Blogging and the Tulsa Race Massacre

A lot of people know about this dark episode because of the HBO Watchmen series - but regardless of how you found out about it, it's an important event in American history that should be more widely discussed. The wikipedia page is very detailed, helpful to get this kind of synopsis of the events. 

Before moving on, let me state that I do not mean to minimize the horrors of that massacre. But it was just over a century ago and while it still has effects that carry over through to today - I am referring to it to make a point about Gaza. Do I believe that a lot more needs to be done in the name of reconciliation? Absolutely 100% yes. And not just for the events from 1921 - but also the godawful racist bullshit treatment that followed for generations afterwards. But, like almost everything, it kinda vanishes when compared to the scale of the genocide that is currently happening in Gaza.

So, back to 1921. The precipitating events to the massacre were the outbreaks of violence on May 31. 10 whites and 2 Blacks were left dead. And then the backlash exploded - the National Guard was fully mobilized to act against Americans and white people went about burning Black Wall Street to the ground. While the official death toll was in the dozens - almost certainly it was hundreds that were killed. 10,000 were made homeless, thousands more were incarcerated. It was just a massive orgy of violence, where fire bombs were dropped from airplanes into residential neighbourhoods. Air strikes - in 1921.

And even back in 1921, it was recognized by some that this was a shameful and horrific act of violent racism that needed to be addressed. But, in the way white society almost always deals with their heinous acts of racist violence, it got ignored for generations. Just memory-holed and forbidden from being discussed for as long as they could get away with it. The wiki lists a couple dozen items under "In popular culture" - one self-published book from 1923 - and then nothing for the next seventy years. It wasn't until 1996 that a commission was finally convened to investigate - prompted by the shame and knowledge that the remaining survivors were now quite elderly and might never see any official acknowledgement of this hate fuelled crime against humanity.

Restitution still has not meaningfully been made - but the story is now at least a little better known. And not just from Watchmen - the majority of the wiki's "In popular culture" list is after 2000. And on the 100-year anniversary, the presiding president finally officially attended the site. In that speech Biden stated:

Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be buried, no matter how hard people try.

So - an official state response to violence perpetrated by a small group of an oppressed minority got massively out of hand resulting in the flattening of entire neighbourhoods and order-of-magnitude disproportionate deaths. That's the Gaza genocide, but only about 1% of the scope. Gaza has a hundred times more dead and injured. A hundred times more damage to civilian infrastructure. And Gaza has been going on for over a hundred times as long. IOW, the genocide campaign in Gaza is the Tulsa Race Massacre, only continued for a hundred times longer. At least that's where it is now - there is no signs of things stopping, and in fact things are still getting worse.

One hundred Tulsa Race Massacres. Black Wall Street getting firebombed, but one hundred times over. That's Gaza. If the destruction of Greenwood was "so heinous, so horrific, so greivous, they cannot be buried, no matter how hard people try" - well what does Joe think about Gaza? Does Joe think that people will be able to bury those injustices?

You Can't Just Blog and Not Listen

The Biden event at Radio City Music Hall was one of those opportunities to be disappointed by Obama. Imagine saying "You can't just talk and not listen." FFS, he ought to know better - but I guess it's just been far too long since his community organizing days.

They are the ones with all the power. Everybody IS listening to them - we have no choice. The things they say have the force of the system behind it. And it's just fucking mind blowing that a Black man who grew up in the 70s and 80s in the US wouldn't have this burned into their souls.

This it the thing that these assholes do not understand. We have listened to them. We hear them loud and clear. We just think they are wrong - factually wrong, morally wrong, and just plain common sense wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Yes, it is a visceral and intense level of disagreement with them - but it is not one that shuts out their voices.

We know what they are saying. I mean - we are all forced to condemn Hamas and chant "October 7th" a fucking million times before being allowed to speak - we know their points. And we agree with these too! We DO condemn Hamas and we DO recognize the horrific atrocities that were committed on October 7th. But that does not justify what is happening in Gaza right now. It absolutely doesn't. And moreover - these fucking smug sanctimonious fucking genocidal assholes know this. They will not contest this argument - because they know they are wrong on it. So they just fucking ignore it. And then they trot out Obama to tell us we're not listening to them. Just so fucking wrong.

I guess it's a small step of progress - while these monsters still deny that what is happening in Gaza is genocide, at least they have acknowledged that it is a catastrophe. But they are still ignoring the argument that October 7th does not justify genocide - and the do this by treating the two as unrelated. It's possibly an even more offensive argument than before when they just pretended that Gazans weren't dying in the thousands. They now agree that they are dying in the thousands - but this is just some mysterious thing with no cause - something that just manifests out of nowhere - please don't think about it at all.

