Genocide Genocide Everywhere and not a Drop to Drink

In reverse chronological order:

Israel has accused Human Rights Watch (HRW) of blood libel. What prompted this?

Yesterday, HRW accused Israel of acts of genocide by depriving Gazans of access to water, including things like destroying vital water infrastructure.

July 29, US State Department says they are "seeking additional information" after an IDF soldier posted a video to social media of "blowing up the Tel Sultan water reservoir in honour of Shabbat".

July 27 - the IDF blows up Rafah's water reservoir.

Now for this timeline to be more accurate, please imagine around three or four entries per week in that five month span stating "US sends more bombs and weapons to Israel".

It's okay though Israel might still be investigating itself who needs water when you can be drinking 2,000 pound bombs? And I guess water is Hamas.  There were gunmen hiding with SCUBA tanks in the reservoir, the IDF could hear them as they casually filmed themselves wiring in explosives.

Songs of a Lost World

This post is in case any of you didn't know I'm Gen X.

It's been sixteen years since the last album from The Cure. I heard A Fragile Thing back in October as part of the whole teaser thing and got pretty hyped about the prospect of new album. A Fragile Thing most definitely sounds like The Cure. Well, I'm only just now getting around to listening to it, and feeling regret about what I've been doing instead for the past six weeks.

I mean it's not some transcendent work of genius or whatever - but what it is, is unmistakable and definitely The Cure. And if you like The Cure, you will like this album. And if you love The Cure, you will love this album. And if you have no idea what the Cure is and you like this album, you have a deep ass rabbit hole that will bury you deep inside of Robert Smith. Just like heaven.

I'm mentioning this now because remarkably, after over a decade and a half, The Cure managed to completely nail the news cycle about one month ahead of time.

It Has Been Four Hiroshimas

It's been over a month since I suggested that I had an idea about what was causing the disconnect between perceptions of the economy and the actual economy. I really thought I had it - I had an explanation, which might not account for all of it, I thought might have accounted for a significant chunk. And then on firther reflection, I determined that I was probably wrong. And now I've been struggling to fill in my understanding of what happened and what is happening. So I'm still trying to parse the November disatser - but in the meantime, here are some thoughts about the scale of destruction in Gaza. 

It's fucking nuts. Like, we don't really comprehend how fucking nuts it is. I keep trying to find ways to contextualize it so we can understand how absolutely fucking ludicrous the campaign of genocide has been, but it's just beyond comprehension.

One example I tried earlier was to note that US military aid to Israel over the span of a year was on the order of $18 billion. There's another half dozen billion dollars spent on shit like keeping a carrier group deployed to the region and such.  By comparison, the GDP of the West Bank and the Gaza strip combined hit a peak of 19 billion in 2022. Now Gaza was under siege in 2022, and while economic activity in the West Bank was forcibly depressed by Israel, Gaza definitely had it worse.  Meaning that the value of US military aid to perpetrate this war is multiple times higher than the peak total economic activity of the region being bombed. Even if every man, woman, and child in Gaza decided to dedicate their entire productive output to "destroying Israel" or whatever racist bullshit the genocidal maniacs believe - this would still be far less than what the US has provided to destroy them. Multiple times less.

Here's another way of thinking about it. Between 1965 and 1975, the US dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos - roughly 100 times more than the amount of bombs dropped on Gaza in roughly one year. Here's an interesting article from ESRI's StoryMaps Team about the Vietnam bombing campaign. They are GIS people so they've plotted out the areas hit by bombs - and since it's ESRI, you can scroll the map around as you please. You can even drag it all the way over to the Middle East and compare the size of the bombing area with the size of Gaza.  It looks something like this:

What's my point here? It's the intensity of the bombing. We're talking about less than 1% of the area being hit by about 1% of the bombs dropped in the Vietnam War - but only in one tenth the amount of time. IOW - Israel is conducting a bombing campaign thats an order of magnitude more intense than the air power used during the Vietnam War.

The StoryMaps article ends with the following:

But there's no doubt that the aerial bombardment of Vietnam will forever remain one of the most staggering sustained attacks in human history.

That was written in 2017. It's already wrong. Incomprehensibly, it has been knocked down to a lower tier of destruction - because what Israel is doing to Gaza is just on a completely different scale.

The people at Airwars have done a study about Israel's bombing campaign for the month of October 2023. They have a bunch of ways of trying to contextualize just how much harm Israel is inflicting on Gaza. That one month was about as deadly for children in Gaza than the deadliest year in the Syrian civil war. And let's not forget that Syria is much larger than Gaza - with almost ten times the population.

85,000 tons of bombs. Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, had a yield of 21 kilotons. It has been four Hiroshimas.

EDIT - added a link I missed earleir

What is Population Growth Actually?

A break from trying to organize my thoughts about The Economy into something (barely) readable.  Dave Weigel tweeted the following:

https://x.com/daveweigel/status/1855248851281555665

Harris is going to get even more votes than Obama! How can anyone say there was an enthusiasm problem?

The US population in 2008, when Obama got 69.5 million votes was 302 million. In 2024, it's 335 million - nearly ten percent higher. 

Some in his replies checked the registered voter numbers. 40 million more registered voters. If there was actually Obama-level enthusiasm, Harris would have taken 47% of registered voters, but she actually got 37% of them. But one of the "reality-based" journos covering it is sure that the enthusiasm was similar. I'm in freaking Canada and I could tell that people were definitely not enthused about Harris. There was a lot of "this is worse than holding my nose and pulling for a candidate I don't like - I am actually compromising some core moral principles in an effort to stop Orange Man Bad."

In Weigel's defense, there were moments when this was true. The DNC was big and there was enthusiasm then. Kamala is brat summer was a thing. The reason we're all feeling blindsided by Trump's victory is that back in August - it really looked like a done deal. Harris was riding high on a tidal wave of support and love. And then the "perfect" campaign fucking burned that down in the very short time they had to do it. Spectacularly amazing really - that they could that campaign so effectively and so fast.

It's the Stupid Economy - Part 2 - Still Failing to Identify the Problem

So, the Biden economy was excellent. People are better off now than they were before COVID hit. There were a lot of real problems caused by the pandemic and other factors, but the US managed its way through those issues better than almost every other country in the world. But Americans are certain "The Economy" sucks.

