Two students dead in 24 hours at Western: Two Western Washington University students died last week in unconnected incidents. On Wednesday, an 18-year-old student died from a fall off a residence hall. The medical examiner ruled it a death by suicide. The second student, also 18, was found unresponsive in their residence hall Thursday morning from a suspected drug overdose.
Did you drop your improvised explosive device? Maybe you last saw it in Burien? On Friday evening, a boom and blast rattled drivers at the intersection of South 116th Street and 1st Avenue South. Officers found what was left of an improvised explosive device they say was tossed onto the road. No one was injured, but authorities wonder whether the explosion is related to Saturday’s I-90 bomb scare.
That I-90 bomb threat: If you sat in snared I-90 traffic on Saturday it’s because two idiots fled a police traffic stop and threw what police suspected were explosive devices out their window as they zoomed away. Authorities shut down traffic in both directions on I-90 in Mercer Island for over two hours so they could locate and detonate the explosives.
EXPLOSIVE DEVICES SAFELY DETONATED
Bellevue PD saying the bomb squad safely disarmed 2 of the 3 devices found. The 3rd was described as an elongated firework.
Below is a picture of the explosive device. Police telling @fox13seattle the suspect attempted to light and throw it… pic.twitter.com/XWfJC9kzuO
— Dave Detling (@DetlingFOX13) October 13, 2024
Just take the bus: Parking fees are going up across the city. In central Ballard and Columbia City, expect to pay $6 per hour. It’ll cost $6.50 per hour to park in Fremont or the Pike-Pine area of Capitol Hill. I can already feel the gripes from the car-clingers among you. You can find cheaper rates in places where not a lot of people are driving and parking. Or, you could pay $2.75 for a bus ride.
The weather: I hoped you spoiled brats enjoyed your balmy weekend. It’ll be chilly, cloudy, and drizzly today. Let the real fall weather reign.
Charity for homeless youth shuts down: The privately funded charity A Way Home Washington, which focuses on reducing youth homelessness, announced it will be closing its doors since philanthropic donations have run dry. In concert with similar government programs, A Way Home Washington contributed to a 40 percent reduction in youth and adult homelessness between 2016 and 2023, according to the Seattle Times. Despite success, the money has stopped flowing, so the charity must die. This is why we can’t look to philanthropy to replace government programs. It’s nice to get private money to fill in gaps and fund services … until those funds turn fickle.
Israel keeps slaughtering Gazans: Over the weekend, Israel aimed strikes at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where people displaced from the war had been sheltering. The strike and the fires it lit that engulfed tents in the encampment killed four people and injured dozens more. Separate from that atrocity, Israel struck a school compound overnight where families were sheltering and where a polio vaccination site had been planned. Those attacks killed 20 people. This is genocide.
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 14, 2024
Starvation as a weapon: According to the World Food Programme, no food has entered Gaza since October 1. Additionally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to seal off all humanitarian aid into Gaza, trapping hundreds of thousands of people without food, water, or other basic necessities.
And, yet the US pledged even more arms and forces to Israel. The Pentagon announced Sunday it would send “an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it.” The move comes as Israel plans a retaliatory attack against Iran, which launched a volley of 200 missiles at Israel on October 1. Additionally, over the weekend, a Hezbollah drone attack at an Israeli base killed four soldiers and injured 61. Israel already responded to that strike by killing civilians in Lebanon—a strike targeting an apartment building killed 18. So, the US will become even more complicit in this killing.
Protesters shut down Wall Street:
BREAKING: A group of Jewish-led protesters in Lower Manhattan just stormed the New York Stock Exchange.
They’re calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin pic.twitter.com/YcjBCJNxFX
— Noah Hurowitz (@NoahHurowitz) October 14, 2024
Right to bear arms and kill cats: The new chief of the National Rife Association, Douglas Hamlin, was charged with a misdemeanor for brutally torturing and murdering the cat at his fraternity house. Hamlin, who was president of Alpha Delta Phi at the University of Michigan, was charged alongside four of his frat bros in 1980 for the abuse of their cat, BK. I really don’t want to recount the abuse here since it makes my stomach churn, but this is the guy helming the NRA, and his atrocities are worth knowing. When their frat’s cat, BK, didn’t use its litter box, Hamlin and company cut off its paws, strung it up, and then lit it on fire. Hamlin and the rest of the accused were expelled from the school, but their charges were expunged after completing community service.
