Refugee crisis: Ninety families who took refuge in a Kent hotel after living in intolerable conditions at an encampment in Tukwila showed up yesterday at city halls in Seattle and Tukwila to pressure local governments to help pay for them to remain in the hotel. The hotel gave the families until yesterday to find a new place to go. The action prompted Seattle to pay the tab for another week, KIRO reports.
Mine sends weird letter to Snohomish County school: An attorney for Mountain Loop Mine sent a cease-and-desist warning to the principal and teachers to stop complaining about the dust and noise from its gravel yard next door, or else? The Seattle Times reports that the mine lacks the permits it needs to operate the yard. The yard’s manager has told media that the site is zoned for industrial activity and it is mitigating its impact on the school. Meanwhile, students are having a hard time learning with all the banging trucks and coughing classmates.
Sara Nelson doesn’t think higher voter turnout is good: To be precise, she’s concerned about a couple of bills in Olympia that would allow municipalities to change their elections from odd to even years. King County voters overwhelmingly supported this reform in 2022 because it would lead to higher voter turnout, as more people vote in local elections that are paired with national elections. Nelson said higher turnout doesn’t mean a better-informed public, but we say representative democracy is pretty cool. Hannah has way more to say than I do.
In her latest conservative stunt, CM Sara Nelson regurgitates Regan Dunn talking points to oppose consolidating elections for higher voter turnout. But we shouldn’t be surprised, she benefits from disenfranchising voters. https://t.co/5osdvjaIOr
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) January 31, 2024
Chris Rufo linked to “scientific racism” journal: The Guardian reports that Rufo, the local conservative activist credited with pressuring Harvard’s president to resign and with popularizing terms such as “critical race theory,” “groomers,” and “trans strippers” has links to the magazine Aporia, which draws connections between race, intelligence, and criminality, a load of pseudoscientific racist horseshit, according to the government. Rufo, a close Ron DeSantis ally, has promoted the publication’s Substack on his Substack. He also appeared on their podcast, which has published interviews with eugenicists.
First known outbreak of deadly fungus in the state: C. auris first showed in a single patient at Kindred Hospital in Seattle last July. But this month, a second tested positive for the fungus. A week later, doctors discovered three additional cases in people who tested negative when admitted to the hospital. The fungus can cause serious illness in the 5% to 10% of C. auris patients, and of that group nearly half die. In general, the fungus is most dangerous for those with serious conditions who live in long-term care facilities. Most generally healthy people are not at risk.
Stop throwing away your batteries in the trash! ICYMI: Seattle Public Utilities is reminding us all that a ban took effect on January 1. You can’t throw away loose AAAs, AAs, Ds, Cs, etc., or anything with a baked-in battery, like a TV or computer. SPU won’t spend time digging through our garbage to issue fines, but it is an asshole move. Batteries can catch fire, damaging garbage trucks and people. KING 5 has a list of places you can drop off your shit. I’ll make sure to tell my neighbor, who threw a whole ass big screen TV away the other day.
Carmelos is filling the void Starbucks left behind: The little local Mexican chain-that-could is moving up in the world. (If you haven’t, try the campechano tacos). Capitol Hill Seattle blog reports they’ll be taking over the Capitol Hill storefront at Broadway and Denny that Starbucks vacated in December 2022 over “security concerns” and totally not the union it is still fighting.
If old Gaybucks finally finds a new use on E Olive Way, gonna have to conclude that SBUX pulling out of the city’s core has been a good thing — Carmelo’s moving in on Broadway https://t.co/hfJzXa2U12
— jseattle (@jseattle) January 30, 2024
Portland declares fentanyl state of emergency downtown: Declaring a state of emergency means the state, county, and city can direct government agencies to work together in a command center downtown to address the public health crisis the drug is fueling. For the next 90 days, people struggling with fentanyl addiction will be triaged to that center so they can be connected with shelter and behavioral health resources. That doesn’t mean Oregon will carry this out right. The state of emergency pairs state and city police on downtown patrols for sales, possibly sticking people who need help in jail–but I’m sure our friends at The Portland Mercury will be keeping a close eye on developments.
