported worldwide to conflict zones where the regime has a vested interest.
Their lawnmower-like whirr is already very familiar for Ukrainians who are constantly under attack from Iranian-made drones launched by Russia.
There, the sound of a Shahed grumbling through the skies signals an imminent explosion and, frequently, civilian casualties. Fitted with warheads of up to 50kg and with a range of up to 2,000 kilometres, the Russians have mainly been relying on Shaheds to attack energy grids and grain storehouses.
The Shahed has already been used many times by Iranian proxies in the Middle East, notably by Houthi militia groups who relied on it against the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, and more recently in a string of attacks on Western commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Syrian regime’s drone fleet is also reported to include Shaheds.
A Shahed-136 drone was, according to US officials, used in the notorious July 2021 drone attack by Iran on the Mercer Street vessel in the Red Sea, which killed a Romanian sailor and a British security guard.
President Joe Biden told reporters Friday afternoon he expects an Iranian strike on Israel to occur “sooner than later” amid urgent concerns that Iran was about to retaliate for the bombing of its consulate in Damascus, Syria, earlier this month.
Asked for his message to Iran in the tense moment, Biden was blunt, saying simply, “Don’t.”
“Would the U.S. respond?” ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked repeatedly as the president walked away after the end of an unrelated event. He paused, thought for a moment and then returned to the lectern.
“We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said.
Biden has obviously taken the motto of Teddy Roosevelt to heart: Walk softly, and carry a big trunalimunumaprzure. (And some big pallets of cash as well.)
Or as Robin Williams once joked about British bobbies, “Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!”
Voyager’s 1970s vintage computers are still working, though almost all of its instruments have been turned off. It’s remarkable that scientists can still contact it, let alone reprogram it to compensate for memory damage caused by the impact of harmful cosmic rays. Its power source will work for several years but engineers worry most about its computers’ health. It recently struggled but recovered. One day it will not answer back.
In 50,000 years, less than the blink of a cosmic eye, our sun will no longer be the brightest star in its sky, having been replaced by Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.
In Voyager’s life the first footprints on the moon are as fleeting as are the Rings of Saturn. Long after the pyramids have crumbled into sand and the Earth has become uninhabitable, it will be just starting its odyssey.
An odyssey implies a return home. What could possibly go wrong for Voyager on the way back?
A businessman who owns 140 Burger King franchises in California will slash workers’ hours and expedite the rollout of self-service kiosks to cut down on labor costs in response to the state’s new $20 minimum wage.
Harshraj Ghai, who owns 180 fast-food restaurants throughout the Golden State, including Burger King, Taco Bell and Popeyes, told Business Insider last week: “We can’t move fast enough on this [rollout].”
“We have kiosks in probably about 25% of our restaurants today,” he said. “However, the other 75% are going to have kiosks in the next probably 30 to 60 days.”
“We are installing kiosks in every single restaurant,” Ghai said.
Several fast food chains have hiked menu prices since the new law increasing pay for fast-food workers went into effect April 1.
Ghai, who raised menu prices between 8% and 10% in the last year, said he plans to cut down on worker hours, eliminate overtime, pause plans to expand his restaurant empire and add more digital kiosks.
Skynet and the board of the Tyrell Corporation smile at the “unexpectedly” incredible opportunities in automation that Gavin Newsom is intent on providing.
Just like that, a trickle becomes a flood. After years of gender-critical voices being dismissed or ignored by mainstream media, they can be dismissed and ignored no longer.
The landmark Cass Review into gender-identity services in England, published today, has laid bare the scandal of the NHS’s treatment of ‘gender confused’ kids. There was never any evidence for subjecting troubled, often gay, often autistic, youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments. But clinicians did it anyway, in thrall as they were to gender ideology.
The review is on the front page of the newspapers today. The BBC is platforming trans-sceptical experts – and not just so they can be hissed at live on air. Keir Starmer’s ever-opportunistic Labour Party is saying it agrees with everything in the report.
Of course it’s far too early to be declaring victory, and far too late for many of the victims caught up in this to celebrate, but something monumental happened today. The unsayable has become sayable, on gender at least.
The review, produced by top paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass over four years, is a stunning piece of work: a 400-page triumph of reason over unreason. It doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know, but it tells us in painstaking detail and with undeniable, data-driven authority.
