Wednesday Night #2175

22 November 1963 -President John F. Kennedy is assassinated
Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.
How the world reacted to news of JFK’s death, from Biden to Khrushchev
Sixty years ago -for many of us the world stood frighteningly still.
Today, mention is below the fold, as fewer people are alive who remember that terrible day.
Would JFK Have Lost Had He Lived?
On the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, a look at what was and what might have been.

Israel-Hamas
Israel and Hamas agree to hostage exchange deal, 4-day pause in fighting
Before the deal was approved, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the war will continue” even after a deal. Hamas said on Telegram that it had agreed to a “humanitarian truce,” thanking Qatar and Egypt for their efforts in helping to broker the deal. Qatar later confirmed the deal, saying the starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours.
UPDATE: The pause is to be extended an extra day for the release of every 10 additional hostages, Israel said, adding that its forces will resume the war afterward.
Ruth Marcus reflects on A troubling split at my Thanksgiving table — and the nation’s

Not of such global and geopolitical import as the hostage exchange, but a great cause for Montreal celebration, the Montreal Alouettes have reclaimed the Grey Cup after a dramatic seven-play, 83-yard drive with less than two minutes left in the game.
Jack Todd: Never-say-die Alouettes are deserving Grey Cup champions
The title game had it all: spectacular plays, explosive hits, lead changes, bad calls and QB Cody Fajardo lifting Montreal at the perfect time.
As he should, Andrew Caddell devotes this week’s column to the history of the Alouettes since his childhood. And concludes: “It is true, the Alouettes were never expected to get very far, given their struggles early in the year. But the limited expectations had more to do with the Alouettes’ record and weak offensive statistics than the 10 Québécois on the team. And the final touchdown was scored on a pass from an American, Cody Fajardo, to a British Columbia native Tyson Philpot. The feeling in Montreal has been much like 1970, with the city revelling in the unexpected win.
That said, the Grey Cup is billed as the sole truly national sporting event in Canada. And with more Quebecers playing and following the game, the Alouettes’ victory and the CFL will be celebrated across Quebec. The very least the league could do in return is treat the French language, and the eight million Quebecers who speak it, with respect.”

Recent election results from Argentina and The Netherlands do not make the world a happier -nor more progressive place.
Far-right leader Geert Wilders wins Dutch election: Exit poll
Wilders wants to ban mosques and leave the EU. ‘Voters are fed up,’ he says.
Argentina presidential election: far-right libertarian Javier Milei wins after rival concedes
Victory for TV celebrity turned politician catapults South America’s second-largest economy into an unpredictable future

Eight days away from the opening of COP28, UAE Climate Change Conference
The COP28 summit will center around how countries leverage the findings of the Global Stocktake report [UN’s Global Stocktake Report Offers a Damning Report Card for Global Climate Effort] to keep the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C alive and address the impacts of climate change.
Environmental Justice a Key Theme Throughout Biden’s National Climate Assessment
The report finds that societal factors, including historic racism, have shaped the climate reality for many communities of color. It also details the impacts of climate change on Indigenous people, public health and agriculture.
Whether it’s the likelihood of living in a flood zone, lacking access to parks or having fewer resources to recover from a destructive storm, the consequences of climate change are not experienced equally in the United States. That’s a key message from some of the nation’s leading climate scientists, public health experts and economists in a landmark federal report released Tuesday.

Inside Hamas’s sprawling financial empire
Why Israel is powerless to dismantle the group’s finances
Hamas has three sources of power: its physical force inside Gaza, the reach of its ideas and its income. … Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be dismantled, too. Very little of this sits in Gaza at all. Instead, it is overseas in friendly countries. Furnished with money-launderers, mining companies and much else, Hamas’s financial empire is reckoned to bring in more than $1bn a year. Having been painstakingly crafted to avoid Western sanctions, it may be out of reach for Israel and its allies.

Turbulence in the Eastern Mediterranean: Geopolitical, Security and Energy Dynamics assesses the security outlook for the Eastern Mediterranean region, considering potential flashpoints for inter-state conflict and newly developed defence ties, evaluating whether these have the potential to evolve into formal alliances. It also assesses whether certain states’ ambitions to become energy hubs could lay the foundations for deeper regional cooperation or increase the risk of confrontation.

Tributes to Rosalynn Carter have poured in since her death on Sunday. Hard to pick one, but we appreciated The Formidable Rosalynn Carter by Jonathan Alter:
“Perhaps in death Mrs. Carter will finally be properly appreciated for her role as this country’s premier champion of mental health. It’s only one of the many unheralded accomplishments of a formidable and gracious woman who belongs in the first rank of influential first ladies.”
It is hard to imagine her beloved Jimmy outlasting her, but he is described as “leading tributes” to her.