Donald Trump stays on the ballot in Illinois: The state’s Board of Elections couldn’t make up its collective mind about whether trying to overthrow the government made one ineligible to run it, so they threw caution to the wind instead. Trump thanked them, saying he loved Illinois. Their choice sets the stage before the March primary for a court challenge from a national voting rights group who argue the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from taking office, does apply to the former president. Colorado and Maine have removed Trump from the primary ballot.
Explorers claim they found Amelia Earhart’s plane (do you think she’s okay?) The mystery of Earhart’s disappearance has dogged the world for 87 years, but I think she died in a plane crash. A team of underwater archeologists and marine roboticists say they’ve found an airplane-shaped anomaly in the Pacific about 16,000 feet underwater. They believe it could be the Lockheed 10-E Electra she flew in an attempt to circle the globe. They hope to return to the site in a year to investigate further.
Explorers say they think they’ve found Amelia Earhart’s long-lost planehttps://t.co/XHkWqnpE9m pic.twitter.com/N2X9feUqAY
— Wynn Westmoreland CNN (@WynnWs) January 31, 2024
Four NHL players charged with sexual assault: Prosecutors charged Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote of the New Jersey Devils, and Dillion Dube of the Calgary Flames with an alleged sexual assault in 2018. This comes two days after former player Alex Formenton surrendered to police for the same alleged crime. Police launched their investigation in 2022, after word broke that Hockey Canada settled with a woman who claimed eight players on its world junior team sexually assaulted her at gala.
White Lives Matter guy sentenced to 18 years in federal lockup: Aimenn Penny firebombed an LGBTQ-friendly church in Wadsworth, Ohio with Molotov cocktails in 2023. The 20-year-old member of the pro-Nazi group pled guilty to an arson hate crime and using fire and explosives to commit a felony. But he didn’t feel bad about it. In fact, he told investigators he would’ve felt better if the church had burned to the ground. Penny justified his actions as free speech and protecting children; he believed he was doing “God’s work” because the church had planned a drag queen story hour.
I don’t often agree with Hannah, but certainly more voter turnout is better. Kudos.
“The 20-year-old
[convicted Arson-
ist] member of
the pro-Nazi*
group”
what?
but dewey
informed el
Schlogg that
there haven’t
been any Nazis
in Amerca since
1945. what gives?
you mean
there’s Fascists
right HERE in the
USOFA? are they Pro-
life? do they Hate off-Whites?
do they Recognize
the Rights of LGBTQs?
surely they’re no
Threat to Washington.
we’re Safe here . thank Gawd.
speaking of fascists:
“Mountain Loop mine sent a cease-and-desist warning to the principal and teachers to stop complaining about the dust and noise from its gravel yard next door… “
but
nosebleeds
are Common
amongst children
living/schooling next
to major dust-making Enterprises.
they’ll likely Go Away
after you Graduate.
and those LOUD
BANGINGS? that’s
just Free Enterprise
Hard at Work. some-
thing you Loafer Com-
mies’ll Never Understand.
While I would love for Amelia Earhart’s plane to be found, I am skeptical that such a plane would survive a water landing and be that intact after so many years have passed. That said, weirder things have happened. Hopefully they can get an ROV down there to get some pictures.
We all know Amelia Earhart was a mermaid.
She just went home, and rules the seas nearby
@4 You spend so many words defending war crimes. Look, it’s pretty straightforward.
It is a war crime to intentionally kill a civilian.
It is a war crime to kill a soldier who has surrendered. Intent is not a required element of the crime (unlike killing civilians)
If the IDF soldiers thought that the escaped hostages were civilians, it was a war crime.
