Good morning! The weather today should be a mix of a little drizzly in the morning and then sunny the rest of the day, according to the National Weather Service. A high near 67 degrees, but with winds up to 21 miles per hour, so wear maybe like a light jacket.
Prosecutors charge off-duty security guard in teen’s death: Aaron Brown Myers, 51, faces second-degree murder charges after he allegedly shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Hazrat Ali Rohani, according to KING 5. King County prosecutors argued for a high bail for Myers given his obsession with vigilante security. Apparently, Myers had a habit of acting like a spare cop, once even calling the police on someone who was riding around on a bike with what Myers thought was a gun. Myers told officers he may need to shoot the person, according to charging documents. Turns out the cyclist was holding a bike part.
Tragically, Myers’s supposed obsession with fighting crime led to him allegedly shoot 17-year-old Rohani in a parking lot that Myers had singled out for his “overwatch” surveillance. He allegedly shot Rohani seven times, despite Rohani putting his hands up and slowly backing away, according to security footage. Prosecutors said they believe Myers’s “self-imposed ‘duty to intervene,’ threatens public safety.” Washington’s own George Zimmerman.
A 15-year-old pleads guilty in 2022 Ingraham shooting: A boy who shot and killed another Ingraham High School student in November 2022 pled guilty Monday to first-degree murder, first-degree assault, and unlawful possession of a firearm, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson. The boy who pled guilty was 14 years old when he shot and killed 17-year-old Ebenezer Haile five times. As part of the plea agreement, the 15-year-old will remain in a juvenile rehabilitation facility until his 21st birthday.
King County says it did a whoopsie when it ignored “dozens, if not hundreds” of discrimination complaints between January 2022 and September 2023, according to the Seattle Times. The King County Office of Equity, Racial and Social Justice failed to respond to people who made complaints about discrimination at workplaces, in housing, and by businesses for more than a year. Apparently, the office had some issues with coordination and an overall messy working environment. Ironically, the office also may have had some issues with inequity in pay.
Burger week begins! The Stranger has teamed up with 20 different restaurants all offering specialty burgers for $12 from now until Sunday, June 16. Megan wrote up the Stranger staff’s debate over their favorite burgers. I’m one of the “polite votes for Red Mill.”
Out of context Needling headline:
No one understands Seattle like The Needling https://t.co/fDHVQNihpD
— 💕 xenobriotic 🐘 (@xenobriotic) June 11, 2024
Seattle Rep layoffs: Struggling to rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic, and with federal aid to arts venues ended, the Seattle Rep has plans to lay off and combine about 12% of its staff. The cuts include a large chunk of its “artistic, arts engagement and Public Works departments,” according to the Seattle Times.
An Apple a day keeps AI on its way: Apple now says AI stands for “Apple Intelligence.” LMAO. At the World Wide Developers Conference, the company promised to start incorporating more AI into its devices, according to the Associated Press. Apple users who have downloaded the latest software update already have some of these new features. (I can’t tell you anything about that because I haven’t downloaded the latest update, not out of protest, but because I’m deeply addicted to this technology and even 15 minutes of it powered down makes me physically ill.) Effectively, the additional AI features just make Siri a little better at her job of looking up the weather for the day and telling me the name of the guy I saw in that thing.
Israel kills 274 to save four: Israeli Defense Forces launched an operation Saturday to rescue four hostages, killing 274 Palestinians in the process. The Gaza Health Ministry said many of the casualties included Palestinian women and children, according to the Washington Post. The number of deaths made the Post finally ask the question, is Israel “doing enough to protect civilians in its war against Hamas in Gaza?” The UN says Israel may have committed war crimes during the raid.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has approved a ceasefire resolution: The Security Council passed its first ceasefire plan since the Oct 7 attacks in Israel started intense airstrikes on Gaza. The US has said Israel has accepted the plan (though Israeli officials beg to differ), and now Hamas must also agree, according to the Associated Press. Hamas seems interested. The three-phase plan seeks to entirely end the eight-month war.