Another assassination attempt? A man with false press and VIP passes toting a loaded shotgun, handgun, and high-capacity magazine was intercepted at a checkpoint a half-mile from the entrance of Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella Valley, California on Saturday. The local sheriff said he believed the man was gunning to gun down Trump, but that it was all speculation. The suspect claimed he was a Trump supporter and brought the guns for his own safety.
Balloon fiesta fiasco: Albuquerque’s annual hot air balloon festival had a few big kinks this year. One balloon caught on fire after it flew into power lines and then landed in a construction site. A different balloon knocked over a radio tower. Still another balloon hit a tree while trying to land on a golf course. A passenger in that balloon suffered a head injury and two other passengers had to be rescued since the balloon’s basket remained stuck in the tree 25 feet above ground.
A song for your Monday: As a rehabilitated Southern Californian, I like to listen to this song whenever the rains start again in Seattle.
“Those attacks killed 20 people. This is genocide.”
That’s not how you assess genocide.
The stock exchange is closed today in observance of Columbus Day. Were they really Jewish led?
World is devolving into violence and death.
“Or, you could pay $2.75 for a bus ride.”
Why would anyone pay that when its optional to pay?
@2 Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not a market holiday, try harder.
@3
I’m guessing discussing character and integrity would be lost on you.
@2, What do you get from questioning the reporting on this protest? The group is called Jewish Voices for Peace and they have a website you can look up yourself. Or would you prefer to see their Ancestry DNA results? What exactly would satisfy your curiosity?
” It Never Rains In Southern California “
Isn’t that a problem?
Southern California is literally a desert.
The two perps found sleeping in a stolen Mercedes were probably just a couple more victims of savage capitalism, napping between futile job interviews, no choice but to steal a vehicle to seek work. Not surprised they were carrying explosives. How else to fend off the police in a society that criminalizes poverty?
Come on Nathalie! This is an excellent incident to lobby for free housing and another minimum wage increase!
@2b
‘The international order is breaking down in Gaza’: UN experts mark one year of genocidal attacks on Palestinians
11 October 2024
“The world faces the most profound crisis since the end of World War II. The atrocities which the world witnessed in World War II resulted in a collective determination to say ‘Never Again’ and to create the United Nations to achieve that goal. However, one year since the 7 October attack by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israel, the world has seen a brutal escalation of violence, resulting in genocidal attacks, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment of Palestinians, which risks breaking down the international multilateral system.
[..]
https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2024/10/international-order-breaking-down-gaza-un-experts-mark-one-year-genocidal
@8 Good point
I am partial to rain so that life and fun can flourish
@5, If humanity was that virtuous then Metro would just announce that $2.75 per ride was what was needed to bridge the gap between tax revenue and operating costs.
But they don’t. They get the County to pass a law that you must pay $2.75. The County and State have enforcement agents to collect the taxes, with fines and potential jail time, because humans possess more character attributes than those you mention. Why not for fares as well?
BREAKING: A group of Jewish-led protesters in Lower Manhattan just stormed the New York Stock Exchange.
They’re calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin
omg!
Jews!
Anti-fucking
ZIONIST Jews!
heads’re
Exploding!
Bodies, Too!
CHILDREN’S!
not to worry:
Our War Mongers
— right Here @tS! —
will have this sorted out
and Justified Long Before
High Fucking Noon which is
Rapidly fucking Approaching.
“thanks,”
to You
Lads!
(Vlad’s
Lad’s!)
@11, To be fair it does rain, particularly along the coast but also in the inland desert, however only in the winter.
I’m not sure what the objection to providing the Israelis a missile-defense system is. It’s a purely defensive weapon.
I really don’t want to recount the abuse here since it makes my stomach churn
Wow I also really wish you hadn’t posted this, especially since you made it sound like the rest of the paragraph wouldn’t get more graphic, so I kept reading, but if you had posted a content warning I would have stopped x.x
16: Sometimes the reader needs to know the severity of the horrific atrocity, this is one of those times. This is journalism.
Regarding the explosive device drop on the Burien road, it made me think that this might be a warning for how the post-election “festivities” will go in the homeland, particularly if Harris wins the election—something to think about other than having Gaza on the brain.
