Morning everyone. Anyone else still sweaty from yesterday? Expect an equally warm day today with a high of 59 degrees and a 20% chance of rain. So, like a, bring-a-rain-jacket-but-if-you-don’t-no-one-will-think-you-were-dumb chance of rain.
Cops raid four Seattle gay bars in a weekend: Viv reported yesterday on a series of raids on Seattle’s gay bars over the weekend. Neither the Seattle Police Department (SPD) nor the Liquor and Cannabis Board gave clear reasonings for the sudden interest in the bars, though we expect a statement this morning. The LCB has yet to cite the bars for an exposed nipple and some bartenders in jockstraps, the only things that they saw as problematic during their sweeps. The Office of Police Accountability is investigating SPD’s role in the raid. City Council Member Joy Hollingsworth sent out a news release Tuesday morning asking the LCB for answers about the basis for the raids and the enforcement actions taken.
Electing a bunch of authoritarian backlash moderates really sets the tone for a city, doesn’t it https://t.co/IXpBmio7Ns
— Brett Hamil (@BrettHamil) January 30, 2024
Seattle City Attorney dismisses cases against Stop the Sweeps protestor: On Monday morning, Assistant City Attorney Joshua Shea said the City would not retry a Stop the Sweeps protestor who stood on an RV for 12 minutes, citing a need to save city resources. The trial for the protestor ended last week with a hung jury. This case has become a bit of a mess for the City Attorney’s office, especially since at one point Shea tried to strike the only Black juror but couldn’t articulate a clear reason for it, according to people present in the courtroom. The Washington State Supreme Court has said courts must recognize discrimination when attorneys try to strike jurors based on race if its pretty obvious.
Plus, the CAO’s chief criminal attorney, Natalie Walton-Anderson, announced yesterday that she’d be leaving the office. The timing seems suspiciously connected to the mistrial, but CAO Spokesperson Tim Robinson said Walton-Anderson’s decision to leave was “personal.”
Money for cops but nothing else: Charles wrote about Seattle’s rotting phase yesterday as the City government succumbs to the greed of its “corporate overlords.”
You don’t hate Seattle. You hate neoliberalism. https://t.co/tdY9dLjbDS
— DivestSPD (@DivestSPD) January 29, 2024
J Pod’s newest member missing, presumed dead: During a J Pod sighting this Saturday, the Center for Whale Research said they could not see the young calf, J60, swimming with the rest of the pod. Due to J60’s age, he likely wouldn’t be swimming alone for an extended period of time, and researchers believe he may be dead. An orca’s lack of nutrition as well as the toxins that mothers pass onto their calfs during pregnancy contribute to the high mortality rate for orca calfs, according to Fox 13. I wish I’d known that before I allowed myself to love the little guy. RIP J60.
Students walk out in West Seattle after shooting death of classmate: Mobarak Adam, 15, died last week after someone shot him in the bathroom of the Southwest Pool and Teen Life Center, a City-run facility, according to KING 5. Students at Chief Sealth International High School walked out of classes Monday to call for more gun control and security at the City facility.
No more trashing batteries in Seattle: Due to the risk of a potential fire, Seattle Public Utilities has banned the practice of throwing away batteries. Seattle Fire Department Chief Harold Scoggins said the fire department responded to 79 battery fires in the past two years, according to the Seattle Times. The Times article also lists all the places you can dispose of your dead batteries instead of the trash. I personally keep them in a little plastic bag under my sink, which now I’m realizing is probably a fire hazard.
Prison labor puts food on dinner tables in the US: The Associated Press just released an article and video yesterday on the role of prison labor in our food systems. In the lead, the AP points out how the country’s largest maximum security prison sits on a former slave plantation, and men imprisoned there must do hard labor for next to no payment. The US banned slavery in the 13th Amendment, except as punishment for a crime, a clause that federal lawmakers have challenged recently, according to the AP.
Drone attack kills three US soldiers in Jordan: The early morning attack hit a housing area in a US military outpost, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than 40 people. The Biden Administration believes Iran-backed militants committed the attack, and now President Joe Biden is dealing with some pressure to respond in a way that both stops the continued attacks on US forces in the region and at the same time doesn’t lead to a war with Iran.
House Republicans move to impeach Biden cabinet official: House Republicans claim Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors for his work on the US’s southern border, though this seems to be mostly political theater, according to CNN. One of the Republican holdouts on the issue is Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-04), who says he wants to hear the evidence against Mayorkas before he decides to vote for impeachment.