In the replies, Fleischer is getting dragged by such hacks as Molly Jong-Fast and Norm Ornstein — but they don’t dare say he’s wrong, because everyone knows he’s not.
We’ve seen a lot of wild actions from the pro-Hamas crew.
But even by their standards, the actions employed by a woman at a Bakersfield, California, city council meeting were particularly unhinged. Riddhi Patel (who some media said identified as “non-binary”) started off slow, saying she was there to push for a ceasefire resolution.
* * * * * * * *
Patel went on to talk about people being evicted and said they were “votes.” She then talked about some people in the “global south” believing in “violent revolution against their oppressors, and I hope one day someone brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherf**kers.”
She continued, chastising the council for the increased security at meetings, including metal detectors and an increased police presence because of concerns about safety. Patel seemed to think that was targeting the pro-Hamas folks. And if what she said already wasn’t bad enough, that’s when she got even more direct. She said the council wanted to criminalize “resisting.” She closed with, “You guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors? We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”
* * * * * * * *
Patel found out that, at least in this case, she wasn’t just going to get off like so many leftist activists before her.
Officers booked Patel on eight counts of intent to terrorize and eight counts of threatening state officials for a total of 16 felony charges. They remain in police custody on $2 million bond.
Let’s face it – in 2024, you better have some serious NFL privilege before you start threatening violence:
WTF: CNN Contributor suggests black people identified with OJ because he k*lled white people.
“[OJ] represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been k*lled.”
JK Rowling is furious. And who can blame her? The recently published Cass Review has proven what she has been saying – and demonised for – for years. On Wednesday, the author and philanthropist posted on X to suggest that she wouldn’t forgive the actors-cum-activists she made famous for turning on her.
Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe (who played Harry in the blockbuster films) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) have both previously condemned the franchise’s creator for daring to point out the dangers of gender ideology. Now, in light of Dr Hilary Cass’s damning report, Rowling has said: ‘Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces.’
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Watson or Radcliffe will be apologising to anyone. The pair have been committed to pushing gender ideology ever since they publicly broke with Rowling in 2020, issuing robotic soundbites in support of trans rights.
Last year, Glenn wrote on his Substack that Leftist politics “is something that the manipulative old sell to the gullible young. Hence leftists’ nonstop efforts to produce more gullible young people…Modern society has extended adolescence well into the 20s for many people and, I want to stress, that’s not by accident. Separation of young people from the larger society helps create a captive cadre of voters, protesters, campaign workers, etc. There are, of course, other forces promoting this separation besides left-politics (companies like to market to young people for the same reasons of hive-mindedness and gullibility) but it’s worth keeping in mind what’s going on here, and why.”
Much of that applies to the trans movement as well, which is yet another subset of leftist identity politics.
Rowling, in having a significant say over the casting of the first Harry Potter film, which gave numerous young actors either a start, or a tremendous boost in their careers. Perhaps they should have heeded her thoughts on other issues as well.
Given that, if the point of polling Latino voters is to gauge their views on people coming illegally to the U.S. from Latin countries, that’s not the way things are today. These days, illegal crossers are entering the U.S. from everywhere. Perhaps that is contributing to the changing views of Latino Americans toward border security.
In any event, Latino Americans are an important voting bloc, and in the 2024 presidential election, it appears they are moving more toward Trump than Biden.
What are you doing that an AI couldn’t do? Type “10 Ways Calvin and Hobbes Has Aged Poorly” into an AI text generator and it will spit out an article similar to yours in seconds…
When you write such a lazy and opportunistic piece, you’re also conditioning readers to expect that sort of prose. You’re conditioning them to expect the kind of regurgitated pablum that a text generator could produce on demand. You’re contributing to your own redundancy, Lukas, and to the redundancy of what we love to do… If you want an image of a future we should try to avoid, imagine a text generator producing mirthless moralistic listicles — forever.
Not to mention, getting into territory where the Babylon Bee has probably gone before:
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Asking AI Life’s Big Questions. How much milk should I buy? What should I do with my gun? Can I do cocaine with God?
You They’re telling me I’m going to meet God now! I am so excited!