@1: Yes, but the actual method of assessing genocide not only requires work, it winds up going in entirely the wrong direction for the Stranger’s liking, esp. with that whole 10/7 “killing Jews, for being Jews, on land the attackers have vowed to cleanse of Jews,” thing. So, per Horseshoe Theory, they’re using the Limbaugh method for ascertaining truth, i.e. repeating something over and over and over again until it magically becomes true.
@12
There absolutely should be fare enforcement available to make sure fares are being paid.
In fact there used to be but it was eliminated because reasons.
@13, is it really a “storming” of the NYSE if the exchange is closed for the holiday? Seems like some sort of Zen exercise.
whilst wormtongue
justifies Genocide thru
Definitions the World can
See Israeli’s Atrocities and Pin
that Tail on the fucking Donkey
(sorry, Joe!
bibi Tricked you
into it! Not. your. Fault!).
@21, The NYSE does not observe Columbus day.
re: NRA Leader
also Torturer of Cats
“a Youthful Indiscretion!”
says the marketeer of WMDs
to anyone with enough Cashola (and
Height!) to toss that $$$ onto the Countertop
is JRR Vancelot
Aware of this Atrocity?
Will he Call Out the Torturer
of Cats? A. did the guy eat the cat?
B. is he White?
C. is he a fucking “Republican”?
and
fuck Yes
the description
of the Atrocity is
and Was Disturbing
Like
bibi’s
Fucking
Genocide.*
*I guess
since WE are
Supporting It, it’s
OUR GENOCIDE Too.
(sorry, wormmy. but
That’s just how
Accountabilty
Works. and
you can
Whine
about
it All
you
wanna.)
@15: “I’m not sure what the objection to providing the Israelis a missile-defense system is. It’s a purely defensive weapon.”
I don’t think there’s such a clear distinction between defensive and offensive weapons. It’s true THAAD by itself can’t strike ground targets, at least not in its current version. But THAAD might enable Israel to strike Iran in ways Israel otherwise would be deterred from attempting.
Iran’s October 1 ballistic missile attack partially overwhelmed Israel’s air defense and struck Nevatim Airbase in the vicinity of Israel’s F-35 fighter fleet (although Israel had apparently launched the fighters in advance of the strike to protect them from being blown up on the ground). Israel may worry that future Iranian ballistic missile attacks will prove even harder to defend—a worry which I think is fully justified, since Iran’s current inventory of medium-range ballistic missile is probably deep enough to support at least two more strike packages the same size as, or slightly larger than, the October 1 strike.
By improving Israel’s air defense through the provision of THAAD, a system which specializes in the destruction of medium-range ballistic missiles, the United States may embolden Israel to think it can weather the next rounds of Iranian strikes more safely than it did the October 1 strike. That, in turn, may cause Israel to feel less fearful about striking targets inside Iran. The “defensive weapon” THAAD enables offensive operations that would otherwise be too dangerous because of the threat of Iranian retaliation.
All that said, the Iranians deserve a solid punch in the nose for October 1, to say nothing of their ongoing military support for the Islamic resistance. If THAAD is what Israel needs to hit back in safety, then send them THAAD I say. Send it to the Ukrainians, too, who desperately need some breathing room of their own.
The hell?
Happy Thanksgiving!
@22: If there’s any point you’ve ever successfully made here, then it was to communicate your absolute and irrevocable opposition to the very idea of words having meanings. So long as they do, you’ll never win an argument.
@20 fare enforcement costs more than it would save, it’s an incredible waste
https://hellgatenyc.com/the-nypd-spent-150-million-to-catch-farebeaters-who-cost-the-mta-104000/
And the “reasons” King County stopped fare enforcement was that an audit was not able to determine that it was effective at all. In other words, “good governance “
https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/depts/auditor/auditor-reports/all-landing-pgs/2018/-/media/depts/auditor/new-web-docs/2018/rapidride-2018/rapidride-2018.ashx?la=en&hash=48CC62AD93C71768170F8B8DFD3BBB07
Columbus was a Jew! He wasn’t much for peace either. Bring on Indigenous People’s Day please. Whitey to the mooooon!!!!
@28
Classic
Wormtongue!
suitable for both
Framing and for
the Ages! well-
Played Worm-
my! thank
you!
@31 — Projection-
ally, et al, that is!
Thank You!
@30: “Columbus was a Jew!”