Brothers in New York found with arsenal: The Queens District Attorney’s Office has charged two brothers with about 130 criminal counts related to their collection of firearms and homemade bombs, according to USA Today. The brothers had a vague list of possible targets for these weapons, which included “banker scum.”
Dizzying and noisy: Enjoy a little bit of Courting’s “We Look Good Together (Big Words)” this Tuesday morning. It’s like music Adderall, but without the focusing. So just the meth part.
@1
and what
an Exemplary
addition to one’s Resume
“In the lead, the AP points out how the country’s largest maximum security prison sits on a former slave plantation, and men imprisoned there must do hard labor for next to no payment.”
the South
may have Lost
the ‘civil war’ but
the Plantation and
Fascism lives on still.
@1: No.
Growing up in rural areas in the 1970s, it was common for high school students to show up to school with rifles in their cars so they could hunt either before or after classes.
No shootings. And even more mind blowing given today’s society, no cars broken into and weapons being stolen.
In the 27 years I’ve lived in Washington, 21 of them in the Seattle area, I’ve seen more and more gun laws go into effect, each championed by people who say they will curb crime. They have failed to do so.
The only thing they’ve managed to accomplish is to create more hoops for people who are not criminals to jump through in order to purchase a firearm.
Why would we expect any new laws to be different?
@#4; Why do you think the murder rate in the U.S. is higher than any other developed nation?
@5 until Toddlers
are required to pack
a little Heat No one will
be Safe from gun violence
ain’t it
Obvious?
@5
The question you should ask is why, when there are more gun control laws on the books than ever before, is there such a high murder rate and so much violent crime.
It’s a people problem, not a firearm problem.
@7 Gun violence rates are inversely correlated to the strength of gun safety laws in the state.
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/
@#7; Are you seriously claiming that there are no people outside the U.S.?
Or are you claiming that the citizens of the U.S. are less civilized than people in the rest of the world.
@9 I know you get really het up about how Hamas infiltrates hospitals with military folks out of uniform and that’s a Bad Thing. Howza ’bout that Israeli raid in the West Bank today where the IDF went into a hospital in civilian clothes and shot and killed a patient (paralyzed and in a wheelchair) and two people visiting the room?
Is having an alleged militant patient enough to make a hospital a legitimate military target? Even if it’s not in the war zone itself?
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/30/1227832688/israeli-forces-raid-west-bank-hospital-jenin
@12 I mean, most people want to work for pennies per hour to jack up profits for outside corporations. Just to relieve the boredom, you know. /s
@4: then tell us what the solution is.
the nation is saturated with firearms. 22 million guns sold in the US in 2020 alone. nearly 500 million total.
more and more emotionally volatile young men have them through theft or black market buys, and whereas they once solved their grievances with fistfights, now they use handguns.
weak ass gun laws are just Band-Aids on a sucking chest wound, and judges keep striking them down.
@15 You seem to have failed to notice that the hospital in question was in Jenin, in the West Bank. Not in a war zone.
Let’s keep the roles correct here. I’m the one horrified by the killings of Palestinians. You’re the one who says they’re all legitimate. The IDF are the ones carrying them out. Hamas are the ones who started the whole mess off. Also, you keep saying that there are only a few (tens to hundreds) of edge cases that conflict with the LOAC (aka are war crimes). How do you know that the killings in violation of the LOAC are so low?
On a broader level, 695 Israeli civilians were killed in the war crimes of 10/7. You have used that as a justification for anything that Israel does, including war crimes. If Israel gets to more than 695 Palestinians killed in war crimes, are they then the bad guys? Does Hamas get a green light for more war crimes too at that point?
Good news for TS and their concerns with Davison choosing to prosecute these misdemeanor crimes in Seattle. The House has introduced a bill HB 1994 that would allow judges to dismiss cases by offering diversion without prosecutor approval. Better yet, people only have to “substantially complete” the conditions so they don’t have to follow through. There are no limits either so if you are a 50th time repeat offender you can participate. Judges can just ignore Davison and her office and do whatever the want. What could go wrong?