ChatGPT
As an AI language model, I’m not equipped to offer any specific information about the afterlife or whether there is a god. The nature of the afterlife, if it exists, is a topic of much debate and speculation among different cultures and belief systems. Some believe in an afterlife as a continuation of the individual’s consciousness or soul, while others believe in a more abstract concept of spiritual energy or reincarnation. Ultimately, it is up to your own beliefs and interpretations.
You God is shorter than I imagined.
ChatGPT
It’s important to remember that our preconceived notions of what God looks like are often shaped by cultural and religious influences. In reality, God may not have a physical form at all. The idea of God is often represented as an omnipotent, omniscient being beyond human understanding. So, if you’re experiencing a meeting with God in your afterlife, it’s possible that it’s in a form that you may not expect.
You He’s offering me cocaine. Is that legal in the afterlife?
ChatGPT
As an AI language model, I cannot give legal advice on the afterlife. However, in many cultures and belief systems, drug use is not considered acceptable behavior, even in the afterlife. Additionally, it’s important to consider the potential consequences of drug use, even in the afterlife, as it may have negative effects on your spiritual journey or experience. Ultimately, the decision is up to you.
You So you’re saying it’s okay to do lines with God?
ChatGPT
As an AI language model, I don’t have personal beliefs or opinions, but it’s important to remember that drug use can have negative consequences, even in the afterlife. Additionally, it’s not clear what the rules and norms of the afterlife are, as it is a subject of much speculation and debate. Ultimately, it’s up to you to make your own choices and evaluate the potential consequences.
Consider one bit of good news here — AI isn’t implying that it’s God.
The US Air Force has 140 of its biggest warplanes – its heavy bombers – in active service: 76 Boeing B-52Hs, 44 Boeing B-1Bs and 20 B-2 stealth bombers built by Northrop Grumman.
But the Air Force has funding for 141 bombers. Its inventory dropped to 140 in 2022, when a B-1 suffered an engine fire at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas – and burned to the ground. The B-1 is sometimes known as “Bone” (from B-one).
Any other air force might content itself with 140 bombers and redistribute the lost bomber’s operating budget. But the US Air Force is counting on the B-1 to play a lead role in a possible air war over the Taiwan Strait. It’s such a high priority that the service is spending millions of dollars recovering, from long-term storage, a surplus B-1 nicknamed “Lancelot” that’s been sitting in desert storage, aka “the Boneyard”, for three years.
This is an operation the Air Force has done just three times in recent decades. Besides the B-1, the service returned to flying status two stored B-52s – one in 2020 and another in 2015 – in order to replace bombers that it lost to accidents.
Recovering from storage a machine as complex as a bomber is hard, expensive and time-consuming work. It can take hundreds of people working thousands of hours over a span of years and at a cost of millions of dollars.
That the Air Force is willing to make the investment speaks to the importance of the big, lumbering warplanes as the service positions itself to, among other contingencies, defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion fleet.
The actress has been married to TV writer and director Brad Falchuk since 2018. But before that, she dated a who’s who of Hollywood leading men. Over the years, Paltrow has been linked to Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Luke Wilson. She was also married to Coldplay singer Chris Martin for 13 years.
But Paltrow is making it clear that none of these relationships overlapped.
During an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Q&A on her Instagram Story last week, the 51-year-old was asked, “Have you ever considered a poly relationship?”
“No thanks!” Paltrow responded. “Not for me but have no judgment. I’m a one man kinda gal.”
Think of polyamory as an open relationship — one where all parties involved mutually agree to have multiple sexual or romantic partners.
As a happily married woman, I’m with Gwyneth on this one. It’s a firm hell no from me. But apparently, it’s just because we’re old.
OK, I’m not really old — I’m in my 30s. But dating looks a whole lot different now than it did even 10 or 15 years ago.
As Glenn wrote in January, linking to an article headlined “Against Polyamory,” “I’ve been around this stuff since I was a kid in the sixties. I know a few people who make it work. The vast majority crash and burn.”
“Defectors from the Soviet Union used to talk about the ‘French paradox’, meaning that if you surprised a Frenchman with a mistress, telling him, ‘We’ve caught you red-handed with a 22-year-old called Tatyana, work for us or we’ll tell your wife’, it didn’t work. That was because he would generally say, ‘Go ahead, show her, she’ll understand’ or ‘She already knows’.”
