The Campaign Starts After Labour Day

So we are now into official campaign season and we are now on the steep portion of this curve. Harris has reversed Biden's deficit into a lead and we still have Trump's sentencing in a coupe weeks. Fun story about that - Trump's legal team argued that it was too close to the election for the sentencing and it should be postponed until after November. The prosecutor's office did not oppose this motion. Similar to how they prviously did not oppose delaying it from July to September. 

Well, it turns out that the crack legal team that has agreed to get stiffed by Trump on their legal bills is about as good as you would expect. 

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance described how the former president's lawyer Todd Blanche "embarrassingly" did not follow the correct protocols while submitting their latest legal argument, and said that it had been "incorrectly filed."

On August 29, Trump's legal team sought to move the hush money sentencing, currently scheduled for September 18, out of a New York state court and into a federal court. The move was seen as another delay tactic by the former president to stave off his sentencing until after November's election against Kamala Harris, or have the case dismissed altogether. 

The request was denied the next day by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. The court's clerk wrote that it had been filed under the "wrong event type" and did not include an "order granting permission to file the pleading" or an order granting "leave" by the state court.

So, sentencing in two weeks.

The other point I want to make about the day after Labour Day is that now is when I am attributing the ongoing support for genocide to Harris instead of Biden. US policy decisions are her responsibility now, even if Biden is still POTUS. If she cannot exert control and influence after Labour Day despite being the candidate in November - that is also a disqualifying indictment of her ability to run the nation.

Now the main issue is that we do not know if her actual position on Israel-Palestine is measurably different than Biden's. There is a very strong likelihood that she is also pro-genocide. This is a realization that has taken me a while to get to. My initial reaction is to assume that most people are not in favour of genocide, because I am still a naive idiot in many ways. But this is simply not true - there are just way too many people who are in favour of eradicating "undesirables" and basic humanity just does not have any role in their thinking on those issues.

We will see - they've backed off on hiding behind "working tirelessly for a ceasefire". A phrase that was all over the place right up until the convention and then vanished into the ether. It's only been a couple weeks so far - maybe it's just summer vacation that's quieted down how much "tirelessly working" they claim to be doing.

That's step one. Harris and the ghouls at the State Department need to stop working tirelessly for a ceasefire. Many commenters have noted that "working tirelessly for a ceasefire" is not a real thing and is just a stall tactic giving Israel more time to commit genocide. It is that - but also it's a massive self-own. It's an admission of pure useless impotence and a commitment to wallow in that impotence while pretending that things might somehow change.

In case you're wondering, Biden has been "tirelessly working for a ceasefire deal" since at least February 8. Since before the World Central Kitchen staff were hunted by an IDF drone over the span of a mile and a half before getting executed. And all they have to show for it so far is countless thousands dead, the Rafah incursion, fucking polio outbreaks, and now full-on military offensives in the West Bank. It's like this working towards a ceasefire deal is actually counter-productive if you actually want a ceasefire.

Chewbacca’s Right to Defend Himself

 So there’s this thing in international law that a people under occupation may, in some circumstances, resort to violence. The right to self-determination is one of thise foundational ones and it’s seen as super important. This is sometimes raised in response to the statement that “Israel has a right to defend itself” - which I will note has morphed under the Biden regime to “Israel has the absolute right to defend itself.” Which is pretty fucking sick and disgusting given the context, but unsurprising for the racist fucking old man asshole. 

Anyways, I bring this up to dismiss it. I’m not an international law guy - the question of whether Israel actually has a right to defend itself from people whose land it is occupying - people whom it is subjecting to blockade, siege, and apartheid - I’m not getting into. Because it is not relevant. 

What Israel is doing in Gaza is not self-defense. It is beyond ludicrous to frame it as such. Israel is the aggressor here. Even if you accept the bullshit idea that all of history begins on October 7th and the generations of racist bullshit leading up to it does not count, Israel is still the aggressor. That anyone sees it differently is just their racism showing. It’s like - cops beating the shit out of handcuffed prisoners while shouting “Stop Resostin!” Are obviously the aggressors even if the prisoner kicked a cop beforehand. But that’s not even what’s happening here. Here, the cops are visiting the prisoner’s home and then beating shit out of his family and neighbours. That’s the analogy we have here. 

