Supreme Court to hear abortion pill case: The court will decide on the availability of mifepristone, a drug the FDA approved 20 years ago and is used in half of all US pregnancy terminations. The Biden administration asked the court to hear the case after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided to restrict the drug. The Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most powerful anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ advocacy groups in the US, is behind the challenge.
UN General Assembly calls for a ceasefire in Gaza: Fewer and fewer countries are on the US and Israel’s side in this conflict—153 representatives in the 193-country body voted for a ceasefire. Arab countries called for a vote after the US vetoed a cease-fire resolution in the UN Security Council. Even Biden is changing his tune. Before the vote, he said Israel was losing support over its “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinians that have killed 18,000 people, according to the latest numbers.
The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza, but as a non-binding resolution the vote is mainly symbolic ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/m98o78CZHv
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 13, 2023
About those numbers: Even though public officials, including our own President, have speculated, there is no reason the cataclysmic number of adults and children killed in Gaza coming from Palestinian sources is untrue, according to a new paper published in the Lancet (the most prestigious medical journal in the world).
Researchers found the Gaza Ministry of Health has a proven track record of publishing accurate mortality numbers in past conflicts that differ only slightly from the UN’s numbers. The researchers also analyzed data from October 7 to November 10 and found no evidence of inflated rates. “Public scepticism [sic, British] of the current reports by the Gaza MoH might undermine the efforts to reduce civilian harm and provide life-saving assistance,” researchers wrote.
Sound Transit CEO out: Next month, after just 16 months on the job, Julie Timm will head back to the East Coast to “take care of family matters,” according to the Seattle Times. Her contract, which paid her $375,000 this year, was supposed to expire in 2025. Sound Transit will soon begin its second nationwide search for a CEO in two years.
Carbon monoxide leak at Evergreen State College? One Evergreen State College student is dead, and two are in hospital with symptoms of poisoning from the deadly gas. Monday night, an Evergreen State College police officer broke down the door of the student housing unit where the victim lived and began performing CPR. He, too, was hospitalized but released yesterday morning, reports KING 5. The Washington State Patrol is investigating.
The posting on a student at The Evergreen State College, where one student died and two others were taken to the hospital. An officer who broke down the door also had to be treated for suspected carbon monoxide poisoning. Updates on KOMO-TV at 4 PM. pic.twitter.com/FMtMETKkId
— Joel Moreno (@JoelMorenoKOMO) December 12, 2023
Good news for people who like bad news (about Tesla): The company will recall nearly all its 2 million cars on US roads after a two-year investigation found the autopilot feature was involved in 1,000 crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the system gives drivers a false sense of security. A software update will warn drivers when they aren’t paying attention and don’t have their hands on the wheel. (The autopilot is kind of the justification for the high price, unless you really like the idea of dying in a battery explosion).
Don’t sign those ballot initiatives, people: As Hannah reported yesterday, Let’s Go Washington ballot initiatives, bankrolled by billionaire Republican megadonor Brian Heywood, has collected 2.4 million signatures as of December 8. That’s just 520,000 shy of a goal Democrats think can be hit before the Sunday deadline. Paid signature gatherers, who cost Heywood $5 million, have apparently been disseminating misleading information, so Dems are asking anyone who sees one to call their new hotline. Read more about it here.
For the love of social services, do not sign any initiative this month. They are all bad, no matter what the $5 million signagure gatherers try to tell you https://t.co/oezsdEUCfW
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) December 12, 2023
More self-promotion: Ashley’s latest Bad Apples column is a doozy. Four cops bullied a 13-year-old kid, the cops caught one of their own in an underage sex sting, and a couple wild pursuits in violation of department policy. The details here.
Zulily sues Amazon: Online retailer Zulily is going out of business and blamed Amazon in a last-dying-breath anti-trust lawsuit. The suit is the first to use information from the FTC’s suit against the company’s allegedly anti-competitive business strategy. Zulily, which targeted families with young kids, bragged about beating Amazon’s prices. According to its lawsuit, Amazon bullied companies to raise their Zulily prices to match theirs.
An interesting read: The Washington Post published a story on how Discord, the chat platform for gamers, became a popular spot for extremists—like the right-wingers who used Discord to plan the Charlotteville Unite the Right Rally in 2017, and a National Air Guardsman shared classified documents for more than a year on the platform. Read more here.