Heh, indeed. (But however you’d spell that in French.)
“The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves, and failing retail,” reports the Wall Street Journal of Democrat-run St. Louis, Missouri. “[E]ven the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.’”
Let’s look at the mayoral history of the doom-looping St. Louis, shall we?
Oh, look, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since — not a typo — 1949. For 75 years, the people of St. Louis have voted for More of the Same, so excuse me if I don’t whip out a violin over all this unavoidable doom looping.
“Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “St. Louis is already trapped in one.”
As offices sit empty, shops and restaurants close and abandoned buildings become voids that suck the life out of the streets around them. Locals often find boarded-up buildings depressing and empty sidewalks scary. So even fewer people commute downtown.
This self-reinforcing cycle accelerated in recent years as the pandemic emptied offices. St. Louis’s central business district had the steepest drop in foot traffic of 66 major North American cities between the start of the pandemic and last summer, according to the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. Traffic has improved some in the past 12 months, but at a slower rate than many Midwestern cities.
In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah, that’s a shame.
As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”
How on earth could we have seen St. Louis’ collapse coming?
There was a wild scene at the home of UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife Professor Catherine Fisk on April 9.
* * * * * * * *
But this is Berkeley and George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley has a great comment on that.
We now have a culture of disruption that has been consistently fostered by academics and administrators on our campuses. When asked “why the home of a dean?,” these students would likely shrug and answer “why not?”
In that sense, this is the ultimate example of the chickens literally coming home to roost. These students have been enabled for years into believing that such acts of disruption are commendable and that others must yield in the cancellation of events. For weeks, they demanded that these dinners be halted despite other students wanting to attend. In that sense, the appearance in an actual home is alarming, but hardly unexpected in our current environment.
That’s exactly right. They may realize now how out of hand it’s gotten but it’s a bit late.
Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals in 1971 with, in part, Dem-on-Dem confrontations between the New Left of the 1960s and the aging FDR-era New Dealers in mind. No one should be surprised to see his tactics still being used for similar left-on-left attacks, especially Chemerinsky. Or as Iowahawk quips:
"I can't believe the leopards ate my face," says man who hosted back yard Face-Eating Leopard mixer https://t.co/EpPksnOj2y
If you lived through it, and I did, “spectacle” is the most generous term you could use to describe the media environment around the trial. It was the moment the entire media, seeing the ratings and attention tabloid shows were garnering, went all-in on the trash-exploitation and racial tropes that dominate news media today. Lead Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran shamelessly made the trial about the LAPD versus another poor black man — and upon Simpson’s acquittal, was covered by television shows on Court TV and was an invited guest to Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
As Cochran stoked racial fires only a few short years after the Rodney King riots, Christopher Darden, a prosecutor during the trial, and a black man, was labeled a race traitor and an Uncle Tom.
Simpson’s legal team was dubbed “the Dream Team,” a label also attached to the 1992 Men’s Olympic basketball team. Sports and politics merged in a way that would later be seen in a way similar to Colin Kaepernick kneeling on the NFL sidelines. Jay Leno’s Tonight Show featured several dancing Asian men in black robes in a comedy segment he labeled “The Dancing Itos,” a reference to the judge of the trial.
Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian’s family later became national celebrities in their own right, with his wife Kris Jenner and her daughters cashing in millions on sex tapes and television shows, music albums, merchandise, perfumes and clothing lines.
In the middle of the trial, National Enquirer published leaked nude photos of lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, sold to them by an ex-husband. Everyone became a punchline, and a character, and a celebrity, due to and because of the guiding hand of the national media. Lost in all of it was the fact that two people had been brutally murdered.
On the menu today: It almost always feels like the scourge of cancer targets those who deserve it the least. I say almost, because yesterday, cancer ended the life of O. J. Simpson. You can make a strong argument that Simpson turned into one of the most terribly influential Americans of the last quarter of the 20th century — terrible both in the scale of his influence and in the moral dimension of his influence.
The Myth of the ‘Juice’
O. J. Simpson passed away from cancer Thursday. The instant meme was an image of the late Norm McDonald declaring, “Finally, O.J. can rest, knowing that his wife’s killer is dead.”