There was another bit that came out from these glorious presidents - perhaps the next wave of genocide apologia. Biden said something about this being about the very existence of Israel. What a fuckin load of bullshit. No seriously - anyone looking at the Gaza right now that thinks that it is Israel that is in danger - they are fucking racist ass genocidal psychos. That they think this appeal makes even a lick of sense just proves the worst of it. These assholes do not believe that Palestinian lives are worth protecting.

Non-Binding Resolutions

So the UN Security Council finally managed to pass a call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. It would have been an immediate and permanent ceasefire, but the US insisted on changing that word because reasons. It passed with a vote of 14-0, with the US abstaining. They did not veto this ceasefire demand, as they had previously on multiple occasions.

And then immediately afterwards, the whole State mechanism trotted out their latest insult to civilized society. Apparently, this Security Council resolution is "non-binding". Moreover - in an exchange with a reporter, Matt Miller stated quite clearly that not only did the US consider the UNSC resolution non-binding but also that the US had no expectations of Israel complying with it.

Anyways, this stupid claim is wrong. It's like Alina Habba levels of not understanding the law. Here is the UN Charter. And this is the text of Article 25:

Article 25

The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.

It's unambiguous. If you are a member of the UN, you have agreed to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. Therefore decisions made by the UNSC are binding on all member states. There's no exceptions or loopholes to this - if the UNSC passes a resolution, it is legally binding. All UN Member States have expressly agreed to it.

Well apparently, the US is relying on some weird bullshit argument that UNSC resolutions are only binding if Chapter VII is invoked. IOW, unless a UNSC resolution says anything about "Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression" - then it's not a real UNSC resolution. This is wrong. The International Court of Justice addressed this exact question back in 1971.

113. It has been contended that Article 25 of the Charter applies only [p 53] to enforcement measures adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter. It is not possible to find in the Charter any support for this view. Article 25 is not confined to decisions in regard to enforcement action but applies to "the decisions of the Security Council" adopted in accordance with the Charter.

IOW, current US understanding of international law is based on an obviously bullshit idea that has already been expressly rejected by the ICJ. The argument they are relying on has already been determined to be wrong. They are wrong on the facts of the case.

Now if it were only that - well it's been clear for quite some time that the US wants this genocide to continue. It's just amazing what they are willing to sacrifice to ensure that the damage to the people of Gaza is maximized. This "non-binding" bullshit is not merely factually incorrect - but it is also some amazing levels of the US damaging their own interests.

This attempt at trivializing UNSC resolutions directly undermines the UN and international law in general. These institutions have been incredibly friendly to US and Western interests. The UN is the body by which a lot of US foreign policy gets implemented around the world. Seriously, who thinks a weaker UN and a weaker UNSC benefits the USA? Apparently these fucking useless assholes at State. No wait - if those paste eating morons were useless, that would be a massive improvement. This is active harm, requiring substantial effort. Calling them useless is wrong - they are far worse than that.

Here's another point - over the years and multiple US vetoes at the Security Council, the concept of a "rules based system of order" had been strained. Countries outside of the clique were looking in and seeing hypocrisy and obvious double standards. And to be fair, it was not the US alone that was wielding its UNSC veto in inconsistent ways - but to be clear - it is mostly the US doing this. But what we have here is different. It's not the US vetoing a resolution - it is the US outright declaring that no UNSC resolutions have any force unless the US says they do. That they demand the power to veto UNSC resolutions without even having to exercise their veto. The "rules based" system apparently is Calvinball rules. So - what does this mean for US foreign policy? What does this mean for how the US engages with other nations, when the US says "international law is optional whenever we don't like what it says"?

And for what? What do they get from this? They could have just vetoed again - they seem to be more than happy to veto shit that is firmly supported by the rest of the world. Is it because these stupid morons think that this helps them. They think that they can now be seen as supporting an immediate ceasefire - the words being directed at them by the public, by other nations, by their own staffers, and by countless aid agencies around the world. Even though they did not even vote in favour of it. This of course is an incredibly stupid plan that will not work. The famine is still going to happen and Israel is not letting up at all on their military operations. Multiple members of the Israeli government have already come out condemning the resolution, implying that Biden is a Hamas flunkie, and clearly indicating that they have zero intention of complying. And the US is not only not doing anything about it - they are actively encouraging it by saying the resolution is "non-binding".