Careful or you’ll set off Average Bob! He can’t resist stuff like this, ha ha! 😃
@33
but WAS Columbus
who never saw an Indigenous
he didn’t wanna either Exterminate
Assassinate take captive or Exploit for
Fun Profit or merely for a little Pleasure
an Anti-
or PRO-Zionist
thumpfer? we’re
Dying to hear your
professorially elucidated
commentariat — but plz Don’t
‘forget’ the Ha Ha Has and the LOLz.
oh, my,
Look — I’ve
stooped to your level
shame
on Me.
Crawl up Donald Trump’s cavernous buttcrack, die of fecal poisoning, and roast in Hell forever cleaning litter boxes, NRA gun Nazi, Douglas Hamlin!
I wish the Orange Turd and all of its loyalists really WOULD die, already. I can’t handle a repeat of 2016.
Bomb threats on I-90. Jesus wept.
@33 Liar. Your continual use of ad-hominem shows you no have no logical argument to shield Israel from accusations of committing genocide in Gaza.
The latest round of the Middle East Scholar Barometer that we co-direct, with over 750 mostly U.S.-based respondents, reveals that few scholars believe that advancing a two-state solution in the foreseeable future is a realistic option, and a large majority believe that war in Israel and Gaza is likely to lead to new large-scale, long-term displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and/or the West Bank. The Biden administration’s policy gets failing grades from the scholars: More than three-quarters say President Joe Biden’s policy negatively impacts the prospects of peace in Israel and Palestine, U.S. interests in the Middle East, and America’s standing in the world.
[,,]
Nearly three-quarters of the scholars surveyed, about 72%, expect the war to result in new mass displacements of Palestinians outside of Gaza and the West Bank. This expectation seems partly based on the scholars’ gloomy assessment of Israel’s motives: A majority, about 57%, see making Gaza uninhabitable in order to force Palestinian removal as a primary Israeli objective of the war. About 15% each see Israel’s primary objective to be keeping the current Israeli government in office or destroying Hamas. Few (about 4%) say Israel’s operation is justified by the right of self-defense
Their assessment of the resultant reality is equally dark: Respondents describe Israeli actions in damning terms, with 41% saying they constitute major war crimes akin to genocide, nearly 34% saying they constitute genocide, and 16% saying they are not akin to genocide, but are still major war crimes. While these views may seem surprising, they are not markedly different from the views of some segments of the American public, especially Democrats, with one recent poll showing a majority of Democrats saying Israeli actions amounted to genocide.
[..]
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/gloom-about-the-day-after-the-gaza-war-pervasive-among-mideast-scholars/
@37: “…reveals that few scholars believe that advancing a two-state solution in the foreseeable future is a realistic option,”
They have good company: pro-Palestinian protestors.
‘The protesters made their demands clear in their rallying chants: “Free, free Palestine,” […] “We don’t want two states, we want 1948,”…’ (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/10/16/79212000/as-a-ground-invasion-looms-thousands-in-seattle-protest-for-a-free-palestine)
Maybe they can all get together and solve the little problem of exactly why nobody listens to them? “Gaza Isn’t Driving Votes.”
We are just the United States of Israel. All of taxpaying America is funding genocide. We’re all in, all complicit, no matter what. Israel has been given a full green light to slaughter whoever they want with no repercussions. And it’s not enough to send money and weapons, now we’re sending military troops, too.
And there was a flight from Mumbai to JFK that received a bomb threat and was diverted to Delhi early this morning.
And to think, if we didn’t have a government run by psychopaths, all of this could have been stopped, FULL STOP, already.
Not voting for anyone currently in power (or any Republican, ever). Stick a fucking fork in this country it is done. Zionists and White Supremacists are desperate to maintain their power by any means necessary and they care about nothing else. Their depraved indifference to all life will end this country (if not the entire world).
I never imagined I would literally live through the end times of humanity and yet here I am.
@37 good info, but unfortunately the commenters here don’t care much for “scholars” or “research.” What do KOMO or local Twitter personalities have to say about the issue?
“… with one recent poll
showing a majority of
Democrats saying Is-
raeli actions amoun-
ted to genocide.”
–@”averagebob”
@19
looks like
Someone’s
NOT getting
His Insidious Mes-
sage Across! c’MON
wormmy! Educate the Planet!
justify!
Justify!
JUSTIFY!
@41: Which poll?
(Also, when did we start assigning guilt or innocence based upon polling results?)
@39
well
it’s a
Race!