Kids, you may not believe this, but in 1994, it seemed absurd that somebody who was rich and famous would be the kind of person capable of murdering two people. There was just this blanket assumption that anyone living a lifestyle of “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” as Robin Leach described it, would be happy.
This was before Phil Spector, before Robert Blake, before Oscar Pistorius, before Aaron Hernandez.
This was before TMZ, before cell-phone cameras showcased every celebrity meltdown, tantrum, and other outburst. The rich and famous people in Hollywood, and their handlers and agents and consultants, exercised a lot more control over their images. This was also before #MeToo, and it was a few years before the country realized it had elected men who saw the White House interns as their own personal sex kittens — not just in 1992, but also in 1960.
You could say it was a more innocent time, but it is likely more accurate to say it was a more naïve time.
When O. J. Simpson was mentioned “as the focus of the investigation” on June 14, 1994, the initial overwhelming attitude among the public, white and black, was that it was unthinkable that the famous face could have committed such a bloody and heinous crime.
A large part of what made O.J. “unthinkable” as a murderer was the byproduct of being an NFL superstar. Pete Rozelle became commissioner of the league in 1960, and with the help of NFL Films, its omnipresent in-house propaganda machine, created a myth of hard-hitting warriors on the gridiron who were unassailable gentlemen off of it. Even after the O.J. trial, even after Rozelle stepped down from his perch in 1989, this myth soldiered on remarkably well until Colin Kaepernick and Rozelle’s successor finished it off for good in 2016: Roger Goodell Killed the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
In the 1960s, American culture was fracturing along a fault line, with the common man on one side and scorn against his mores and values on the other. The league’s commissioner at the time, Pete Rozelle, chose to take the side of ordinary Americans in the raging culture war, because they were his natural audience. The league sent star players to visit troops in Vietnam and issued rules requiring players to stand upright during the playing of the National Anthem.
In 1967, the NFL produced a film that combined sideline and game footage titled, “They Call It Pro Football.” The film was unapologetically hokey. It was crew cuts and high tops and lots of chain smoking into sideline telephones. With a non-rock, non-folk, non-“what’s happening now” soundtrack, heavy on trumpets and kettle drums. John Facenda, who would come to be called “The Voice of God” for his work with NFL Films, provided the vaulting narration. The production began with the words, “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.” There was nothing Radical Chic about it.
The NFL surpassed baseball as America’s pastime with careful branding that conformed to the tastes and sensibilities of middle-class Americans – Nixon’s silent majority. A half century later, Roger Goodell would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
In August 2016, America was experiencing a polarizing presidential election. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the national anthem, to protest injustice. It was a politically divisive act directed at fans who regard the national anthem as something sacred. The league did not lift a finger to stop him.
Most employers don’t let their workers make controversial political statements to their customers. It is why you do not know your UPS driver’s views on the expansion of NATO. The Constitution does not prohibit private businesses from regulating speech during work.
A savvier commissioner would have reminded Kaepernick that he is being paid millions to wear the logo of the NFL, and the league does not permit players to use its brand to flaunt their personal politics. Instead, Roger Goodell permitted the pregame ceremonies to become the focus of intense political scrutiny, as the media lined up to catalog whether players stood, sat or knelt during the national anthem.
In retrospect, as somebody who had bought into Rozelle’s myth wholeheartedly, I’m glad that Kaepernick and Goodell finally buried it. That it could survive someone as heinous as O.J. Simpson is a testament to its strength, the gullibility of pro football’s most rabid fans — and whatever was going on this week in offices of the legacy media:
This is why The Free Press NPR piece is so important. Not a single person, journalist, editor, lawyer at THE FUCKING ASSOCIATED PRESS thought… "let's maybe not run this one?" https://t.co/O3UBixrkV8
As the 1960s kept ending, the next installment was the arrest of Charles Manson and four of his followers for the horrific murder of five people, including actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski, at a luxury mansion north of Beverly Hills. When Manson’s trial began in 1970, Wenner [who would then have been about age 24–Ed] leaped at the story with an idea for the headline: “Charles Manson Is Innocent!”
