Explosion kills Hamas leader in Lebanon: Deputy political head Saleh Arouri, 57, died in a drone strike on a suburban apartment building yesterday after years of exile and living as a top Israeli target. He’d maintained a low profile since October 7. Six other Hamas members, including two military commanders, also died in the strike. Lebanese state-media blames Israel for the blast. Israel has declined to comment.
Palestinians say Israel held thousands without charges for weeks in degrading conditions: Human Rights Watch said Israeli soldiers allegedly stripped Palestinian laborers naked and photographed them, put them in diapers, sicked dogs on them, dragged them in the gravel, and deprived them of food and water. These accounts are yet to be independently verified, but photos and videos that showed the abuse and humiliation of civilians circulated in October and December. As of today, 22,000 Palestinians have died, including 9,100 children. An additional 57,000 Palestinians have been injured. At least 7,000 are missing.
First council meeting: The council unanimously elected conservative Council Member Sara Nelson as president. Rob Saka’s daughter swore him in, and during his introductory speech he mentioned 9/11 and his desire to be the “king of potholes.” Maritza Rivera promised better police response times with all the cops we don’t have. Big applause for Joy Hollingsworth. Cathy Moore gave the Mayor a shout-out. Bob Kettle said Seattle needs to be safe for businesses big and small. People used public comment to say hi. Yep. It’s gonna be an awesome four years.
FIRST CITY COUNCIL MEETING OF 2024 WE ARE SOOOO BACK pic.twitter.com/UbgGFcJOH8
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) January 2, 2024
Republican joins WA AG race: Ladies and gentlemen, meet Pete Serrano. This Eastern Washington lawyer loves guns, hates COVID health mandates, and wants to be your Attorney General! Serrano, who directs the conservative nonprofit Silent Majority Foundation, told the Tri-City Herald that he’s all about law and order. Anyway, he’s currently representing a gun manufacturer that Attorney General Bob Ferguson is suing under the state’s consumer protection laws for allegedly continuing to sell high-capacity magazines after a ban went into effect.
No tax credit for Cybertruckers: Some electric car owners who expected a meaty $7,500 tax credit this year are shit out of luck after new Biden rules came down Monday. The administration winnowed a list of more than two dozen cars to 13. The administration cut anything manufactured with Chinese battery parts. The lucky ones saw their credit slashed to a still-sizable $3,750. Others, including owners of Tesla’s Cybertruck and Ford’s E-Transit van, lost theirs entirely. *Cue Price is Right horn*
All you need is a little bit of magic murder: One of the earliest versions of Mickey Mouse from “Steamboat Willie” entered the public domain at the stroke of midnight Monday. Like Winnie the Pooh, Mickey is already out for blood. A trailer for the horror-comedy Mickey Mouse Trap was out on day one.
Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain on January 1, 2024. At that point you can do whatever you want with him. You can fuck him, you can make him fuck you, you can find something for him to fuck. You can get him to watch you jerk off.
— Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) December 4, 2022
ICYMI: A viral video appeared to show drones arranged in the shape of a giant vulva in front of the Space Needle on New Year’s Eve. I had to find the truth.
After a long vacation, it feels really good to dig into a forensic investigation of this caliber from @vivmccall.
Did you see that drone vulva in the sky on New Year’s Eve? No, you didn’t. https://t.co/9o8rK4UW1P
— Rich Smith (@richsssmith) January 3, 2024
Ohio Republican Governor vetoes anti-trans legislation: Mike DeWine, a guy who wanted teachers to have guns in class, surprised Ohio Republicans Tuesday and vetoed two anti-trans bills they introduced: The “Save Adolescents from Experimentation” and “Save Women’s Sports” acts. (If those names sound familiar—Republicans introduced these copycat bills in several states last year as part of a national legislative tirade.) Alongside Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson, DeWine is only the second Republican governor to veto anti-trans legislation since 2021.