If the IDF soldiers thought that the escaped hostages were Hamas militants (more likely), it was a war crime. The hostages were waving a white flag, were unarmed, and were not wearing shirts (illustrating that they were not wearing suicide vests). That is a textbook definition of having surrendered and laid down arms.
Sure, there was fighting nearby. But it is incumbent on a soldier to know who they are shooting. You know, so they don’t commit war crimes.
Whether there were orders or not is immaterial. The action of pulling a trigger was a war crime. The fact that nobody was punished in any way, not even a meaningless hand slap to the personnel file speaks volumes about the IDF’s willingness to tolerate war crimes.
“Lunar New Year …. The holiday falls on February 10 this year,”
Why do articles like this pretend that every culture/religion all have their Lunar New Years starting on the same date?
Maybe we should recruit some billionaires to head down into the oceanic depths to explore that plane wreckage. Worked out pretty well last time as I recall.
@8: Socialism and anarchism are two different, and in some ways, opposing systems of governing. For example: the former emphasizes collective, public ownership of economic resources and centralized governmental administration of those resources; whereas the latter promotes an individualistic approach, somewhat akin to libertarianism, and completely eschews the concept of any kind of governmental authority whatsoever. I suspect you’re just coughing up wurds (sic), the meanings of which you don’t understand, like a cat coughs up hairballs.
And sure, let’s just blame the end-users and not the multi-national pharmaceutical mega-corporations that flooded this country with opioids, nor the foreign state bad actors cough! China cough! similarly flooding this country with opioids.
I’m glad Beth’s is gonna be open later (No way I’m going, but happy for vampires who need food), and I am thrilled they are updating the menu. It gives me hope that simple pleasures for the working masses are coming back into fashion.
Sara Nelson is a ghoul. What politician is ever against voting? One that is afraid of being voted out. Please Gawd, make that wish come true.
Portland, OR is my hometown. I’m sad that so many people are homeless in the PNW, and that unmet social/physical needs are the root cause of it. Circling back to my frustration with Sara Nelson et all, politicians who pretend they have no idea why drug use is a thing, are abominations. OMG – can we pleeeeaaazzzz get social workers, mental health specialists, employment specialists, health care specialists, and housing for suffering people? I hate all of this.
@14 no one is blaming the end users and the makers of these drugs/importers should be held accountable. The border should also be maintained to stop the flow of these drugs into our country. That being said when addicts can no longer control their addiction and start committing crimes either because they are addicted (e.g. assault) or to feed their addiction (e.g. theft) they should be held accountable. It’s been well documented the progressives in Seattle and Portland feel that the addiction is an excuse to let people do whatever they want and until we can offer these people treatment (and they accept on their terms) there should not be any consequences and that is where they lose the narrative and the majority of support.
404 error at that King 5 link.
Here’s a link to SPU’s “where does it go?” battery page: https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/where-does-it-go#/item/batteries
@14: sure thing, we’ll get that to Seattle and Portland right away. where would you like the bill sent?
No, Ms. Nelson. That’s not how it works. You can’t have elections involving only the devout. That’s the thing, hon, about ugly ol’, inconvenient ol’, fabulous ol’ democracy. Voters get to pick you. You don’t get to pick the voters.
The CBC’s much-admired version of 60 Minutes (kinda), The Fifth Estate, did a story about sexual crimes committed by hockey players last year. This doesn’t occur only with the pros. A few incidences of junior hockey players pulling this shameful stunt has occurred during tournaments. A young woman lured or swooned up to a player’s room only to find a gang-bang waiting for her. Political leaders universally spew disgust at this, of course, but the middle-management guys, the ones who could have gotten the ball rolling to punish offenders and end this, pretty much copped a boys-will-be-boys attitude. Perhaps it’s the hockey culture and tradition that doesn’t entirely discourage players to stop raping women, but I think on the whole, little Canadian boys are schooled early on to respect diversity and gender and sex. I consider myself a feminist, but I know that men generally are physically stronger than women, they’re larger generally, so that advice that Momma gave Betsy Sue back in 1957 just before she leaves the house on a date in a poodle skirt and a fresh Toni needs updating but still may apply. En garde! Especially if you aren’t skilled at kicking ass. It’s tragic that this is still even a thing.