Hunter Biden found guilty on all counts: Prosecutors charged the president’s son with owning a gun while being a drug addict, a wildly dumb charge. The jury began deliberating Monday, but the judge released them after about an hour, according to CBS News. The young Biden now faces up to 25 years in prison, but the conviction is his first offense, so he probably won’t get that much.
The Baltimore Key Bridge shipping channel reopens: After almost three months of clean up, boats can once against pass through the Port of Baltimore’s shipping channel, according to the Baltimore Sun. The channel has remained at least partially blocked since late March, after a container ship crashed into a support pier for the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The crash caused the bridge to collapse and killed six men filling potholes on the bridge at the time.
Charli XCX drops Brat: Charli XCX sounds like she’s having fun on this album. Enjoy one of your most online friends trying to walk across the table at your next dinner table.
banger but i can’t focus too hard on the lyrics or i start to get embarrassed for her https://t.co/7Z26KJoKjz
— carey (@brokebackstan) June 9, 2024
@66 I do think it’s farfetched anyone would take seriously someone’s claim to a land because they are related by a few genes to someone who lived there more than 40 generations ago and they decided to immigrate there. The overwhelming majority of Jews in Palestine came through immigration; 3 millions of which immigrated after 1948. Palestine is surely the homeland for Palestinians Jews who were about 10% of the population before immigration started with the Zionist movement. If we proceeded to remake the world the way it was before the birth of Jesus Christ we would generate conflicts the world over. Are you planning anytime on arguing that North America should be handed back to native Americans? come on, it has only been ~500 years ago. Barely a thing by your standards.
From farfetched it then become full throated racist to proceed in booting off said land people who have lived there for generations. all because they are not Jews. Those who can’t be booted off are systematically discriminated against, abused and jailed without charges (we won’t call them hostages of course), and occasionally murdered by snipers, colonists, etc..
I fully support Jews to have a homeland as long as it doesn’t involve taking it away from someone else without their consent, which at this point is going to be quite difficult. So , I suggest that Jews should keep live among the rest of us, as fellow human beings, free of racism and discrimination.
@73, So…. we should assume Hunter Biden is snorting cocaine just out of frame in any video where that is a remote possibility? If we don’t have to see it happening to believe it’s true why stop here?
I can tell what kind of “fact sites” you like to get your information from but USA Today is a widely circulated newspaper that does credible reporting and fact-checking.
@74 Classic straw-man argument because I did mention there were Palestinian Jews before colonization. They were a relatively small minority according to what I have read and there couldn’t have been many considering how many immigrated since. Anyhow, Palestinians didn’t immigrate and they have a right to the land.
Take your indignity pill and shove it up where the sun doesn’t shine. Liar.
@65: “Maybe no one is biting because it’s widely accepted that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and this is news to no one?”
No want wants to engage because it would mean admitting they’ve been duped into doing the bidding of terrorists, and are actually exacerbating the very situation they are complaining about. Cheap moral scolding is fine, so long as it confers the warm glow of self-appointed moral superiority. Admitting it was a trap set by terrorists tends to dull that smug sense of satisfaction.
@68: ‘”Hamas can end the war any time they want by releasing hostages and surrendering.” The first part of that statement is not true. And you know that.’
That’s because I wrote the entire sentence to be read as a single, coherent thought. You decided to ignore the actual punctuation, put a full stop before the word “and,” thus rendering it false. But that’s your problem, not mine.
Of course, the people who complain about Israel’s supposed bloodthirsty nature have yet to organize worldwide demonstrations, on-campus or off, demanding Hamas release hostages and surrender, because they care about civilians in Gaza only so far as those civilian deaths can be blamed upon Israel. As we’ve seen in the Stranger’s headline post, the very possibility Hamas could have been responsible for so much as one single civilian death during the rescue mission was implicitly dismissed, even though Hamas had willingly created the entire situation.