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns: Gay faced two big accusations from conservative activists and publications. The first claim was that she too closely copied language from academic papers, plagiarizing when she meant to paraphrase, something many scholars at Harvard and beyond have said was not true. She was also accused of not properly investigating antisemitism on Harvard’s campus after October 7. For his part, Washington conservative activist Chris Rufo took credit for Gay’s resignation.
NYT is like reporting each thing Chris Rufo tweets he’s planning then reporting breathlessly on his “outrage”, creating the media campaign he’s stating he’s drumming up IN those tweets. the harvard-nyt prestige class feedback loop enables his anti “CRT”/“woke”/LGBTQ campaign https://t.co/5YjHvzihQ0
— Lex McMenamin (they/them) (@leximcmenamin) January 3, 2024
A wintry mix: I live for the cold. I like to sit in front of my open window wrapped in a blanket like a Thomas Mann character. The rain sort of ruins the alpine vision, but expect no sun with temps in the 30s and 40s this week. King County isn’t likely to get slush, but Whatcom and Snohomish counties could.
Multiple systems lined up to go through Western Washington in the next week will push Seattle yearly rainfall totals to above normal for the first time since 2022. Sunday looking like the driest day in the next 7. #wawx pic.twitter.com/vgCvKzQkp0
— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) January 3, 2024
Demolition permits submitted for First Hill building: I hate to see historic mixed-use buildings go, but on New Year’s Day the second fire in two years brought 100 firefighters to the vacant four-floor pre-war apartment complex with retail space at 823 Madison Street. We’re not even sure if one unknown person made it out alive. I see the case for doing something. Seattle’s Department of Construction said it expected full removal would take weeks.
RIP Vito’s building. I’ll always miss the Men’s Room tiles. Welcome, empty lot that will sit vacant for decades.
Apologia saying that rape of Israelis by Hamas justifies sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners* by Israelis incoming in 3 … 2 … 1. Note also that the Palestinians in question had been given work permits to work in Israel, and therefore were subject to detailed Israeli background checks. And that they were eventually released right back into a war zone.
So yeah, that’s awesome.
@5 Where are you getting sexual abuse from? Also from the last line from the linked article “Human Rights Watch was not able to verify these accounts.”
Hamas, the terrorist group that keeps on giving … oh wait, taking freedom from Palestinians
@6 Generally speaking, stripping someone naked and photographing them against their will is considered sexual abuse. Holding them incommunicado and threatening them with dogs was just a cherry on top. I suppose we’ll see if Israelis have better operational security than the guards at Abu Ghraib did. If not, the photos will leak out.
When several people independently tell the same story of abuse with slightly different words, it’s usually a good sign that the claims are true. Note also that HRW gave the Israeli authorities the opportunity to deny the accusations of sexual and other abuse and they declined to do so. And that the detainees were released when HRW filed a lawsuit asking for access to the prisoners. All HRW was saying was that their staff had not specifically seen the room full of naked detainees.
“It’s gonna be an awesome four years.”
A functional and safe city sounds pretty good to me.
And it’s not like the outgoing council members have much to show for their efforts over the last four years: the homeless population increased, housing affordability grew worse, fatal overdose deaths increased at shocking rate, rates of violent crime increased, and Seattle continues to have one of the most regressive tax structures of any major American city.
I couldn’t quite remember where 823 Madison was so I did a Google street view. Shit! That’s Vito’s! The corner of 9th and Madison where across the street was that always crappy Greek restaurant. Still, it was a functioning concern and now it, too…all boarded up.. Looks different these day, eh? Kinda like Belfast ’71. You guys must really be depressed about it. I am, and I don’t even live there anymore.
@12 Israelis certainly tolerate prison rape (and threats of rape during interrogation) of Palestinians, so maybe. So far, we don’t have any accusations of that though. Give it time.