@18, 19 I’m guessing you either have chosen not to read the linked cite I gave you from the UN or you are completely ignoring it. Because you are straight up wrong. We’ll try it again. Follow along here, because it’s a little complicated. I know that you can do it though.
So, open this link. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml
With me so far? Good, I knew you could do it!
Scroll down to item 2. “War crimes means:”
Hold on to your hat now, this is getting complicated. What this is saying is that they’re about to define what a war crime is.
Scroll down to b. A war crime is “any of the following acts”
Let’s review. Anything following is a war crime. Got it? Great! I knew you could!
Scroll down to ii: “Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives”
This is important. You see, they used the word “intentionally” there. That means that you have to intend to shoot a civilian for it to be a war crime. Now we’re almost there.
Scroll aaaaaall the way down to vi: “Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion”
What a careful reader will see here is that the word “intentionally” is not in this definition. You do not have to mean to kill a surrendered soldier to commit a war crime, you can commit a war crime through negligence.
See? Not so hard, is it? I knew you could read through and maybe even understand!
If you don’t think that intent is required, please provide a cite of customary international law specific to war crimes of this nature (ie that don’t have “intentionally” in their description). Otherwise, you’re just blowing smoke.
The officer did not have to give an order to cease fire if a white flag is seen. The soldiers should have been trained to do that themselves. If they weren’t trained in their obligations on a battlefield, they had no business being on the battlefield in the first place. And Israel still bears the responsibility of their negligence.
Thank you @20. King County already has its own intractable homeless crisis. The last thing it needs to be doing is spending $3,000,000 on hotel rooms for people who have no right to be in the country to begin with–which in turn encourages even more to show up with no money, no plan, and their hand out. And now Seattle is paying for an additional week of hotel rooms for these illegal economic migrants?! If these people feel that living in a tent in the PNW is “intolerable,” they shouldn’t have come here. Equatorial South America and Africa are much more temperate this time of year. The sense of entitlement of these people is mind blowing.
@ 23 – Yeah, I’m picking up on the entitlement thing, too. One hopes the money for another week gives planners that time to come up with a fix. Perhaps even hire a charter plane that’ll fly them all back to Caracas business-class. Oh, and they can take that Venezuelan flag with them please.
Imagine the US becoming an intolerable place to live (that’s no longer inconceivable) and you make your mind up to leave. You say, “I know! I’ll go to Japan!” (imagine a land bridge to Japan). You somehow slip through the border, you and your four toddlers, and proclaim, “Boy, things sure are rough here without any money! But I’ve left the US because it has a dictator now. So, put me up at a Holiday Inn Express with some meal tickets. Oh, and laundry service would be nice. It’s upon the government of Japan to help me.” Now picture yourself waving good-bye to Japanese authorities from the window of your plane home.
Now, picture going to the Japanese Embassy here in the States before leaving and saying, “I want to leave the US out of fear. I have skills that Japan can use. I will be an asset and not a burden.” Now, was that so hard? And if Japan says, “We’re full,” then you think of another country.
Fentanyl sellers need to go straight to jail. Compassion for the addicts, but the dealers need to be put out of action.
@25 You are really lousy at reading comprehension. How many times to do you need to be told that the escaped hostages had no shirts on before you figure out that means they couldn’t have had a suicide vest on? You think that if they had it wouldn’t have been front page news? You think that if they had had any hint of being armed that wouldn’t have been mentioned at the soldier’s trial?
So no, the escaped hostages were not armed. They were waving a white flag. They were shot anyway. Which is a war crime.