Maybe. Maybe that's it. They could be just stupid. But often in situations like this, you also have to consider "maybe they are evil". And maybe that's the plan here. The US knows that the War in Gaza is going to have to stop eventually - and they've said outright that it will be diplomatic pressure that will force the operations to cease. So what this whole "non-binding" charade is - it's an attempt to prolong the war. To obfuscate and confuse things - to invalidate international bodies to prevent them from being used as a mechanism to apply pressure. IOW, what Team Biden is after here - is for Israel to have more time to do as much damage as possible to the people of Gaza. I know that sounds crazy - but at some point, you have to acknowledge reality. And the reality is that Biden's actions - of not applying the influence he has to allow food and water deliveries but instead shipping more and more bombs and munitions - they have all pointed to his position being "MOAR WAR PLZ".

Saying Goodbye to Brian Mulroney

I was holding off on this until all the hagiographies were done. While he died on Leap Day, the ass-kissing class of people that control our media wanted almost a full month of praising this fucking piece of shit asshole, and the state funeral wasn't until March 23.

It's fucking mindboggling. All this bullshit about the great 18th Prime Minister of Canada and how wonderful he was and whatnot. Dude was garbage. He managed to hoodwink people through his first term in office well enough to get a second majority - but holy shit did he fail with it. So fucking hard. Arguably the single worst prime minister in Canada's entire history.

He was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, so I think it's fair to judge his performance based on the fortunes of the party he lead. The conservative party in Canada has gone through multiple names and iterations over time, and the PCs came to be known as such in 1942. And Mulroney managed to kill the brand dead. The conservative party is now the Conservative Party of Canada - the Progressive Conservatives are gone.

In 1988, Mulroney managed to lead the PCs to a majority government with 43% of the vote. 169 seats, which would shrink to 156 as the 1993 election drew closer. This was a drop from the 1984 election which was a backlash to the complacent too-long-in-power Liberals. And really - that's all it was. The "natural governing party of Canada" had overstayed their welcome (having held government for something like two decades before the election) and Mulroney was just in the right place at the right time to be made Prime Minister. And then he managed to stay relatively popular for one term - then fucked up everything so badly that it's hard to actually understand the damage he did.

158 seats going into the 1993 election. How did they do? They elected Jean Charest and Elsie Wayne. Two seats. Two. You could count them on your thumbs.

The collapse of the conservatives allowed the establishment of not one - but two new political parties. Mulroney's complete alienation of the Canadian electorate created a vacuum into which Preston Manning's Reform Party stepped in - picking up 52 seats. Also, Mulroney's hubristic delusions of being the saviour of Canada's constitution and resolving the Quebec issue was so badly played that a Quebec sovereigntist party, the Bloc Quebecois, became the official opposition with 54 seats. I just want to reiterate this - Mulroney's second term as PM was so bad that Canadians fucking elected a secessionist party to be the official opposition. Just fucking nuts.

It was lasting damage too. The PCs stayed at 2 seats in the 1997 election. They would flounder for a bit, trying to hold on to their heritage as Canada's actual conservative party, but the Alberta rednecks had cemented themselves as the viable conservative party. Peter MacKay signed the death warrant when he reneged on his promise not to merge the party with the social conservatives from out west and that was the end of it.

Mulroney himself though? Did not stick around to face the music. Even with a majority, he still had to call an election in 1993 - so he bailed, announcing his resignation in February and handing the party over to Kim Campbell in June. The election was in September - so she had three months to convince the country that the party was different - and basically nobody knew who the hell she was.

So he fucked shit up worse than any Canadian politician ever. He lucked into a majority resulting from a once in a lifetime backlash to the Liberals and then managed to turn that into such hatred and vehemence of the opposition party that it actually collapsed out of existence.

He sucked shit. And this is all without mentioning his terrible policies or the fucking manilla envelopes stuffed full of thousand dollar bills. The guy was a corrupt traitor and Canada actually recognized it and killed his entire political party for it - and yet people have been singing his praises for weeks. And that's the story of our 18th Prime Minister. Just a garbage person who managed to get away with everything.

We Teach Life Sir

Since I’ve already suggested that everyone should read a thirty thousand word story from 1981, I guess I should keep recommending things. I mean if anyone actually reads these interminably long posts of mine, it’s pretty clear that I don’t much respect my audience’s time. 

Which is of course, actually true. I blog to quiet the voices in my head. I kind of expect no one to read these things. 

Anyways, the recommendation is a spoken word piece about Gaza. From Rafeef Ziadah from the time before the time before the time before the last time Israel assaulted Gaza. Or maybe the time before that. Anyways, here it is.

