"The once ubiquitous bird has suffered a catastrophic decline.... As many as 98 per cent disappeared from some states."

"Rats and feral dogs flourished in their place, spreading diseases, including rabies. As a result, the human death toll rose significantly. And further to that, Schama adds, an ancient cultural ritual risks being lost. Zoroastrians, no longer able to perform their traditional 'sky burials' — in which corpses are carried to a 'tower of silence' to be picked clean by vultures — are forced to consider cremation instead. 

This chain of collapse between human culture and the lives of birds set me thinking,' Schama says...."

From  "Simon Schama: 'Our fascination with birds is rooted in envy'/The historian has curated an exhibition that explores the relationship between birds and humans" (London Times).

"'What are they, these creatures, two-limbed like us and yet nothing like us at all?' he wonders. 'Human culture is arranged around the perfection of the human,' he says. 'We are seen as God’s greatest works. But one thing we have not been able to do is fly.' Our fascination with birds, he suggests, 'is based around a sort of envy.' Because what we call flying is not really that, it’s just 'sitting in a metal tube with the blinds shut looking at old movies.' It is not about the glorious freedom that we dream of, about the transcendence we desire, the celestial state that we yearn for. That freedom of spirit will always elude us.'"

"Younger, left-leaning Jews, steeped in the cause of antiracism and terms like 'settler colonialism,' are increasingly searching for a Jewish identity centered more on religious values..."

"... like the pursuit of justice and repairing the world than on collective nationalism tied to the land of Israel. Many older liberal Jews have also struggled with the Israeli government’s lurch to the far right, but they see Israel as the centerpiece and guarantor of continued Jewish existence in an ever more secular world.... For Republicans, the issue is simple and convenient. The raising of anti-Zionism in the debate over antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war pushes aside the presence of white-nationalist bigots on the fringes of the Republican coalition... and instead forces Democrats to defend the pro-Hamas demonstrators on their own coalition’s fringes...."

Writes Jonathan Weisman, in "Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic? A Fraught Question for the Moment/From the halls of Congress to America’s streets and universities, a once largely academic issue has roiled national discourse, inciting accusations of bigotry and countercharges of bullying" (NYT).

"... Democrats worry that the debate is blurring the line between political speech and hate speech. Tibetans pressing for freedom from the Chinese are considered unserious or even repugnant in Beijing, just as Native American activists demanding to reclaim parts of the United States might be to the owners of that land. But are they bigoted?"

ADDED: Who is Jonathan Weisman? He published a book in 2018 called "(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump" (commission earned). Simon Schama, reviewing the book in 2018 in the NYT, wrote:

A richly researched and nuanced account of Jewish life in stressed-out, polarized America would be timely, but this isn’t it. Instead, Weisman takes a chapter to complain about what he considers the major distraction preventing American Jews from being fully alert to the perils of the time — but this, a little surprisingly, turns out to be “Israel, Israel, Israel.”... 

The second malaise Weisman identifies as blunting Jewish alertness to the peril of the times is the hollowing out of a Jewish identity that is neither uncritically Zionist nor devoutly religious. “The Jews who are most interested in a liberal, internationalist future, who wish to live progressive, assimilated existences free of threat,” he warns, “are disappearing.”...

But if “being Jewish” means nothing more than an ethically attuned solidarity with kindred disadvantaged at home and abroad, then the reawakening he wants will just evaporate in a cloud of airy good will....

Blogging this morning is not as light as it looks.

I'm working — perhaps way too hard — on finishing a post I began last night, "Let's read the Comey transcript." I've been republishing that post, adding things to it as I make my way through the transcript.

Here's what I just added this morning:

On to Roy Blunt, who needles Comey about why he was willing to keep working under Trump. Comey affirms that if he hadn't been fired, he'd still be working under Trump. Blunt suggests that the story Comey is telling today is the view "in retrospect," influenced by his having been fired. He didn't resign and, before the firing, he didn't let the Justice Department know about his misgivings.

Comey says that "at some point... I was sure we were going to brief it to the [Justice Department] team in charge of the case." And, Comey notes, he tried to keep the Attorney General from getting "kicked out of the room." He said to the Attorney General "I report to you. It is very important you be between me and the white house."