What is Israel defending itself from? Another October 7th? It took Hamas over a year to plan that attack and the damage done only reached the levels it did because the IDF and the Israeli intelligence community are fucking useless pieces of garbage. Hell, some of the civilians killed that day were killed by the IDF! And all told - 1,139 killed and 251 hostages. A surprise attack that will not work again (until the Israeli security community gets overtaken by another round of hubris) and would take years to rebuild to. OTOH, Israel’s genocide has strengthened Hamas’ influence - perhaps they could recruit a larger force next time. But even assuming that’s true - what can they really do? Hypothetically, some future attack might kill a couple thousand?

There are over twenty times that many death certificates issued in Gaza already. The actual death toll is multiple times higher than this. “We need to kill 20 to 100 people to protect one of our own” is not self-defense. It’s preposterous. 

As I said at the beginning - the question of Israel’s “right to self-defense” being in a gray zone under international law is irrelevant. The underlying sentiment - that Israel has a right, and actually a duty, to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks - that is something I agree with. Israel is obligated to provide security to its people. BUT this is the Chewbacca Defense. It’s not relevant. Israel is not defending itself - very clearly and obviously. It really is not and claims to the contrary shoukd be acknowledged as justifications for genocide. 

Genocide

Here’s the Sde Teiman post. The short version is just the title. A nation engaged in genocide is of course going to brutally torture and abuse prisoners. This is unsurprising. But also unsurprising and often unsaid  is that there will be swaths of the public that support the genocide so much that they will attack and then occupy military bases to defend those accused of rape and torture. Because that is the nature of genocide. 

Genocide is not easy. It takes a lot of effort. Especially because it is do abhorrent to civilized society. It involves the mass slaughter of civilians, something possible only through dehumanizing the group being exterminated. Genocide involves atrocious acts because at its core, it is an atrocious endeavour. The sanitized air strike version even becomes difficult to maintain without dehumanization because it is ongoing. When you fly over so much rubble and wreckage on your way to add to it - on a daily basis - you have to register that those husks of buildings used to be inhabited. And that you can only continue if you do not consider those inhabitants as actual human beings. 

It’s possibly worse now than it has been. Before social media, it was easier to hide the atrocities. Before everybody had the ability to record video evidence, it was easier to deny what actually happens. But in the case of Israel and Palestine, this is not an issue. There is precious little effort to hide things. IDF soldiers have published mountains of evidence of genocidal acts - something that continues to this day with no sign of disapproval from above. And that too may be intentional. Dehumanization is a hard thing to maintain. As much as our lizard brains have tribalism and fear of the other hardwired in - so too do we have at least some level of basic empathy for others. Maintaining a genocidal regime means pushing what I have heard being called “genocide fever”.

Society is made of many individuals, and the opinions of those individuals spans wide ranges. The most extreme members believe some crazy ass shit and they would do horrific things if they knew they could get away with it. And so - we end up with protest crowds lead by elected cabinet ministers marching on and then taking over military bases - all in the name of defending the right to torture detainees by sodomizing them with object violently enough to break ribs. 

There have been statements that Sde Teiman is Israel’s Abu Ghraib. It’s not. It is much much worse. 60 detainees have been killed at Sde Truman over 10 months. 63 detainees were killed at Abu Ghraib over the span of four years - and 36 of those were due to mortar attacks from Iraqi insurgents, i.e. not tortured to death. But the horrific atrocities aren’t why Sde Teiman is worse - it’s the reaction to it. Even in the US bloodlust for Arab punishment, Abu Ghraib was too much. The US government and US society as a whole recognized that this was an awful stain on their reputation. They knew they were in the wrong. Now sure, some assholes did not acknowledge this - many commentators argued that this was justified. But that was the fringe view. It was a scandal because it was recognized as bad. 

That’s not what Sde Teiman is in Israel. Again, a protest against the arrest of soldiers who sexually assaulted a prisoner with a metal rod in a violent action that not only tore his rectum, but broke his ribs. With enough support that they overran a military base. Actually they occupied two separate military bases that day. It’s not something that is generally agreed upon to be bad. That’s genocidal fever. This is what genocide means - it’s a crime of motive, where there is an intent to exterminate a culture and society. Something only possible with widespread dehumanization of the victims. 

This was a hard post to write. It’s much easier to criticize the Israeli government or the Israeli state, but it is definitely problematic to criticize Israeli society. Antisemitism is a very real problem - extremely widespread and extremely dangerous. And criticizing the culture of a Jewish ethnostate definitely plays footsies with antisemitism. But this cannot be an immunity card. What if Israel society does start doing extremely bad things? Do we dare not criticize? And is this part of how we got into this mess we are in now?