“Everything Hamas does, Israel does as well, with only a little less frequency and vigor.”
The IDF hides behind civilians? The IDF has committed a large number of rapes in Gaza? The IDF has taken hostages from Gaza, and surrounded them with civilians in Israel? Do tell. (Try to do better than you did @60, although that is not exactly a high bar.)
@67 Given that the Republican Party Platform is basically “We’re horrible people!”, it’s hard for me to think of a common usage definition of “stereotype” that makes sense in your statement. I mean, can you name 3 living, widely-known, currently avowed Republicans, who aren’t horrible people?
@76: “Anyhow, Palestinians didn’t immigrate and they have a right to the land.”
Genetic testing shows ancestors of self-described “Palestinians” arriving in Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from surrounding regions, https://www.wired.com/story/23andme-genetics-palestine/
That part of the world has been a crossroads of peoples for all of recorded history. Your belief you can isolate one current group there, and say they (and they alone) have a “right to the land,” is every bit as delusional as any right-wing “blood and soil” mythology.
“Take your indignity [sic] pill…”
Thanks for the laughs.
I did watch the video. He is walking right behind his father and step-mom on a crowded stage surrounded by a bunch of other people and cameras. If you believe he did a bump of cocaine in that setting it’s because you want to. The video proves no such thing.
@79 So you claim to be a specialist in genetic studies now? and the only evidence you provide is an article in Wired that doesn’t even cite a scientific study?
I am not a specialist in genetic studies or the history of Palestine but here is a wikipedia article that cites numerous scientific studies that trace Palestinians to Bronze age Levantine: “[recent studies] have found that Palestinians, and other Levantine people, are primarily descended from ancient Levantines present in what is today Israel and Palestine, dating back at least 3700 years”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians
In other words, as per usual you are taking out of your behind but I am certain it won’t prevent you from coming back with another tangent to create a diversion.
As for who has a right to the land, it’s pretty easy. People who have lived on the land for generations have a right to the land.
Hunter and Jr’s drug habits aren’t a concern of mine, I just choose not to believe things that are fabricated from whole cloth to make idiots angry on Twitter.
nyt:
U.N.
Commission
Accuses Both Israel and
Palestinian Groups of War Crimes
A United Nations commission investigating the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent conflict in Gaza has accused both Palestinian armed groups and Israel of committing war crimes, and the panel said that Israel’s conduct of the war included crimes against humanity.
But Israel, during its monthslong campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas, has also committed war crimes, the commission said, like the use of starvation as a weapon of war through a total siege of Gaza.
It said Israel’s use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas amounted to a direct attack on the civilian population and had the essential elements of a crime against humanity, disregarding the necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and causing a disproportionately high number of civilian casualties, particularly among women and children.
The conflict had killed or maimed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, a scale and a rate of casualties that were “unparalleled across conflicts in recent decades,” the commission said.
Other crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza, the commission said, included “extermination, murder, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, forcible transfer of the population, torture, and inhuman and cruel treatment.”
“The treatment of men and boys was intentionally sexualized as an act of retaliation for the attack,” it added, referring to Oct. 7.
The commission said it had identified the people most responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including senior members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and senior members of Israel’s political and military leadership, including members of its war cabinet.
The commission said it would continue its investigations focusing on those with individual criminal responsibility and command or superior responsibility.
–Nick Cumming-Bruce; reporting from Geneva
more:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/12/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas
“There
is no justify-
cation for terrorism. Ever.”
tensorna on December 8, 2023 at 8:44 AM
‘There
Is No Justifi-
cation for Terrorism,’
Says Man Justifying Genocide
more disturbingly:
https://theneedling.com/2023/09/02/there-is-no-justification-for-terrorism-says-man-justifying-genocide/
that’s a
fucking
BINGO.