I think there are multiple reasons for this. Let's start off with what I think are the the smallest factors.

I noted that it was the lowest income earners that got the most benefit - but that assessment is based on how you do the groupings. That lowest grouping includes minimum wage earners - the number of whom did not significantly budge over Biden's term. Those people just straight up saw their purchasing power decline by almost a third. A pretty sizable chunk of this lowest income quintile are in fact worse off, and blaming it on inflation is completely accurate. Their struggle is real.

Also too retirees - and it's weird that we haven't heard about this group since they have historically been one of the media's go to  interviews. Not just retirees, but anyone on fixed incomes, those reliant on pensions or disability payments and the like. Some of these incomes have tried to pace inflation - social security payments get annual cost-of-living adjustments that are close to CPI rates, but often the cost of goods and services required by older people rise in prices faster than the normal basket of goods. And then there are people who planned out their retirements and have a decent nest egg providing them the income they thought they would need - usually factoring in inflation. Except not the inflation we had post-pandemic. They got hit too.

BUT - this doesn't account for it all.  The minimum wage earners? BLS says there's about a million of these people. Retirees? Harris actually did quite well (based on exit polling) with 65+ getting a tie against Trump versus Biden losing them by 5 points in 2020.

So these people definitely exist and they are definitely suffering. There are people who are demonstrably worse off - but it doesn't look to me like this significantly impacted the vote.

4% unemployment is considered full employment. There will always be some percentage of people unemployed - for example, when they change jobs. And also, some people who just have a really hard time finding a job. These people are also getting shafted by inflation offset by wage increases since they are living off savings and employment insurance. But again - not there aren't that many of them. The transitory inflation makes it suckier to be jobless - but joblessness is sucky even with normal levels of inflation and there's less joblessness now than in previous elections. Chronic job seekers are already primed to say The Economy Sucks even without the 2022 price surges, and this group is historically small.

How about the vanishing Middle Class - did they get shellacked with the transitory inflation? Inflation adjusted median income, both household and personal income, roughly flat since the pandemic.  Not great, but pretty decent considering what Biden was dealing with. That said, no one was asked "how is the economy doing, considering the challenges Biden had to face with the global pandemic". So, on balance, the median income buys about as much today - even with current egg prices - than it did before the pandemic hit. The implication is that the number of people doing better is roughly the same as the number of people doing worse. So this might have rightly contributed to the number of people saying "The Economy Sucks" versus those that are wrong about it.

And indeed, polling bears this out. Back in May, 41% said that their personal finances had improved, but only 23% said the economy was good.

There are probably many other small factors - but these are the ones I have thought through. So - not a comprehensive list, but a list of things which are true and might have lead to people being down on The Economy - but are poor explanations as to why people voted for Trump on the Economy.

Do I have a good idea as to why people think the Economy sucks? Probably not. I have an idea that I think is a good explanation, but it's entirely possible that I'm totally wrong. We'll tackle that next time on "watch d-kw rant about random shit so he doesn't go back to screaming about genocide again".

It's The Stupid Economy - Part 1 - Failing to Identify the Problem

The number one reason cited in exit polls for Harris losing was "The Economy" or some variation of that. The price of eggs and stuff. And this is confusing because by almost any quantifiable measure, Biden has done an exceptionally great job at managing the economy. So here, I am going to put my thoughts about it together. There's a lot of thoughts, so it's probably going to span a couple posts

First - yes, Bidenomics has been great. He took over in the middle of a global pandemic which ravaged the entire world order - and shepherded the US economy back to normal faster than any other country in the world, despite the US being hit so hard by COVID. And the benefits have not been concentrated at the top as they usually are. It is the lowest income segments that saw the highest percentage income growth under Biden. The US is at full employment with inflation still in the target 2% - 3% range. That's the theoretical ideal pocket! Stock markets indices are at record highs and the poverty rate is at record lows.

One thing that's obfuscating is that since Biden took over during the COVID crisis - it's easy to demonstrate massive improvement by comparing the start of his term to the end of it. But even if you mute this impact by only looking at the latter half of his presidency, his performance is still incredible in terms of economic growth, job creation, and slowing the growth of inequality. 

The US has outperformed the rest of the world on these terms under Biden's watch. He managed the crisis better than anyone else. So it's like he went to the Olympics for Economic Performance and won gold while setting a bunch of new world records - and the reception he's gotten back home is having garbage thrown at him and getting called a big loser. So let's try to unpack why.

The one thing people point at is inflation. Prices are so much higher now than they were before Biden took office! And this is true - the economic shock that was a global pandemic had major impacts on inflation around the world. Also, there was a big to do about "supply chains". The global logistics and distribution network has been highly optimized, it's been pared down to deliver exactly what is needed and almost nothing more - so as to get the prices down as far as possible. But then the pandemic changed how everyone was doing things. They weren't going into the office anymore, but instead huddling alone in self-isolation. Irrational hoarding behaviour proliferated with people stockpiling toilet paper like it was going to be the new currency in the apocalypse. If your delivery system is designed to supply the factories which pump out fast food entrees for shipping to chain restaurants and suddenly half that demand changes to supermarket food, it will take time and money to adjust.

Russia invading Ukraine didn't help - Russia is a major energy supplier to the world, so this disruption was bound to impact energy prices.

IOW, inflation was caused by outside factors - the shock that was the pandemic and a major energy supplier being hit with a wide slate of economic sanctions. And this was pretty obvious at the time - and also obviously, something which the system would adjust to. The nature of demand had suddenly changed - over a very short time, people needed less office appropriate clothing and more pants with elasticized waists. This calls for a retooling of production and supply, which is expensive - but also something that can be completed. Those costs get paid and then we're back to normal. It's my understanding that this was the argument behind Team Transitory - people saying that the high levels of inflation were temporary and would go away. And that's exactly what it was - a temporary bump in inflation before coming back down to normal levels.

And again - the US outperformed most of the world on this measure too. Yes, there was a lot of inflation, but Biden got it under control, while maintaining low levels of unemployment, faster than anyone else. And more importantly than that - he managed it with wage growth outpacing inflation on the aggregate. Now this did take time - inflation was on top for a while - but that's been reversed now and overall, people have more purchasing power now than they did before the pandemic.

So what gives? Why do Americans still feel like "The Economy" sucks?