Home Alone, in Tacoma: Two reporters at the Tacoma News Tribune, playing off a TikTok trend, calculated how much Kevin McAllister would have spent on his 10-item grocery trip in the film if he’d been living in Tacoma in 2023. In 1990, he paid $19.83. The reporters compared prices at Fred Meyer, Safeway, Target, and Walmart and it ended up being nearly triple the price.
E3, first dormant, is dead: The Electronics Entertainment Expo was canceled indefinitely after more than 20 years. As Polygon reported, E3 was once the gaming industry hype fest of the year where the new console, the big game, or the next weird Nintendo peripheral would make its debut. But in 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment pulled out; during the early pandemic, other big game makers like Nintendo and Microsoft realized they could do their own version of E3 presentations online and make big announcements on their own schedule. E3 went digital in 2021, but canceled a virtual conference in 2022. In March 2023, organizers canceled E3 for the second year in a row.
Russia suffered massive casualties in Ukraine: US intelligence found that 315,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since February 2022. Russia had about 360,000 ground troops before the war. NBC reports the Biden administration declassified these numbers to help persuade Congress to give Ukraine additional military aid.
I think the Russian death count is more like 326,000 today.
Which is still abysmal.
And still a failure by Putin, the leader of the GOP
“The Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most powerful anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ advocacy groups in the US, is behind the challenge.”
all’s they Want
is merely Dominion
over our Womenfolk
oh & the End of LGBTQs
neolibs and cons
whose Side are
You on?
@1 Sometime in the last few months, someone confirmed that the ~300K number is casualties, so it includes both dead and wounded. It’s at least theoretically possible that the number has double or triple counts for people who have been wounded more than once and/or wounded and then killed.
Do the Gaza casualty numbers include Hamas combatants? I haven’t seen that quantified.
The folks at The Stranger seem fixated on paid signature gatherers.
The last time there was a push for more gun control legislation that the left said would reduce violent crime paid signature gatherers were everywhere. When did they fall out of favor?
The IDF has claimed to have killed 5,000 Hamas militants and 10,000 civilians (2 civilians for every Hamas militant), for a total of around 15,000 deaths. I hadn’t looked until now, but that’s startlingly similar to the claimed ~17K deaths in Gaza reported by the Gaza health ministry. So that kind of puts a stake in the heart of the “Hamas is inflating the figures” argument.
By the way, that ratio of civilians to militants is also roughly similar to the Siege of Aleppo. No doubt, we’ll have the apologists for the IDF here saying that Assad was really trying hard to limit civilian casualties as his forces rolled barrel bombs off of helicopters into residential areas [eyeroll].
@7: Bingo.
which’s
why the
stupid UN
GAVE THEM
some of That
Land in the 1st place.
@8: The claim of inflation was always somewhat a distractive straw man. The real issue is that Gaza suffers from both the fog of war, and relative isolation; both hinder independent confirmation of casualty figures, so nobody really knows, and figures from either the Gaza Health Ministry or the IDF are immediately suspect. That the figures provided by those two sources seem to agree suggests they may be valid, but again, who knows?
“No doubt, we’ll have the apologists for the IDF here saying that Assad was really trying hard to limit civilian casualties as his forces rolled barrel bombs off of helicopters into residential areas [eyeroll].”
Hamas takes active measures to increase the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, so (unless the defenders at the Siege of Aleppo were somehow doing the same) if the ratio of intended targets (terrorists) killed to unintended targets (civilians) killed is similar in both cases, it means the IDF is successfully countering some of Hamas’ attempts to hide behind human shields.
Now, while the IDF keeps Hamas busy in Gaza, the rest of the world should try to choke Hamas’ money supply. If only our protesters would demand their governments enforce laws against the flow of money to Hamas, we might really get somewhere.
“The real issue is that Gaza suffers from both the fog of war, and relative isolation; both hinder independent confirmation of casualty figures… “
speaking of Hindering
Confirmation of Israeli
Atrocities how ‘Bout all
them Journalists Israel’s
Assassinated? 60 or 70?
“the fog of war”
good one
wormtongue.
now if only
BiBi’d End the
Terrorism* he’s
Raining down on
Gazans he might offer
Hope to Jews worldwide
who’re facing an increasingly
illegitimate & belligerent Planet
overly-fed up with
BiBi’s shenanigans & directing
their Ire in the Wrongest of directions.
*’There
is no justifi-
cation for terrorism. Ever.’
tensorna on December 8, 2023 at 8:44 AM
in a rarest of
moments in
of Lucidity
huh.
cap’n ahab
and olde tentsey
appear to be thick as thives
like Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy
inseparable
are you training
your AI tentsey?