As knowledge of the role the U.S. played in arranging the temporary halt in the Israel-Hamas slaughter becomes public, we are proud of the unflagging efforts of  the President, U.S. and international diplomats, negotiators, and foreign policy experts. Making for a happy Thanksgiving for at least 50 families.
Pourvu que ça dure
The secret negotiations that led to the Gaza hostages deal
Shortly after Hamas militants took hostages on Oct. 7, the government of Qatar contacted the White House with a request: Form a small team of advisers to help work to get the captives freed.
That work finally bore fruit with the announcement of a prisoner swap deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt and agreed by Israel, Hamas and the United States.
The secretive effort included tense personal diplomatic engagement by U.S. President Joe Biden, who held a number of urgent conversations with emir of Qatar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the deal.
It also involved hours of painstaking negotiations including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director Bill Burns, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy Jon Finer, and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, among others.
The Thanksgiving turkeys have been pardoned by the President and with funding assured for the US government until early 2024, the congresspersons have returned to their home districts to give thanks, collect their thoughts and/or funding. Not much hope of their return to Washington in a more collaborative mood.
Hold these thoughts!
Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American November 20, 2023
Once again, liberal democracy is under attack, but it is notable—to me, anyway, as I watch to see how the public conversation is changing—that more and more people are stepping up to defend it. In the New York Times today, legal scholar Cass Sunstein warned that “[o]n the left, some people insist that liberalism is exhausted and dying, and unable to handle the problems posed by entrenched inequalities, corporate power and environmental degradation. On the right, some people think that liberalism is responsible for the collapse of traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority and widespread immorality.”
Sunstein went on to defend liberalism in a 34-point description, but his first point was the most important: “Liberals believe in six things,” he wrote: “freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy,” including fact-based debate and accountability of elected officials to the people.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled her fall economic statement on Tuesday, an update on the country’s financial health and introducing some new measures to target the housing crisis.
— $40 billion: The updated deficit for this year.
— $15 billion: The amount of money expected to go toward loan funding, beginning in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, to build more than 30,000 homes across Canada.
— $1 billion: The cost of a new affordable housing fund over three years, beginning in 2025-2026, which the federal government projects will help build 7,000 new homes.
Also includes “a series of measures to support consumers, and cut everyday costs, includes an amendment to the Competition Act intended to stop manufacturers from refusing “in an anti-competitive manner” to repair devices. Ottawa says Canadians are frustrated by having to throw out household items, such as washing machines and lawnmowers, because they can’t find proper repairs.” [Six highlights from the fall economic statement as Canadians struggle with affordability issues]
As discussed more than once on WN
Canada’s EV charging strategy reaches fork in the road
(Reuters) – Canada needs to shift gears on its strategy of building electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, advocacy groups and government officials say, but they are trying to steer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government down different roads.
Trudeau’s rollout strategy is focused on building EV ports in populous public areas and multi-family residential buildings, which experts warn may not be enough to rapidly increase EV adoption and help meet the government’s ambitious climate goals.

Quebec health reform Bill 15 – as of Wednesday morning, Quebec pushes to pass major health-care reform bill before end of session
Health Minister Christian Dubé acknowledges only half of the articles in the bill have been debated at the parliamentary committee since it was tabled in March. He insists three weeks is enough time to study and adopt the rest.
Opposition parties say 3-week timeline ‘not realistic’ to finish studying extensive bill
Join the growing chorus against Quebec’s health-care revamp
Eva Ludvig, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network
Bill 15 will hurt patients, researchers, communities and more; it will  will do nothing to address the crises in our emergency rooms, delays in surgeries, the lack of family doctors or other major and urgent shortcomings of our health care system
Sign the petition to stop the government from ramming it through.
This 300-page bill, containing more than 1,100 clauses, is the second largest ever presented in the assembly. Have you heard about it? Do you know what it will do to community voices in the management of health institutions?
… That is why the Quebec Community Groups Network is urging all Quebecers to [immediately] sign the petition demanding the government put an immediate hold on this proposed legislation — a bill that would trigger an even greater centralization of health-care management and dramatically reduce the role of the community in the governance of health and social services institutions everywhere in Quebec.
The petition urges the Quebec government to reconsider Bill 15 to avoid negative effects on patients, volunteers, charitable foundations, researchers and local communities; to hold additional consultations so citizens and groups who did not have the opportunity to be heard can be; and to amend the bill to preserve local health and social service governance and proximity to the community, including in the provision of English-language access and services.

OpenAI, Sam Altman, Microsoft and, and, and …
Over the last five days, on your behalf, we have followed the astounding twists and turns in the Sam Altman saga. After all the hue and cry, as of early Wednesday morning, Sam Altman Is Reinstated as OpenAI’s Chief Executive
Once the dust has settled there should be some fascinating ‘war stories’.