One thing that strikes me in the reaction to this story is that when there were reports by Israeli women kidnapped by Hamas being raped after being kidnapped, there was general outrage here. Nobody once thought to doubt those stories. And they shouldn’t. If Israeli women came back with stories of being stripped and photographed naked against their will, there would be outrage about the sexual abuse. As there should be.
The moment some Palestinian men accuse their Israeli captors of sexual abuse, the same commenters are all “Well how do we know if there’s no independent witness?” and “It was only stripping them and taking pictures, what’s the big deal? It’s not like it was rape.” It’s almost like these commenters have double standard. Weird.
And for the purity trolls out there, I think that every person guilty of rape and/or sexual abuse in this conflict should be charged, tried, and punished. Regardless of which uniform (or lack thereof) they wear. Unfortunately, I expect that the Israelis will act with the same impunity as Hamas in this regard. Feel free to prove me wrong by showing any instance where an Israeli official is charged for committing or allowing others to commit sexual abuse of any kind.
That section about the fire(s) in the building that used to house Vito’s has a serious case of the Passive Voice. How did the fire get set? Who set it? Why was the building left vacant for two years?
You could at least link to CHS’s real reporting on the subject from yesterday. https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/01/first-hill-building-that-became-squat-after-2022-fire-burns-again-in-massive-3-alarm-blaze/
@10: as a SCC agnostic, i note that homelessness increased nationally, fatal ODs increase nationally, and our regressive tax system is locked in by the state (income taxes are “unconstitutional”).
barely anything you’re blaming the SCC for was within their power to fix. but violent crime decreased last year, precipitously. big national news story yesterday. do they get credit for that?
@9/15 I think sexual abuse is a stretch given the context. Hamas fighters are in this thing to be martyrs so its a reasonable precaution for the IDF to strip them down and make sure they aren’t hiding suicide bombs. As for your other comments there is visual evidence (video/photos) from Hamas themselves raping these women (laughing and bragging about it) so its not really a disputed fact coming out of a biased source. If you want to take everything Hamas says at face value that’s your choice but I’m going to remain skeptical considering their actions/words in the past have proven to be lies/mistruths (e.g. the hospital bombing that were in fact their own rocket). You seem to be going out of your way to attribute actions to Israel that are conjecture whereas other commenters are basing their comments on actual visual evidence of Hamas atrocities. If as you say evidence eventually comes to light that Israel is abusing prisoners we can have a different conversation but at the moment there is none.
@Garbby
wow
‘Searching for infant formula has become a futile quest. We change milk types for our children, tears in their eyes, as we cry for necessities. Infants born in tents receive water and sugar due to the unavailability of milk.
Amid this struggle for life’s details, the war has humiliated us. It has stripped away our humanity, dignity and self-esteem. We are left homeless, barefoot and exposed in streets and tents.
In the face of such adversity, we find ourselves alone, bearing witness to a battle we cannot match. Gaza lacks the resources of a superpower, unable to withstand the onslaught of massive military equipment funded by the United States.
I have seen extravagance in life, luxury and money spending, but I did not expect to see extravagance in the use of weapons that destroy stones and people.
The lavish use of US weapons in Gaza—artillery, planes, tanks, quadcopters, naval boats—comes at the cost of innocent lives, the majority of whom are women and children.’
weaponry
supplied &
supported
by OUR Tax
Dollar$ replete
w/MADE IN THE USA
& in the fine print?
You’re
Welcome!
have a Nice day!
yeah
there’ll
Be no Backlash
but if there Is
expect a BIG Strong
daddy-type Tyrant to Take Over
to
keep
us Safe.
It’s sad about the Vito’s building, but it’s not surprising. And there’s no way it’s going to sit empty for ten years. It’s not owned by the City of Seattle.
I expect to see a great deal of activity on that corner in the very near future.