@15
‘Jews worldwide
who’re facing an increasingly
& illegitimately belligerent Planet
overly-fed up with BiBi’s
shenanigans and Misdirecting
their Ire in the Wrongest of directions.’
apologies.
Regarding Ukraine, this is crass, but should resonate with Republicans: The U.S. has dramatically depleted its #2 global adversary for pennies on the dollar with no loss of American soldiers. Compared to other foreign interventions in modern history, the cost to achieve such a strategic military objective has never been so cheap, in terms of taxpayer dollars.
Unless the UN is prepared to go into Gaza themselves and set up a peacekeeping force to ensure Hamas does not start terrorizing their own people while planning their next attack against Isreal their resolutions are pointless. As @14 noted the only thing a ceasefire does currently is kick the can down the road until the next time and it doesn’t address the fact that Hamas still has hostages in their captivity.
I hope everyone of this initiatives make the ballot. Since we don’t have a legitimate opposition party in WA state anymore the initiative process is the only thing left to push back against the legislature when they do things that are shady (capital gains tax) or that voters have said they don’t want (WA Cares).
@18: Payback for LBJ’s dirty little war in Southeast Asia. Americans tried to close the Ho Chi Minh trail via aerial bombardment. Soviet support was limited to donating ground vehicles for materiel transport along the trail. Thus, we Americans traded our own jet aircraft (and sometimes pilots) for Russian trucks and local drivers. Pennies on the dollar would have been a better deal for us.
@14 Well, for starters the IDF could stop bombing areas that they’ve declared “safe” for civilians to evacuate to. Sadly, that seems a bridge too far. You blame Hamas for every civilian casualty, so apparently the IDF gets a free pass.
I’m not asking for no civilian casualties. I’m asking for reasonable precautions to reduce civilian casualties. Does that mean that maybe they forgo the chance to kill the #3 man in Hamas? Probably. But given the number of times the US killed the #3 man in Al-Qaeda with no change in combat on the ground, maybe that’s not that big a deal.
Don’t you love how groups who want to restrict or forbid something so frequently put “Freedom” or “Liberty” in their names?
Anyone remember the UN resolution that equated Zionism with racism? It passed with flying colors, too.
Israel has never been allowed to respond appropriately to aggression. When it does, it risks the wrath of many countries around the world. It’s all varying shades of the color dirty-jews-got-what-they-deserved.
Curious if The Stranger is going to comment on the apparent implosion of Hugo House. An article appeared in the Seattle Times last Friday, but no mention in TS that I’ve seen. From the outside, it looks like the “equity” crowd initiated a palace coup, threw out the competent (but white) executive director, and subsequently ran the place into the ground. Rich wrote a long piece on the coup but I’m not seeing anything on the aftermath. Isn’t reporting on a literary organization like this right in The Stranger’s wheelhouse?
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/future-of-seattles-hugo-house-up-in-the-air/
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/02/16/55296692/writers-of-color-reassert-call-for-hugo-house-directors-resignation-ahead-of-key-board-meeting
While honoring a belated celebrity birthday of actress Rita Moreno (who turned 92 on Monday) I just saw West Side Story (1961) again last night on DVD. Heart-wrenching, but worthy and deserving of its 10 Oscars, including the 1962 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Moreno, in her role of Anita. I love her dancing with George Chikiris, who also won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Bernardo.
Oh, the music by Leonard Bernstein, direction by Robert Wise and choreography by Jerome Robbins!
Much like what is currently happening in Gaza or Ukraine, however, war clearly is hell, no matter who or where you are and what you’re doing.
Here’s an idea: let’s keep Mifepristone, abortions, and body autonomy safe and legal.
I’m for outlawing neofascist MAGAt-pro Trumpism INSTEAD.
Male RWNJs demanding insanely forced litters of children can be reassigned trans female and impregnated (how about that “immaculate conception”?). I’d LOVE to see a cruelly misogynist white male going through a nine month pregnancy, complete with labor contractions, childbirth, delivery, and breastfeeding.
I’ll get the red wine, dark chocolate, and popcorn.
@22: Hamas initiated this war, and now hides behind civilians. Therefore, Hamas bears primary responsibility for it, and for all of the deaths (not just civilians, not just in Gaza) in it. That’s not really hard to understand. If anyone in the IDF intentionally targets civilians, that is a war crime and should be investigated, tried, and punished as such.
“I’m asking for reasonable precautions to reduce civilian casualties.”
Examples of which would be what, exactly?
@27 “Examples of which would be what, exactly?”