I have ideas. They're confused and jumbled right now. And maybe they are dumb and totally wrong - but they are stuck in my head and I need to get them out. But this post is already too long, and I still need to organize them some more, so mark this as "...to be continued" - hopefully not after another decade long hiatus.

Maybe Racism Does Still Actually Exist

One thing I've found that bothers the fuck out of liberals is when I call Joe Biden a racist genocidal asshole. They are outraged by this - the idea that some privileged white guy who grew up surrounded by whiteness - born during World War 2 - could have a racist bone in his body. But they are outraged by it.

They never have an answer though - as to what non-racist explanation there is for his role in the genocide of Gaza. How a person who values Palestinian life at all could continue sending the bombs that are incinerating it.

Also, as good liberals, they acknowledge that racism still exists - just that none of The Good Guys are racist. Joe is a decent man - therefore it is impossible for him to be racist. There is an explanation for why he keeps supplying the arms that he acknowledges are killing way too many civilians - no one knows what it is, but it is totally not racist.

He's a racist. And until we address what that means - and what racism in general means and what impacts it has on society - racism will continue to have those impacts on society. Impacts like this:

https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/1854113848292164042

30 Days to Stop Intentionally Starving Gaza

Three weeks ago, Blinken and Austin wrote a sternly worded letter to Netanyahu warning that if they didn't stop intentionally starving northern Gaza in thirty days, maybe they might not get as many bombs as they want. This is weeks after a fresh round of warnings that northern Gaza was being starved.

As you might imagine, shit has only gotten much worse in northern Gaza since then. No aid was being allowed in. The IDF then stepped up military operations there, further intensifying the already horrific pace of mass murder and destruction. And then Israel passed a law banning any co-operation with UNRWA.

Matt Miller was asked about this and he made a joke about the 30 days not being done yet- "the semester isn't over, hahaha (it's only a couple hundred Arabs that are being starved into extinction, so what's the big deal?)"

Well there is good news for Matt Miller and Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken. They don't have to worry about humanitarian aid making its way to northern Gaza any more. The IDF announced yesterday that the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza was complete. There's no one left there to use the humanitarian aid if it was delivered. Anyone left there is clearly a Hamas terrorist.

Also too, while the US was out voting yesterday, Netanyahu fired Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense. Apparently the guy who said that they were fighting human animals in Gaza was too moderate. So despite how fucking unbelievably terrible the situation is in the Middle East - that one terrible truth still remains in effect. It is going to get worse.

Well That Didn't Turn Out So Good

Part of the reason I've been quiet is that, even with almost no audience, I was still scared shitless of doing anything to help Trump get into office again. Even if no one is reading this blog (and almost nobody is) - I still know that my criticism of the Biden Administration doesn't help them at all. Well, not only was it pointless (since I am an irrelevant voice that has zero reach) but also, it was pointless in that Trump has won the election.

Would I feel better now if I had continued screaming into the void? Probably not. This is really fucking terrible shit. Trump is a disaster. It's going to be fucking bad - on every front. Our only mitigating factors are that opposition to his fascist agenda will be more united and maybe the damage he does will be limited by his incompetence and infighting among the deeply selfish grifters he has surrounded himself with.

Anyways, the reason for this blog is to quell the voice in my head that makes me want to gripe and rant and complain. And it is far better for me to do so here than IRL. Well, it is looking like I am going to have a lot of things to rant about for quite some time. So maybe you can expect this blog to be more active again - no promises though.

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.

Blogging the ICC Warrants

So anyways, there was some good news in that Labour was thinking about cancelling their challenge to the ICC warrant requests for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. This was framed as a concession they were making due to the very strong performance of pro-Palestine candidates in the UK general election. They haven't pulled their challenge yet - and now there's word they likely won't.

There's also another view on it. Now - grain of salt, &c - the only place I could find this story in English was on JNS - Sheldon Adelson's pro-Israel news service. IOW - not necessarily trustworthy, but also - an outlet with access to Israeli politicians and large segments of Israel's defenders. Also, it is mostly reporting on Channel 14 reporting (which is in Hebrew) - so their claims would be easy to check. Here's that story.

Some notes:

According to a European source cited by Channel 14, the new Labour government would not pull the challenge, if only because all indications are that the court intends to ignore it, allowing Labour to avoid souring relations with Israel without angering its anti-Israel supporters at home.

How does this make sense? Not pulling the challenge is going to anger anti-Israel people in the UK. That said - it's the Labour party, I totally believe that they totally believe this.  Anyways - it's not so much that the ICC is going to ignore the request - I bet they are delighted for the opportunity to stall some more. The issue is that the ICC has already ruled on the question of jurisdiction. It's been settled - specifically regarding Israel-Palestine. This argument made by the UK has already been defeated.

In either case, Israeli legal officials agree that it’s “highly probable” the ICC will issue arrest warrants in the next two weeks, said Channel 14 reporter Tamir Morag.

Nice.  A timeline. This is longer than it took to issue warrants for Putin, but not ridiculously so. These warrants look like they are being treated fairly. Also too,

On June 25, Netanyahu also said that he expected the ICC would approve its chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants, Ynet reported. Netanyahu suggested that the warrants could be issued before his address to the U.S. Congress on July 24.

Well two weeks takes us to after Bibi's visit - so we will get to avoid the indignity of  a wanted war criminal addressing a Joint Session of Congress. But quite possibly only by a very narrow margin of time. The International Rules Based Order everyone!

The Time of Monsters

Content warning - long rambling "I'm 13 and this is deep" level stream of consciousness follows.  I am trying to work something out.

Here's a thing to consider. Trump is a symptom. As much as we find it incomprehensible and offensive - Trump commands the adoration of a very large number of people. Now it's true that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by millions - but at the same time, why the hell was it close enough for him to steal it through the Electoral College? Tens of millions of people voted for him in 2016, and despite the dumpster fire that was his first term, even more people voted for him in 2020.

Is American society really that sick and depraved that such a larger chunk of it wants this shit? Why is it that running transphobic bullshit in the NY Times ends up being a successful business strategy? There's something much deeper than just the current freakout over the "Dictator on Day One".

A lot of it is that the alternatives suck. Neither Hilary nor Joe inspired people - their main selling point was that they weren't Trump. This is still like 99% of Joe's current campaign. But that only explains why they didn't get blow-out victories like they would have in a rational world. Trump still got a lot of people to vote for him. Crazy shit.