Why do I mention it? Because it is an amazing piece. But why do I mention it now? Well, I saw something that reminded me of that question “Don’t you think everything would be resolved if you just stopped teaching so much hatred to your children?”

Here’s what reminded me of that question.

True Names of Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge died on Wednesday. One of the old school SF writers that ushered in the age of cyberpunk and all that Intartrons nonsense. And as a shitposter, I feel it is important to acknowledge the man who predicted our world so incredibly accurately. 

The first Vinge I read was True Names. Let me just say right now, if you have not read it - stop reading anything else and track it down. It is amazing, and also - I am going to be spoiling it in this post. Now to be clear - as a story it is quite good, maybe even great (with a small g) - but it's not some transcendent work of narrative genius that will leave you weeping. It's a bit of a spy-thriller and the plot beats of it follow that template quite closely. Have their been Great Works (capital letters) that were spy-thrillers? Probably - it's not really my genre of choice - but I suspect that it's not all that many of them.

There are some more philosophical bits about the nature of the human condition, especially near the end - but end loading it like that made it feel kind of tacked on (even though you can tell it clearly isn't tacked on if you reread the story). Anyways - at its core function, as an SF-thriller novella - it is solid. A real page turner that actually engages the reader and makes you want to get to the end to see how it all turns out. But that's not why I think everyone should read it. There are loads of solid SF-thriller stories - and while True Names is good - I don't think of it as one of the Greats in terms of entertainment.

The reason it is one of the Greats (with a Capital G) is because of the other thing speculative fiction does - exploring the ideas contained within. And here, True Names is unsurpassed. Many of the core ideas of the story still seem like interesting takes on online culture. True Names was written in 1981 - a year before Burning Chrome, the predecessor to Neuromancer. Anyways, let's explore this a bit.

In 1981, there was a novella about the online space. Seventeen years before Google. Eight years before Tim Berners-Lee proposed the WorldWideWeb to CERN. Three years before William Gibson wrote about Henry Dorsett Case. This is a story about cyberspace that predates the word cyberspace. A story written when only a small fraction of people had ever heard the word "internet" - and even then, usually as "inter-networked".

The core conceit of the story is that in an online world, people with the ability to manipulate data and online systems are like wielders of powerful magic (called "warlocks" in the story) who have as their greatest weakness and liability their "True Names" - their names IRL. If one warlock has another's True Name, they have complete control over them. IOW, in 1981 there was an SF story where doxxing was a core feature in the world building.

Also too, the bad guy is an AI. One developed by the military for legitimate purposes (to protect government online assets from warlocks and enemy agents) that got out of hand because the folks in charge of it left it running without oversight. So the events of the story are prompted by someone using AI improperly.

In 1981.

It's been a while since I revisited his other works. I do recall them being fun reads also with interesting ideas - like how the Peace War and the bobbles worked. But True Names is the work of his that I remember best - and still surprises and shocks me how much of our world today he got bang on correct.

RIP in peace, Vernor Vinge.

I’m not ready to say I did it on purpose, I’m not ready to say I didn’t

The starvation campaign in Gaza is almost certainly worse than you think it is. Very few of us have any actual knowledge of what starvation does to people - maybe we've been in circumstances or seen others in situations where they have gone hungry for a long time. Some people voluntarily subject themselves to calorie restricted diets and maintain them for a long time. None of this is starvation and the difference is huge. It is not easy to die of starvation, it takes weeks of zero calorie intake - and months if you instead have a drastically reduced intake. It is a slow death that is as horrific and ghastly as anything we can imagine.

The campaign is worse than I thought it was. You cannot reverse this degree of starvation easily. The attacks on aid seekers and places that are internationally recognized as sanctuaries exempt from war (unless Israel it is Israel killing off Palestinians) will discourage people from going to get food - even as they die of starvation. And the agency with the most capacity to distribute aid in Gaza and that retains at least some credibility among the people there is UNRWA, which has been defunded.

My other concern was about refeeding syndrome - the physiological and metabolic changes the body implements to deal with starvation are in some ways incompatible with eating. Your blood chemistry gets all messed up - and in this state, eating can kill you. The wiki has a pretty clean explanation of the mechanism. So even if you could open up the gates and flood food into the Gaza Strip, the mere act of eating will kill more people because they have already been starved for too long.