OK, fine. Israel never signed the Rome Convention. They did sign the Fourth Geneva Convention which says virtually the same thing. Surrendered soldiers who have laid down their arms are considered civilians, and you aren’t allowed to shoot them. See pages 7-8 of the PDF, numbered pages 170-171. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf
And no, the Fourth Geneva Convention makes no distinction about whether the surrendered soldiers are in custody or not. Killing civilians (including surrendered soldiers) is “prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”.
Who said anything about murder? The question is war crimes. Do try to keep up.
So yeah, Israel still failed to meet its international obligations. You also keep saying “LOAC” as if that’s a citation. Provide a link, page, and line item.
I think the most promising parts of the sonar discovery are the facts that it was found within less than 100 miles of Earhart’s intended destination and that it appears it could have a double finned stabilizer. Probably worth sending a robot down to find out what it actually is.
Wasn’t Ms. Earhart’s flight pandamonium from the start? And remember one of the tabloids reporting, quite a while ago now, that they’d found her – her disappearance was a hoax. She is actually a housewife in NJ, and here’s her picture. “Looks just like her,” it said. Poor woman. That must have been disruptive.
Her story is a sad one to be sure. I think I read that she was getting pretty unhappy with all the attention, and that she was misguided and hoodwinked into taking on that stunt – for it was a stunt then. But it puts humanity’s mind at ease sometimes to figure out historical mysteries. We still speculate about Jack the Ripper even though it matters not a whit now who he really was. It only sets the record straight.
@29, It was, she dinged up the plane in Hawaii on the first attempt, lost her radio operator, and her navigator was allegedly an alcoholic who’d gotten fired from PanAm. There have been a couple of false leads. An aluminum panel and sextant box found on an island, but it was too far for her to have gone with the fuel remaining, and the panel ended up being from a DC-4 and the sextant serial number was produced after she disappeared. If this thing is a plane, at least it’s in the right place where they would have gone down.
@ 33 – A, for a few weeks now you’ve been concluding some of your posts with a I-don’t-hold-out-much-hope-for-the-situation kind of statement. Do you think, as I’m beginning to, that regionally this thing is starting to unravel into a wider conflict. Is this just the horrible beginning? God, I hope I’m wrong.
@21 Bauhaus I and @26 dvs99 for the WIN!!!
STFU, Seattle City Council President, Sara Nelson!
We, THE VOTERS, decide, not you. If you can’t get that
through your MAGA peabrain, consider filing your resignation.
All you are doing is contributing to the death of the GOP.
@31 Huh. The Convention cited says that it’s about soldiers who have surrendered. Not soldiers who have surrendered and been searched. Sure, they should expect to be searched. But you don’t get to assume that just because someone else was a suicide bomber, everyone is a suicide bomber. Otherwise, the protections of civilians are meaningless. I mean, unless you can provide an actual citation.
@33 You might check on that ol’ reading comprehension of yours. The paragraphs I cited were under Article 3.
And you might re-read your citation. It doesn’t say that the spy or saboteur has no rights to humane treatment. In fact,t he following paragraph says exactly the opposite. It just says that they can be held incommunicado if necessary for military security. For example, Article 104 gives some requirements for access to communication. You still don’t get to shoot them, despite your fever dreams.
So what are your super-secret LOAC citations that go into all that mens rea stuff? Is it top secret, only available to senior military personnel and former transit union shop stewards?
@37 Sure, but your point fails because killing a soldier who has surrendered is always a war crime.
As previously stated (many, many times!), the Rome Convention outlaws /intentional/ killing of civilians and /any/ killing of surrendered soldiers. So mens rea clearly applies to civilians, but not to surrendered soldiers.
As you correctly pointed out, Israel has not signed on to the Rome Convention. But they did sign on to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is even stricter. That convention forbids killing or injuring of civilians or surrendered soldiers “at any time or in any place…” Again, intent is not required. As you say, it’s a strict liability thing.