Maybe that's really it - the end of the experiment in American democracy. Maybe there is no reversing late stage capitalism and the twilight of empire. How does it go? The old world is dying while the new one struggles to be born, we are in the time of monsters. 

But then again, fighting monsters is what we are supposed to do. This is the human condition - the struggle against something larger than ourselves. This is where heroes come from - rising up against adversity to defeat the threat to us all. Or at least that's how it works in the story books.

I guess we're supposed to be the heroes. That we're supposed to do our part to stop the slide into fascism and decay. But none of us know how to. This isn't a Hero's Journey with sign-posted stops along the way. It's one where we can't even identify the monster. Who knows - maybe the monster is us.

Everyone has their own priorities and perspectives. Maybe your monster is someone else's hero. There's legions of people who have Trump as their hero.

Here's my perspective. My monster is those people. The ones who idolize Trump. And yes - they are being taken advantage of. They too are victims in all this. But that does not make them not-monsters. Also too, Trump is not the first to have exploited their small minded bigotries - they keep falling for a long line of grifting assholes promising them that "the bad guys" are really gonna get theirs. Maybe they have honest non-monster excuses to believe what they do - but surely some of them (and I venture to guess that it is a large majority) do not.

Anyways - my current confusion, the one that's been eating at me in some way or other for as long as I can remember - is trying to figure out what to do about it. How do you fight a monster like this? Clearly the act of actually fighting them only makes things worse. But letting the bullshit fester and showing people that there are no consequences for anti-social behaviour also makes things worse.

I guess this is all just a bad framework to view the world through. Maybe all of us are monsters, and as a result - none of us are monsters. Maybe the thing which makes monsters is identifying someone else as the monster - that desire for "the bad guys" to really get it this time. 

No. There are monsters - they reveal themselves to us all the time. It's just that society values monsters and rewards them and I have no idea how to make it stop.

Biden

 I have thoughts. Lots of them. And as much as I have serious issues with Biden’s  passively deadly racism, it’s actually the reactions to Biden now that bother me most. 

Just one point here. There’s an appeal to Biden to step aside in order to save his legacy. To avoid going down in history as someone who tried to cling on to power too long. 

Motherfuckers, this would be a massive to his legacy! Right now, his legacy is the genocide of Gaza. The racist asshole values Palestinian lives o poorly that he is proud of going to extreme lengths to facilitate their mass slaughter. If he is remembered as a dottering old fool who overstayed his welcome, that’s way better than being remembered as the fucking deeply racist monster he has proven himself to be. 

Using "Literally" to mean "Figuratively" is an Egregious Use of the English Language

Egregious comes from a Latin word meaning "distinguished" or "eminent." It was once a compliment to someone who had a remarkably good quality that placed him or her above others. Today, the meaning of the word is noticeably less complimentary, possibly as a result of ironic use of its original sense.

Elections Have Consequences for Blogging

So Labour won a monster landslide victory in the UK general elections, and they did so with Keith "I think Israel does have that right" Starmer running on a pretty expressly pro-Israel platform. So much so that they faced multiple challenges from pro-Palestine independent candidates. Four or five of them (depending on whether you include Jeremy Corbyn in this group) won, including shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth losing to a first time independent candidate. Another senior Labour shadow minister came within 528 votes to losing to a 23 year old independent candidate.

This has forced them to shift their stance on the genocide. One of the last things the Conservative government did was to intervene in the request for war crimes warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. Well, now the word is the incoming Labour government is dropping that request. Now to be sure, we won't know if this is real until the warrants are issued and governments love to talk about how they are concerned with the ongoing massive casualties and destruction in Gaza all while steadfastly doing nothing to prevent it. Also on the "possible good news but I won't believe it until I see it" front - the UK is reviewing their decision to cut off UNRWA funding and to continue supplying military equipment to Israel.

Meanwhile in France, the left wing coalition that just won the most seats is talking about recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Is this all massively inadequate to meet the moment? Yes. But also, it is a big difference - tiny steps in the right direction don't seem like much until you notice that the prior trend was just plummeting down a hole into normalizing ethnic cleansing.

Lancet Blogging

Some housekeeping. I’ve been quiet on here because I have been very distracted by the fallout from Biden’s debate performance. The aggravation at so much of the American discourse thinking a poor debate performance was disqualifying while fucking hidamned genocide is a-ok - made it my impossible to think straight. Holy shit these people are so fucking terrible. 

Anyways, back to the regular schedule of noting how bad shit has gotten in Gaza. The Lancet has a number. 186,000.

For scaling, the Lancet took a couple cracks at Iraq War deaths. 600K to 800K in four years. Roughly the same pace as the 186.000 over nine months that Israel has inflicted. IOW, the pace of killing in Gaza is about the same as the first four years of the invasion of Iraq. 

The big difference of course is that Iraq is significantly bigger than Gaza. The population of Iraq at the time of invasion was some 26 million people - ten times more than Gaza. So another way of putting it is that what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip is like the invasion of Iraq, only ten times more intense. The experience for people living in Gaza is like the experience of people living through the Iraq War - only it’s a week and a half of violence crammed into a single day. Every day. Since October 7.

What's Your Answer to All the Blogging

Credit where due to the genocide apologists. They've stopped asking "well what's your solution?" with the implication that of course anyone who opposes genocide wants to see Israel eradicated completely. /eyeroll

I want to believe that they've figured out that "Israel must commit genocide in order to survive" is a stupidly bad argument, but the truth is that these people do not give a fuck about Palestinians. These racist fucking assholes do not actually believe that it's a bad argument. In their worldview - this genocide is good because the dirty brown folks deserve it. I mean, how else can you defend genocide?

No, what's happened here is that they've had this question answered too many times. There is an obvious choice which ends the violence - and that's addressing the root cause of the violence. The key to peace in the Middle East is to end the occupation. It's painfully obvious. An oppressed people will struggle to be free - this is not a hard concept to grasp. Even with their immoral wallowing in the dehumanization of Palestinians - this is obvious. Even if you are one of those racist sociopaths that think Palestinians are no better than wild animals - well, you don't keep poking wild animals with a sharp stick expecting them to suddenly start loving you.