Go look @22 again. Just a mere paragraph above that is this request:
“Well, for starters the IDF could stop bombing areas that they’ve declared “safe” for civilians to evacuate to. Sadly, that seems a bridge too far. “
I know that asking you to read BOTH paragraphs is too much. I mean, how could you possibly do that before jumping to blaming Hamas for Every. Single. Civilian. Death.
Your repeated statements that the IDF is justified in bombing any member of Hamas at any time in any place is the same as saying that it’s OK for an adversary of ours to bomb a general walking across the UW Medicine circle drive. Because the general is a legitimate military target. If they didn’t want the front of the hospital blown up, the general shouldn’t have walked there. And I am also 100% sure that if that hospital parking lot bombing happened, you’d be at the front of the line screaming about war crimes and the need for retribution.
retribution
get-outta-Jail-free
cards bulldozing a population
into the Seas no toilets no water
no Hospitals no Lights no innernet
how on Earth
do Gazans
get those
Alerts?*
smoke
signals?
the Victims’ve become
the Perpetraitors. the
Planet’s getting
Pissed blaming
Jews for BiBi’s
Transgres-
sions
*’go over There!
whilst we Bomb your ass
into Heaven. yes – you’re Welcome!’
relax
anti-Semites
it’s just Justice
our way
now Pardon
Us while we blame
Hamas.
@29: The side that initiates hostilities bears primary responsibility for the war, and for all the death, suffering, and misery therein and there from. If you don’t want to understand that, then you won’t.
Hamas hides behind civilians in Gaza. When the civilians flee, Hamas follows them, so where was safe for civilians today is no longer safe for them tomorrow. If you don’t want to understand that, then you won’t.
We’re not talking about someone taking a walk in a park; we’re talking about weapons and war rooms in the basements of civilian buildings. If you don’t want to understand that, then you won’t.
We’re not talking about an isolated person, room, or weapon which just happened to end up in someone’s yard after a firefight. We’re talking about logistics tunnels dug under entire neighborhoods, for quick, covert movement of fighters and weapons during planned attacks. If you don’t want to understand that, then you won’t.
Get back to the rest of us when you’re willing to understand what Hamas does.
@24 look for versions of this same story to play on repeat for the next several years (but don’t look for reporting on it in the Stranger.)
“The side that initiates hostilities bears primary responsibility
for the war, and for all the death, suffering,
and misery therein and there from.”
therefore
Israel is Free
to respond in Any
way howsoever IT deems Fit.
no
I don’t and I
Won’t ‘understand’ that.
nor will the Planet.
understand the
Repurcussions
because they
WILL Be
Severe.
you and BiBi’re
Destroying
Israel
whilst
Re-Electing
el trumpfster:
understand
That.
how did Hitler
succeed in Leveling
Germany? total war on
his Enemies. good luck, Bibi.
nyt:
War
Against
Hamas Will
Last ‘Months,’
Israel’s Defense Minister Says
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments
suggested that Israel was not likely
to be swayed by concerns over
the war’s rising death toll.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/14/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
total war
brought to us by
war mongers and
war profiteering. ‘Relax!’
they tell us: war’s just Natural.
Hamas will NEVER
‘back down’ leaving
Israel “No Choice!” but
to bomb Gaza to the last
Gazan. so, sure, who Wouldn’t
support Genocide. it’s just Natural.
why don’t the rest
of us see it that
way too?
@48: Your calling it genocide won’t make it so. Hamas, meanwhile, remains committed to an ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine. Your refusal to admit this won’t make it any less true. Your deliberate equation of the side attempting genocide with the side trying to defend itself from attempted genocide won’t make them equal, either. It just reveals your abject moral failure.
Your girlfriend Johnstone has already thrown up her hands and admitted y’all are absolutely impotent in the face of Hamas’ determined terrorism, and you’ve swallowed and regurgitated her impotent defeatism as your own, so I don’t see what further statements of your impotent surrender to terrorism gets you here. Just because you refuse to do anything to stop Hamas does not mean nothing can be done; it just means persons who are better than you and Johnstone will have to work just a little bit harder to stop Hamas, as you’ve refused to help put an end to terrorism.
“There
is no justifi-
cation for terrorism. Ever.”
tensorna on December 8, 2023 at 8:44 AM
end Israeli
terrorism
on Gaza
NOW.
stop the
bunker-busters
end the war crimes.
let the Haig
sort it out
just End the
Slaughter.