To be clear - there is still a huge distinction between criticizing Jews and Judaism versus criticizing Israel, even Israeli culture and society. There are Israeli Jews protesting the genocide marching in the streets of Tel Avuv almost every day. In a state slicing towards totalitarianism such that posting a Palestinian flag on social media can get you arrested. Abroad, much of the protest movement against the Gaza genocide is lead by Jews, rallying to calls such as “Not in My Name”. To be frank, I can think of very little that is as Jewish as opposing genocide. They carry they weight of being subjected to such a crime.

There are reports of the IDF using Palestinians as human shields. Dressing them in IDF uniforms and marching them with their hands zip-tied into areas where they think there might be an ambush. Those include reports of soldiers refusing to engage in clear war crimes but being forced to by their commanders. That’s genocide - a system that forces people to dehumanize others against their inherent opposition to doing so. And that’s what’s happening in Gaza now. It is genocide.

It’s been clearly and obviously genocide for a long time now. Generations of apartheid and oppression. Of blockade and siege. Still ongoing. There’s a West Bank neighbourhood with chain link fencing as a ceiling - installed to catch garbage and glass bottoms being flung at the market by Israelis in the buildings above. How does a situation like this happen and be allowed to persist without dehumanization?

Those dark impulses are always with us. Part of the human condition is hating on others - it is something we keep in check and under control with civilization. But the degree to which it was not in check in Israel was quite large. The longest remaining occupation in the world - so this too should be unsurprising. And October 7 just provided the cover to act upon it. 

All the hashtag caveats. Not all Israelis. Hell, it’s even not all Zionists. But certainly some Israelis and for fucking sure it’s some Zionists. And we’re doomed to have this genocide continue because we refuse to engage in thinking about what fraction of Israelis and Zionists are genocidal, and whether this fraction is gaining influence in Israel. And the Sde Teiman riots give us a hint as to the answers to those questions. 

The Scale of the Blogging

I have thoughts about the developments around Sde Teiman, but those are still baking and will wait until a future post. In the meantime, some thoughts about how all fucked up and bullshit things are.

I mentioned it yesterday when I pointed out that the rate at which Israel has been slaughtering Palestinian children is the equivalent of at least 4 Majdal Sams bombings every day for closing in on 300 days. And this is just those identified direct kills. If we go by the Lancet's estimate of excess mortality, the number of dead is over 5 times higher. So the number of Druze children slaughtered in that attack is roughly equivalent to the number of kids that Israel has killed per hour since October 7.

To the people wondering why Gaza supporters are "ignoring" the slaughter of Druze - it's the scale. A bombing of a soccer field killing a dozen kids - that's got the same death toll of children as one hour of Israel's assault on Gaza. One hour.

At the start of this thing, I would do the occasional attempt at contextualizing the death toll - but we no longer have reliable numbers. The Gaza Health Ministry has been effectively destroyed, limiting even their ability to just count the dead. No one believes the death toll is under 40K at this point.

Now to be clear - this is not the fastest rate at which people have been genocided. Not even remotely close. The Rwandan genocide was several hundred thousand victims in 15 weeks. The actual number is disputed with estimates as high as a million, but even the lowest estimates coming in at around 500K show a rate of killing that outstrips the Gaza genocide by an order of magnitude.

That said "nowhere close to as bad as Rwanda" is a shitty defense against accusations of genocide. What's happening in Gaza might not be in contention for the most deadly genocide or the most intense genocide of all time - but it's still horrifically bad. It's definitely not the Holocaust, but it is still genocide.

And that's the part that the genocide-defenders want you to miss out on. The sheer scale of killing in Gaza is enormous. It's so bad that they've stopped invoking October 7 as an excuse. 1,139 (maybe as high as 1,300 if you count dead hostages, which you should) versus at least 40,000 - up to possibly 200,000 if not even more - just the sheer absurdity of it is staggering. They just want to leave it at "this is nothing like the Holocaust, and suggesting that it is, that's Holocaust denialism". It's a strong argument - Gaza is nothing like the Holocaust and saying that they are the same is Holocaust denialism. But that does not mean that what's happening in Gaza isn't fucking horrifically bad and in fact, an ongoing genocide.

That's just counting the dead. The survivors right now are not having an easy time of it. Nearly a hundred thousand identified as wounded while famine and epidemic disease stalks the massively overcrowded "safe zones". So many families shattered. And their homes - destroyed. Entire towns and large segments of cities levelled to the ground.

It is really fucking bad! And the efforts to minimize the scale of the suffering have been enormous.