Full text of bill here – https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1994&Year=2023&Initiative=false
@18 So a patient under treatment at a hospital is using the hospital outside its humanitarian function? My, that’s a spicy take. Along with your repeated statement that Israel can use whatever size bombs it wants as long as it kills a single Hamas militant, there are some gaping wide doors there. For example, under that reading, you would be entirely OK with Hamas blowing up an entire hospital in Tel Aviv in order to kill a single Israeli general who stopped in for a medical appointment. Good to know.
It’s telling that you go from entirely legalistic readings of the LOAC that forbid this or allow that when you’re talking about Hamas. The instant that anything might blow back on Israel, it’s all “The ICJ ruling is just a piece of paper with no meaning.” Almost like your principles aren’t actually rooted in the law.
It’s obvious from your postings over the last four months that any tears you shed for the civilians of Gaza are crocodile tears. Clear war crimes committed by the IDF are just how war is hell, no consequences needed. When given specific examples of how the IDF could conduct the war to reduce civilians casualties, you shrug your shoulders and say that’s not how the IDF wants to conduct the war, so obviously nothing could be done differently. Any Gazan casualties are the necessity of war, despite any evidence to the contrary. Anyone carrying a white flag can be shot, because it would be terribly inconvenient to identify targets before shooting them.
@21 — Powerful Comment
here’s a critique
I stumbled over from
yesterday’s Schlogg it
seemed kinda familiar
& most Fitting as Well.
‘”The warrior can
do what they want,
at least until a warrior on
the other side stops them
with guns, artillery, rockets, etc.’
-cap’n Ahab
moments before
being swallowed by
the White Killer Whale*
of the International Court
of Justice for excusing genocide
or at least
assisting in
making it in-
Evitable. oops”
*toothless
perhaps but
the International
Court of Justice can
help Influence the Right
People — & BiBi’s only just
B a r e l y ‘holding on.’
Set
Israel
fucking FREE:
END the Madness
@7:
If, as you claim, “it’s a people problem, not a firearm problem”, then why would any sane person want people to have easier access to firearms?
@10
I said nothing of the sort.
As for people in the US being less civilized, have you walked around Seattle? Do civilized people simply let folks slowly kill themselves with drugs and pass out on the streets? I mean sure, that’s the progressive way, but is it civilized?
@25
Previous gun control laws have failed to prevent crime. What news laws will work?
@26 What, to prevent all crime? None of them. To make a noticeable reduction? Lots of them.
Safe storage laws reduce gun thefts (and suicides at the same time).
Bulk purchase laws reduce straw purchases for criminals
That’s just two examples. Personally, I’d like to go back to 1790’s militias. If you want to own a gun, you’re damn well going to be marching up and down the town square one weekend a month as a drill sergeant yells at you.
@28 “On the rare occasion when a claim of violation of international humanitarian law makes it to an international tribunal, the subjects of the ruling just ignore it and move on.” So we shouldn’t have prosecuted war crimes in Bosnia, then?
Your examples about how Iraq is different from Gaza ignore the fact that the US was working from real time intelligence in Iraq too. They just made an effort to reduce civilian casualties and called off strikes (or punted them up to higher levels of command for approval) if they were expected to kill large (>30) numbers of civilians. Israel could do the same if they chose. They choose not to, with predictable results.
Israel has received thousands of smart bomb kits, and yet doesn’t have enough. Gotcha.
Please provide sources for the assertion that opposing forces in Mosul just sat around and didn’t move. That’s not how any insurgency in any modern era has run.
You’ve also glossed over a major difference between Mosul and Gaza. In Mosul, civilians were able to flee the city and leave the fight to the US and ISIS. Israel not only blocks people from leaving Gaza, they also shoot unarmed people carrying white flags on evacuation routes. So the premise that an equivalent level of concern for civilian casualties is a little light on actual, you know, facts and shit and a little heavy on “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Note an important word in your review of the Jenin assassination: alleged. I would have had no problems if Israel had sent police to arrest the person they targeted. Bring him in for trial. I could accept plainclothes cops. I can understand if he got killed resisting arrest. But dressing up as medical personnel, opening the door, and immediately opening fire is exactly the kind of tactic that you blame Hamas for. But I guess it’s not a shock that you’d support extrajudicial killings. War crimes don’t matter to you unless they’re committed by Hamas.
nyt:
[De]Widening Mideast Crisis:
“In a surprise move, an Iran-linked militia in Iraq that the Pentagon said was likely responsible for a lethal drone attack on an U.S. base in Jordan over the weekend announced on Tuesday that it was suspending military operations in Iraq under pressure from the Iraqi government and from Iran.”
fucking
Nice.
also
“The Israeli military
confirms that it has be-
gun flooding Hamas tunnels.”
