No charges for cops who killed Manuel Ellis: Acquitted. The Tacoma three cops who physically restrained Ellis in March 2020 to the point where he couldn’t breathe and then died were acquitted on all second-degree murder and so too were the two cops charged with manslaughter. During a 10-week trial, the cops argued they weren’t responsible for Ellis’s death because they used their aggressive force after he “fought them… with extraordinary strength” and he died from a “high level of methamphetamine combined with his preexisting heart condition.” The jury deliberated for three days before delivering the not-guilty verdict. As the trial wrapped up, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff warned the officers, “I would just be careful. A lot of emotions are running high right now.”
To be expected: According to the Seattle Times, “Only six deaths at the hands of law enforcement have resulted in charges against police officers in Washington state over the past century. The last time three police officers were charged in Washington for a death was 85 years ago.” So, expecting justice was a fool’s errand. Leslie Cushman, the founder of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, said, “I believe that if we had a verdict that held these officers accountable, we may have had some momentum that would have changed police culture. We are left without accountability for what many of us think was brutal, unnecessary, violent behavior. We’re appalled at the verdict.”
Protesters take to Tacoma streets: Over 100 protesters gathered in Tacoma after the verdict. They marched through the streets. Then, they gathered at the mural of Ellis in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood, lighting tea candles, making speeches asking for change. Stranger reporter Ashely Nerbovig was also there—we’ll have a full report on Slog later this morning.
In Tacoma, where family of Manuel Ellis and supporters — including Jamika Scott, Tacoma Councilmember-elect — have shut down 11th and MLK, blocking the streetcar. The Tacoma Police officers charged with Ellis’ death were just acquitted by a jury pic.twitter.com/qHB7iDVgAt
— Scott Greenstone (@evergreenstone) December 22, 2023
New transitional housing village opens in Interbay: The Low Income Housing Institute opened a 35,000-square-foot lot with tiny homes and space for RV campers to park. Altogether, the space, known as Salmon Bay Village, will shelter 40 to 50 people. The goal of the village is to help transition people living in RVs into permanent housing. Once there, RV dwellers can keep living in their RV or take up residence in the nine tiny houses available. They’ll receive access to “obtaining IDs, applying for income support, and help with housing navigation, employment, healthcare, and other supportive services.” The lot, however, won’t be Salmon Bay Village forever. In 2025, plans for a mixed-used apartment building and 22 pickleball courts on the lot will move forward.
Nevermind baby keeps suing: Spencer Elden, the baby going full frontal on Nirvana’s 1991 album, seems to really want a payday. He sued Nirvana saying he was the victim of “child sexual abuse imagery.” A district court judge dismissed the claim since it wasn’t filed within the 10-year statute of limitations. However, a US Court of Appeals panel of three judges reversed the decision because “‘each republication’ of an image ‘may constitute a new personal injury,’” reports the Seattle Times.
This fuckin’ guy: A new recording just surfaced of then-President Donald Trump pressuring two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in Michigan to not certify the 2020 election results. He told them they’d “look terrible” if they certified the results, that “we’ve got to fight for our country,” and “we can’t let these people take our country away from us.” The two didn’t sign the certification that night, then, the next day, they tried to rescind their votes of certification, according to the Detroit News.
Ganja Joe: President Joe Biden announced people convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia would be eligible for pardons. He also granted clemency to 11 people serving “disproportionately long” sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. These are the latest moves from Biden to rectify racial disparities in the criminal justice system. We’re going to need a lot more executive clemencies to right the ship in that realm, Joe.
Feast on your one extra second of daylight: It’s officially winter. The days are only getting longer from here. The weather will still be gross, though.
Welcome to the first full day of winter. Today Seattle gets 1 more second of daylight versus Thursday. By the end of the month the days will be a little more than 4 minutes longer. Rain and mountain snow today. Dry Saturday. Active weather pattern setting up next week. #wawx pic.twitter.com/EIKs48ANF9
— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) December 22, 2023
ICYMI: An Australian fisherman says he may have found missing Malaysian flight MH370 nine years ago when he pulled up a jet airliner’s wing with his net trawler.
Hyperloop hits the breaks: Hyperloop One, the high-speed transportation firm using magnetic levitation for lickety-split quiet and fast travel, didn’t win a single contract to build a hyperloop. The company is shutting down. It raised $400 million from investors. Looks like reinventing transit doesn’t actually work. Let’s throw $400 million at high-speed rail or a city bus system or something instead of investing in sci-fi pipe dreams.
Stamp Act Pt. II: The prices of stamps are going up! In the new year, a stamp on a letter weighing one ounce or less will cost 68 cents, an increase from 66 cents. This is the fifth stamp cost increase in two years.