Wenner’s headline was less insane than it sounds to modern ears. Manson was already an object of media obsession, a former Haight-Ashbury denizen who drifted to L.A. and collected hippie acolytes for LSD orgies and quasi-biblical prophecies. While the straight world viewed him as a monster, much of Wenner’s audience saw him, at least hypothetically, as one of their own. The underground press of Los Angeles, including the Free Press, cast him as the victim of a hippie-hating media. Manson was a rock-and-roll hanger-on. Wenner was convinced of Manson’s innocence by his own writer David Dalton, who had lived for a time with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, a Manson believer. “I’d go out driving in the desert with Dennis, and he’d say things to me like ‘Charlie’s really cosmic, man.’ ”
* * * * * * * *
Meanwhile, a lawyer in the DA’s office, believing he was doing a favor for a friend of [David] Felton’s at the Los Angeles Times and that this hippie rag from San Francisco was a benign nonentity, brought Felton [then-recently hired away from the L.A. Times by Wenner] and Dalton into the office to show them the crime scene photos of the butchered bodies of Manson victims — including a man with the word war etched in his stomach with a fork. Dalton blanched when he saw the words “Healter [sic] Skelter” painted in blood on a refrigerator, instantly recalling what Dennis Wilson told him about the coded instructions Manson heard in the Beatles songs. “It must have been the most horrifying moment of my life,” said Dalton. “It was the end of the whole hippie culture.” Jann Wenner changed the headline.
WTF: CNN Contributor suggests black people identified with OJ because he k*lled white people.
“[OJ] represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been k*lled.”
O.J. SIMPSON DIES OF CANCER AT AGE 76, FAMILY SAYS: “Simpson, whose life as an American sports hero quickly turned when he was charged with the 1994 murder of his wife and her friend, died on Wednesday at the age of 76, his family announced on social media.”
O.J. Simpson, who ran to fame on the football field, made fortunes as a Black all-American in movies, advertising and television, and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday. He was 76.
The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media. The announcement did not say where he died.
A jury in the murder trial, which held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, cleared Mr. Simpson, but the case ruined his world.
As Engel replies, “Nicole and Ron slaughtered. O.J.’s world ruined.”
As Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times a few days later in 2020: When Coronavirus Lockdowns Go Too Far. The closures were necessary. Chasing picnickers and closing paint aisles is petty overreach.
The tweet shows two silhouettes, extending in familiar policeman shapes. The text is as cheery as a beat-walking bobby in an Edwardian children’s book: “If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows!” And the message, directed in this case to the inhabitants of Central Bedfordshire in England, is an example of how even when they’re essential, anti-pandemic policies are always at risk of going a little bit insane.
I’m a skeptic, to put it mildly, of the skeptics of lockdowns and social distancing requirements. At best they make an argument for more speed and optimism in reopening*, not a case that there’s an alternative world where the American economy stayed open** and steady while the virus was killing more people weekly than car crashes, flu or cancer and New York’s monthly death toll was climbing above that of September 2001***.
But the skeptics’ determination to catalog every petty tyranny inflicted in the name of quarantine is an important public service — not just because overreach always needs critics, but because petty tyrannies today are obstacles to the adaptation we need to get to semi-normalcy tomorrow.
In response to the overreach of the Central Bedfordshire rozzers, James Lileks noted:
If you sneak off into the woods for a picnic, you could be killing people and crippling the NHS, so shadowy peelers should manifest themselves and issue tickets.
Turns out this wasn’t well received:
Utter nonsense. Huge stonking heaps of bollocks. Walking to the dunes for a picnic, or heading to the field off Potter’s Lane to enjoy the sun, is absolutely harmless, and everyone knows it, and it’s corrupting the trust people would normally grant the authorities. As I once wrote about small-minded public officials: “I don’t make the laws, sir, I just enforce them with a great deal of enthusiasm.”
Back in 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.” The lockdowns gave the British police all the excuse they needed to get their inner Mosley on.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was unimpressed by the EU’s move: “ArvanCloud is a key player in the Iranian regime’s project to cut off the Iranian people from the global internet and surveil them.… ArvanCloud maintains a close relationship to Iran’s ministry of intelligence and security, and senior managers of ArvanCloud are either current or former affiliates of the ministry of intelligence and security. So ArvanCloud remains sanctioned by the United States.”
Yet the Biden administration, for its part, is waiving billions in sanctions on Iran, and has been intervening diplomatically to ease pressure on Hamas in Gaza, which signals to Tehran that its current course of action is working.
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