How much starvation is there? There's actually a measurement for this, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. There are 5 phases in this classification - 1 is normal, 2 is "stressed", 3 is "crisis", 4 is "emergency", and 5 is "catastrophe". Currently no one in Gaza is at stage 2 or lower. Meaning that the best fed in Gaza are still in crisis. This makes up 12% of the population. 88% are at emergency level or worse. Fully half of Gaza - over a million people - are so hungry that the only classification beyond that is "died of malnutrition". Even if aid could be delivered - a million people are at risk of death by refeeding syndrome, and maybe even more than that. Refeeding syndrome can be avoided through monitoring of blood chemistry and keeping track of electrolyte levels - but the healthcare system in Gaza has been destroyed after months of bombardment. And there are other health impacts like disease and physical trauma that are still on the triage list. Gaza is a place now where amputation (sometimes done without anesthetic) is so widespread that it would be a public health issue if there weren't more pressing emergencies.

But as I mentioned, it's worse even than I think it is. I'm very privileged. I have never known real hunger. I cannot comprehend what this does to people psychologically. And this state is the one most of us live in. But we don't need to have direct personal experience to know things - that's what science is for. BUT, starvation is so bad that we do not allow it under any circumstances (unless it is Israel killing off Palestinians). You cannot conduct an experiment even on willing volunteers to investigate the impacts of starvation. 

Well at least you cannot do that now, but there used to be a time when you could get away with all sorts of stuff so long as it was "For Science!". Which brings me to the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Here, 36 young men - carefully selected for physical and mental health - were subjected to 24 weeks of starvation and 12 weeks of refeeding (although still at greatly reduced calories). A third of them had an additional 8 weeks of observed unrestricted eating after the program. You can read more about it here.

The impacts are nuts. And this is with people who knew they were in an experiment and that their lives would be returning to normal afterwards (their lives did not return to normal). Who weren't being subjected to round-the-clock bombings or being hunted by drones and IDF patrols. The title of this post is about one guy who cut three of his fingers off during the refeeding phase. Starvation breaks people's minds. And that's what's happen to literally millions of people right now.

The Purpose of Blogging is What it Does

A point I was trying to make earlier - stated intents and motives aren't as important as results. It's like when the US told Kataib Hezbollah "actions speak louder than words". For reference, Kataib Hezbollah has followed up on their words (from January) to refrain from attacking in order to not embarass the Iraqi government by not attacking despite the US assassinating one of their leaders.

Anyways, the US' constant refrain of Israel having to do more to protect civilians while supplying the very bombs being used to slaughter them is one of those examples of bullshitting about motives. As is just about everything that the IDF and Israeli regime says about protecting civilians.

But a lot of people refuse to believe this. They are the "good guys" - how can they be doing the war crimes? Only other people commit crimes, certainly not the Forces of Justice! I mean, Hamas is a terrorist organization - therefore anyone opposing them has got to be good and incapable of doing anything wrong - right? Of course this infantile moronic worldview is ridiculous, but it is also widely accepted.

Here's how I want to refute it. Facts matter. Results matter. And if you accept that, then there are some important consequences:

According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances.

Sure "cybernetician" is a pretty wanky word, but the principle here is a pretty good one. Results matter. If a system is doing something - starving children to death for example - then it can only be one of two things - an "unintended consequence" or it is being done on purpose.

With that, let me note the following:

Israel has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) not to issue emergency orders for it to step up humanitarian aid to Gaza to address a looming famine, dismissing South Africa's request to do so as "morally repugnant". 

In a legal filing to the United Nations' top court, made public on Monday, Israel said it "has real concern for the humanitarian situation and innocent lives, as demonstrated by the actions it has and is taking" in Gaza during the war.

Children have been dying of malnutrition for weeks now. Warnings of starvation were issued by international aid groups last year. What has been demonstrated by Israel's actions is that they are starving children on purpose. If this was an "unintended consequence" - they would have changed their approach a long time ago.

Their excuse for this - the only thing they have to explain their genocidal actions other than just pure eliminationist hatred - is that these are collateral damages in their righteous mission to "destroy Hamas". Just so we are clear - the best case scenario, the kindest take you can have to defend Israel's actions - is that they are intentionally starving children to death over the span of months but that these are acceptable losses.

Israel has now killed more children by starvation in the past month than all children killed by Hamas in any way throughout their entire existence.

And it is only going to get worse.

And this is all intentional on Israel's part. It is what they want to happen.

Two Things Can Be True

Speaking of being late to the party, following is my entry into the "Two Things Can Be True About the Israel-Palestine Crisis" body of work.