*the International Criminal Court
in The Hague, Netherlands
@50: No, there isn’t ever any justification for terrorism, which is why even most commenters here would rather have the IDF do whatever damage it can to Hamas now. Again, your calling Israel’s actions “terrorism,” doesn’t make it terrorism, so my quote does not apply.
@16: Add your nym to the list of commenters here who’ve accused me of sock-puppetry. I guess since you can’t be convinced by the facts and arguments I use, you can’t imagine anyone would agree with those same facts and arguments either, so it simply must be All. One. Guy. Whatever.
The Evergreen CO poisoning is beyond terrible. We had a CO leak into our apartment and the landlord wound up paying a lot. Hope the survivors get covered both for their rescue and for trauma from the near-death experience. So sad for the family of the deceased.
so if
HAMAS
don’t Give
a Fuck about
WAR CRIMES than
Israel doesn’t hafta Either?
genocide
ethnic cleansing
call it what you Will
the World’s not seeing
it yours — nor BiBi’s Way.
it’s a fucking Choice:
you don’t hafta
Israel is not
Forced to
kill 5 or
ten or
20 or
Fifty
Gazans
for every
dead or captured
Israeli on October 7th
shit like this
Always Backfires
the Reckoning may be
Massive. Jews targeted, Planetwide
however Unjustly.
the Price
Nutnyahoo
& you are apparently
willing to pay. how much
will finally be too much
can a Final Solution
be close at hand?
may be
we’ll get
Lucky.
and
Maybe
we won’t
yet another
stupid correction:
it’s a fucking Choice:
you don’t hafta
Israel is not
Forced to
kill 5 or
ten or
20 or
Fifty
Gazans
for every
HAMAS killed.
oh
and
we’re
Required
to Believe Israel’s
numbers. is that correct?
@54: Calling something “war crimes” doesn’t make it so, either. You need proof, and civilian deaths in a war zone, by themselves, are not that. (You also need to prove the retribution scenario you won’t stop yelling about, and you’ve got nothing there, either.)
You really, really need to understand that, in war as in peacetime, accusations require proof beyond reasonable doubt. You also really, really need to understand you’ve provided no proof of anything.
“so if
HAMAS
don’t Give
a Fuck about
WAR CRIMES than
Israel doesn’t hafta Either?”
That’s hilarious. You and your girlfriend’s position is that because Hamas “don’t Give a Fuck” about civilians in Israel or Gaza, Israel must stop fighting Hamas in Gaza. Care to explain what sense that makes?
@56:
“oh
and
we’re
Required
to Believe Israel’s
numbers. is that correct?”
To the contrary, I have written, in this very thread, that the IDF’s numbers are suspect; proof I leave as an exercise to the reader. In your case, as I have just now made a true statement, I boldly predict you won’t be able to validate it. Go ahead; show that I’m wrong in that assertion. Produce the quote from me, from this thread, wherein I say the IDF’s numbers are suspect. (You CAN quote me, can’t you?)
@36 raindrop: Thanks for sharing! Both Rita Moreno’s and George Chikiris’s acceptance speeches at the 1962 Oscars, however brief, are indeed classics.
@39 Garb Garblar: I’m not for WWIII. Heaven help us–if it happens we’re all toast and the Earth would become an uninhabitably burnt out shell.
War is hell, no matter who or where you are and what you’re doing.
Grave consequences are inevitable on either side.
Too any of the wrong people are in power, hellbent on turning the world into a dystopian nightmare reminiscent of the darkest of Twilight Zone (1959-1964) sci-fi episodes.
@53 HM3: That really is sad. Agreed: CO poisoning is beyond terrible. I’m sorry to hear you had a CO leak in your apartment! I hope everything turned out okay. My condolences, too, to the surviving friends and family members of the deceased.
@57
you think
your feeble “but
it’s Barely Genocide!”
defense’s gonna play well in
the World Court of Public Opinion?
pretending
to uphold Israel’s
god-given “right” to
conduct it’s War Crimes
hung up on
Semantics
whilst 10s
of thou-
sands
Die.
You’re
Electing
donald trumpf
Wormtongue. but
you already Knew that.
@59: So, have you found the comment, up-thread, where I’d already answered the question you asked @56?
I mean you CAN quote me, can’t you?
Go ahead, we’ll wait…
@60
TLDR
Sorry.
could you
repeat that?
@61 kristofarian: I keep waiting for teenieweenie to get back to his 7th Grade remedial Math homework.
There must be lead in his tap water supply that has now infected his small brain.
@60: You do realize you’ll never catch your tail no matter how long you keep on spinning in neutral, don’t you? Stop before you hurt yourself.