We're so boned. Credit: Oleg Nikishin / Getty

Carbon market is open for business: Well, Washington’s carbon market has been open, but it’s now bustling. With the Climate Commitment Act intact after a failed repeal effort on the November ballot, prices for carbon allowances have shot up. Polluting companies must reduce their emissions or buy carbon allowances if reduction isn’t in the cards. At the first allowance auction after the election, the state raked in nearly $272 million. According to the Seattle Times, the state sold “5.3 million 2023 and 2024 allowances at $40.26 each and 2.2 million 2027 allowances at $26 each.” An allowance accounts for one metric ton of emissions from a respective year. Polluting should be costly. Reduce your emissions or pay the price before the planet makes us reap all that we’ve sown. 

This about sums up the state of things: Donald Trump was named Time’s Person of the Year for 2024. Sigh. I’d seen a lot of people rooting for France’s Gisèle Pelicot for Person of the Year. Pelicot discovered her husband had been drugging her and inviting strangers to rape her for years. Instead of keeping the case and her privacy under wraps, Pelicot made her trial public. She did so to shift the shame from her to her rapists. But how could a woman’s standards-altering bravery triumph when we could heap a convicted rapist in more laurels? 

 

 

Biden goes big: On Thursday, Biden commuted the sentences of around 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others of non-violent crimes. The 1,500 commuted sentences were all prisoners who were sent home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus and made to serve the rest of their time at home. Republicans in Congress have threatened to send those on home release back to prison. 

It’s a deal! Seattle Art Museum’s security guard union reached a deal with the museum on Wednesday after more than two years of negotiating and striking for 12 days. The contract sees wages increase from $21.68 to $23.25 per hour plus 4% wage increases from 2025 through 2027. Yay! Go kiss someone next to a Thaddeus Mosley sculpture. 

 

 

Sex trafficking sting ensnares assistant principal: Yuck. The Renton Police Department conducted a sting operation in September where they posed as 14- and 15-year-olds and connected with potential offenders on social media. One of the seven men arrested in the sting was Alex Diaz Rios, an assistant principal at Seattle Public Schools’ TOPS K-8 school. SPS placed him on leave when they learned of his charge. Diaz Rios has since resigned. 

Hold on to your panniers: There’s a new bike bridge in town, baby. The new bike bridge in Montlake that crosses Highway 520 will open on Saturday. With the bike bridge comes a pedestrian pathway, too, and the 3-acre Montlake lid. Years of construction and congestion in that hellscape of an intersection may finally pay off. There will be opening ceremonies on Saturday at 11 am. 

The weather will be wet. 

Yeah, okay, buddy: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol defended his decision to declare martial law last week, saying he was trying to “prevent the collapse” of democracy. He said he won’t resign, vowing to “fight to the end.” Critics want Yoon impeached; they say his martial law order was a sign of insurrection.  

Shocker: 2024 will likely be the hottest year on record, continuing the trend of every year becoming the hottest year on record. 

CEO hit list: The New York Police Department warned US healthcare CEOs about a heightened risk to their lives in the wake of the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s top executive. As suspected killer Luigi Mangione wrote in a notebook seized by police, “What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.'” The NYPD’s bulletin warned of copycat attacks,  citing social media posts highlighting the names of CEOs and their salaries. Additionally, physical “wanted” posters featuring information about different healthcare CEOs have been spotted around New York. Since the killing, corporations have been beefing up security for their top dogs. Critics have suggested that if they wanted to really be safe they’d stop the predatory practices which have enraged the public. 

Overdose deaths are down: Overdose deaths in the United States fell by 17% between July 2023 and July 2024 according to the Centers for Disease Control. White House Domestic Policy Council Advisor Neera Tanden said that “it’s the largest decrease in deaths ever seen in the United States,” according to CBS News. Many moves by the Biden administration have played a role in the decrease such as “making treatment more accessible… cracking down on drug cartels and drug production” and expanding access to naloxone, the medication that reverses opioid overdoses. While this is progress, there will still be around 100,000 overdose deaths this year. 

Drugs and CEOs: “I want to experience ego death.” “I want to get my company through a public offering.” “I want to find God.” Read all about the CEOs paying for a guided shroom trip to make them better executives and, maybe, better people. The guy who runs the retreat, a former oil and gas CEO, has rebranded his personal definition of CEO to mean “conscious, empathetic, and open.”

Something for your Thursday: Hey, why don’t you chill out and watch the Grateful Dead Yule Log for an hour or seven? 

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The AI Wars Come to Ravenna

There’s a contentious election in a normally sleepy North Seattle legislative district, with out-of-state money pouring in. Blame the robots.

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...

95 replies on “Slog AM: Donald Trump Is Person of the Year, SAM Workers Reach Contract Deal, A CEO Hitlist”

  2. hell.

    even

    Hitler

    once graced

    the lofty cover of

    Time magazine. it did

    Not bode Well for Germany.

    @1 what if he’d

    been Knifed, mr

    magoo? would

    That’ve made

    you less dis-

    pleased?

  4. @1, Did you watch the link?

    The homeless woman who was shot and survived is being charged with assault. The police want to find the shooter, because they will need a victim to facilitate her prosecution.

    The homeless man who died from being shot, would have been charged had he lived.

    The person who did the shooting suffered serious physical injury, or would have suffered serious physical injury, or even died, had they not shot.

    I thought The Stranger was obsessed with reporting on the plight of the homeless as well as the topic of gun violence.

  6. @2 The story also touches on the plight of a gig worker, whom The Stranger also supposedly cares about.

    Their lack of mention of this story, when it hits all the normal areas that they usually emphasize is weird?

  7. Not nearly as weird as being obsessed with finding all the legal loopholes to kill people without going to jail or paying restitution

    I watched it and all I saw was a bunch of assholes with guns fucking around and finding out. That altercation could have ended with a few lumps but now someone is dead because they thought their gun made them invincible.

  8. “Polluting should be costly. Reduce your emissions or pay the price before the planet makes us reap all that we’ve sown.”

    Just a reminder that these companies are not the ones “paying the price” its the rest of us via the costs that are passed through. With the defeat of the initiative the prices in the market are soaring which will translate to higher prices at the pump. Do you remember when we briefly passed CA as having the most expensive gas in the country. We’ll see that again in 2025. For those of you who think, I don’t drive much so I don’t care, well all the groceries and other stuff you buy is delivered by truck so be prepared for increases there as well. Of course all this extra cost will be great for the environment and we can look forward to reductions in climate change. The state just has to figure out first how to even measure our impact because right now they have no idea.

    I’m also looking forward to Ashley’s Bad Apples columns about educators later today since there was also a North Shore teacher picked up for attempted child rape.

  10. @1 – Best to enjoy Slog AM as a buffet of items the staffer puts solely by what they feel is important, interesting, or entertaining. You read about those other items elsewhere, so why complain that you’re not reading them here?

    Don’t complain when Nathalie doesn’t serve oatmeal.

  11. @10,

    Dude has been on here for well over a decade posting under literally at least 60 or 70 different and now banned user names whining that the paper doesn’t cover every single story that he demands. It’s been pointed out to him repeatedly that they’re under no obligation to cover every such story, though this hasn’t deterred him because he’s an compulsively obsessive idiot and an asshole.

  12. @5 @2, Sorry. Meant @2

    @7, Legal loophole? It’s no loophole!

    Much homicide explicitly, intentionally, and specifically made non-criminal by the legislators you vote for. If it bothers you, why have you not donated money to a legislative candidate that would repeal those laws that de-criminalize most homicides? Have any of the legislators you have voted for ever even tried to repeal them?

    Oh wait, you just want people to be ignorant of the laws on the subject. You want to be kept willfully ignorant, so you can keep your head buried in the sand. You think people who understand civics (all this was covered in my urban, public high school civics classes – only seven states still require civics classes) and the outcomes that it generates in the function of our society, are not normal. If your willful desire to remain ignorant on the civic and legal issues that are in play every time there is a homicide is typical, I think I have to agree with you on that latter point.

  13. I don’t care what people do or don’t know about their legal right to kill people. Legal homicide is not a thing most people like to think about at all, but yes I understand you took civics in high school so you’re just built different. I hear they only require it to be in the curriculum in 7 states! That means most Americans weren’t taught as high schoolers when they’re allowed to kill somebody and the steps they need to take so they aren’t on the hook for a civil suit.

  14. Time is a husk of its former self.

    Of course they picked MFer. That fucking clown has been in our faces every fucking day for 9 years, and now he’s triumphed. He’ll be in our faces every fucking day until he’s buried, and then the MAGA party will start building giant statues along the interstate to keep him in our faces in perpetuity.

    99% of America has never even heard of the French rape lady. France has.

  15. did Someone

    step out in Front of

    Someone Else’s bus at

    some point & now they’re

    here, @tS, searching for Catharsis?

    tell Us: we’re

    Here to

    Help.

  17. @10, I am complaining that they are not being intellectually inconsistent in what they highlight here.

    They, as has this specific reporter, constantly put up stories about the plight of the homeless, gun violence, and the plight of gig workers. So why not in this case?

    @11, See @ 12. If you, and The Stranger, care about those three topics, which I assume is the case, since you have been known to comment on them, then why would you want this case, and the civic and legal issues that drive it’s outcomes, not discussed and debated?

    If you object to most homicides being made explicitly non-criminal by the people you elect, wouldn’t understanding that the people you elect have explicitly de-criminalized most homicide be important? Wouldn’t understanding those laws, so you can debate the letter and outcomes of them here, as well as with candidates and legislators, the manner in which they should be amended, be important?

    Civics.

    Kudos to Max Solomon who engages in exactly that kind of debate. Multiple comments from him about how a cars hitting people in a crosswalks (e.g. Parkland vehicular homicide he has commented on multiple times, and others) not being defined as a crime by the Legislature, you, he, and I elect.

  18. In the duh department:

    “Claims about the presence of Hamas fighters in hospitals in Gaza under siege by Israel’s military have been “grossly exaggerated”, a top prosecutor at the international criminal court (ICC) has said.”

    Andrew Cayley, who is leading the ICC’s Palestine investigation, questioned the reliability of claims about military activity in Gaza’s hospitals which have been made to justify Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the territory.

    [..]

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly justified operations against medical facilities in Gaza with claims that they were being used by Hamas militants.

    Cayley said the ICC faced “great difficulty assessing” the level of Hamas militant presence in hospitals “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that is really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office”.

    He added: “I think that has been grossly exaggerated, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”[..]

    https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/dec/11/claims-of-hamas-fighters-in-gaza-hospitals-may-have-been-exaggerated-says-senior-icc-prosecutor

  19. @14

    hmmm.

    combustible

    Statuary. it could

    be A Thing. Effigies,

    wherever eltrumfpster turns.

    I kinda Like it. great idea, Max!

    well,

    Other than in

    Wildfire prone

    areas. Obviously.

  20. @17: Intellectual inconsistency is unavoidable, even for the New York Times.

    Think about it. If all media were to be “intellectually consistent”, we’d be in real danger.

  21. @17, You make a lot of assumptions about what people believe and the motives behind those imagined beliefs.

    It’s not the self-defense laws I have a problem with so much as the proliferation of guns and how they embolden people to make dangerous choices. I always vote for people who support gun control but it’s a hollow gesture because the gun lobby has a stranglehold on our national politics and even widely supported policies like universal background checks cannot be passed.

    I also don’t feel the need to map every news story onto a good guy / bad guy narrative because real life is not a tv show. Sometimes everyone involved is the bad guy and they get what they deserve. I don’t like that they’re engaging in behavior that puts innocent people at risk and add expenses to our law enforcement and healthcare systems but I’m not losing sleep over someone getting shot in an altercation they either provoked or didn’t run away from because they were armed.

  25. Nathalie… Love your point about Trump’s POY award. Time magazine has always sucked. They have that POY award and it is the only thing that makes it a notable publication. Otherwise their stories are blah, predictable and copies of whatever is already in the news. And because your point is SOOOOO GOOD, they celebrate rapists. One more time today for good measure… FUCK TRUMP, FUCK THE GOP AND FUCK YOU!

  26. @18, So just to confirm, there are no warrants for arrest from the ICJ or ICC on charges of Israel’s leader unlawfully having the IDF attack civilians or civilian infra-structure.

    From your own post: “Cayley said the ICC faced “great difficulty assessing” the level of Hamas militant presence in hospitals “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that is really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office”.”

    Your own post shows that Prosecutors have not proven to the ICC that there was no military presence, the IDF knew there was no military presence, and targeted the hospitals anyway. The post seems to suggest prosecutors haven’t even come to that conclusion themselves..

    Again from your post: “I think that has been grossly exaggerated, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”[..]

    So based on your own post, no gross exaggeration or misleading by the press has been demonstrated. His office has yet to demonstrate the absence of military presence to the degree that they can even bring the charge.

    So the ICC prosecutors, with regard to unlawful attacks on civilian hospitals in Gaza, are where Giuliani was at with regard to the 2020 election, ‘We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”

    @22, It’s worse than that. The prosecutor is acknowledging they don’t have evidence to show that particular crime. They have, “lot’s of theories,” they “just don’t have the evidence.”

  27. @14, Statutes are fine. They are monuments to something behind us.

    I am more worried about MAGA regularly electing (assuming we even have elections in the future) a successful successor to Trump to continue the MAGA agenda.

  29. You think “inconsistency” is a feature at the stranger because you’ve decided this story was a homeless rights issue; that supporting basic rights for homeless people means you believe homeless people are always victims and never perpetrators; that this is a gig worker issue because an uber driver caught this on dash cam (???); and that the stranger is unable to cover this story because the dead homeless person may have been the instigator not the victim and that the killer may have been acting in self-defense, and you’ve somehow arrived at this incredibly elaborate set of conclusions not based on any evidence but for the complete lack of it. Every last premise behind your argument is something you made up.

  30. @21, You wrote:

    “Sometimes everyone involved is the bad guy and they get what they deserve. I don’t like that they’re engaging in behavior that puts innocent people at risk.”

    Unpack that for me. Who do you mean by “they?” The unlawful aggressor, or the person responding in self-defense?

    If it’s the latter, how can they be a bad guy, if they did specifically what we the voters, explicitly told them they could do? I.e. Committed lawful homicide. Why would you begrudge someone lawfully defending themselves?

    In the Lake City Case, it appears the guy who killed his attacker, was not himself attacked with a weapon, but by multiple people using fists and feet. In that scenario he was no less at risk of serious injury or death. Should he be prohibited from having a weapon that can correct that mismatch, so he can avoid serious physical injury, a felony against him, or death? Should he, be required to refrain from defending himself to protect people behind his attacker? Do you expect him to involuntarily be required to refrain from using means that could defend him, to protect other people not subject to the attack?

    You correctly identify the correct issue. It’s not the means or objects, its the “dangerous choices.” Ignoring gun assaults and gun murders, we still have assault and murder rates in the U.S., two to eight times those of our European counterparts, depending on the European comparison country. So its not the weapons causing the problem its higher rates of dangerous choices in this society.

    Firearms aren’t even discussed in our self-defense statutes. The construction of those statutes is essentially this: If you face a felony, serious physical injury, or death you may lawfully use deadly force for self-defense, until the threat stops. The statutes do not specify the means by which the threat is imposed, or the mechanism or mode of deadly force in response.

    Your preferred policy choices deny the law-abiding the most effective self-defense tools, but does not deprive those that attack them the most effective weapons for attack. It’s one-sided and requires the innocent to take one for other innocents not being directly attacked.

  31. The way this country feeds Trump’s malignant narcissism is so fucked up.

    I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their lives, because more people in this country will die than ever before. Over a million killed because Trump botched COVID? Wait until he destroys the entire country and people have no health care and are starving and dying in the streets because the cost of everything has increased tenfold, while all of the tax money that still exists goes straight to the billionaires.

    We are about to find out what it’s like when you allow someone as sick as Trump is back in power (thank you Democrats for doing ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING TO MAKE SURE THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN AGAIN)!

    And the people that voted for him, all of the white supremacists and woman haters and in their dreams think they’re gonna be billionaires but live in trailer parks? They are about to find out what happens when you fuck around and find out.

    It’s absolutely fascinating how everyone is just going about their days like everything is totally normal.

  32. You need someone to explain to you why a bunch of armed people who got involved in a street fight resulting in injury and death might all be bad people who were up to no good, even if the killer may have been acting in self-defense? I don’t know that you are capable of taking in information that contradicts the elaborate stories you’ve already written in your own head, but the fact that he fled the scene and still hasn’t contacted the police might be your first clue. But sure, he could also be a law-abiding citizen in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am just speculating about the circumstances leading up to the shooting but it doesn’t change my opinion about these kinds of events or our stupid gun laws.

  33. The Stranger should commute Raindrop’s sentence and let him come back. We can then see whether Raindrop and Phoebe in Wallingford are indeed the same person, as some have speculated.

  34. @31: 3rd para is right on. It would have taken an alpha personality from the early primaries onward to beat Trump. Biden was tremendously selfish to run again.

    @33: I’d rather see COMTE reinstated.

  35. @26: “So just to confirm, there are no warrants for arrest from the ICJ or ICC on charges of Israel’s leader unlawfully having the IDF attack civilians or civilian infra-structure.”

    lol, you’re the only person here worse at international law than Average Bob! 😁

    First, the ICJ doesn’t issue warrants at all, so an absence of ICJ warrants is hardly something to crow about.

    Second, the ICC did issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for attacking civilians, among other crimes. The warrants themselves are secret, but we can read what the ICC said to the press about the issuance of the warrants:

    “Finally, the Chamber assessed that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population of Gaza. In this regard, the Chamber found that the material provided by the Prosecution only allowed it to make findings on two incidents that qualified as attacks that were intentionally directed against civilians.”

    As for your boasting that “Prosecutors have not proven to the ICC that there was no military presence, the IDF knew there was no military presence, and targeted the hospitals anyway,” of COURSE prosecutors haven’t proven that. The trial hasn’t started yet! No one has proven anything, lol!

    As for your observation that, “prosecutors haven’t even come to that conclusion themselves,” that, too, is a normal part of criminal procedure. The prosecutors have not yet filed the charges which will go to trial. (That filing will occur at an Article 61 hearing.) So of course they don’t have solid evidence and firm conclusions at this stage…they don’t even know yet what the criminal charges will be.

    The only person leaping to conclusions is not the ICC prosecutors but you! Even Average Bob managed to avoid most of his usual erroneous editorializing @18. 😉 You know you’ve messed up when you make Average Bob look like the reasonable participant in the conversation. 🤣

  36. @31 Xina, you gave up all of your right to complain about anything Trump does when you spent the whole campaign attacking and criticizing the only opponents who could stop him from being President. You helped him return to power, so you share some of the blame for everything he does.

  38. @37 I don’t think so. They just posted a comment a few days ago. I don’t think they are very active anymore but they pop up every now and then.

  39. @29, Nope. It’s inconsistent because they report on most shootings with the “Oh gosh, gun use bad,” reductionist line.

    Amazing how they skip over a story where it saved a homeless guy from serious injury or death.

    So they report gun use, good bad, and ugly, or they don’t do that consistently.

    Are you suggesting that because the victim was homeless they were up to no good? Are you suggesting that the homeless are more likely to be perpetrators of predatory violence?

    Assuming they are all up to no good, are you endorsing vigilantism, and whatever lead to the violence was appropriately handled extra-judicially, or that its better that these folks don’t have the skills to not let the conflict get that far? Assuming they are all up to no good, does that mean the shooter should lose protection in law from being assaulted and attacked? Legally they don’t now. Do you want to change that?

    BTW, Crime victims aren’t obligated to contact the police. Many crime victims choose not to, for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with potential criminal liability. It’s their call, not yours, or the state’s call.

    Someone who committed a non-criminal homicide is not obligated to contact the police. They committed no crime.

    If The Stranger had their calls heeded, there would be no police to contact. The way this matter was handled by the killer, would be the normal way to handle crime. Police it yourself. That is probably the ultimate inconsistency in their ignoring this story. The story will be the expanded normal without police.

  40. @37 & 38

    dewey always Did

    like to stir up Fake

    ‘controversies’ to bask

    in the reflected Glory of a

    good argument over the trivialest

    of reasons. there are more overlaps

    than I’d suspected but perhaps dewey

    Did have that Masters Degree in psychology

    they were Always bragging about. suspicioning

    I may have been ‘incorrect’ in my sockpuppet dismissal.

    hmmm.

  41. @38

    I doubt it GWB.

    speaking out against

    sub-par Pols does Not

    automatically Disqualify

    one for Commenting on the

    Outcome til the next fucking Election.

    what.

    we all

    just gotta

    STFU whilst

    the “D”NC continues

    ro tack ‘right’ and alientate

    a Third of the Electorate? your

    ire is Misplaced, tho I’m confident xina

    may be able to Explain it in better Detail than I.

  43. @36 I did not help him return to power. I live in a state that voted for Harris. I live in a county that voted for Harris. I live in a rural town that voted for Harris.

    I have absolutely ZERO power in the context of this country, from the top down. The Democrats did NOTHING. The DOJ did NOTHING. Trump was indicted of 91 felonies and tried to overthrow the government in 2021 (treason).

    You can rail at me all you like, I bear no responsibility in Trump’s reelection. None.

    Every single Democrat who had the power to end this on January 21, 2021 is responsible.

    Every single idiot in this country who voted for Trump (whatever their deluded and deranged reasoning) bears responsibility.

    The media in this country bears responsibility.

    The billionaires who bought the election bear responsibility.

    I will suffer, probably more than most given I am disabled and live with my elderly, retired mother, but I bear no responsibility.

    Expecting those in power to do the right thing and stop this from ever happening is not the same as abdicating my right to as you put it “complain about anything Trump does.”

    It must be deafening to live in the state of cognitive dissonance in which you exist.

  44. “Someone who committed a non-criminal homicide is not obligated to contact the police. They committed no crime.”

    You’re just a total and complete piece of fucking shit as a human being.

  45. I shouldn’t have posted that and apologize. Probably should’ve just reported his profile to be banned. For the six or seventh dozen time.

  46. 39, Are you drunk? It’s your story and it’s not even complicated but you’re still getting the details wrong. Try to keep up.

    The homeless guy is dead. I’m assuming the person who shot him isn’t homeless but I have no idea. Both sides of the fight had guns. I am assuming everyone involved is problematic because they were fighting in the street, someone got shot, and the shooter fled the scene without notifying authorities that he shot multiple people in apparent self-defense, but I have no idea because I’m working with limited in. I just know it’s a messy situation all around.

    This is not a “guns are good” story unless your brain is fried from watching too many TV cop procedurals and think every shooting has a good guy and a bad guy. Multiple people were shot and someone is dead over an altercation we still don’t know the details about. This is very much a “guns are bad” story. This is as a tragedy that probably could have been avoided if no one had guns or the cloak of invincibility they think it gives them.

    You really need to learn how to stick to the information you have and not fabricate entire arguments in your head from whole cloth. You have a habit of making ridiculous assertions about what you think people believe and expect them to answer for your straw men. You’re doing it right now. You throw out so much bullshit it’s impossible to address all of them. Your time has to be more valuable than this. I know mine is. Enjoy the rest of your day.

  48. @35 “The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) strongly condemned Israel’s extensive military operations in Syria in a press conference on Wednesday, emphasizing that these actions following Bashar al-Assad’s downfall constitute serious violations of international law.

    United Nations (UN) experts, including the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, Ben Saul, also condemned Israel’s conduct. Saul stated that “[t]here is absolutely no legal basis under international law to preventively or preemptively disarm a country. […] This is completely lawless.”

    Israel has conducted around 350 airstrikes in recent days across strategic locations in Syria, including Damascus, Homs, Tartous, Latakia, and Palmyra. These operations aim to dismantle critical infrastructure, targeting weapons production sites, anti-aircraft batteries, and airfields. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have reportedly managed to dismantle 70-80 percent of Assad’s strategic military capabilities, with a particular focus on destroying weapons stockpiles to prevent them from falling into the hands of various groups. In addition, Israel has bolstered its presence in the Golan Heights buffer zone along its border with Syria.”

    https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/12/un-experts-reject-israel-strikes-on-syria-as-egregious-violations-of-international-law/

  49. @48: Bwah ha ha ha! The human rights experts at the UN crying over Israel’s destruction of Assad’s navy, ballistic missiles, air force, and chemical weapons! I love it! 😂🤣😂🤣 This may be their best one yet! Yeah, by all means, human rights experts, let the salafist militiamen get their hands on some chemical weapons and an air force! Great idea, human rights experts, so glad you’re here to give the world your advice, ha ha ha!

    As for the legal aspect, Israel and Syria have been in a continuous state of war since 1948. The 1974 Agreement on Disengagement, which the human rights experts are furiously waving in the air, explicitly says, in its final paragraph, “This Agreement is not a Peace Agreement.” If the Syrians wanted their chemical weapons and ballistic missiles not to be bombed, they could have asked Israel for a peace treaty anytime in the last, oh, 76 years, ha ha ha! Israel would have signed it, too, and I know this because Israel did sign treaties with Egypt and Jordan…neither of whose air forces are now being demolished on the ground, ha ha ha!

    I am tickled pink by this latest complaint from the UN human rights experts! 😆 “Israel bad, strong Israel very bad” is as far as their expertise ever extends! 🤣🤣🤣

  50. Xina, I forget what is your stance on transgender women are real women? I seem to remember posts of yours being removed/deleted and you being labeled a transphobe/terf. You haven’t mentioned a thing about the Trump campaigns advertisements, “kamala is for they/them”. Curious on your thoughts of the effectiveness of those ads? Did you vote for Trump?

Comments are closed.