Jan. 30, 2024, 8:50 p.m. ET; 33m ago
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/30/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
roto rooter
routing rousting
the Hamas outta
their burrows who
knows how many hos-
tages’re Alive . hopefully
ALL and may Israel repatriate
a few thousands of Prisoners* too
cease.
fire.
bring ’em back.
My heartfelt condolences to the tragic loss of another J pod orca calf.
We humans are the most selfish, greedy, and destructive creatures on this dying planet.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
@5 & @10 Merchant Seaman, @16 Max Solomon, and @25 COMTE +4 for the WIN!!!
@4, @7, and @26 ASaxman5537: Interesting. I grew up in a rural community in the 1970s, too, never felt the need for a gun then, and still don’t today, despite the transient horrors of serial killer, Ted Bundy cruising through the region, seeking new victims before finally being sentenced to death for murdering 36 women in cold blood. And I live in a city and I’m still here, five decades later, still gunless.
@21 boatgeek & @22 kristofarian +2 Powerful commenting, both of you.
War is hell no matter who or where you are. War is not the answer.
Anyone claiming that war “helps the economy” needs psychiatric help, STAT.
They’re usually corrupt billionaires or their willfully misinformed working class pawns.
@1: I may have to start calling you Avis, raindrop dear. You try so hard!
@12 Garb Garblar: Lol is right! Thanks for the chuckle, Garb.
@30 “Does that put them beyond criticism or without error? Of course not. Should possible war crimes for willfully (not negligently, the crime requires mens re (intent), not just actual killing) shooting surrendered prisoners be investigated by the IDF and international bodies such as the ICJ? Of course. Will the possibility of that do anything to reduce the tremendous body count of non-combatants in a statistically significant way in real-time? Nope.”
Thing is, Israel already did an “investigation” into the case of IDF soldiers who shot and killed civilians who surrendered (carrying a white flag, no shirts so it was obvious they had no suicide vests). They found the soldiers not guilty. This was, of course, the case of the escaped hostages. So it’s obvious that the IDF has no intention of holding its soldiers accountable for war crimes.
The problem that the IDF has here is that they’re stuck between two war crimes. In the link below, the escaped hostages plausibly fall under two situations. Either the IDF thought that they were civilians, or they thought they were Hamas soldiers. If the IDF thought the hostages were civilians, they committed war crimes, because then they would have intentionally killed civilians, see B.ii.
“Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives”
If the IDF thought that they were Hamas soldiers, they committed war crimes because the hostages were carrying a white flag and had therefore surrendered. They were obviously unarmed, so they had also laid down arms. It is a war crime to kill surrendered soldiers, see B.vi. Note that this crime doesn’t even require intent.
“Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion”
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml
You can’t have it both ways. No matter what the IDF thought the escaped hostages’ status was, they committed war crimes in shooting them. And Israel investigated and found “nothing to see here.” So you’ll pardon my skepticism that anything will come of Israel holding its own soldiers accountable.
@40 You spend so many words defending war crimes. Look, it’s pretty straightforward.
It is a war crime to intentionally kill a civilian.
It is a war crime to kill a soldier who has surrendered. Intent is not a required element of the crime (unlike killing civilians).
If the IDF soldiers thought that the escaped hostages were civilians, it was a war crime.
If the IDF soldiers thought that the escaped hostages were Hamas militants (more likely), it was a war crime. The hostages were waving a white flag, were unarmed, and were not wearing shirts (illustrating that they were not wearing suicide vests). That is a textbook definition of having surrendered and laid down arms.
Sure, there was fighting nearby. But it is incumbent on a soldier to know who they are shooting. You know, so they don’t commit war crimes.
Whether there were orders or not is immaterial. The action of pulling a trigger was a war crime. The fact that nobody was punished in any way, not even a meaningless hand slap to the personnel file speaks volumes about the IDF’s willingness to tolerate war crimes.
@37: Uh, no, raindrop dear. By triggered I think you mean ASaxman5537.
Try harder, Avis.
@43 — your Perfection
through Projection’s
been Reached and
Qualifies you for
Introspection*
tho upon re-
Flection I’ll
hold but
Scant
hope
@38
uncomfortably
Close to the
Line there
pard
*professional
Intervention!
we’ll All
chip In.