(Some of)
the ‘White’ race
vs the Human race
a race to the Bottom
racing to see who can
drag us into the Abyss
BE-fore we can possibly
Evolve beyond our reptilican
brainstem & it Looks Like our
Humanity — and it’s Debatable
that we Are humans, our ‘Humanity’
taking a Backseat to greed hubris glut-
tony our empathy having been shown the door
having no place on this Gorgeous
little Blue Planet exiled by The
Wiser Ones to the farthest
reaches of the Known
Universe may be
Overdue for an
Appraisement.
astute,
xina, as
per Usual.
@37: “Nearly three-quarters of the scholars surveyed, about 72%, expect the war to result in new mass displacements of Palestinians outside of Gaza and the West Bank.”
lol, mass displacements to where, the moon? Egypt and Jordan won’t allow any more Palestinians into their countries and will “Black September” any Palestinians who try to cross unauthorized. Prohibition of new Palestinian immigration is a feature of Jordan and Egypt’s peace treaties with Israel. I worked in a Palestinian refugee camp on the Jordanian border (UNHCR not UNRWA, lol), and from what I could see the Jordanians would be MORE than happy to see the backs of these people!
Lebanon won’t take ’em, having learning its lesson after the 1982 war. Syria is overwhelmingly a net exporter of refugees, not an importer. And the only way Palestinians would agree to move into Israel would be at the head of a conquering army, lol! No one in Gaza or the West Bank is going anywhere. These so-called “scholars” in the Brooking report have been reading too much progressive social media and not enough history of the Middle East.
@34 From Wikislogpedia: “Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani. He then visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what is now Haiti. Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493, with captured natives (@34 did you read that one, Columbus was a slaver too!). Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe (ie. We found stuff, look here are some slaves.).
@39 xina: I share your frustrations. I never thought I’d live to see end times, either.
That ~ 75 million complete idiots who have absolutely no ability to vote wisely STILL
eagerly cheer on, willingly seek to re-elect and choose a twice impeached convicted
felon over an intelligent, well qualified woman is to me, baffling to say the least.
Unregulated corporate greed and MAGA stupidity will be the end of this country
as well as the rest of the world.
39: We’re not in the first period of history when people thought the end of humanity was approaching.
@1:
Except it’s not JUST one group of 20 – it’s 20, 50, 150, ? day after day after day, over and over and over again, with no end in-sight.
THAT’S how you access genocide…
@19:
The flaw in your argument is in thinking that the Jewish People have some sort of inherent nationalistic right to the land turned over to them in 1948; whereas, the region has always been an amalgam of ethno-religious entities going as far back as the early Egyptian Dynasties more than four Millenia ago. In fact, the Jewish population was very much a minority until statehood, with Palestinian Arabs comprising a far greater majority. Various treaties and declarations (e.g. The Balfour Declaration of 1917) were supposed to uphold their civil, religious and political rights, including a promise to create a separate Palestinian country during the Paris Peace Talks of 1919, but with the huge influx of Jews into Israel after the end of WW-II, this policy was essentially abandoned. Instead, land that had traditionally belonged to Palestinian families for generations was summarily confiscated from them, with no avenue for redress.
What we see today is the result of this misguided policy; had the Palestinian People been granted equal status AND their own homeland when the British turned over control of the region, the last 80 or so years of continued internecine bloodshed probably (and granted, that’s a BIG “probably”) have been largely avoided.
Kamala’s campaign must have read my mind. She’s going on Fox News. Shows spunk.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/live-blog/harris-trump-presidential-election-live-updates-rcna175177/rcrd60159
@48: Actually, genocide has nothing to do with the number of victims, but entirely by both the identity of the victims, and the intent of the attackers. An event can be a genocide without a single death. (https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf)
Cheer up, though: while your attempt at understanding genocide failed completely, your warmed-over regurgitation of averagebob’s one-sided history of Palestine gets a C-.
@48. Comrte.
Questions –
Do you believe it was the correct decision by both Palestinian political leadership and the Arab Front Line states when they not only rejected the UN Resolution 181 Partition but declared war and attacked the newly established state of Israel? Yes or No
If you could rewind the clock and have the resolution be accepted would you? Yes or No
How has repeatedly electing for war served the Palestinian cause? Mostly well or mostly not
Does opting for war, generally speaking, come with dire and often long term consequences? Yes or No
Can you think of any movements throughout history that succeeded in throwing off the yoke of some oppressor that did not involve war and/or terrorism?
