All eyes on them, over at my Substack.

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister, was shot a couple of weeks ago. He, thankfully, survived and has been discharged from the hospital. The man who tried to kill him is in jail. But one thing I noticed was that so much of the coverage of the shooting made it seem as though, well, maybe someone trying kill Fico was, you know, understandable because he is “controversial.” By that, you can guess the rest – he is a populist. He is not in favour of arming Ukraine. He is more right-of-centre than the EU might like, and so on. So therefore, isn’t it normal that one might try to shoot him? WTF? He was democratically elected, he is hardly a dictator and hardly unreasonable. (And I say this as someone who would arm Ukraine till the cows came home if I had any power.) Have we reached the point where someone who doesn’t fit the priors of the mainstream is considered to be an expected target for violence? The more I thought about it, the more I remembered the reaction to the assassination of Shinzo Abe, which I wrote about here.

So I guess we have reached that point. It is “normal” to try to kill someone you find objectionable. Brendan O’Neill writes about the attempt on Fico’s life and the subsequent reaction here.

…at my Substack about the ongoing campus Kristallnacht.

I believe this Gerard Baker comment piece to be accurate, all the more after Iran’s attack on Israel yesterday.

…at my Substack.

My oldest brother once said that as one ages, one’s world shrinks. I don’t agree with that – in fact, I often feel the opposite is true. But in one sense, I see this happening – as we age, people that meant something to us, either personally or in the public sphere, pass away. And our world seems smaller. This week, three such people passed: Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli economist and Nobel Prize winner, who tried to explain why humans behave so (seemingly) irrationally so much of the time, died at the age of 90; Joe Lieberman, simply a fine human, died at the age of 82; and Richard Serra, abstract and minimalist sculptor and visionary, died at 85. Serra was one of the few modern artists whose work appealed to me, which I suppose is neither here nor there. All three of these men are what I call, “value adding people.” They expanded the world. They never tried to diminish or take away or make us smaller.

There’s a new piece over at my Substack.

A handful of links I put aside this year – none related to New Year’s Eve, though…

That NYTimes article – two months late and yet, hats off to them for this thorough and depressing investigative report on Hamas’ use of sexual assault (or rather, depravity). A difficult read, but read it one must.

Matti Friedman on Hamas’ insight and understanding of how effed up the West is. He puts it more diplomatically than that, but I have to say, as early as October 8th, I found myself wondering if the terrorists indeed knew just how many useful idiots there were out there.

A couple of pieces from BHL – thank goodness for the old liberal lion – about Ukraine, including this, about how Ukraine and Israel are part of the same fight and about what Ukrainians need in order to win.

David Mamet on how the Democrats betrayed the Jews. Same could be said in Canada about parties that traditionally supported the Jewish community and Israel, but that now seem to be willing to seek excuses for the slaughter of Jews, and also to be hyper-critical of the justifiable Israeli response to that slaughter.

One of my favourite historians writes about a false narrative relating to Israel (one among oh so many).

Brendan O’Neill on the unholy alliance between woke-ism and barbarism.

And no list of mine can ever be complete without an animal story – a California otter was seen stealing surfboards! As I’ve said before, the animals are done with us, and understandably so.

Happy New Year, all.