END the Madness and
Begin the War Crimes Tribunals
BEFORE WWIII: the REALLY BIG ONE
speaking of the
“right” wing:
Right-Wing
Campaign Urges Supreme
Court to Protect Fossil Fuel Interests
Some of the players
are tied to Leonard Leo,
architect of the court’s conservative swing.
Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars.
Some of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leonard Leo, the architect of the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court who helped select Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. Leo also appears to have ties to Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“He’s really crafted the Supreme Court,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and an expert on Leonard Leo’s network.
Honolulu is one of 40 cities and states suing big oil for an alleged decades-long effort to sow doubt about the dangers of burning fossils. If successful, the case could force the defendants to pay for climate damages.
“I have never, ever seen this kind of overt political campaign to influence the court like this.”
In October, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the suit can go to trial. But oil companies petitioned the US Supreme Court in February to review the state court’s decision; they argued the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that shouldn’t be tried in state courts.
Supreme court justices met on Thursday to consider whether or not to take up the fossil fuel companies’ request, and the justices could grant or reject the petition in the coming days.
If granted, the request could catalyze the dismissal of the wave of climate accountability lawsuits against big oil—a major win for the defendants seeking to limit their liability for the climate crisis. But it’s the kind of ask about which the Supreme Court would not normally offer its opinion, advocates and legal experts say.
–by Dharna Noor
[This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.]
more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/06/alito-thomas-leonard-leo-federalist-society-supreme-court-fossil-fuels-koch-industries/
is the “right” wing
truly the Enemy
of Humanity?
You be the
Judge.
@83: “So you claim to be a specialist in genetic studies now?”
Hahahahahaha… so what, exactly, was your basis for your opinion-stated-as-fact, “Palestinians didn’t immigrate…”? As your argument depends completely upon it, you do have a factual basis for it, right?
“I am not a specialist in genetic studies or the history of Palestine…”
Yes, you’ve made those points very clear. Too bad your ‘arguments’ involved pretending you knew jack about either.
Look, you’re obviously starting with the conclusion you want to reach, and working backwards from there, throwing in whatever you can find (or fabricate) to support your predetermined conclusion. It doesn’t work, for the same way the right-wing “blood and soil” mythology doesn’t work, either: there’s no basis in history or biology for tying one ethnic group to one piece of land. (In fact, all of the evidence goes the other way.)
Right now, the only hypothesis you’re validating is Horseshoe Theory.
@88 “there’s no basis in history or biology for tying one ethnic group to one piece of land.”
Isn’t that the whole point of Zionism?
@89: Because Jews have faced harassment everywhere else they’ve ever lived, so why not have a dedicated home for them? Conveniently, their old one became available.
If the world had done a better job on the whole diversity thing, the modern state of Israel might never have been formed.
M@91, Nice try but no. I’ve seen photos of Hunter smoking crack with hookers so I’m under no illusion about his habits. I am just incapable of believing stupid things like a professional addict doing drugs in the most conspicuous place imaginable when he’s just feet away from a door and probably a few feet further from a bathroom.
That video is catnip manufactured expressly for “Biden crime family” types like you who struggle with critical thought and are desperate to make some criminal equivalence between the Trumps and Bidens.
@89, @90: The closest thing we have to international legitimacy is the United Nations. In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which proposed a replacement for the expiring British Mandate there. It had an Arab State, a Jewish State, and international control over Jerusalem. Palestinian Jews accepted this plan, some Palestinian Arabs accepted this plan, and some Palestinian Arabs did not; the latter faction chose war — and lost. The Palestinian Jews and Arabs who accepted the plan and survived the war formed Israel; the Palestinian Arabs who’d chosen war and lost started down the path they’re still on, sadly.
Choosing war means accepting the consequences, including the results of a loss, which in this case, means no Arab State. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine)
I guess this is an actual music video.
Then why don’t you name them, raindrop dear?
I suspected as much, Raindrop dear.
That’s OK. You get a blue participation star.