Blunt gets back to the subject of Comey's leaking the memo about the Flynn conversation.

BLUNT: So you didn't consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document. You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?

COMEY: Correct. I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.... My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.

BLUNT: So why didn't you give those to somebody yourself rather than give them through a third party?

COMEY: Because I was [wary] the media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point. I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide. I worried it would be [like] feeding seagulls at the beach[, i]f it was I who gave it to the media. I asked my friend, make sure this gets out.

I had to go back to the video to understand the "feeding seagulls at the beach" remark. The bracketed material you see there is my correction of the transcript. I'm using Politico's transcript, by the way, and the mistakes, notably in punctuation, are irritating. The comma after "beach" is crucial to understanding. It's also important that the word was "wary," not, as Politico has it, "weary." Comey wasn't tired of the press, but vigilant. They were like seagulls, flocking where they anticipated feeding, and Comey didn't want to appear to be feeding these scavengers or didn't want to reward them for hanging out in his driveway.

Blunt hasn't got enough time left to do anything but muse that Comey "create[d] a source close to the former director of the FBI as opposed to taking responsibility yourself." Yes, but so what? Was this another instance of a failure of courage? Is Comey improperly tending to his personal image?

Angus King — an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats — goes next. There's what sounds like a rehearsed dialogue that gets bungled (perhaps because Comey doesn't trust King to get his line out):

KING: [W]hen a president of the United States in the Oval Office says something like, I hope or I suggest or would you, do you take that as a directive?

COMEY: Yes. It rings in my ear as, well, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest.

KING: I was just going to quote that, in 1179, December 27th, Henry II said, who will rid me of the meddlesome priest, and the next day, he was killed. [Thomas a Becket.] Exactly the same situation. We're thinking along the same lines.

The bracketed name is heard in the video but missing (with no indication of an omission) in the Politico transcript. Lame.

King's "Exactly the same situation" is a tad overeager. And he screws up the quote. Not only is what Trump said not "exactly the same," Comey's quote "will no one rid me..." isn't even exactly the same as King's version "who will rid me...." In Senator King's version, Henry is asking who will do it. In Comey's version, Henry is expressing displeasure that it may not happen. Who got the quote right? It's not clear exactly what Henry said all those many years ago. There's no recorded recollection memo, but an oral tradition.

According to Wikipedia, the most common quote is "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" but according to the historian Simon Schama, what Henry really said was: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?"

We don't really know what Henry said, but we do know that it was taken as a directive to kill Thomas Beckett. And the analogue here is that Comey took Trump's remark as a directive. The puzzle remains whether it was a directive. We should all understand that leaders may express themselves in enigmatic ways that are useful to keep themselves above the fray but that the underlings know how to interpret. We still need to think carefully about particular assertions that something that wasn't said was implied.

Next is Senator Lankford, who wonders why Trump used such a light touch if he really wanted to stop the investigation. Why not be explicit? It is that "he doesn't have the authority"?

COMEY: I'm not a legal scholar, [so smarter people answer this better,] but as a legal matter, the president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but [direct that anybody be investigated or anybody not be investigated]. I think he has the legal authority. All of us ultimately report in the executive branch to the president.

If the President can do that but didn't, does that mean he didn't want his vague expression to be taken as a directive? That would have been my follow up, and I assume that Comey would have said Trump may have found it more convenient to avoid taking responsibility for the action if Comey had done what Trump wanted....

"I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men."

Harold Schechter, author of "The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century," picks five books that describe great murder trials.

1. "The Murder of Helen Jewett" by Patricia Cline Cohen (Knopf, 1998)....

2. "Dead Certainties" by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1991)....

3. "The Minister and the Choir Singer" by William M. Kunstler (William Morrow, 1964)....

4. "Compulsion" by Meyer Levin (Simon & Schuster, 1956).