1. Hamas is a terrorist organization that brutally murdered hundreds of non-combatants and violently kidnapped hundreds more - including women, children, and the elderly.
2. The IDF and the Israeli government are worse than Hamas. By A LOT. It is not even remotely close.

Facts have to matter. Results have to matter. What Israel has done to Gaza since October 7th is at least an order of magnitude worse than everything that Hamas has ever managed in its entire existence combined.

The only argument I've seen that might bring the comparison close is where you start speculating about motives. "Hamas is worse because their intent is worse" - as if the people making this argument had magical mind reading powers. And even here - any fair accounting that doesn't make bullshit excuses for clear statements of genocidal intent from Israeli leaders would get you to about a draw. I mean, it's a qualitative comparison - you can't put a number on "how anti-social are these motives" - it's just "they aren't", "they are", and "holy shit - are they ever!" And both sides are firmly in category 3. So even when you discard actual results and the actual outcomes of actions from either side - at best, the Israeli government is about as bad as a terrorist organization. Hell, even if you give the genocide deniers their special pleading of "but the Prime Minister, President, Defense Minister, and senior military officers don't speak for Israel" nonsense - the fact that Israel is continuing their murderous campaign despite the civilian casualties and destruction - this demonstrates that their intentions are fucking horrible.

But let's not deal with "intent" that you can only demonstrate at this point with indirect observations and speculation. On every quantifiable measure, by any reasonable standard, the government and military of Israel is worse than Hamas - and usually by a huge amount. Let's just consider a few metrics:

• Number of civilians killed
• Number of children killed
• Ratio of non-combatants to combatants killed
• Number of people injured
• Number of non-combatants injured
• Number of hostages taken
• Duration that hostages have been held
• Number of hostages or prisoners injured
• Number of people who have claimed to have been tortured by each group
• Number of children taken hostage
• Damage to property and civilian infrastructure

And this isn't even considering the current starvation crisis. Which gets us to the even more damning part - the damage that Hamas has inflicted is basically done - and has been done for months. There have been two attacks by Hamas gunmen outside of Gaza since the original mass killing terrorist strike. resulting in I believe five Israelis killed (one of whom was killed by the IDF). OTOH, Israel's campaign of genocide continues vigorously and with new flavours of war crimes being introduced nearly constantly.

Here's a big part of why Gaza is still a big fucking deal to so many people - the scale and scope of what has happened in Gaza is just unbelievable. It's so much horror and suffering that the murderous attack of October 7 is dwarfed to the point of being round-off error. AND - the destruction of Gaza is still ongoing - it's literally still happening right now.

So yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed mass crimes against humanity - in cold blood with ample premeditation. But as bad as Hamas is, the IDF and the government of Israel is objectively worse - and worse by a huge margin.

Starvation as a Weapon of Blogging

The Flour Massacre on Leap Day was horrible enough on its own. It had been nearly five months of the military operation, with insufficient amounts of food and water getting into Gaza. Especially Northern Gaza which by then had not received any humanitarian aid at all for over a month. There were reports of people eating animal feed and grass. Children were already dying to malnutrition. A slow and horrific way to die - starved while literally thousands of aid trucks are being held up at the fence.

In the backlash to that crime and the mounting death toll of starved children, finally more aid trucks were being let through. Only for the IDF to open fire on these aid seekers too. There have been at least four incidents where aid seekers have been mass murdered by IDF fire since the Flour Massacre. It is almost as if the inability of the international community to punish blatant and obvious war crimes prompts the war criminals to continue doing war crimes.

People trying to get humanitarian aid - food and water to keep their kids from starving to death - what threat do they pose? Even the incredibly immoral and stupid automatic defense of the genocide deniers - the whining of "BUT HAMAS!" is meaningless here. Unless the goal is to starve enough of Gaza that Hamas also runs out of food? This is a clear and obvious war crime - it is not merely collective punishment, but it is such a depraved and monstrous view of the Palestinian people that it should disgust the entire world.

No, obviously this is insane. Hamas is a terrorist organization and they have the guns. The last people in Gaza to starve will be the Hamas terrorist gunmen. Trying to starve Hamas into surrendering means first starving two million people to death.

Perhaps the goal is to discourage starving Gazans from seeking aid? That Israel realizes that they will eventually be forced to allow more aid in - which is very slowly happening now - and that they can maximize the number of dead children by scaring Gazans into not seeking the paltry aid they let through. Even if that's not the intention, it's the result. An easily predictable result. That it continues to happen means that either Israel does intend to frighten starving people away from aid delivery or that they just don't give a shit about children starving to death.