If a bullied school kid or maligned employee shows up one day and shoots their peers to pieces are they accountable at all for their actions given the abuse they received? If so does this line of reasoning also operate at a societal level or do aggrieved peoples have no actual responsibility for their behavior?
Given the countless crimes committed by Putin towards Ukraine, should we applaud, encourage, or enoble Kyiv should it decide it wants to embark on a mass terror campaign against Russian civilians?
As outside observers, when we react sympathetically to civilian suffering that was a direct consequence of “human shield” tactics does this not encourage more of the tactic? More precisely, if the Hamas tactics of militarizing schools and hospitals did not yield any international sympathy, do you think we would see more or less of such behavior?
Looking back at a year of turmoil and protest following the Oct 7 massacre, are you satisfied with the movement itself? Would you hail it a success? If so, what are you most proud of?
@25: The anti-missile system being sent to Israel next week comes with 100 US troops to operate it.
That’s not going to Ukraine. Wouldn’t want to provoke Putin.
@52: THAAD can be operated by recipient countries’ militaries. Saudi Arabia and UAE each operate their own THAAD systems, with no noisy US troops to wake up the neighbors. Ukraine is already operating PAC-3s, so it wouldn’t take much (besides money) to spin them up on THAAD as well.
Maybe THAAD is overkill for Ukraine, given the short ranges across which Russian ballistic missiles are launched? But the Kinzhals are air-launched from some insane altitude by Foxhounds, so it strikes me that THAAD would still offer Ukraine capabilities that PAC-3 does not. I’m happy for Israel that they get THAAD (and their situation vs Iran is what THAAD was tailor-made for), I just wish Ukraine would get it too.
@9
More proof that Mercer Island is the Bomb!
@25: One can argue it both ways: confidence in a solid defense can make the defended side more aggressive, but it can also make it less aggressive. The defense reduces the temptation for “use it or lose it” thinking concerning military assets which are defended.
@55: I doubt the Israelis feel any fear of “use it or lose it” in the face of Iranian ballistic missiles. Even if the Israelis had no missile defense at all, Iran doesn’t have enough MRBMs, and the MRBMs it does have aren’t accurate enough, to significantly degrade any of Israel’s military capabilities.
In the October 1 strike, ~40/200 MRBMs struck Nevatim Airbase. Even 40 missile hits failed to damage a single aircraft or injure a single Israeli. (Indeed, the only casualty was a Palestinian man in the West Bank who had a missile booster fall directly on his head.) Iran likely has only ~750 MRBMs left in its inventory. If 40 MRBM penetrations can’t kill a single Israeli warplane, then even 750 MRBMs is just not enough missiles to do any kind of significant damage to Israel’s military, much less the kind of damage that would put Israel in a “use it or lose it” situation.
Israel needs THAAD and other ballistic missile defenses not to preserve its military asset, which will survive in any event. It needs missile defense because the next Iranian salvo could be aimed at Israel’s civilian population, the only Israeli target soft enough for Iran’s weak missile capabilities to damage. A large missile strike package aimed at a major city could produce dozens or even hundreds of civilian deaths, well worth the investment of ballistic missile defense.
Esmail Qaani was apparently just shown on Iranian state television. It’s unlikely even the Iranians would resort to body-doubles, so I think it’s time to resolve this mystery in favor of the conclusion that he remains alive. Israel still owes Iran an airstrike, so there will be more chances in the near future, if Israel can figure out how to neutralize the rest of Iran’s MRBM arsenal.
Still no confirmation on Hashim Safi-ad-Din. Israel’s seniormost officials say he is “likely” dead, while Hizbollah continues to say nothing. I’m keeping the odds on his death at 5:1 in favor.
@37 “These so-called “scholars””
Are the quote supposed to say they aren’t really scholars or is it that they have to play act being “professors on the internet” like you (and fake laugh a lot) for you to take them seriously?
These Middle East historians know very well that ethnic cleansing has been Israel’s standard MO w.r.t. Palestinians, and that Israeli politicians have discussed repeatedly flushing Gazans out to the Sinai since they started attacking Gaza in October. Whether or not Israel will succeed in expulsing Gazans is unclear as the IDF terrorizes and kills every day dozens of civilians with nowhere to go and no place to live even if the massacre stopped tomorrow.