And in the face of this - the fucking Democratic centrist dipshit asswipes are melting down over people that cannot bring themselves to support the Democratic party. "Trump is worse!" they yell. And sure - that's true. Trump is worse. But it is entirely reasonable and one might argue that it is the only moral position to take - to refuse to support genocide. The fault isn't with people who are so disgusted with the Democratic parties enthusiastic embrace of the mass slaughtering of Palestinians. It's with the Democratic Party and their enthusiastic embrace of the mass slaughtering of Palestinians.

And then we get to the other massive dishonesty with respect to scale. "America doesn't dictate Israeli policy! What can the US do?!" As if it was some big lift - some impossible sacrifice to stop supporting genocide. As if it was difficult to not send bombs to the IDF for use against civilians. As if it was hard to justify obeying the fucking law that prohibits funding countries doing what Israel has done for ten months and is currently doing right now.

Kamala Harris is the candidate. Her influence and control are massively increased. And there has been some evidence of change in the policy - the enthusiastic embrace of genocide now appears to be slightly more reluctant. But doing the right thing here is not hard. It's literally following the law to not aid and abet mass murderers. Biden couldn't do it because he's a racist fucking asshole who saw no upside in Palestinians not being bombed to death by the hundreds. Is the same true of Kamala? I appreciate that she's not even POTUS at this point and still has to fight for influence, but she's now fighting from the dominant position in the Administration. 

My guess was that it will take until Labour Day for her to consolidate enough power to have substantial control over policy. Which, to be clear, is fucking bonkers. But the Democrats have shown themselves to be a gerontocracy that values old people more than winning. Joe is a lame duck and letting him call the shots provides zero benefit at this point - but he's still the guy so tough luck for anyone who cares about November. Anyways, I'll be watching to see how things turn out in the coming weeks. I'd be delighted to be wrong and for there to be an actual real shift in US policy towards Israel-Palestine instead of just some meaningless platitudes that are in direct contradiction to actual policy - but I ain;t holding my breath.

Blogging the Druze Massacre

 The moronic Zionists are saying unbelievably stupid shit like “imagine the outrage if it was Israel that had bombed soccer playing kids.” First point - we do not know that Israel was not responsible for this massacre of Druze. The IDF claims it was Hezbollah, but we know that the IDF lies. All the time. They are in fact, quite famous for blatantly lying about anything and everything.

The less oblivious defenders of Israel are aware that the IDF bombed a bunch of kids dead at an UNRWA school mere hours prior to the massacre they want to weaponize. They say stupid shit like “two massacres of children happened that day, and if you are only upset about one of them then something is wrong with you.”

To be clear - they are acting smug and morally superior because they aren’t bothered by either of them. The Druze are similarly subhuman in their eyes. So they are wallowing in their @moral consistency” of supporting racist genocide both inside and outside of Gaza. IOW, they are shit. 

Here’s the explanation as to why the Druze massacre isn’t the only thing we are talking about. At least 15,000 children have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7.  12 soccer playing kids were slaughtered in Mandan Sams. For context, the rate at which Israel murders children is roughly 4 Majdal Sams soccer kid bombings per day, every day, for 297 days so far. And that is a definite underestimate as many of the dead have yet to be counted. 

FFS, Majdal Sams wasn’t even the deadliest bombing of soccer playing kids this month as Israel dropped a US made GBU-39 on Al-Awda school on the 9th. 

It’s wild though - to see media suddenly concerned about air strikes on Arab children. Where the fuck have they been the past ten months?

The Big Man Theory of Everythinh

Here is my attempt to provide some useful thoughts about Biden stepping down. Almost all of the takes on it are way too steeped in the idea that One Man has All The Power. That EVERYTHING depends on The Deciderer. 

The expectation that Joe now being lame duck and Kamala being the heir will result in change. Or the expectation that no change will happen since Joe is still POTUS. These are silly. As if the president Decoderers all The Big Decisions all on his own. Using his Big Brain and Presidential Powers. That’s not how it works. 

Technically, Biden has a Cabinet that handles most of this work. And while there hasn’t been a full cabinet meeting since October, Joe still has them to rely upon. Also, there is Joe’s advisors whom he can consult to know the shit that needs to be known in order to make the right Decider-cisions. Now POTUS can lead these Deciderer-making processes, but he doesn’t have to. People making their way up to this level have to have Joe’s trust and are also quite capable of making choices without being given edicts from The Big Man. It is in fact the selection of these people that is the biggest thing POTUS does.