Christiane Amanpour had Ami Ayalon on for an interview. Ayalon spent 33 years in the Israeli Navy, starting in one of their secret mission special forces units and working his way up to eventually becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. After retiring from military service he headed up Shin Bet, Israel's counter-intelligence service. This is a guy who is insistent on strong and robust Israel military forces. and not some Columbia University protestor.

Unless we shall understand, again and again I am saying it, - that if we shall not end the occupation, we shall not have security, and if we shall not end this occupation, we shall not have democracy - we shall not have democracy and we shall not have security and this is the end of the Zionist dream.

Sometimes people forget. It's so obvious that the question catches you off guard. "How do you bring peace to Israel-Palestine?" Of fucking bloody course you have to end the occupation. The occupation itself is a violation of peace - it has been perpetually and constantly violent - the oppression and humiliation of Palestinians for generations. Not only does ending the occupation remove the source of the animosity that drives terrorism - but by definition, there is no peace so long as Palestine is occupied.

No peace so long as Palestine is occupied is not a threat - it is a simple statement of fact.

A Couple of Blogging Hits

 Do you remember the killing of Hind Rajab? That was way back in January. Forensic Architecture has recently published their findings on the attack. It's really not surprising - everybody has known since it happened that it was an IDF tank that opened fire on the car. Still, the US is pretending that Israel is not just wallowing in genocidal war crimes bent on eradicating any Palestinian presence in Gaza. They insist that incidents are being credibly investigated and there will be accountability if anyone is found to have done anything wrong. It's like they are talking about a completely different State of Israel.

Anyways, with specific regard to Hind Rajab, Prem Thakker has been persistent on nailing Matt Miller on this incident. Miller's latest answer on June 5th is particularly hilarious. Thakker's been asking for updates on the Hind Rajab investigation since Valentine's Day and forcing Miller to say "we don't have any updates".  It's slightly different now - the latest answer is "let me get you an answer to that and come back to you". This is at least the fifth time Prem Thakker has asked that question - I guess Miller was expecting him to have forgotten or just moved on.

Another thing I'd like to note is the work of the Airwars crew, sifting through the information on the tens of thousands of people that Israel has slaughtered with their air strikes. Here's a snippet from a recent AJ+ documentary. It really lays out the sheer scope and speed of this genocidal onslaught. We've been reaching for other examples of facts that highlight how barbarous and murderous the State of Israel has been with their military campaign - and these latest facts are undeniably powerful.

This is the conflict where we have counted more children killed in a single strike than we have in any other conflict - multiple times.

Looking at that - one might think that Israel is going out of their way to target children. That's not true. Israel does not preferentially kill children - they kill Palestinians indiscriminately, whether or not they are children. The reason that many of the massacres with the highest death count of children are committed by Israel is because so very many of the massacres of civilians committed have been by Israel.

Here's an interview with Airwars Director Emily Tripp from back in April:

So so far we've identified more than three thousand individual incidents that we have yet to process through our methodology - that's more incidents than we've found for the entirety of the war against ISIS.

To be clear - there are some additional aspects of Israel's bombing campaign that increase its lethality. Israel's military technology is the highest that's ever been used on this sort of thing. A combination of both the support from Biden and the USA and also that this campaign is happening now - with access to the most recent developments in the technology of killing civilians. The other huge aspect of course is the size of Gaza and the fact that there is no escape. The Gaza fence keeps everyone rounded up into a tiny area. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

And to close out this post, just a reminder that these people directly killed by Israeli military action are only part of the genocide. Gaza is still facing famine - insufficient food and water is reaching the population, one that was stretched to its breaking point ages ago. There's no public order or civil infrastructure remaining and people are literally starving to death and there is no plan whatsoever to slow down, let alone reverse this situation.

IOW, it is going to get worse.

Blogging Without Pier

 

source: https://stephensemler.substack.com/p/three-times-more-food-aid-reached

EDIT: Let's put some context to this. 93,442 pallets of food sounds like a lot - but how much is it really? Well, the densest you can pack these things is probably MREs. Here's a prepper site link to buy a pallet of MREs. They can fit 720 meals on to one pallet. So 93,442 pallets is roughly 67 million MREs over a month - or roughly 1 MRE per Gazan per day. 1 MRE is 1,200 to 1,400 calories - woefully inadequate.  We're now at less than a third of that. And these are best case scenarios.

If you click through to Stephen Semler's Responsible Statecraft article, you'll see that April was actually a high watermark level of aid delivered, With March being pretty high as well (relatively speaking - even the highest amount of food delivered is less than half of normal requirements). The context of this arc is the ICJ issued orders for Israel to facilitate aid back in January, and Israel responded by cutting off aid (41,878 pallets in February) culminating in the murderous hunting of the WCK workers on Leap Day. Global outrage that Israel was also killing non-Palestinians forced a change resulting in 75,917 pallets in March and the 93K we see in April. So these ridiculously inadequate levels of aid delivery have been the case since at least January (68,914 pallets) which is the data shown in the RS article. Likely the starvation has been going on since October - and some may argue that it has been going since 2006. Anyways, now that Israel controls the Rafah crossing completely - we're at a new high score for starvation. Just in time for summer in the Middle East.

Give Them an Inch and They Blog for Miles

Here's the pattern. The IDF commits some ludicrously atrocious war crime - there is near universal outrage, but apparently not enough to shift Biden in his support of the ongoing genocide. Israel pretends to have some sort of regret over the "mistake" - and then the IDF repeats the war crime over and over and over again.

The latest thing that follows the pattern is the Tent Massacre. A "mistake" where dozens of people were horrifically burned to death in their refugee tents - burned by a US-made and Biden supplied GBU-39. In the four days following the Tent Massacre, at least 66 more people were killed by Israel in "safe zones" in Gaza. The IDF is still bombing refugee tents in Rafah. The Tent Massacre was really just the first of a series.

And it is a pattern.  Remember the Flour Massacre on February 29? Well, it too was the start of a series. This is a list of incidents in March at the same roundabout.

The general progress of the genocidal rampage is yet another example. The incursion into Rafah was opposed by basically every country other than Israel. Even Biden said that Israel should not go into Rafah - although his racist asshole psychopaths noted that this was with the caveat of "without a credible plan to evacuate and protect civilians". Incidentally - this is just basic international humanitarian law - no military actions without a credible plan to protect civilians. And what happened? The IDF moved into Rafah without an evacuation plan - the US put their goalposts onto a moving truck and had to repack them multiple times after trying to set them up again. That moving truck is likely set on fire now - Rafah is essentially evacuated with who knows how many casualties that entailed - and the US still does not believe their red line was crossed.