@50 It’s obvious that you have not provided any specific rebuttal to Comte’s summary of history. Empty posturing isn’t convincing
@58: I’ve provided responses to pieces of his mashup in the past; as you may recall, “… the Jewish population was very much a minority until statehood,” resulted from the Roman Empire having expelled Jews from the region en masse, and the Ottoman Empire having enforced discriminatory policies against Jews entering Palestine.
Persons who agree with the decisions of long-dead imperial powers to expel/exclude Jews from Palestine will tend to be persuaded by such arguments as @48 used, while persons who believe in self-determination for local populations will tend to find such arguments entirely unimpressive.
@58: lol, no one is getting “flushed out to the Sinai.” This is about as credible as your “millions of lives in Lebanon” meltdown the other day. Meanwhile, in reality, the number is about 2,000 😄 I’m surprised you haven’t started calling that a genocide, too, or maybe you already have, ha ha!
Hearing that song always makes me want to re-watch Greenberg.
@60 “no one is getting”
Nobody said someone currently “is getting”. Scholars said the purpose of Israel was to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land (as it has repeatedly done in the past) and Israeli politicians had been discussing it
“as credible as your “millions of lives in Lebanon””
You are again lying. The article I cited from Huff Post said “Fighting on the ground in Lebanon risks millions of lives” as a headline while the article itself used “endanger”, which is all true. Millions of lives are individually put at risk of dying. It doesn’t mean millions are going to die. If Israel’s attack on Lebanon is as deadly as that on Gaza, 100,000s innocent civilians will die, which is apparently small potatoes for a ghoul.
Word twisting like ad-hominem is a classic sign of someone trying to defend the indefensible
@49 You are using a classic fallacy often used by those who try to demonize their opposition rather than have a dialogue and resolve conflicts (a favorite of Thumpus the thug): stating historical facts has nothing to do with agreeing with how and/or why these facts occurred . For example, I can say that Oct 7 happened in the context of Israel’s 50+ year long illegal occupation and violent apartheid in Palestine while being horrified by the crimes committed by Hamas on Oct 7. So, in other words, one can explain reoccurring violence by the settlers’ theft of land and Israel’s violent suppression of protests without condoning terrorist violence against Israelis.
The historical facts are that a) Palestinians Jews were a small minority in the late 1800s when Jewish immigration started due to ancient and some more recent policies. and b) Palestinian Arabs had been occupying that land for many generations, some of them for at least 3700 years according to genetic studies.
@62: Oh god, he’s back on the Jews! Tensorna, what have you done! 😂😂😂
Thumpus the thug only has slander and word twisting to defend the indefensible
it Works on the FOX
“averagebob.” why
on Earth wouldn’t
it work Right
Here?
@62: Oh, I get it now. You’re having trouble with the common meanings of words. (Little wonder you and kristo’ get along so well.)
“…Oct 7 happened in the context of Israel’s 50+ year long illegal occupation and violent apartheid in Palestine while being horrified by the crimes committed by Hamas on Oct 7.”
Every event happens “in the context of” other events, because no event happens in isolation. But mere co-relation does not, in and of itself, imply cause. So even if Israel had a policy of “apartheid” (which the ICJ recently declined to say it had), that alone would not have caused Hamas’ attack of Oct. 7. By contrast, the relatively low population of Jews in British Mandatory Palestine was caused by the Roman Imperial policy of expelling Jews from the Jews’ traditional homeland, followed by the Ottoman Empire’s ever-tightening restrictions upon Jews’ re-entering Palestine, in the final years of that later empire’s nonconsensual rule of what had once been the Jews’ traditional homeland.
Therefore, any argument which relies upon the relatively low population of Jews in British Mandatory Palestine also relies upon multiple imperial rulers’ expulsion and exclusion of Jews from the Jews’ traditional homeland, and thus endorses those imperial powers’ nonconsensual impositions of discriminatory policies upon local populations.
How you square your acceptance of multiple discriminatory imperial policies with rejection of “settler-colonist” policies is up to you, but good luck getting anyone else to accept it.
@66 “the relatively low population of Jews in British Mandatory Palestine was caused by the Roman Imperial policy of expelling Jews”
So in 2000-some years it’ll be entirely defensible for the Palestinians’ descendants to illegally immigrate to the region, launch a terror campaign against the current occupants, and create an ethnostate? Or does that “logic” only work one way?
@67: Confused as usual, I see.