@Cap’n
1,200 Dead Israelis
plus raping cum
pillaging
vs
24,000 DEAD
Gazans is a Fuckton*
of a Lot to pay for what
Seems like very Few of these:
/hamas-used-gaza-hospital-as-a-command-center-u-s-intelligence-says/
is
the Cost
in Human
Lives sustainable?
and as the “War”
on Hamas expands
beyond Palestine’s Borders
I gotta Wonder:
Will we turn the
Deserts to Glass?
all This
just to keep
Nutnyahoo outta jail.
whoa
oh and
how Many
Injured where
there basically IS
no Healthcare System?
*sixty five
thousand
+ . so far.
@24 So it’s not sexual abuse to strip someone down and take naked pictures of them? Good to know. I’ll make sure to remember that next time you’re outraged about something similar.
These weren’t people taken off of the battlefield, or even from Gaza. These were Gaza natives who had work permits to work in Israel. To get those permits, they had to go through extensive background checks to make sure that they weren’t terrorists. And they were picked up off the street, at workplaces, or at checkpoints. So the chances of them having suicide vests was pretty darn low. Not zero, but a reasonable way to deal with that would be to do a search, give them their clothes back, and then take the pictures. There’s no need for naked pictures unless you’re engaged in abuse.
I’m not disputing anyone’s account of rape or sexual abuse. I’m saying that you (IIRC) were Very Upset that Israeli women who had been kidnapped were sexually abused in captivity. When you only had their account of it. So that’s the double standard. You will take the word of an Israeli civilian and not the word of a Palestinian civilian, even one with no connection to Hamas.
You may have missed it in your rush to judgement, but the source of the report was Human Rights Watch, not Hamas. Is HRW an arm of Hamas in your mind too?
Yeah, I’m /really/ going out of my way to attribute actions to Israel. After all, these people were picked up in Israel, held by people who said they were Israeli security services, asked questions about people suspected of being in Hamas, then dropped off on the Israeli side of the Israel/Gaza border and pushed over to Gaza. It’s sure hard to understand why anyone would think that Israeli government was somehow involved in their abuse. :eyeroll:
@ 26 – Gosh almighty, Ms. Vel-DuRay, I sure hope you’re right. Maybe I need to come stay with you as one would go to an ashram hoping that some of your optimism seeps in by osmosis. All I see in my crystal ball is either a parking garage or more $4M condos. As much as I hope your vision is correct, I’m hoping mine is entirely wrong. That intersection looks like it has been a squatter’s paradise for quite a while. I’d heard about the unravelling of downtown’s 3rd Ave which has always been kinda troubled, and the unwelcomed changes at Westlake Center, but 9th and Madison was a shock.
@19- the old SCC did several things to discourage landlords from providing affordable housing, so I think they DO share some blame on homelessness. Hopefully the new Council will repeal the worst of it.
And I’m a hell of a lot happier with Israel killing Hamas leaders in targeted strikes than I am with them flattening entire cities.
@29 they weren’t naked. You can say it was disrespectful I guess but it’s not sexual abuse. If they wanted to abuse them they wouldn’t have even bothered giving them a diaper. Given the heightened security and potential for suicide bombs I completely understand the action taken. I was (and still am) very outraged by the use of sexual violence by Hamas during their Oct 7th attack (unlike Jayapal) and again we didn’t have just the victims account of it. There are videos and images from Hamas themselves corroborating their actions, along with their delight at having committed them. If you want to say these people were treated poorly I’ll agree with you on that but whether you think so or not you are extrapolating on what happened to with zero evidence.
@32 “They weren’t naked.”
Erm, no. Only if you don’t believe them.
“They [forced me to take] off all my clothes…and they took pictures of me.…They beat me intensely, I was naked during this, it was humiliating. The worst part was when the dogs were attacking [me]. I was blindfolded and cuffed with metal shackles, I didn’t know if the dogs were controlled by someone or just left to attack me, I was terrified.”
Sound like a little more than poor treatment, but maybe that’s just me. Did you call it “poor treatment” when Hamas stripped their captives naked and photographed them? If not, what’s the difference between abusive treatment of Palestinian civilians and Israeli civilians?