Or - consider the Al-Ahli Hospital massacre way back on October 17. This was before the world picked up on the massive degree of dishonesty that Israel and the IDF is capable of. Israel pitched a story of a "misfiring PIJ rocket". Literally the exact same lie they used just over a year prior when they slaughtered five children. The Tent Massacre should have brought some more attention to Al Ahli - basically the same incident - a firestorm that killed many people sheltering in tents. The same sized explosion, the same primary cause of death, the same degree of physical damage to the surroundings. Al Ahli was almost certainly caused by an Israeli fired, US made, and Biden supplied GBU-39. But even if it wasn't - the fact that Israel was allowed to continue their military operation, not merely unabated but in ever escalating intensity - ensured that the Al-Ahli Hospital Explosion merely the first of a series. We all saw what happened afterwards - the IDF was gripped in a hospital destroying mania. Delusions of a "Hamas Pentagon" underneath Al Shifa turned up tons of planted evidence (live ammo and grenades stored behind an MRI machine), closed off tunnels they had to dig eight feet down to find, and a box of dates. And that was not the only hospital that the IDF sieged relentlessly. In fact, the IDF sieged all of Gaza's hospitals relentlessly.

It's not always thus. There have been things that have forced the IDF to actually change their behaviour. The WCK attack which killed seven aid workers in a humanitarian aid convoy - where Israel used drones to hunt these people down over the span of a mile and a half before murdering them. Not to say that the IDF has not engaged in a campaign targeting aid workers - they absolutely have. But six of the WCK victims were foreign nationals - and Israel seems not to have slaughtered many more foreign aid workers since then.

But otherwise - it is just a matter of doing the most outrageous thing possible and daring people to oppose them. And when that opposition is shown to be insufficient to slow down the slaughter, because people like Joe Biden do not believe Palestinian life has any value at all, that specific war crime becomes normal operating procedure.

Which brings us to the scary part. The last outrage was disguising IDF special forces as civilians in order to massacre 274 Palestinians and wound some 700 more in order to rescue 4 hostages. Is this the next standard operation for Israel? To be clear - they've committed this specific war crime before - there's video evidence of Israeli special forces raiding a hospital disguised as doctors and patients. But this latest incident was close to a thousand casualties. Also, the previous examples of the pattern all had historical precedents. Israel has long been obsessed with Gaza hospitals, they've bombed refugee camps many times before October 7 - even shooting aid seekers is not that much different than their actions throughout the Great March of Return. The pattern is having one extreme example of atrociously bad behaviour - and when that doesn't lead to actual repercussions, incorporating that bad behaviour into the military operations in a much bigger way.

Summertime Blogging

Just finished day three under the Heat Dome. Yesterday here in LEAFS SUCK, we got to 30 Celsius with the humidity making it feel like 39. Which is a break from the previous two days where the humidex reading broke 40.

It’s a bit disjointing to hear the radio stations harp on about the high temperatures. Yes, it is really hot - for here. Not outside of our experience, it regularly gets that hot in Toronto - just never while it is still officially spring. And we certainly do have issues with it too. We have a lot of rental buildings from the 70s and earlier - without AC. Towers where temperatures are even higher than the surroundings and with no reasonable means to cool them. It’s bad. We also have a not insignificant homeless population that is increasing in size. These people are undoubtedly facing real challenges. 

But - this level of heat is basically what Gaza has had for the past month. Less humid, sure - but also without any rain at all. Or much in the way of fresh water supplies. Or any air condition at all. Instead, they have air strikes and widespread starvation. Toronto might have a sizable homeless population numbering in the thousands - but Gaza’s ranks of homeless is well over a million. Fortunately, there hasn’t been a heat wave there yet. But we’re at the start of it now - summer in the Middle East. With water scarcity, no security, the constant threat of military action, no electricity, very little food or medical supplies, and the only shelter being tents or the bombed out remains of the city.

It’s going to get worse. 

Biden is Not Supplying the Blogging for Rafah Red Lines

Forty days and forty nights ago Joe Biden said the following:

I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem

The IDF said that they now control 70% of Rafah. The Tent Massacre which burned dozens of Gazans to death in their refugee tents in the "safe zone" was committed with a US-made and Biden supplied GBU-39. Three weeks ago Israel promised an investigation into how this horrendous mistake was not their fault and no one needs to be punished except Hamas. That investigation is "ongoing" but out of the limelight after the rescue mission where IDF special forces disguised themselves as civilians, massacred 274 people, and wounded around 700 more, in order to rescue 4 hostages.

Yesterday, Biden managed to successfully pressure a couple Democratic holdouts into approving $18 billion in arms sales to Israel. 

72 Blogs Uncensored

Here's an interesting question. IDF soldiers have been uploading videos and pictures of themselves committing all sorts of horrible acts - clear war crimes, documented by the perpetrators, published to social media channels. Quite obviously, they are news and provide important context into the biggest story since October. Additionally - there are no international journalists in Gaza, so on the ground reporting of what's happening there is extremely limited. And yet there's been no coverage. Why?

The kneejerk answer is that mainstream media is too in the tank for genocide and they refuse to cover anything that puts Israel in a bad light. Now to be clear - this is definitely part of it. The ludicrous bias in coverage has been thoroughly documented. But - even with that bias in place - some stories get through. Some coverage happens. Even the New York Times with their obvious propaganda pieces have published stories that are quite damning of Israel (and also their own coverage of the conflict). And yet no one talks about the IDF videos.

Here's my theory - it's because it's a can of worms they really do not want to open. The videos of soldiers riding children's tricycles or dressing in women's clothing - knowing that the owners of that stuff have been either killed or displaced - that's pretty bad. The videos of soldiers whooping it up as they level entire neighbourhoods with planted explosives (meaning that the buildings were already clear enough for demo crews to go in and wire them to go boom) - pretty bad. The videos of soldiers forcing hundreds of men to engage in some kabuki theatre of surrendering while stripped to their skivvies? Also bad. And there are now thousands of these videos and pictures online. But these only represent the tip of the genocide iceberg. This video evidence of rampant and disgusting dehumanization of Palestinians is actually some of the least offensive shit IDF soldiers have done.