After the British Empire dismembered the Ottoman Empire in WWI, Britain controlled Palestine. British control of Palestine continued as a Mandate under the League of Nations. The British eased SOME of the Ottoman Empire’s restrictions upon Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine, with the result that Jews entered Palestine, bought land, and stayed. There was nothing “illegal” about any of this; in fact, it was all conducted under the only international legal authority the world had yet known, the League of Nations.
As for the history of Palestine after WWII, please see the questions @51.
@38 that’s not correct, Jewish immigration was heavily restricted largely due to the 1939 White Paper. Jews ignored the quotas and flooded into the region and waged a terror campaign against the British and Arabs. Only differences between the Israelis and Palestinians are the Palestinians didn’t wander the desert and elsewhere for 2000 years before trying to take “their” land back, and the US doesn’t unquestioningly support the Palestinians.
@69: Jewish immigration into Palestine had been heavily restricted by the Ottoman Empire; some of these restrictions were eased by the British, starting in 1917. So even if you’d provided a citation for your White Paper assertion, Jews had enjoyed less-restrictive access to Palestine for twenty years.
And if you’re relying upon imperial restrictions upon Jews to support your argument, then you can’t simultaneously claim other local peoples should be free of external control — unless you’re anti-Jewish, of course. Take your pick.
speaking of normalizing
a little genocide:
You’re Not Crazy. This
Genocidal Dystopia
Is Crazy.
You’re not crazy. They are crazy. The ones who are going around acting like everything’s fine. The ones dismissing the Gaza genocide as a “single issue”. The ones who don’t like it when you talk about this stuff because it bums them out. They are the crazy ones.
I say this because living in the west during a western-backed genocide can make you feel like you’re going insane. Like maybe there’s something wrong with you for not being able to go along as though your government isn’t helping Israel burn people alive, shoot kids in the head, deliberately destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, and target civilian populations with deadly siege warfare in order to annex Palestinian territory.
Like maybe you’re defective if you can’t be as chill about all this as everyone else is being.
But there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are not defective. There is something very wrong with a civilization that could go along with all this. It is our genocidal dystopia that is defective.
History is rife with examples of horrific mass atrocities to which the majority of the population did not respond with the appropriate revulsion and urgency at the time. Slavery. The Holocaust.
The systematic extermination of other indigenous populations in other settler-colonialist projects. Most of the people who now look back and judge those evils correctly in hindsight are sleepwalking right through their present-day reiteration in Palestine.
Those who stood against the mass atrocities of history tended to be in the minority, because if opposing them was conventional wisdom they wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
This shows us that there is no correlation between conventional wisdom and real moral clarity. We cannot look to others to evaluate whether our position on an issue is the correct one, because history tells us that the majority is very often wrong on the most important issues in the present moment when it matters.
And the majority is wrong now. The ones flagrantly supporting Israel’s abuses are wrong. The ones who try not to think too much about what’s being done in Gaza and Lebanon are wrong.
The ones who say it’s all so tragic and heartbreaking but it’s oh so very complicated and Israel has a right to defend itself are wrong. T
he ones who don’t oppose Israel’s atrocities but only oppose their own country sending boots on the ground or spending their tax dollars on it are wrong.
The ones who know a genocide is happening but avoid making too much noise about it because they want to make sure the Democrats win the election are wrong.
The ones who know it’s a genocide but don’t respond to this reality with the appropriate level of urgency, forcefulness and focus are wrong.
All around us we are bombarded with messages trying to gaslight into believing that we are the ones who aren’t perceiving reality correctly. These messages can be overt, like the propaganda of the mass media and the talking points of the Israel apologists we run into online.
They can also be subtle, like the unspoken messages we get when nobody around us is talking about Gaza and how people grow uncomfortable when we do.
But those messages are lying to us. We absolutely are the ones who are seeing things correctly. We absolutely are the ones who are responding to this nightmare appropriately. They are the ones acting like a bunch of lunatics casually strolling around in the middle of a house fire.
Don’t look to others to evaluate your own level of clarity. In a civilization that has gone insane, you have to sort out what sanity looks like for yourself.
When our leaders are throwing their support behind an active genocide in a society that is awash with propaganda-induced delusions, we’ve all got to be brave enough to stand on our own two feet.
–by Caitlin Johnstone; Oct 16, 2024
oodles:
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/youre-not-crazy-this-genocidal-dystopia