These folks have not been replaced. It is still the same people providing advice and insight into the decision making process. But there is a difference. Kamala is the new boss  even though Joe still holds the office, the people giving advice know that their positions of power rely on Harris winning in November. And on staying in her good graces  

I don’t think this will affect Gaza decisions much. Those fucking genocidal monsters are true believers. They are incapable of seeing things any other way. Doing so would mean contending with the fact that they have promoted genocide for no reason whatsoever. Changes to Israel-Palestine positioning is going to wait - possibly until after Labor Day - when Harris’ team starts truly calling the shots  

Sadly, I think it will impact labour relations more than anything - and on that, the signs are that Joe is much better than Kamala. We will see with the VP pick. 

These are my guesses anyways. 

Still Biden

I've made my position on Joe quite clear - I think he's a fucking racist monster. Just deeply fucking racist and in that super hard "actually racist" way where the bigot doesn't give a shit whether the subhumans live or die. But despite this, I believe that the efforts to replace him are bullshit.

Has he slowed down? Yes. Is he incompetent and senile? No. Joe clearly still has at least as good a grasp on the world as he always has. Does he forget names sometimes? Yes, he does - but also, he's done this basically his entire public life. Joe Biden misspeaks - a lot. He sometimes has long extended pauses in the middle of a sentence which he will then abandon and start on a different tangent. That is Joe - he's always done this sort of shit. To be clear - he's done that more often the past couple weeks, but he has always done it.

The speculation of whether or not Joe is up to the crazy pace of a presidential campaign and then four more years of governance? Maybe there's a bit more reason to be concerned if Joe can do this - but really, not that much more than any other candidate. The past few weeks Joe has seemed like Joe. Never a great orator, and actually kind of famous for his gaffes and slip ups.

One of the issues here is that people have a stupid idea of what it takes to be president. That it requires one to be functioning at 100% of super-genius brain levels 24 hours a day, every day. This is bullshit. Donald Trump managed four years as president and in that time also managed to completely subsume the entire Republican Party, forcing them to abandon every thing they have ever stood for and replaced it with loyalty to his own self. Despite spending like half his waking hours golfing. So you can be POTUS as a sidegig even if you are a narcissistic moron.

It's not hard to be president. Yes, you get to make all the big decisions - as another shockingly mediocre man who managed to put in two full terms said, the president is "the Deciderer". But making those decisions is not hard - and choosing wrong does not necessarily ever have any consequences. It does not require high levels of intellect or perception or self-awareness. Arguably, these things might hamper an Administration's ability to get shit done.

The arguments that Joe is not up to the job or that there exists someone who has a better shot at beating Trump despite not being able to start their campaign until late July - are purely vibes based. And also are handwaving aside a lot of very strong arguments about how their position is delusional bullshit.

All of that said - I've now been convinced. Joe must go. He cannot be the candidate - and the reason why is entirely on him.

He's had weeks to put this to bed. Weeks to answer the criticisms and reassure the public that his brain hasn't turned to mush. And how has he done on that?

I said earlier that it doesn't matter much how good a job the president does at deciderer-ing the deciderer-choices. And it really doesn't. But it does matter how he sells those decisions. His job is to lead - which involves getting people on side and following. Joe has not been able to do that with members of his own party. It's just been a steady stream of mutineers sticking him in the back, one after another after another. He has lost control and influence among his allies - how the hell is he supposed to get anything done? He can't. He has to go.

It was that first week after the debate that did him in. He knew he had a bad debate. And instead of reassuring the public that it was just an off day - he fucking turtled. He answered zero questions for a full week - just small and brief appearances where he read a couple paragraphs off a teleprompter and then vanished to the undisclosed location. Now I get it - the president is a busy man. He has a lot of shit to do. But he and his team clearly fucked up beyond imagining when they looked at the whisper campaign and considered it low priority. And then this belief that one interview - 20 ish minutes long - with George Stephanopoulos was going to settle everyone down? Come on.

In those early days, the strategy from the Biden camp was described as "this will all blow over". And I was Team Blow Over then. The criticisms of Biden's debate performance were massively overexaggerated. All Joe had to do was make himself available to the press and demonstrate in person that he still had his marbles. And he didn't. For way too long. And then we were all left with the impression that "omg, maybe Joe is senile and that's why they are hiding him away in a shoe box!" For things to blow over, the story has to be replaced by something else. There was no something else to go in there - so it was replaced by confusion as to why Joe hasn't faced the public. The original story did blow over - but a much worse version of the same story took its place. And that was entirely the fault of Biden and his team. He dug his own hole here.