In May 1924, self-professed Nietzschean supermen Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the pampered sons of two prominent Chicago families, set out to prove their intellectual superiority by committing the "perfect crime." They abducted and killed Loeb's 14-year-old cousin, then stuffed his nude body into a drainpipe. Despite the supposed brilliance of their plan, they were arrested less than two weeks later. The highlight of their prosecution--which had been immediately (and rather prematurely) trumpeted as "The Trial of the Century"--was the summation by their lawyer, the formidable Clarence Darrow, who delivered an eloquent 12-hour attack on the death penalty. His clients were convicted but spared execution. In "Compulsion," Meyer Levin's 1956 best-selling account of the case, the author thinly disguised the story for legal reasons, producing what many critics consider the prototypical "nonfiction novel"-- a genre that Truman Capote would take credit for inventing a decade later.

5. "Kidnap" by George Waller (Dial, 1961)....

Kind of a harsh stab at Truman Capote, but don't you want to read "Compulsion"?

Alternatively, we can dig out the old DVD of "Rope" and watch it one more time. That's always great fun:



And can you imagine a lawyer today subjecting the jury to a 12-hour attack on the death penalty? Can you imagine the lawyer being considered brilliant and eloquent for doing so? Can you imagine a jury today getting roped in by a lot of high-flown talk about the death penalty after hearing evidence of a brutal, senseless murder? Frankly, it's outright unfair to decide who gets the death penalty based on what the lawyer said about the death penalty in general. All that brilliant talk would be equally applicable in any capital trial.

Here's the text of Darrow's summation, helpfully divided into titled sections. From the final section:

I have stood here for three months as one might stand at the ocean trying to sweep back the tide. I hope the seas are subsiding and the wind is falling and I believe they are, but I wish to make no false pretense to this court. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and the thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own,--these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. And as the days and the months and the years go on, they will ask it more and more. But, your Honor, what they shall ask may not count. I know the easy way.

I know your Honor stands between he [sic] future and the past. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that some time may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgement and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

Think of the children!

From Meyer Levin's book — which you can search inside at Amazon:

When someone asked if Nietzsche's superman philosophy justified murder, Judd perversely replied, "It is easy to justify such a death, as easy as to justify an entomologist impaling a butterfly on a pin."

The room became quiet. Danny Mines of the News said, "We all had a little Nietzsche in college, Steiner, but that doesn't mean you have to live by it."

"Why not?" Judd demanded. "A philosophy, if you are convinced it is correct, is something you live by."

We all studied our menus. "The herring is excellent here," Judd announced to McNamar, "but I suppose you don't like herring — you aren't Jewish."

Throughout the meal he continued to flash his erudition and against my will, I was being pushed by the others, set up as the antipode — for I too was a university graduate at eighteen.

Hmmm... Do you like novelization?

If not, read the confession of Nathan Leopold:

When we planned a general thing of this sort was as long ago as last November I guess at least, and we started on the process of how to get the money, which was the most difficult problem. We had several dozen different plans, all of which were not so good for one reason or other....

The next problem was getting the victim to kill. This was left undecided until the day we decided to pick the most likely-looking subject that came our way. The particular case happened to be Robert Franks. Richard was acquainted with Robert and asked him to come over to our car for a moment. This occurred near 49th and Ellis Avenue. Robert came over in the car, was introduced to me and Richard asked him if he did not want to help him.....

"Richard who?"

Richard Loeb. He replied no, but Richard said, well, come in a minute. I want to ask you about a certain tennis racket. After he had gotten in, I stepped on the gas, proceeded south on Ellis Avenue to 50th Street. In the meantime Richard asked Robert if he minded if we took him around the block, to which Robert said, no. As soon as we turned the corner, Richard placed his one hand over Robert's mouth to stifle his outcry, with his right beating him on the head several times with a chisel, especially prepared for the purpose. The boy did not succumb as readily as we had believed so for fear of being observed Richard seized him, and pulled him into the back seat. Here he forced a cloth into his mouth. Apparently the boy died instantly by suffocation shortly thereafter. We proceeded out to Calumet Boulevard in Indiana, drove along this road that leads to Gary, being a rather deserted place. We even stopped to buy a couple of sandwiches and some drinks for supper....

ADDED: Leopold and Loeb pleaded guilty, and Darrow's harangue was directed at the judge. Here's Judge Caverly's opinion, which rests not on a general opposition to the death penalty, but on the youth of the defendants:

It would have been the task of least resistance to impose the extreme penalty of the law. In choosing imprisonment instead of death, the court is moved chiefly by the consideration of the age of the defendants, boys of eighteen and nineteen years.