@36 It sounds awful and I feel for these people that they were treated this way but there is also some context to take into account. Israel was attacked, its citizens murdered and they had no idea who participated and if there were there was more to come. Yet I don’t see any of the Palestinians accusing the IDF of sexual assault and based on the report it seems none of them were murdered in cold blood. While pictures may have been taken were they taken while they were naked? Were the pictures just mug shots or something else? We don’t know. Again you are extrapolating on the report to go exactly where you want to go. It seems like the point you are trying to make is the IDF and Hamas are two sides of the same coin. You are going to need more evidence than this to make that claim true.
Shame, shame, shame! For not digging deeper into the Mike DeWine veto story. DeWne has said he vetoed those two anti-trans bills so he could implement much more restrictive redmgulations directly from the executive branch that would create restrictions not only on trans kids but trans adults too. Oh my, such a hero. The man is made of the worst right-wing dirt.
@37 I should be amazed at your ability to twist the victim’s words. “They [forced me to take] off all my clothes…and they took pictures of me.…They beat me intensely, I was naked during this.” He specifically says that he was naked during the photographs and the beatings.
Like I said in @4, the apologia for sexual abuse (I never said assault) was incoming. As expected. And if there were pictures of actual sexual assault, you would brush them away because Israel was attacked. Nothing to see here, just a little dehumanizing treatment. Even if it’s behavior that you’ve just pounded Hamas for doing.
Hamas is worse than the state of Israel. Just not as much worse as you would like to believe. You justify any action on Israel’s part by the murders and rapes of October 7. Then you turn a blind eye to the murders and rapes of Palestinians over the years (decades!) leading up to October 7 and abuse and murder of civilians since. Because apparently the lives of Palestinians have no value to you.
Here’s what I’m talking about, though it’s from 2005. A 13-year-old Palestinian girl accidentally was in a security zone, carrying a school bag. After warning shots, she dropped the bag and ran away from the military post. The Israelis shot the bag, confirming that it had no explosives. An Israeli officer then shot her dead and went over and emptied his clip into her body. The officer then said that he would do the same if a 3-year-old walked into the security zone. He was acquitted of all charges in military court. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2
Before you even start, yes she had a bag, and yes, it may have been a bomb. That’s what the warning shots and the shots into the bag were for. No, she did not need to be killed. No, she did not need to have an entire magazine emptied into her at point blank range. No doubt this is just another tragic accident that could have been avoided if she’d only not been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But kids go into the wrong place at the wrong time all the time. In most places, that’s not a death sentence upheld by military courts. This shit happens all the time to Palestinians, whether they’re in the war zone or not. And nobody cares, least of all you.
@ 17
It’s pretty clear that you don’t undertand how law in general or codes of conduct work in real life. Far be it for me to defend university adminstrators, but answer was perfectly honest and appropriate.
Which is why it was indeed a set up by right wing ideologues and a certain billionaire hedge donor. Any answer would have been “the wrong answer” to them, and unleashed a host of corporate media hand wringing.
@5: “Apologia saying that rape of Israelis by Hamas justifies sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners* by Israelis incoming in 3 … 2 … 1.”
Which hasn’t happened here. And your claim of sexual abuse is indeed a stretch. Human Rights Watch’s account contains no evidence any of the alleged physical abuses were sexual. If these abuses happened, they were indeed physical abuses, and likely completely illegal under both international and Israeli laws, but there’s not necessarily anything sexually abusive about strip-searching and photographing prisoners. There’s literally no mention of sexual assaults, or even threats of sexual assaults, anywhere in these accounts. Again, that does not make these alleged assaults and maltreatments any less illegal or abusive; it just doesn’t make them sexual assaults.
@40: “And if there were pictures of actual sexual assault,”
Which there aren’t, but why would you come this far, just to let a mere total lack of evidence deny you your cherished and preordained conclusion? And here it comes:
“Hamas is worse than the state of Israel. Just not as much worse as you would like to believe.”
Bingo. That is where you wanted to go, and so you’re equating alleged abusive mistreatments by amped-up Israeli security forces with Hamas’ well-documented organized, targeted rapes and mutilations of women.
“Here’s what I’m talking about, though it’s from 2005.”
That you had to go back almost twenty years for a single example shows just how incredibly widespread and chronic this is!!!1!
(And yet, the girl wasn’t raped, her genitals weren’t mutilated. Other than that, it’s totally the same.)
@40 so what point are you trying to make? Israelis do terrible things to Palestinians and thus got what they had coming to them? The IDF allegedly treated prisoners in their custody poorly and thus are no better than Hamas? I’m not sure what exactly you are trying to accomplish. I have no doubt Israel has done questionable things and some may even be criminal in nature. In this case you have anecdotal accounts but no conclusive evidence like there is for the Oct 7th attacks. Let’s say you are totally correct though, Israel is still justified in defending themselves and continuing their current campaign against Hamas. So again I ask, what is your main point?
@44 “Just because something is a horrific experience for me and mine, doesn’t make it unjust, or if it is unjust, lay it at the feet of the most visible party to my misfortune. Horrible things happen to innocent people all the time. It’s called life. ”
Just guessing, but this category is not something your ideology extends to Oct 7?
But some chucklehead was saying there is only relative morality and so everyone can judge everything through their own zionist/hamas/harvard gay hating glasses.
Did anyone catch the news about one of the few good guys in this conflict, the Israeli who shot two Hamas terrorists in Israel at the bus stop was later shot by Israeli soldiers. He had stopped a terrorist attack, put down his gun and taken off his jacket as commanded by the Israeli soldier and was shot. He was surrendering.
I just wanted to pro zion team to understand that things are out of control. Things happen in a war will be your perpetual excuse. But people in Israel are naturally upset about this.
I think the most annoying thing about the pro zionists here is the lack of a filter. It’s like the only view you folks know is the far right zionist view, where every atrocity is excused. Israel has a much wider spectrum of views. Everyone knows Hamas is horrible, everyone wants Hamas stopped. But fewer and fewer believe the current regime in Israel has a plan or a clue to achieve this. And your support of every war crime by the IDF is just weird.
“And
your support
of every war crime
by the IDF is just weird.”
‘but
HAMAS!’
is all the
Justification
supporters of
Nutnyahoo’ll EVER
need whilst he takes
Israel down the path of
martyrdom
just to keep his
corrupt ass
Outta
Jail.
and speaking of the
far Far FAR “Right”
nyt:
Flowers
Are Evolving
to Have Less Sex
As the number of bees and other pollinators falls, field pansies are adapting by fertilizing their own seeds, a new study found.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/science/flower-sex-evolution-bees.html
fucking
Pansies.
look for
Reich-wing
Legislation outlawing
Pansies below the Bible Belt
and Wherever
else the so-
called
‘right’
goes.
Bauhaus dear, that area is going through a transformation. The “old Greek Restaurant” site (which, I must say, was a nice place) is going to be a 21 story apartment building (part of the living building challenge!), all sorts of stuff has been happening around the Cathedral (and the Diocese is planning on demolishing their Chancery Building in order to build another high rise)
The big deal there is the fate of the First Presbyterian Church, which is rotting away in all of its Mid-Century Splendor right at the corner of I-5 and Madison. The parish is trying to unload it, but I think they are waiting for the right number of dollars.
the simple-minded
require no more
than simple
‘solutions.’
see:
Dunning/Kroger
@26 & @54 Catalina Vel-DuRay and @30 Bauhaus I: So it is as Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat says:'”Wanna see growth in Seattle? Just look up.” [Seattle continues to defy gravity, at least up in the sky, December 20, 2023, The Seattle Times, OpEd]
It’s a shame it’s all going to luxury high rises, most of which are likely to stay vacant and unused.