Those garden variety war crimes media are nothing compared to the worst of the what these genocidal monsters are celebrating. The IDF was running a snuff channel (as alluded to in this post's title) - hosting literally hundreds of videos of Palestinians being murdered and having their deaths mocked by Israeli soldiers. There are a lot of those videos - and reporting on the much milder generic war crimes captured on film opens up the question about the rest of the social media posts. It's kind of like reporting on a car accident and noting the damage to the vehicles while not mentioning how many people were killed.

So they don't want to go down that road. They know that it leads to some super dark shit that they really want memory-holed as badly as possible. Or maybe they just have not figured out a way of actually covering it without the Biden Administration declaring them terrorists and shipping them off to Gitmo. Regardless - they are being super careful about IDF social media posts because they know that reporting on that issue is way worse than it initially seems.

Sitting on the Humanitarian Dock of the Blog

So the humanitarian pier built to deliver aid to Gaza, that was destroyed by waves, was rebuilt about a week ago. Well, it looks like it will have to be taken down again. I guess there's no quick fix for "we designed this pier without considering that it might have to deal with waves".

Anyways, check out this in the replies. On June 8, CENTCOM announced the pier had been rebuilt and was ready to start delivering aid again. In the photo for that announcement is a truck with aid loaded on the flatbed. That truck, with those exact same loads of aid, was on the pier when the Israeli helicopter that evacuated the hostages took off.

IOW, the "hostage rescue mission" appears to have been the very first thing the humanitarian pier was used for. A rescue mission so horrific in its blatant violation of international law that the US is distancing itself from it. 274 dead Palestinians and something like 700 more wounded. The IDF disguising themselves as civilians, possibly as humanitarian aid delivery, in order to gain access and be better positioned when they started shooting. And it looks like the US was not only fully on board with these war crimes, but also participated in them by providing a staging area, evacuation point, and additional credibility for the "humanitarian aid truck" full of IDF special forces gunmen.

I guess the good news is that waves will prevent the IDF from using the aid pier for more genocidal missions and they might have to go back to indiscriminate air strikes.

The Blogging is Sometimes Quite Demoralizing

 I mean what can you even say about this?

Israel on Friday released the names of 17 militants it said were killed in Thursday’s strike. However, only nine of those names matched with records of the dead from the hospital morgue. One of the alleged militants was an 8-year-old boy, according to hospital records.

A Deal You Cannot Refuse to Blog

So I got taken in by the "ceasefire deal". I had believed that this was an actual shift on the part of the US to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, but I was mistaken. US policy is unchanged - the actual ceasefire is dependent on Hamas ceasing to exist. That's how they can call it an Israeli proposal - this is also Israel's position - the war must continue until Hamas is destroyed.

What this really is? An even more extreme version of what the US has been trying to do for quite some time now. First it was framing a temporary pause in bombing that would absolutely be followed up with more war as a "ceasefire". This was when they were trotting out the line "an immediate ceasefire... for up to six weeks" /eyeroll

But now - it's "an immediate ceasefire (for up to six weeks!) followed by a permanent ceasefire (if Hamas agrees to dismantle itself completely)".

Just so that we understand how unbelievably fucking stupid this is - who are the parties to this ceasefire deal? Israel and ...? No one. Hamas is required to cease existing for the "ceasefire" to take place. And they expect Hamas to agree to this. It's not a ceasefire deal - it's yet another demand for complete and total surrender.

Here's the even more ludicrous part of it all - even if their wildest dreams come true and Hamas decides to retire the AK-47s and homemade rockets - what does that leave us with? I mean maybe the Biden plan is to just bribe Hamas with trucks full of money and a private island or a superyacht for them to retire to or whatever. I dunno - it just seems like such a nonsense idea. Still, let's give it to them - Hamas decides to fold and close up shop for a permanent ceasefire. What happens next?

I'm going to put this in the kindest and gentlest way possible for the stupid fucking paste eating psychopaths that think this is a desirable outcome. Look at Gaza right now. There are people living there who have legitimate and justified grievances against Israel. Even the fucking asshole Netanyahu supporters in the Biden Administration - including the smug ass condescending shitbags that they put on the podium at pressers - have agreed that Israel's conduct of the war has been problematic. What's going to happen with these people? Are Palestinian grievances going to be even remotely close to being adequately addressed? Yeah, and then pigs will fly out of my ass.

So where does that leave us? Thousands and thousands of parents who have lost children. A generation of orphans. Millions who have had their homes and communities turned to rubble. And then watching from refugee tents while the people responsible for the destruction celebrate their victory. I guess in magical State Department land this ends all hatred and animosity towards Israel and everything is all sunshine and roses next. How could terrorist ideology take hold with such amazingly wonderful conditions for Gaza? It's just so fucking stupid - an idea so moronic that it borders on causing actual physical pain with its stupidity.

And what of Israel? A little bit of light genocide resulting in the end of Hamas - that's bound to take the wind out of the messianic fascist extremists dreaming of a Greater Israel. FFS. Gantz may have left Netanyahu's ruling coalition but Bibi still holds 64 out of 120 seats. Of that coalition, it's Likud - and then a collection of ultra-conservative religious supremacy parties. If this delusional dream of Biden's happens - how does Israel find its way back to being not a fascist theocratic pariah state that love committing war crimes? Will this lower the stature of the Ben-Gvirs and Smotrichs in Israel? 

Really - this is just mind-blowingly awful shit. I've said for a long while that things are going to get worse, but it is starting to look like I may have been way too optimistic.

Update on How the Blogging is Going

 As with previous updates - it's going as we predicted. Fucking terrible, and getting worse.

The big news I guess is that Israel managed to rescue 4 hostages. And while this should be good news, it was really only welcomed by the handful of racist sociopathic monsters who have been cheerleading the genocide from day one - like the Biden Administration. And why is that? Over 270 Gazans killed and several hundred more injured. Reports that the high risk IDF mission involved disguising themselves as humanitarian aid workers and then using the joke of a pier to escape. IOW, a death toll so disproportionate that only the most racist fuckheads could celebrate the mission - one filled with war crimes and US complicity.