Please don’t yell at me in the comments: I know stamp price increases are not the same as the British parliament imposing “a tax on all printed materials for commercial and legal use such as wills and deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards.” I just wanted to use Stamp Act for a fun turn of phrase. And, yes, I did copy the definition of the Stamp Act directly from a History Channel article.
Rite Aid’s racist facial recognition program: The Federal Trade Commission banned Rite Aid from using facial recognition technology in its stores to surveil its clientele after the FTC found Rite Aid’s tech was “falsely and disproportionately [identifying] people of color and women as likely shoplifters.” Rite Aid isn’t alone in using this kind of AI facial recognition tech. Macy’s said it used “some” in stores. Home Depot said it collects “biometric information, including facial recognition.” Who else is stealing, studying, and profiling your face as you shop?
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Nathalie – we would Never yell at you!
Here’s hoping you (and all sloggers) have a happy and safe holiday.
And as far as the stain on our democracy, was a navy blue dress involved? Gay sex has come out of the closet- see how far we have advanced since the Clinton years!
Biden will never be good enough for the idealist Progressive Left, even when he does good-to-great things no other Presnit has even tried.
He’s forgiven BILLIONS in Student Loans, and got rebuffed at the SCOTUS over forgiving more, but that’s not good enough.
Wake up kids; these are the good times.
Yeah-I’ve never bought the “superhuman strength “ line that always seems to come up when the cops choke someone, but I didn’t see everything the jury did. The answer to this is probably a policy that says it’s not a requirement to subdue everyone that the cops think might have done something. Maybe walk away and pick them up when they’ve actually done something more serious than a traffic violation. Too many of these cases seem to escalate out of something that was really not a big deal. And I have to say that I don’t blame people for trying to avoid being arrested given that it seems to be OK to kill you in the process.
Also, having some trouble buying that a fisherman who pulled up a wing that he thought came from a large jetliner, when the entire fucking world was looking for that plane , would not have done more than leaving one message. Seems like it might have appeared more important than that.
Fantastic that the jury was able to examine the evidence impartially and come to a just decision despite ridiculous mob mentality and bias coming from the media and governors office.
Ellis’ own actions obviously led to his death, and while it’s always serious when anyone dies, we can at least take some relief in the fact that a violent meth addict is no longer able to harm anyone, and the officers who kept the public safe from him are able to keep doing their jobs.
@7, At least stop people who drive around w/o license plates since those people who do it are hiding their tracks while they go crimin.
“The goal of the village is to help transition people living in RVs into permanent housing.”
Given the Stranger’s love of non-congregate shelters, I’m looking forward to the Stranger’s profiles of all the persons who will transition successfully through this facility. Going from RVs to tiny houses to paying rent in Seattle should make for inspirational stories!
Is this newest LIHI village low barrier? Didn’t see any mention of that anywhere in the various stories about it.
whilst tS’s Thought Police
Demand we argue over
definitions Tens of
THOUSANDS of
Palestinians’re
Murdered:
“Nothing Will Stop Us”
The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.
The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.
This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.
Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.”
— Ralph Nader; December 22, 2023
more:
https://mailchi.mp/nader/israeli-governments-war-crimes-enabled-defended-by-biden-congress-139414?e=ae71353e32
END
the GENOCIDal
WAR On PALESTINIANS
is that Better?
speaking of
“the Fog of War”:
The Cost of Bearing Witness
There are scores of Palestinians writers and photographers, many of whom have been killed, who are determined to make us see the horror of this genocide. They will vanquish the lies of the killers.
Writing and photographing in wartime are acts of resistance, acts of faith. They affirm the belief that one day – a day the writers, journalists and photographers may never see – the words and images will evoke empathy, understanding, outrage and provide wisdom.
They chronicle not only the facts, although facts are important, but the texture, sacredness and grief of lives and communities lost.
They tell the world what war is like, how those caught in its maw of death endure, how there are those who sacrifice for others and those who do not, what fear and hunger are like, what death is like.
They transmit the cries of children, the wails of grief of the mothers, the daily struggle in the face of savage industrial violence, the triumph of their humanity through dirt, filth, sickness, humiliation and fear.
This is why writers, photographers and journalists are targeted by aggressors in war — including the Israelis — for obliteration. They stand as witnesses to evil, an evil the aggressors want buried and forgotten.
They expose the lies. They condemn, even from the grave, their killers. Israel has killed at least 13 Palestinian poets and writers along with at least 67 journalists and media workers in Gaza, and three in Lebanon since Oct. 7.
by Chris Hedges
more from
the Chris Hedges Report:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-bearing-witness?r=k7ee3
@Whalepooner
your
Genocidal
Support is Ap-
preciated Profusely
by those
Committing it.
WWJD?
@12: We’re not disputing the point that thousands of civilians in Palestine have died as a direct result of Hamas’ using them as human shields. We’re saying that specific words mean specific things, and that collateral deaths of civilians in war zones are not, just by themselves, evidence of genocide. The United States killed German and Japanese civilians at the rate of tens of thousands PER DAY during some days in 1945, but America had no genocidal intent against either Germans or Japanese, as we demonstrated by rebuilding their countries after the war.
How do we prevent Hamas from kidnap, rape, mutilation, and slaughter of civilians in Israel? How do we stop Hamas from using Palestinians as human shields? If you don’t like pushback on your abuse of the word “genocide,” then stop abusing it, and start suggesting solutions to the proximate root cause of civilian deaths In Palestine, which is Hamas.
I wish I had a healthy, safe, and sane solution to offer in regards to the wars in Gaza / Palestine and Ukraine.
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, safe, and sane holiday season well into 2024 and beyond.
May the dystopian nightmare of willful Trumpian misinformation come to an end.
No matter how beneficial Bill Gates Jr., (now the richest citizen of Washington State since Jeff Bezos fled to Miami, Florida, and good riddance) considers ALI ( Artificial Lack of Intelligence to me), I find this technology as disquieting as self-driving cars.
wanna know what I’d do?
well I’d ask prolly
ask the Pope
nyt:
Pope Francis
on Monday focused
his Christmas address on
the violence in Israel and war
in Gaza that had caused an “appalling”
loss of civilian life and brought “sorrow” to Bethlehem,
traditionally seen
as the birthplace of
Jesus, as he called for the release
of Israeli hostages and an end to devastating military attacks.’’
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/25/world/europe/popi-urbi-et-orbi-israel-hamas-gaza.html
that’s what I’d do.
End the Illegal Land Grab
End the Occupation
End the Genocide
End the War
Crimes
and put an END
to BiBi’s Reign
of Terrorism
on Palestin-
ians NOW.
Merry
Christmas
& thnx 4 asking!
@24:
“well I’d ask prolly
ask the Pope”
Indeed, the Papacy has much experience of settling disputes in that region:
“The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions—varying in size, strength and degree of success—occurred between 1096 and 1291. The costly, violent and often ruthless conflicts enhanced the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East.”
(https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/crusades#)
Now back to the original questions, already in progress:
“How do we prevent Hamas from kidnap, rape, mutilation, and slaughter of civilians in Israel? How do we stop Hamas from using Palestinians as human shields?”
Your dead silence on these topics thunders far more loudly than all of your words ever could. (Even the words you used correctly.)
Silent Night
Shameful Night
Merry Christians in the Holy Land!
@27: Or, instead of simply assuming Hamas is a problem to be left to Israel to solve alone, and then complaining loudly about exactly how Israel solves that problem alone, the persons marching in protests could demand the following:
End to state support of Hamas’ terrorism (Qatar, Iran);
International cooperation to stop flow of money to Hamas by enforcing laws against financing of terrorists;
Publicly identifying everyone involved in Hamas’ theft of international humanitarian aid to Palestine, and tracing the flow of loot through international channels. Prosecutions of everyone involved in these thefts and transfers.
Condemnation of Hamas for use of human shields, terrorism, theft, rape, mutilation, murder, kidnapping, etc.
But it’s so much easier just to virtue-signal, abuse the word genocide, and then attack anyone who questions the value of such protests, isn’t it?
@27
it’s Blatant
Land Theft on
an Epic — or is it
on a Biblical — Scale.
or is it merely
Mass Murder carried
out by a so-called “leader”
bound for the Gulag the Moment
Isreal can draw a deep breath. and yes
Wormy’s calling for a continuation of Genocide
is to be
expected
what with
his stellar record
and blatant ‘it’s all about
The Cruelty.”
oh wait
he was
just joking
ha ha
ha.
ironically, for Christmas
& for the Birthplace
of Jesus there is
no passion for
Compassion
in many of
tS’s com-
mentar-
iat.
oh
the
Irony.
@34: Toby asked you why the health, safety, and lives of Palestinians had not mattered in the slightest for all the many years when Hamas was their primary threat, but then magically became the most important topic in the whole wide world at the exact moment Israel became involved.
No, you won’t answer that, and you’re not alone in refusing to answer that; none of the other persons protesting actions by Israel — and only by Israel — will answer it either. That’s why the rest of us do not now take your stated concerns seriously.
If ever I observe you, or an other persons who now protest Israel’s actions, start making demands of the type I described @30, then I might consider taking seriously your protests against Israel. Until then, you’re de facto taking Hamas’ side in the conflict, and that will receive nothing but condemnation from me.
@43: For any and every problem with the Seattle Police Department, the Stranger advocates “defund” as a viable solution, despite voters in Seattle repeatedly rejecting it.
For the problems of theft, kidnapping, rape, mutilation, and murder intentionally perpetrated against civilians by Hamas, the Stranger never, ever advocates “defund” as a viable solution, even though a successful defunding of Hamas would end deaths of civilians in Gaza.