Varia
While Tom Nichols makes some good points in the article, it is the P.S. that attracts us. If only we could replicate that kind of discussion today…
When Hollywood Put World War III on Television – The Day After premiered 40 years ago
P.S.
If you want to engage in nostalgia for a better time when serious people could discuss serious issues, I encourage you to watch not only The Day After but the roundtable held on ABC right after the broadcast. Following a short interview with then–Secretary of State George Shultz, Ted Koppel moderated a discussion among Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, the professor Elie Wiesel, the scientist Carl Sagan, and the conservative writer William F. Buckley. The discussion ranged across questions of politics, nuclear strategy, ethics, and science. It was pointed, complex, passionate, and respectful—and it went on for an hour and a half, including audience questions.
Try to imagine something similar today, with any network, cable or broadcast, blocking out 90 precious minutes for prominent and informed people to discuss disturbing matters of life and death. No chyrons, no smirky hosts, no music, no high-tech sets. Just six experienced and intelligent people in an unadorned studio talking to one another like adults. (One optimistic note: Both McNamara and Kissinger that night thought it was almost unimaginable that the superpowers could cut their nuclear arsenals in half in 10 or even 15 years. And yet, by 1998, the U.S. arsenal had been reduced by more than half, and Kissinger in 2007 joined Shultz and others to argue for going to zero.)

Richard III, king of northern hearts
(Wrong side of history) …Richard III’s reburial in Leicester Cathedral, two and a half years after the former king’s skeleton was found in a car park in the city, in part thanks to the work of historian Philippa Langley. … Langley is back in the news with a book The Princes in The Tower, and a documentary, in which she argues that Richard III’s two nephews, Edward and Richard, lived until adulthood. Langley, the Telegraph reports, believes the princes ‘were not murdered by Richard III but spirited to Europe and later tried to retake the crown… She believes that a duo dismissed by history as pretenders to the throne – Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, who each launched failed bids to depose Henry VII in the late 15th century – were the real princes.
‘The evidence – collected by some of the 300 volunteers recruited for Ms Langley’s Missing Princes Project – is laid out in a Channel 4 documentary, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence… Ms Langley, who led the successful search to locate the grave of Richard III in 2012 and is a passionate Ricardian, said she expected some historians to disagree with her theories.’

A horse gets loose aboard a cargo flight
[A] cargo flight out of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York was forced to turn around because a horse onboard got loose. It escaped its stall and could not be wrangled. As it turns out, shipping horses via airplane…usually goes off without a hitch. To learn more, The World’s host Carol Hills talks with Bastian Schröeder of EquiJet, a company that ships horses by air.

Long reads
Too many taking sides in this conflict miss the true nature of Hamas – and Netanyahu
Both those calling for a ceasefire and those opposing it are making assumptions that don’t stack up
Start with those who look at the havoc wreaked in Gaza – at the many thousands killed, at the pile of rubble that was once the largest Palestinian city in the world – and decide that, whatever horrors Hamas committed on 7 October, surely it has now sustained enough of a blow; given all that Gaza has suffered, surely now Hamas will be deterred from future attacks. Such thinking fundamentally misunderstands the nature of that organisation. Because Hamas is a different kind of enemy, one that does not fit the usual theories of war. Put simply, it does not mind if its own people die.
In a wide-ranging column, Paul Wells reflects on the recent Halifax International Security Forum
Things worth fighting for – Of course people disagree. That’s what we’re trying to protect.
He concludes: “The good news, as we were reminded in Halifax, is that Canada is close to being the least of the world’s problems. The bad news is that it also seems determined to become the least of the world’s remedies.”
How the hostage crisis is changing Israel
Negotiators have reportedly been getting close to reaching a deal to free Israeli hostages taken by Hamas last month. In exchange, Israel would release Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. But so far, any agreement between Israel and Hamas has proven to be difficult to reach.
For cranberry lovers celebrating American Thanksgiving -or anticipating Christmas turkey dinner- Mama Stamberg’s relish shares the table with cranberry chutney

War in Ukraine
From a Scandinavian friend:
I thought that you might be amused by this little trick played on the Russians.
[Some friends] got together and after a few flasks of bubbly decided to buy a destroyed Russian tank from Ukraine. Ukrainians were happy to donate it after hearing what it would be used for.
It was then transported to Finland by like-minded pranksters who had a suitable truck at their disposal returning otherwise empty after delivering help to Ukraine
The wreck of the tank is now on display at the square next to the Central Library of Helsinki.
The Russian Embassy has protested vehemently, Moscow is furious and yours truly rather pleased.
If you have any clue of the perpetrators of this prank, keep it to yourselves as Putin does not only have his enemies murdered but also their kids.

HAPPY [U.S.] THANKSGIVING TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE!