Actually, Secretary of Defense nominee and Fox News host Peter Hegseth says calling his tattoo a symbol of white supremacy is "anti-Christian bigotry." Credit: Spencer Platt / Getty

What’s up, doc? E. coli is what’s up. It’s in the carrots. Whole and baby carrots farmed by Grimmway Farms are the source of an E. coli outbreak in 18 states. Nationally, 39 people have fallen ill. Of those, 15 have been hospitalized and one has died. In Washington alone, eight people have been infected, five of whom have been hospitalized.  

In local beer news: Elysian Brewing, a Seattle pioneer in the craft beer scene since 1996, permanently closed its Georgetown taproom last week, and its Georgetown production facility will close for good on December 31. This closure comes after 33 workers in the Georgetown facility voted to unionize. Since then, they have not reached a contract deal with their owner, Anheuser-Busch, which purchased the beer company in 2015. Could this signal the end of Seattle-made Elysian beer? Don’t panic yet. Elysian’s Capitol Hill taproom and (much smaller) brewery will remain open and will receive a $1.7 million investment. With the closure of the much bigger Georgetown facilities, it’s unclear how many jobs will be impacted. The Washington Beer Blog reported 90 employees could lose their jobs, while a spokesperson for Elysian claimed all jobs would be safe.

A snowy winter ahead? It’s going to be soggy and wet all week. Perhaps that moisture combined with frigid temperatures will spawn moist snowflakes. Perhaps it will remain rain. Regardless, we should be in for a wetter, colder, snowier winter than last year. 

Deadly shooting in U-District: A 31-year-old man was shot and killed at the 4500 block of Brooklyn Avenue NE in Seattle’s University District at around 10 p.m. on Saturday night. Police arrested a 40-year-old suspect. 

FOB Sushi Bar fiasco: TikTok food reviewer Keith Lee stopped in at Belltown’s FOB Sushi Bar. His review posted to his 16.5 million followers was fairly positive: Affordable, pretty good sushi, overcooked rice. Then, an eagle-eyed watcher spotted something they thought was off in his video. If you slow it down, she says that while holding a Hamachi sushi roll up to the camera, you can see that something on the fish twitched. The TikToker thinks it was a worm. (Parasites are common in raw fish, and it’s generally recommended that you freeze fish for a number of days before eating it, to kill them.) The video went viral. FOB Sushi responded saying the worm rumor was false and that the movement in the video was not a worm. “The movement observed in the fish may result from natural elasticity or the pressure of chopsticks when applied to its structure,” Fob Sushi said in a statement.  

Now let’s spend some time in cabinet appointment hell: First off, I’m sorry. There’s simply too much appointment news, likely by design. Well, let’s get into it. Pete Hegseth of the National Guard and Fox News is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense. Fellow National Guard service members reported Hegseth as a possible “Insider Threat” since he has a white supremacist tattoo on his bicep. Hegseth said calling the tattoos symbols of white supremacy is “anti-Christian bigotry.” It also came to light that a woman accused Hegseth of sexual assault in 2017. Trump’s pick for the Federal Communications Commission is Republican regulator Brendan Carr, who is expected to slash communications regulations, go after Big Tech, and strip TV news networks of their licenses. In Rep. Matt Gaetz news, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it would be a breach of protocol to release the House Ethics Committee report that investigated Gaetz for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other transgressions. 

No FBI background checks for these bozos: Trump’s picks will not be undergoing standard FBI background checks and instead will outsource background checks to private investigators. The FBI checks for criminal histories as well as conflicts of interest. Trump bypassing that process could make it easy for the Senate to approve his controversial picks. Plus, the disregard for the FBI is in line with Trump’s conspiracy that the agency is part of the “deep state” working to undermine him. 

Now, a note from our Managing Editor, Megan Seling: 

With love from one alt-newspaper to another: Bill Freeman, owner of FW Publishing and publisher of Nashville’s alt-weekly the Nashville Scene died Sunday night. The Scene reports: “Bill Freeman — the co-founder of Nashville-based real estate company Freeman Webb, a Democratic Party powerbroker, a former mayoral candidate and the owner of Nashville Scene parent company FW Publishing — has died by suicide at his Green Hills home.” Freeman and his business partner Jimmy Webb purchased the suite of publications—the Scene, the Nashville Post, and Nfocus—in 2018. I worked at the Scene for years when I lived in Nashville. What a great group of smart and hilarious weirdos keeping the spirit of the alt-weekly alive. Sending lots of love to all my Scene, Post, and Nfocus BFFs.

Thanks, Megan.

Broken Spirit: Spirit Airlines, the US’s biggest budget airline, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. 

Pig chase: The Tacoma Police Department had its hands full with a slippery hog when police responded to a call about a loose pig last week. 

Bird flu in Oregon human: Oregon reported its first case of bird flu in a human on Friday. The person has connections to a poultry operation in the state where 150,000 birds have the virus. So far, nationwide, there are 52 confirmed cases of bird flu in people. 

Monkey update: Six of the 43 escaped lab monkeys remain at large in South Carolina. Meanwhile, three hours away from where the monkeys escaped, two “feral and not trained” emus named Thelma and Louise are on the lam. 

Alright, that’s enough news—see ya! Picture me walking away exactly like this. 

Joe Biden becomes the first sitting US President to visit the Amazon Rainforest.

[image or embed]

— Pop Base (@popbase.tv) November 17, 2024 at 1:52 PM

Oh, wait: Before I truly leave you, here’s this: 

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...

107 replies on “Slog AM: Elysian Brewing Leaves Georgetown After Union Attempt, FOB Sushi Bar’s TikTok Fiasco, Trump Appointee’s White Supremacist Tattoo”

  1. Thelma and Louise have been on their lam for three months. Good luck out there, ladies.

    Also, “feral and untrained” sounds more like a description of Matt Gaetz, than a couple of big birds.

  4. I, Garb, CDizzle, and various other sockpuppets and accounts over the years have posted myriad YouTube links. I implore you, if you must watch any of the links I post, I would trade them all for just this one.

    Granny D Goes to Washington

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFlSomHHChk

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Haddock

    Probably the most important champion for democracy of our time, and her message has never been more timely and urgent.

    Please make some time out of your day to remember this true American hero and what she was fighting for. Thank you from the top and bottom of my heart.

  6. Am I the only one that thinks FOB is wildly overrated? Like, who on earth told Keith THAT was the must-visit sushi spot in Seattle? Over Umi, Sushi Kashiba, or Shiro’s? Hell even Japonessa is better.

  7. Elysian brews subpar beer. The only good thing about them selling out years ago was you could get a Space Dust (which indeed is a step up from Miller Lite) at random Midwest airport bars. But now those same Midwest cities brew better beer than Elysian ever did.

    Corporate beer sucks.

  11. And that’s the last we’ll ever hear of the 40 year old shot in at 45th & Brooklyn, or the 31 year old who shot him. Won’t learn names, won’t hear what happened, won’t hear what the outcome of the case is.

  12. @9. Yep, 26 minutes. I know that’s a lot to ask in an age where the average attention span is less than a Tik Tok video, but it’s a good watch and probably only about how long it takes you to pen a few mocking screeds here several times a day.

  13. ‘E Coli’?!

    Costco called me

    told me to return my

    Uneaten carrots for a

    Full Refund! a wee bit

    Too Late, Costco, but how

    ‘bout a Free 99-cent hot dog!?

    worms in your Sushi?

    worms as weightloss for

    the ¾ of America deemed

    Obese? why Not? Cheaper

    & maybe better than Ozempic

    @9 — for someone

    who Excelled at jr hi

    and Aced Trolling 101

    three

    Minutes

    must seem

    like an Eternity

    you’ll likely not

    Fare Well in

    Purgatory.

    @4: fuck Yeah,

    Garbby, ENDING

    “Citizens United” is

    CRUCIAL if we Wish to

    Keep our little Democracy

    if it Ain’t

    Already too

    Fawking Late.

  14. @12: lol, pass. I’ve never watched a YouTube link from Slog, and I’m not about to start with a 26-minute political documentary from the year 2006! 😆 Go outside and walk it off, bruh! 😄

  15. Ironically, the Elysian sold out to AB specifically because they had built their production facility in Georgetown, and wanted the reach of a huge company to distribute their vastly larger amounts of beer nationwide. Now that facility will close, leaving their two small brewpubs (Capitol Hill and Elysian Fields) to supply whatever national customer base remains.

    On his way out the door, Dick Cantwell regretted not writing a Mission Statement which emphasized they were running a brewpub, not some ginormous industrial beer factory. Looks like he was right. (Hooda thot, eh?)

  16. Watch doofus @2 & 3 regurgitating unsubstantiated IDF claims about human shields. As if the Western press wasn’t already doing its best to justify the murder of innocents, cretins like NotMyopic have to do it too.

    Meanwhile, this is what real journalism looks like:

    Israel is trying to terrorise people’: Lebanon’s civil defence reels after deadly strike

    [..]an Israeli jet had dropped a bomb on the salon of the Douris civil defence centre on the outskirts of the ancient Lebanese town of Baalbek, killing 20 people, including 15 first responders. Five were rendered unrecognisable by the force of the explosion. On Friday afternoon, emergency workers were still collecting bodily remains to be taken for DNA analysis.[..]

    More than 200 emergency responders have been killed in Israeli strikes. Healthcare workers and state officials have accused Israel of deliberately targeting medical teams, and of bombing sites a second time when rescuers arrive. Israel has accused Hezbollah of hiding weapons and fighters in ambulances – a claim it has not provided any evidence for[..]

    As a result of the more than 60 attacks on healthcare facilities over the last year, more than eight hospitals have been forced to close, most of them in south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. Officials have compared the damage to the Lebanese healthcare sector to that in Gaza, where the World Health Organization has said Israel has engaged in “systematic dismantling of healthcare”.[..]

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/18/lebanon-civil-defence-reels-after-deadly-israeli-strike

  18. @11, Context and nuance isn’t what you find at The Stranger. Snark is whats valued.

    @16, You have it backwards. The IDF, as the accused, need prove nothing. The burden of proof is SOLELY on whoever brings a human rights case to prove that there were no legitimate military targets where civilians were killed, and other elements of a war crime. It is why international human rights law has such a poor record of protecting non-combatants.

    The deaths of non-combatants that you note does not satisfy the elements required to prove a war crime. Additional elements include, but are limited to, there being no military targets present at the scene of the non-combatant deaths, and willful targeting of non-combatants knowing that no military target is present. To use your example, “DELIBERATELY targeting medical teams.” How do you prove that intent without some internal document from the IDF, witness testimony from inside the IDF? Something like, “I was told to target X. I informed my superior that the intelligence and reports from ground units indicated no military activity or target at location X. I was ordered to fire anyway and did so.” Without something like that the high evidentiary requirement to prove a crime can’t be met.

    Some general statement of animus against Palestinians by some politician, far removed from the decision about a specific target, in a dynamically changing war environment, won’t satisfy intent requirements around that specific targeting decision.

  19. @18 still waiting for your evidence “that there were no legitimate military targets where civilians were killed, and other elements of a war crime” in Hamas’s actions on 10/7. Per your standard, and absent such evidence, it seems like that was a totally legitimate operation under international law. Much like Israel bombing an intersection in the middle of Beirut was legitimate because a Hezbollah spokesperson existed in society (“used human shields” in your parlance) rather than remaining at all times in a Unibomber type cabin in the middle of nowhere.

  20. @18: the Seattle Times won’t follow up on it either. because it’s most likely vagrant junkies killing each other over scraps, just throw it on the pile.

  22. I’m not big on sushi, but know the extremely rare shit is considered by those who are to be the best shit. I don’t think it’s uncommon to find places that take pride in serving it at the time, or even before rigor mortis is setting in. And so I would assume that maybe there’s some inherent risk in consumption there, though perhaps the restaurant could/should be expected to scan it for parasitic worms, fuck if I know. But it would also seem the reviewer dude wasn’t harmed by the little worm-guy if that’s even what it was, so I say no harm, no foul.

  24. Next time you buy halibut from the grocery store… cut it up and squeeze some lime all over it. You’ll see a ton of worms wiggling all over the place. That’s simply how fish works.

  25. @19, Being the aggressor (i.e. the first to launch the violent attack), in and of itself can be a war crime. What military base was co-located at a music concert venue? What IDF command and control center? How many of the hostages were not soldiers engaged in active hostilities or defense of the location prior to the attack commencing? That one is going to be pretty easy. A prosecutor can show all the video of the scene taken that day, not just by Israeli’s but by Hamas. Find the military facilities or soldiers engaging against in Hamas in those videos. Find it at the scene after the fact.

    Absent all that, Hamas can step forward with their own intel (revealing their sources and methods and subjecting themselves to cross-examination) that showed a secrete IDF base or operation being shielded by a rock concert. That is unlikely.

    Also, it sort of misses the point. Hamas attacked. Israel has the right of self-defense under Article 51 which is not limited to driving Hamas back into Gaza under international law. Once Hamas throws down the IDF can keep attacking forever until Hamas surrenders and stops hostilities. Likewise with any other aggressor and defender. Provided the defender is attacking military objectives, collateral damage is permitted under international humanitarian law, and is not criminal.

    Such an exercise becomes far more problematic when all there is, is a pile of rubble. What was there before the 2,000 pound bunker buster leveled it? What video is there of the underground shelter/bunker time-stamped just before the bomb went off showing people swaying to the music, with no armaments, command and control facilities, or soldiers in the background? Worse yet Hamas and Hezbollah keep confirming IDF assertions when they report that the IDF did in fact kill their official in an attack. Video of IDF attacks, particularly those in Lebanon, often show strong secondary explosions indicative of arms caches detonating. Video of the aftermath of IDF attacks in Gaza often show arms, arms components, command and control components, and weapons manufacturing components, or blast damaged pieces of same.

    What international humanitarian law is pretty good at is criminalizing taking unarmed POW’s or civilians out somewhere and summarily executing them. It’s pretty good when the combatants are all in uniform (which Hamas and Hezbollah don’t do) and military assets and personnel are separated from non-combatants. E.g. Offut AFB is bombed, not downtown Omaha, provided downtown Omaha is not just a miss when targeting Offut. When combatants and non-combatants are commingled and mixed and undifferentiated, which Hamas and Hezbollah have clearly done, international humanitarian law is crap for protecting noncombatants, and apparently that’s a feature, not a bug, of Hamas and Hezbollah military strategy and tactics. Having the IDF killing large numbers of non-combatants, on a global stage, benefits their public opinion warfare; although it isn’t resulting in any action by the international community that benefits them and hinders the IDF.

    @20, Your observation about the ST (and news media in general) in reporting on shootings, stabbings, and other criminally investigated violence is spot on. A shooting, stabbing, other use of violence, or vehicle v. pedestrian death/injury is, in and of itself, not a crime. E.g. Homicide committed as self-defense, less than lethal violence in self-defense, hitting a pedestrian in crosswalk while being distracted. There are some 2,200 cases of justifiable homicide per year and tens of thousands of garden variety, non-criminal car v. pedestrian incidents. Yet all we see from TS, is OMG, a homicide happened. I think there ought to be a policy or AP Stylebook note that any police investigated shooting, stabbing, or other news reported violence ought to be reported on to the conclusion, even if the conclusion is “no charges were brought, charges were dismissed,” etc. Someone was shot, stabbed, beaten, etc. and someone was detained, arrested, etc. is incomplete. We need to know the nature and circumstances around that violence, in order to address it.

  26. @18 You have zero evidence of human shields for almost all Israeli strikes against civilian facilities, yet you continue to offer blanket approval despite mountains of evidence pointing to Israeli war crimes. You are insane.

  28. @25 “Hamas can step forward with their own intel (revealing their sources and methods and subjecting themselves to cross-examination) that showed a secrete IDF base or operation being shielded by a rock concert.”

    Wait what happened to “The burden of proof is SOLELY on whoever brings a human rights case?”

    “Such an exercise becomes far more problematic when all there is, is a pile of rubble. What was there before the 2,000 pound bunker buster leveled it?”

    Oh, so Hamas and Hezbollah should change tactics and drop bunker busters on Israeli civilian zones to also avoid accountability?

    “Hamas attacked. Israel has the right of self-defense”

    That’s a simplistic and cynically time-limited view.

    You clearly are devotedly pro-Israel and all your seemingly hypocritical analyses are properly viewed through that lens.

  29. @19: Ah yes, demanding proof of a negative. You’re really in fine form today.

    NATO describes Hamas’ chronic use of human shields in Gaza, https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf

    From the Wall Street Journal, Sinwar tells other leaders in Hamas to get more civilians killed in Gaza, because it makes Israel look bad:

    “High civilian casualties would create worldwide pressure on Israel, Sinwar said.”

    (https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-chiefs-brutal-calculation-civilian-bloodshed-will-help-hamas-626720e7)

  30. @26, The burden of proof is not on the IDF to prove that there were legit military objectives being targeted when there was collateral damage (e.g. non-combatant deaths).

    The burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove a negative. I.e. There were no legit military targets present, the IDF knew that, and the IDF attacked anyway. Tough sledding for any prosecutor to prove a negative, particularly in the war context where the scene of the alleged crime is nothing but obliterated evidence.

    Was the lack of military infrastructure in the rubble because it was destroyed, or because it was never there? If its the latter, then you could have a war crime; however, you have to prove that the party targeting the site also knew there were no military targets there and then attacked anyway (that would meet mens re element required in all crimes).

    The IDF doesn’t have to prove or justify their innocence, an International War Crimes Tribunal has to prove their guilt. The IDF doesn’t have to prove anything, nor does any other accused have to prove anything.

    As far as sites, particularly in Lebanon, being weapons storage facilities, I can watch CNN video and see the secondary explosions occurring when munitions stores are being hit. I don’t need an assertion from the IDF or video from them. I can read the statements from Hezbollah reported on CNN saying that such and such member of their movement was martyred in their ongoing “March to Jerusalem” confirming IDF assertions that location x, y, or z was struck targeting a Hezbollah leader. I can also see the reporting from CNN that said site was under an apartment building, office building, hospital, or near one. How did the site destroyed get under an apartment building, hospital, etc. or near one, full of non-combatants unless Hezbollah willingly put it there?

    We don’t get such independent video from Gaza; however, we do have statements from Hamas from time to time confirming the death of someone the IDF says they were targeting, and that targeting was always someplace surrounded by non-combatants. How did that person get under or among non-combatants without Hamas putting that person in that environment, rather than at a military facility separated from non-combatants and non-combatant infrastructure? Why wasn’t that Hamas person in a fighting position that Hamas had evacuated non-combatants away from, like the IDF or any other modern military does when they take up defensive positions in a civilian area? We don’t put missile silos in Manhattan or military barracks in downtown Tacoma. Hamas launched all their rockets from in and among civilian areas and their fighters are not put in barracks separated from the rest of the population. Units A, B, C, and F on the 10th floor of building 50 in Gaza are non-combatants and D, E, are full of Hamas Jihadists not identified with uniforms of any kind either to the IDF or the surrounding residents.

  31. @28: lol, look at you struggling to discern a difference between dropping a bomb on an armed militiaman versus shooting civilians in the face in front of their kids. Hamas filmed it, bruh. 😜 You can, if you want, watch video them hacking off a farm worker’s head in one of the kibbutzes while the dude is still alive, although I wouldn’t recommend it if you have a weak stomach.

    I know, I know, you desperately want the Israelis to be the bad guys, but I’m sorry to tell you they just aren’t, deal with it, lol. 😚

  33. @31 like NotMyopic says the burden is on you to prove the head hacked off didn’t belong to a Mossad assassin. Nobody can criticize any party unless they have unassailable concrete proof the people massacred weren’t military targets, or maybe standing too close to one. Sorry I don’t make the rules

  39. @37: Islam ≠ terrorism, my dude! Hamas ≠ Palestine. Ha ha ha, when the progressive moral compass breaks, it really breaks all the way, lol! What a mess! 🤣🤣🤣

  40. @26

    “@18 . . . You are insane.”

    averagebob on November 18, 2024 at 12:12 PM

    well fucking put.

    thank you.

    [sorry tS!]

    @28

    “Oh, so Hamas and Hezbollah

    should change tactics and

    drop bunker busters on

    Israeli civilian zones

    to also avoid ac-

    countability?”

    now why didn’t

    They think of

    That! [Twist

    That for

    Us wor-

    mmy jr]

    actually,

    that only

    Works for

    victim Israel.

    and

    they’ll

    Explain it

    For you in

    Great Detail.

    sorry!

  41. @30 It’s a good thing that things like car gas tanks, propane tanks, and other civilian infrastructure doesn’t cause secondary explosions when bombed. I’m sure that your extensive experience of explosive demolition and military-grade secondary explosions gained during your tenure as a transit system shop steward makes you qualified to evaluate the source and type of those explosions. You’re just awesome like that.

    Is it wrong when the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields? Note that this report is from an IDF soldier.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-human-shields-israel-military-gaza-intl/index.html

  42. @32. And how many of those protest grannies do you remember who walked from one coast of the USA to the other as a pilgrim from age 89 to 91 in order to raise awareness of the need for campaign finance reform? Why was it so important that she would take such a journey? We are living in the world she walked to prevent. And with a little luck the next generation will pick up the torch and straw hat to keep us a free and self governing society.

  43. @41: lol, I’ve seen the videos of the secondaries, too, and they are, uh, extremely energetic. That ain’t no propane explosion, lol! If you’re going to try argue there’s no high explosives stockpiled in Gaza, you’ve got a pretty steep hill to climb! 😂

  46. @43 exactly, and the secondary explosions in the Twin Towers were clear evidence of a controlled demolition. Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel!

  47. I can’t for the life of me find Elysians “Altered Contact” in stores anymore. Shops keep telling me distributors dropped it. Probably their oddest bird, a hazy, tart ale. Don’t think it sold well but I dug it.

  48. @28, Nothing happened to the burden of proof. I said they “can”, not they “must”.

    It is risky for a defendant to do so. They only do so when the prosecution has strong evidence for their case, which Hamas’s own videos of 10/7 are.

    I am not pro Israel, I am pro Article 51 of the U.N. Charter which specifies an unlimited right of self-defense.

    Averagebob, Greenwood Bob, you, and others attempt to eviscerate that right by creating a dynamic where, for the sake of example, the United States could place ballistic missles all across Brooklyn,, NY, with command and control stations in civilian basements, and attack any nation on the planet, with conventional warheads. Whoever we attacked would violate international law by bombing or otherwise attacking our missile and command and control.amd other sites because it would flatten apartment buildings, hospitals, etc. disproportionately killing non-combatants that we forced to remain there, or that were blockaded there by whoever we had attacked.

    You would further restrict the right to self-defense of whoever we attacked, not to counter-attacking until ending the threat from us, but rather you would force them to stop after some set period of time, or after some set number of casualties imposed on us in the counter-attack.

    Change the weapons, location, and parties to the conflict and that is the nature of what is happening in Gaza, and now Lebanon. I don’t want the international precedent you all are arguing for to repeal Article 51 by international court precedent, rather than by treaty.

    It also begs the question of what army enforces an international court ruling? Courts in the U.S. and other countries only work if they have police or armies available to use as much force as required to enforce their judgments. How many third-parties to that ruling get killed by the crossfire when such a court enforces their edict on unwilling subjects of their order? If the parties creating the crossfire changes from the party or parties subject to an international court to the army of the court and one or more of parties subject to the court, are the non-combatants any less dead?

    If folks were willing to submit to treaty and international law then there wouldn’t be a war to try and regulate. If there is a war, then by definition, treaties and nonviolence aren’t being observed anyway.

    The answer for Gazan, Lebanese, an Israeli civilians caught in the crossfire is ending the crossfire, not feckless attempts to regulate it. That happens when one or more parties creating the crossfire suffers enough to quit. it’s counterintuitive, but the path to ending the violence is actually increasing the violence such that those targeting each other cry uncle.

  49. speaking of Altered Contact

    if Elysians paired up with a

    damn fine Indica they just

    might Have something

    cannot Wait for the

    day when mushys

    come in a soda

    can: NOT For

    BEGINNERS.

  50. @43 Recall that a natural gas explosion leveled several buildings in Greenwood a while back, not to mention breaking windows for a couple block radius. A modest size cylinder killed a firefighter, injured 11 more, and leveled a house less than 2 months ago (https://www.ctif.org/news/propane-worker-charged-death-volunteer-firefighter-after-explosion-11-first-responders). Gas explosions can be quite energetic.

    What are your qualifications for determining whether explosions on TV footage are military-grade or not?

  51. @48 or what if the only territory we had WAS Brooklyn, and our enemy blockaded it in violation of international law, and started bombing apartment blocks then claiming a government spokesperson was on the block therefore all the civilians had to die. Maybe they then warn everyone to flee to a refugee camp in Williamsburg, and then bomb that after everyone gets there because there was allegedly a weapons cache in the neighborhood. That would all be totally ok with you right? You people are unserious.

  52. @51: Eh, maybe, like, don’t chop people’s heads off, or shoot rockets at them, or kidnap their citizens if you don’t like getting invaded? 😂🤣😂🤣 Maybe don’t hide your militiamen and their weapons in schools and hospitals if you don’t like those places getting bombed? 😂😂😂 At some point you do need to choose between your love of Palestine and your love of Hamas, ha ha ha!

  54. @52 heehee haha maybe don’t steal people’s land by violence, blockade them in overcrowded and impoverished corners of their land, and persistently mistreat them in violation of multiple international laws if you don’t want them to lash out in desperation heeheehee 🤡

  57. @49. Kristo. Oh, if someone can do that, I know where it could debut – Duchy of Biccoline LARP village in Qubec. Never did I see so many souls with ale tankard in hand and magic pipe in mouth!

    Campfire talk often revolved around combining fantasy lore with libations and other altered states – gnome shroom brew, Elven Feywine, amphetamine laced berserker Dwarven ales, etc. Pre battle Moloko Plus to sharpen you up…

  58. @54 the land was not stolen. Why does Egypt blockage them (your words) as well? You and Bob continually pretend like the Palestinians are an innocent, peace loving culture whose only desire is to live their lives in tranquility. The truth is they are a brutal, repressive, dogmatic cult who have vowed to continually kill their neighbors both Jewish and Egyptian until they can establish their own caliphate and inflict even more terror upon the world along with their sponsors in Iran. It’s a really simple equation. Release the hostages, recognize that Israel has a right to exist, stop trying to kill everyone around you in the name of your imaginary friend and embrace a government that recognizes human rights and doesn’t repress and terrorize its own people and voila they would have a virtual paradise along the Mediterranean that would be the envy of many other countries in the area.

  60. @53 Lack of actual answer noted. Oh, and the original discussion where our resident specialist claimed to be able to tell the difference between civilian and military infrastructure by the secondary explosions (@30) was about Lebanon. Hamas is notably absent from Lebanon, and the civil defense authorities are distinct from Hezbollah there. Truly you’re a living, breathing example of Dunning-Kruger.

    @58 The PA in the West Bank tried the second half of your proposal, recognizing Israel, cooperating on security, all the rest. The result? Israel kept stealing Palestinian land for settlements. Sadly, Israel has shown through their actions that cooperation doesn’t get you anything.

  61. @58 I was trolling when I wrote @37, didn’t expect someone in this discussion to come through with actual Islamophobia. Congrats you are the most ignorant person here–even more than the guy who communicates via laughs and emojis

  62. @56 Elysian isn’t going out of business, their overlord AB is just shutting down a production facility because the workers tried to unionize and moving production elsewhere. Like when Boeing announced the Dreamliner would be built in South Carolina. It’s union busting.

  63. I see the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea have spent the day in fruitless arguments about something over which they have no influence whatsoever.

  64. @60: Hamas “notably absent” from Lebanon? What planet do you get your news from? One of the reasons UNRWA’s in hot water is due to its employing the head of Hamas in Lebanon, lol! 😂

  65. 58 you realize over half the population of Gaza are children and most of them weren’t even alive when Hamas was elected right

    Also it’s pretty clear the Netanyahu regime has been actively thwarting a hostage deal because the people of Israel expect the assault on Gaza to stop once they’re released. Do you also think he is part of a dogmatic cult? He seems to be quite pleased with killing his neighbors, too.

  70. @50, Does this look like any natural gas explosion of a structure you have every seen in the U.S.? Is the damage consistent with such a blast?

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/04/world/video/beirut-overnight-explosions-lebanon-ldn-digvid

    Note the multiple detonations after the first one (secondary – follow on explosions). I.e. The first explosion occurs, which then causes other explosives present to then detonate. Combustible material is going everywhere. Where did that come from on a concrete high-rise?

    Contrast it with this one, where its just concrete dust.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/world/video/beirut-explosion-lebanon-digvid

    A gas explosion from fuel on the first floor would be outward, blowing out ground floor walls, not taking out a bunch of floors vertically on one-side of the building.

    The difference between hitting something with explosives in it, and hitting it something where the only explosive is the one introduced with the explosive projectile dropped or shot into the target.

    The former case, and there are many video you can find like it, is pretty clear evidence of hitting some sort of munitions storage. How did the munitions get there, if Hezbollah didn’t put them there? Oh wait, the Mossad brought truckloads into the building secretly ahead of time.

    The former video could be targeting just personnel or command and control facilities of Hezbollah where there are not explosives stored, or it could be a knowingly targeting a non-military target based solely on the lack of secondary explosion; however, if the IDF is just targeting a non-military target, why not just carpet bomb with dumb, unguided bombs that cost 1/10th the cost, and where you can stretch your bombs over a wider area to create far more terror and take out far more civilians? If you are really trying to kill off and disrupt Lebanese society, picking some tiny percentage of civilian apartment buildings for precision pinpoint, structure-by-structure bombing is the most inefficient, costly, and ineffective ways to do it. Carpet bombing is much cheaper and actually might achieve the terror and civilian disintegration of society better.

  71. @70: Ha ha, I hate to give hope to the “Hamas natural gas company” people on here, but that first video does not show secondary explosions. It shows multiple primaries. 😃

    But you’re not going to win an argument here with video evidence, no matter how big of a secondary you find. That thirteen12 dude is on here calling the beheading of a wounded civilian an act of Palestinian self-defense. It doesn’t matter how much terrorism a video shows, he’s never going to see terrorism so long as the victims are Israelis! 😄

  72. @33, To prove a CRIME (i.e. war crime) requires one to meet the burden of proof of a crime. That is what you and others keep alleging. War crimes in violation of treaties Israel has signed and international humanitarian law. So where is the evidence that meets all the elements of a CRIME? Non-combatants being killed by IDF strikes is not in question, but that, BY ITSELF, does not meet the required elements of a war crime, or a violation of treaty.

    You might not like what is happening, you might find it immoral, you might find it horrific (I do), you might wish it wasn’t happening (I wish that), but when you use the word “crime,” that has a specific additional meaning, with specific required elements, and facts to support all of those required elements. It also carries with it specific, higher evidentiary standards.

    About the only charges of war crime in this whole human slaughter that has any legs against the IDF and Israel is the starvation allegations. When Israel, by its own admission, is stopping food and water from entering Gaza, that has no possible dual use as weapons, the conduct is hitting required evidence, with required standards of proof.

    Harder to sustain is that the IDF is criminally responsible for starvation across Gaza because food is being hijacked by armed groups or Hamas after it enters Gaza. It’s arguable that Israel is an occupying power in Gaza if it doesn’t occupy every part of Gaza continuously and subdued the enemy in every part it occupies. But that is a moot point, since its clearly not letting the food and water in, in sufficient quantity to sustain 2 million people in the first place.

    If its a war crime to kill non-combatants and have collateral damage on non-military infra-structure than Article 51 has been repealed and Israel, and every other country on earth, has lost the right to self-defense when attacked, since its not possible to strike at the military attackers without collateral damage.

    Do you oppose rights of nations to self-defense when war is launched against them? Do you support immunity for the attacker provided they attack from under, amongst, and adjacent to civilians and civilian infrastructure? That is the effect of criminalizing collateral damage. Fortunately, international treaties, international human rights law, and bodies like the ICJ don’t define war crimes as you do.

  73. 69 I realize this is just like a tv show for you lol 😂🤣😂 but the citizens of Israel actually expect their government to make an effort bring the hostages home, wrap up the conflict, and maybe even negotiate a permanent solution, but the hostages are clearly more valuable to Netanyahu if they are dead because he doesn’t want to stop killing Palestinians

  74. @73: Don’t forget, kill a few tens of thousands of heavily armed Arab militiamen. There’s a lot on the Israeli government’s plate right now, lol!

  75. @64 Apologies, I didn’t write what I meant. Hamas is not part of the Lebanese government, and like Hezbollah, has no power over the civil defense authorities.

    @72 You did notice the part in the article I linked in 41 where the IDF general said that he didn’t care about international law, just keep using Palestinians as human shields, right? Huh. Kinda sounds like knowledge of international law and intent to break it. Oopsies.

  76. @51, Blockading does not violate international law. It’s permitted by the laws of armed conflict. If you don’t let food sufficient to feed the civilian population in, that violates international law. A blockade to keep weapons from who you are blockading is permitted. Sanctions by the U.N. were authorized in 2006 against Hamas.

    Again, what you allege are lawful acts of war, not war crimes, until and unless its proved there where no military targets where places were bombed, and the bombing power knew there where no military targets where they bombed. That is true, even if the bombing power stayed silent and claimed nothing.

    The bombing power is under no obligation to prove prove something is a military target before striking at it. The obligation of proof is on a party to prove that there was no military target to target and the party targeting knew it. That’s how allegations work. The party alleging has to prove each and every element of what they allege. The party subject to the allegations has no duty to prove their innocents. They are innocent until proven otherwise.

    The one accusing must prove guilt, the accused is not guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

  77. @65,

    You wrote, “@58 you realize over half the population of Gaza are children and most of them weren’t even alive when Hamas was elected right.”

    That is true; however, it does not deny anyone attacked by Hamas the right to self-defense, the right to strike Hamas back in Gaza, or deny them that right if children in Gaza will be killed striking at Hamas. If it did, then no nation would have the right stated by Article 51 of U.N. Charter to defend itself. That right would be null and void because striking back always destroys civilians and always destroys civilian infrastructure.

    There is no such thing as “immaculate hostilities.”

    War ALWAYS kills more non-combatants than combatants. That is what makes it such a humanitarian catastrophe. A catastrophe is not a war crime.

  78. @73, The citizens of Israel are not monolithic. Israeli society is a series of plurality groupings on all subjects, including how to conduct the war, when to end the war, whether wiping out Hamas is a higher priority than hostages or vice versa.

    The issue they are most monolithic about is stopping the war before Hamas (and now Hezbollah) are largely destroyed in their ability to keep striking Israel. Majorities oppose that in poll after poll.

    During the negotiations, months and months ago now, over returning the final round of hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, large majorities opposed the deal, if it meant the IDF withdrawing from Gaza. They would only accept hostages and a six-week ceasefire, not a permanent one, against Hamas, if the IDF remained in Gaza to insure Hamas didn’t have a freehand to regroup and reorganize.

  79. @75: A lot of people today want Thumpus to respond to their every precious word, but you asked me so nicely I’ll humor you! 😉

    No, I don’t see an Israeli general in the story you linked. I do see a “senior commander,” echelon unknown, at first encouraging the use of human shields and then relenting on the issue and releasing the human shields. (Maybe Hamas negotiated for their release in “good faith,” eh Barth, ha ha ha!) I also see an official statement by the IDF saying that the use of human shields is “strictly prohibited” in the Israeli armed forces and a citation to an Israeli Supreme Court decision also prohibiting the practice. So I’m gonna go ahead and say the Israelis know that using human shields is illegal, and the soldiers who use them do so at their own peril. I note, too, that the Israeli soldiers in the story who objected to the use of human shields were able to secure the release of the human shields.

    I’m now looking for similar anti-human shield rules from Hamas, but I’m drawing a blank! 😂😂😂 Why, it’s almost like the Israelis respect the law of armed conflict and the Islamic resistance does not, lol! 😲

  80. @59 I’m not because it’s true

    @61 whether you were trolling or not that’s been your consistent view of the genesis of this conflict.

    In either case I noticed both of you choose to attack me rather than address why the Egyptian border is more heavily guarded than the Israeli one. When none of your neighbors are interested in helping you during a “genocide” it might be time for some introspection.

  85. my latest missive

    from mister

    Senator

    Sanders:

    dear

    kristofarian,

    (gotta Love that)

    The American people have had enough. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose sending more weapons and military aid to fuel Netanyahu’s war machine. We should listen to the American people.

    [NOT Listening to them

    Cost the Dems this

    And maybe ALL

    Elections,

    Bernie.

    IF ONLY We’d

    Listened

    To YOU].

    Please read my op-ed in The Washington Post today:

    – Bernie

    oh, Look

    here it is Now:

    No more arms sales to Netanyahu

    The United States government must stop blatantly violating the law with regard to arms sales to Israel. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act are very clear: the United States cannot provide weapons to any country that violates internationally recognized human rights.

    Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act is also explicit: no U.S. assistance may be provided to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

    According to the United Nations, much of the international community and every humanitarian organization on the ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws.

    That is why I have introduced, with colleagues, several joint resolutions of disapproval which would block offensive arms sales to Israel. The votes will take place in the Senate on Wednesday.

    As I have said many times, Israel clearly had a right to respond to the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, including Americans.

    But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas. It has also waged all-out war against the Palestinian people. Within Gaza’s population of just 2.2 million, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 103,000 injured — probably 60 percent of whom are women, children or elderly people.

    A recent U.N. assessment of satellite imagery found that two-thirds of all structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. That includes 87 percent of housing, 84 percent of health facilities, and about 70 percent of water and sanitation plants. Every one of Gaza’s 12 universities has been bombed, as have hundreds of schools.

    During the last year, millions of desperately poor people in Gaza have been driven from their homes, forced to evacuate again and again with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

    Families have been herded into so-called safe zones, only to face continued bombardment. The children of Gaza have suffered a level of physical and emotional trauma that is almost beyond comprehension and that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

    As horrific as the situation in Gaza has been over the past year, it is getting unimaginably worse. Humanitarian aid workers on the ground report that tens of thousands of children are now experiencing malnutrition and starvation because of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid.

    The need is greater than at any other time in the conflict; the volume of aid getting into Gaza in recent weeks is lower than at any point since the war began. And Israel’s recent decision to ban the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza, will only make a horrific situation even worse.

    I have met with doctors who have served in Gaza, treating hundreds of patients a day without electricity, anesthesia or clean water, including dozens of children arriving with gunshot wounds to the head.

    I’ve seen the photographs and the videos. UNICEF estimates that 10 children lose a leg in Gaza every day. There are more than 17,000 orphans.

    All of this is unspeakable and immoral. But what makes it even more painful is that much of this death and destruction has been carried out with U.S. weaponry and paid for by American taxpayers.

    During the last year alone, the United States has provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel and delivered more than 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment.

    In other words, as Americans, we are complicit in these horrific and illegal atrocities. Our complicity must end.

    I understand there are those who will argue that blocking these offensive arms sales will only embolden terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their sponsors in Iran. I would respectfully disagree.

    You do not effectively combat terrorism by starving thousands of innocent children. You do not effectively combat terrorism by bombing schools and hospitals. You do not effectively combat terrorism by turning virtually the entire world against your country.

    Because of its immoral actions, Israel is less secure and increasingly isolated. Israel is becoming a pariah nation condemned by governments around the world, international institutions and humanitarian organizations.

    Britain recently suspended 30 arms export licenses after concluding there was an unacceptable risk they could be used in violation of international humanitarian law.

    Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands have taken similar steps. U.N. bodies have called for an end to the arms shipments fueling the conflict.