Incidentally - this occurred at Nuseirat Refugee Camp - in central Gaza, about halfway between Khan Younis and Gaza City. An area the IDF said they cleared months ago. And that pier? Still not operational. It's going to take a bit of effort to "repair" the pier since that sucker was not designed to withstand waves (FFS) and they will need to make fundamental changes to it before trying to use it again.

As per the Institute for the Study of War, Hamas is still attacking IDF positions in the Netzarim corridor. Rockets have been launched at IDF positions inside Gaza as well as Israeli communities near Sderot. So Hamas has clearly not been destroyed. We're getting leaks about how some in the US genocide support machine are worried that maybe tens of thousands of civilian casualties might be helping Hamas with recruiting new fighters. That kind of genius, 8 months in, is why they get paid the big bucks. That said, the people getting paid even bigger bucks are intent on ignoring this obvious truth. Such is life when your job is enabling genocide.

The US is still pushing their "Israeli ceasefire deal" - a deal that Israel has now repeatedly said they do not support. I had originally believed that this deal was basically the same as the one Hamas offered a month ago - but it looks like I missed something. The US position isn't for a permanent ceasefire, like they have been claiming. The permanent ceasefire would only occur if Hamas is destroyed. How you can have a "ceasefire" with something that no longer exists is an exercise left to the imaginations of the racist genocidal ghouls at the US State Department. Anyways, even this glimmer of hope that the genocide might end sometime soon has been snuffed out.

Now you may be asking why Israeli would oppose a deal that gives them what they want - continued violence until Hamas is destroyed. I believe that it is the framing - it's how it is being pitched. The US has been adding in "constructive ambiguity" to imply that it is a permanent ceasefire deal (when they intend nothing of the sort). The issue is that if it takes, then the six week "negotiation" period with the expectation of a ceasefire deal will prevent it from restarting. The earlier "humanitarian pause" was always framed as temporary and played on our desperate optimism for an end to the violence. But it was always going to end with more bombing to come. This deal is not being framed as temporary. Restarting the genocide will be met with a steep high barrier. Imagine - after six weeks where Hamas abides by the ceasefire but refuses to stop existing, what is the excuse for the bombs to start falling again? It might end up being a "trap" where the impetus for additional slaughter of civilians has been sapped of all urgency - and the current genocidal monsters running this show cannot allow that to happen.

That rescue mission was so fucking bad that it managed to buy only one single day. Benny Gantz had provided a June 8 deadline for a Gaza plan or else he would leave the Israeli War Cabinet. He delayed his decision on news of the rescue - a delay of one day. He's now out. The War Cabinet is now only Netanyahu and Gallant, two people with current ICC warrant requests due to the commission of war crimes.

Israel also now has the dubious honour of being listed as a country that harms children. Israel joins an rogue's gallery that includes the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, and Syria and groups such as Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. I'm sure this listing is going to help them loads as the genocide case works it way through the International Court of Justice. South Africa's case which has had other countries joining - Nicaragua in February; Belgium in March; Colombia in April; Turkey, Libya, Egypt, the Maldives, Mexico, and Ireland on May; and Chile, Spain and Palestine this past week. 

So - it's not going well. In fact, it is going quite badly. But also too - there's no signs of it coming to close anytime soon. So I guess Israel's silver lining is that it could be much worse - a fact they seme intent on proving to be true.

US Policy on Hamas Blogging

 Hamas could end this tomorrow. Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done period.

It's funny because it just sums up Biden's position perfectly. It is always Hamas' fault - because they refuse to (unintelligible).

It would be funny if this wasn't being used to enable genocide.

EDIT: Here's the thing - Biden needs that to be (unintelligible) for a reason. If he actually laid out what Hamas needs to do to end this - it would either be ridiculous (all Hamas has to do is cease existing) or it would be something that Hamas could do and thus prove (again) that Biden is full of shit.

Cops. They Are Tough on Crime.

I know I have this meme backwards, but this is how I encountered it - and the implication that karma is fake and bad shit goes unpunished is fitting.

How it's going.

This person is identified as Peter Henschel, a #Swiss national. He was arrested & spent the night at police station. It appears cops brought him a mattress & apologised to him for being arrested & saying he didn’t deserve it, after having punched a young woman in the head

How it started. 

The Big Pile of Shit

I think it was all the way back in 2023 when I first said that the US and Israel are going to have to eat a big pile of shit. Well, here it is.

The deal that Hamas agreed to back at the beginning of May was unacceptable because it leaves Hamas intact. Hamas is not surrendering and a permanent ceasefire means that the campaign to militarily destroy Hamas must end. Now to be clear, that military campaign was only strengthening Hamas, making it ridiculously easy for them to recruit. Their influence has expanded and grown and they enjoy far more support now than ever before. So this was the smart move as not finally eating the shit sandwich just meant more shit getting piled on to it. I really believe right now that the timing was dependent on the Trump verdicts - and Joe is hoping this Mission Accomplished moment goes by unnoticed while the rest of us are popping champagne over Trump's multiple felony convictions.

Anyways, both the US and Israel had staked everything on destroying Hamas. An impossible task. And now they have been forced to give up on it.

Biden opened his remarks by saying that Hamas has been reduced to not being able to fight back anymore. That they were no longer a threat to Israel's existence. Holy fucking shit - this was even true on October 7. Those attacks ONLY succeeded because Israel so badly fucked up their response. Hamas has NEVER been an existential threat to Israel - it's just a bunch of angry violent dudes with assault rifles and homemade bombs. Versus one of the most technological advanced militaries in the world backed by the infinite resources of the world's only superpower. That Hamas could not destroy Israel was ALWAYS true.

The Institute for the Study of War/Critical Threats recap for yesterday says that Hamas fired mortars and rockets at the Netzarim corridor. Just south of Gaza City. In the area the IDF has had "under control: since early November. And it was only 5 days ago that Hamas fired a volley of rockets from Rafah to Tel Aviv with a significant number of them evading the Iron Dome. But sure - "Hamas has been destroyed".

The most horrific part of all this, with Hamas still in place and almost certainly stronger than ever - is that all of the destruction was for nothing. Hamas had offered a deal for the return of all hostages way back in October.  I hope that this haunts Biden for the rest of his days - that his fucking racist ass whitey bullshit which lead to a stain on all of human history was all because of his stupid ass racist whitey bullshit. And that he has nothing but death and destruction to show for it.