Gaza is facing a man made famine. People have been dying of starvation for weeks now and still the level of aid reaching Gaza is woefully insufficient. What possible explanation could there be for this other than genocide? What possible threat could there be to allowing more food and water in? Not even the most contrived fever dreams of the genocide denialists can justify this.

The Hamas Blogging Plan

I know I've mentioned this before, but it definitely bears repeating. Quite likely the biggest reason for the scope and extent of the death and kidnapping on October 7th is that the Israeli security apparatus sucks shit at protecting Israelis. It really does. Just so we are clear on how bad they suck, they had Hamas' Battle Plan for over a year before October 7. It's been a while since I noted this, so let me return to exactly how fucking useless and incompetent these assholes are.

1. Despite the Battle Plan contained sensitive Israeli military secret information, Israeli intelligence dismissed it as being "aspirational". Sure they could steal secret military intelligence from Israel, but surely these terrorist gunmen couldn't, I don't know, carry an assault rifle while riding a motorcycle?
2. They had reports of dry runs being carried out in the summer. This is unsurprising - the people of Gaza, especially those suspected of being Hamas, are very tightly scrutinized and surveilled. So if a large number of Hamas fighters were doing training exercises, Israeli intelligence would have gotten reports of it. And it turns out that the training exercises matched the Battle Plan exactly. But still, the Hamas Battle Plan was dismissed as not being serious.
3. October 7 was the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack that started the Yom Kippur War. And the Hamas Battle Plan was for a surprise attack. It's almost as if someone paying attention could have guessed what the attack as going to be and when it would happen.
4. The number 4 is unlucky.
5. Despite all of that - what did the IDF do in advance of October 7th? They literally transferred troops away from Gaza so they could use them to bolster their support of Israeli settler terrorism in the West Bank.

The bullshit nonsense about "security guarantees" for Israel? Quite clearly and obviously, the biggest threat to Israel is the genocidal psychopaths running the country and the fact that gross incompetence results in zero consequences. There's a word that's been getting thrown around a lot - impunity. Mostly in relation to how the US refuses to do anything to hold Israel to account even when there are rampant and blatant war crimes being committed. But that lack of accountability is not solely a gutless American government issue. So much of the world is just letting this slide - just ignoring it completely.

If Hamas is not destroyed, this does not materially harm Israel's security. I know that sounds crazy - but it's the truth. Even if Hamas wants to destroy Israel (and they absolutely say that they do - so we should believe them) - they can only do what they are capable of. Surely Hamas has been wanting to destroy Israel for many years now! And their huge success in mass murdering Israelis would have been prevented if Israeli security wasn't such pure garbage. More importantly - Hamas is not what's causing terrorist gunmen to want to take up arms and commit mass atrocities in Israel. That would be the occupation. An occupied people will want to be free - and the harsher and worse the conditions of occupation are, the more likely it is for violent terrorist movements to come from it. "Destroying Hamas" will not make Gazans suddenly interested in ensuring Israelis feel safe - especially not now after months of the most intense military  siege since World War 2.

Nobody Needs 5 kg of Blogging per Day

I know I said the starvation stuff was going to get posted on another day, but I put together a pretty good comment on it and thought I'd pop it up here too.

Ryan Grim is usually pretty good, so it's surprising he made this mistake. The capacity of a 40 foot container truck is just about 20 tons. Israeli spokesperson Eylon Levy isn't saying that they would eat the trucks - 20 tons is what each truck could theoretically haul.

That said - yes, 5 kg per day is barely subsistence. Because Israel cut off Gaza's water supply, bombed the water mains, bombed the wells, and then pumped sea water into the aquifers and ground water. Hey, a package of dried pasta weighs almost nothing! You can get loads of meals out of a measley 5 kg. Who says you need to cook it? You can probably get even more nutrition by shoving fistfuls of flour straight into your mouth!

5 kg is the weight of 5 litres of water - the UN notes that basic needs for drinking and sanitation is between 50 to 100 litres per person per day. So 5 kg is less than a tenth of the minimum required amount for basic needs. 5 kg per day assumes a continued absence of sanitation and hygiene. In Eylon Levy's opinion, Gazans don't deserve access to showers or toilets or even hand washing. They can wash their hands when they lick the flour off their fingers I guess. But don't you dare accuse him of dehumanizing the Palestinians.

Back to the trucks. Let's say they are hauling MREs. An MRE is between a pound and a pound and a half. 1 MRE is around 1,250 calories - so if you are going through 3 MREs per 2 days you will still be in calorie deficit. Here's an article with a Navy SEAL explaining what to do if you have to survive on MRE's.