    Let’s be clear: Israel, like any other nation, has a right to defend itself and these resolutions will not endanger that defense. Instead, they specifically target offensive weapons that are responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

    The American people have had enough. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose sending more weapons and military aid to fuel Netanyahu’s war machine. We should listen to the American people. The Congress must act now to stop these arms sales.

    –by Bernie Sanders; November 18, 2024

    @84

    it’s wearing Me

    out, too, switfy

  86. “You do not

    effectively combat terrorism

    by turning virtually the entire world against your country.

    Because of its immoral actions, Israel is less secure

    and increasingly isolated. Israel is becoming a

    pariah nation condemned by governments

    around the world, international institu-

    tions and humanitarian organizations.”

    . . . Endangering

    The Lives of Jews

    Planetfuckingwide.

    totally

    UnFairly

    Because

    THIS is bibi’s

    little Genocide

    and Not

    THEIRS.

    but that’s

    not How the

    Haters see it.

    Depose

    bibi. End

    this thing.

  89. But there are a shitload of other online comment sections where the five or six of you who are obsessed with this shit could be posting amongst a whole bunch of other people who are similarly obsessed, and not be regularly hijacking these threads from the hundreds of us who are smart enough to recognize the futility of your relentless fucking nonsense.

  90. “…..Elysian beer? Don’t panic yet…….” So are you saying that we should wait patiently for AB to get finished screwing their workers so we can go back to drinking scab beer? I wish the Stranger could change it’s view from inside the plate glass window in their stomach.

    @7, 14, 56, 62, Good ones.

  91. @81 DOUG and others –

    There once was a script that was inspired by an ongoing conflict between commenters Will in Seattle and fnarf, or perhaps more accurately, inspired by people who just wanted to hide Will’s comments.

    This was in 2009, and I have no idea if the code could be used in modern browsers. I don’t know if the author (Jon Collins) still reads SLOG. If so, thanks!

    It involved an extension to Firefox named Greasemonkey which allowed the user to add scripts to alter the appearance and functionality of web pages. The script can be found at

    https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/48588

    and is described:

    Registered Commenter Filter for Slog and Line Out

    By Jonathan Collins — Last update Apr 23, 2011

  93. @41: Reminded, yet again, of how Hamas has long used Gazan for human shields, and how the head of Hamas in the current conflict wanted even more civilian casualties, you argue the minutiae of secondary explosions. Ok juror, just how many recordings must the FBI produce of the mob boss ordering the killings before you admit these just might be gang-related deaths?

    “Is it wrong when the IDF uses Palestinians as human shields?”

    If you’d read the NATO report, written many years ago, you’d see the Israeli Supreme Court ordered a stop to the practice. Please note the difference between “higher authority condemns practice,” and “higher authority demands more use of the practice.”

  94. People ( and I use the term loosely) should know they are horrible people if they use emojis to celebrate the death of innocent children.

  95. Thirty-plus years ago, when Dick Cantwell brewed at Pike Place, the three regions of the world with the largest number of breweries per capita were, in order, Britain, Belgium, and the Pacific Northwest. Now, it seems almost every town in America has a brewery, as it was in the days before Prohibition. Brewing great craft beer in one town and shipping it to faraway towns no longer makes economic sense, and so AB is ending the practice.

    The craft brewing revolution has been won, and we celebrate folks like Dick Cantwell and the Elysian for vastly improving Seattle’s quality of alcoholic life. Cheers!

  98. @84 “that you can do nothing about”

    very naive. Pro-Israel propagandists don’t think that way:

    ““Social media is a terrain of warfare, not just for cyber troops, but also for citizen battalions armed with AI-enhanced bots and the ability to generate endless unique posts that evade current content moderation tools,” she said. “It is incumbent on tech companies to defend against such abuses.”

    “This level of organization only exists on one side of the conflict,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy adviser to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It exists for pro-Israel voices, and it exists because there are government ministries in Israel that support these tools and encourage their use.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/24/gaza-israel-activism-online/

  99. @79 So it’s A-OK for the IDF to use Palestinians as human shields because Hamas did it first? Whee! Elementary school playground rules!

    @93 Oh, so the “senior commanders” ordering IDF soldiers to use Palestinians as human shields are breaking international law /and/ Israeli law. That makes it better!

  100. @98, 99

    No on Justifies

    bibi’s Genocide

    like the Wormtongue

    justifies fucking Genocide.

    his little sockpuppet/

    ChatterboX echochamberer

    though is a Very Close second.

    so bibi’s

    likely Paying them?

    will ‘surprises’ never cease

  101. @99: Wait, did you just accidentally admit that Hamas does use human shields? 😄Careful, boatgeek, that’s the step toward ZIONISM!!! 🤣🤣🤣

  102. @99: Well, that was a particularly juvenile way to back-handedly admit you’ve been both ignoring Hamas’ longstanding policy of war crimes, and engaging in a false equivalence.

    And I’ll type it again for you to ignore: any use of human shields is a war crime. Every allegation should be investigated, and if the evidence warrants, punished.

  103. so if

    Hamas

    Knew there

    were IDF at the

    Party on 10/7/23

    wouldn’t

    that give

    Them carte

    Blanche everyone

    There is Suspect or

    too Near one — Not

    a Thing COULDDA BEEN

    DONE. like with your team.

    is

    that

    not how

    it Works?

  104. @103: Ha ha ha! No, Kristofarian. That is not how this works. 😂😂😂

    Would you like me to explain to you the difference between dropping bombs on armed militiamen versus shooting civilians in the face in front of their kids? I’d be happy to guide you in your moral development! All you have to do is sit at the feet of Professor Thumpus and listen! You’ll be a much better person once I’m through with you! 😄

  105. @98

    artifically ‘intelligent’ bots aka

    sockpuppets Chatterboxes

    here at tS? you Gotta

    be outta your

    mind:

    sock:

    to hit

    smack

    thump

    ok but

    Whom:

    why, tS’s

    left-leaning

    commentariat:

    us.

Comments are closed.