"You definitely want to drink water," Smith told Military.com. "Depending on how much you weigh, anywhere from a half-gallon to a gallon a day."

So between the drinking water and the MRE, we're already closing in on 4 kg. That's assuming no packaging weight and never washing anything. Just what gets eaten and drunk on a diet that still results in calorie deficit. For a population where people are already dying of malnutrition. The current top reply to Levy is a doctor who notes that since October 7, Gaza has been short half a million tons of food - so the needs are heightened even more.

This water requirement is probably around right only because it's still winter. If it gets hotter down there in the Middle East, the water needs are going to increase substantially - and that's still assuming no showers or washing or flushable toilets - and it's already been five months of this.

TL;DR: 500 trucks per day would still result in conditions that North Americans would not tolerate in for-profit prisons. But an official spokesperson for the Israeli government wants you to believe that this is extravagant.

The average number of trucks entering Gaza in February was less than 50 per day.

Another Update on How the Blogging is Going

I have a lot to say about all of the intentional starvation and the grotesque kabuki of air drops and a floating pier, but that's going to be a post for another day. I was going to do some SOTU stuff - but I'm kind of torn bout which way to go with it. On the plus side, a very aggressive and confrontational SOTU that directly attacked Republicans and the "predecessor" relentlessly - that's good. OTOH, the stuff about Gaza was painfully bad.

So I will retreat back to playing with numbers.

The IDF claims that they killed 30 Hamas fighters in the past 24 hours. We need to remember that the IDF lies - including about the number of Hamas they kill. Of the 30K official dead, the IDF claims that 12K of them are Hamas fighters, even though some 70% are women and children. It's just not even remotely credible.

Still, let's indulge their fantasy numbers. If the IDF is managing to kill an average of 30 Hamas terrorists per day, how much longer do we have? Oh, I guess we also have to assume that somehow, in the midst of all the fighting, that Hamas recruitment is zero. Also totally not credible. But, we're still humouring the insane fairy tale land of the "eradicate Hamas" lunatics like the Israeli government and people like Joe Biden.

The number of Hamas fighters was estimated at between 20K and 30K before the war. We're also using the obviously bullshit 12K already killed. So there might be as few as 8K left to mop up. Now remember, this is leaning heavily on the scale where we take obvious IDF lies and assume they are true (because that's the standard operating procedure of much of the West) and weight every assumption in favour of the military operation as much as possible.

267 more days. The actual number is probably infinite since the brutal campaign of genocide is obviously creating more Hamas supporters. But even in the world of the genocidal maniacs who think "BUT HAAAMMMAAASSS!!!11!1eleventy-one!" is a full and complete rebuttal to any argument, the killing will go on at least until the end of November.

When Will It Be Enough Blogging

From the early days of the conflict, the question was asked - how many Palestinians will have to die? We've had some pretty horrific answers, many documented in South Africa's ICJ case - but also answers from the US as well. All of them. Kill them all. You know, your normal every day regular non-genocidal speech. Except for the "non" part.

But it's those patchouli reeking SJWs that ask this question - as some sort of gotcha. Almost as if they don't recognize that there apparently is nothing Israel can do which would justify any degree of Palestinian response - and also that anything Palestinians do is full justification for any measures Israel pursues, up to and including genocide. Under these rules, it's quite simple - just like Michelle Salzman and Andy Ogles have explicitly stated.

Unfortunately for the morality-free assholes who agree to this murderous standard - there are other parties asking. Specifically Israel is asking "how many dead Palestinians will be enough?" Only Israel is asking it like this "is this batch of war crimes enough for you to withdraw support - No? Well how about this brand new batch of war crimes - Are you uncomfortable enough to actually do something or do you kick the can down the road further?

The latest round is the Flour Massacre. The first convoy of trucks headed to northern Gaza in over a month was fired upon by the IDF. Over a hundred dead, hundreds more wounded. Is that enough? Cutting off any humanitarian aid delivery to northern Gaza for over a month, and then shooting people when they line up to get flour?

Every day, IDF soldiers upload videos of themselves committing war crimes - and that has never been enough. Not even when the IDF admitted that they used to run a channel that curated hundreds of these videos, snuff videos captioned with some of the most genocidal language imaginable. That didn't even get any acknowledgement.

So this latest horrific massacre won't do it. It's conceivable that some of the murderous sociopaths running the State Department are delighted with the slaughter - Stuart Seldowitz would have been.

The next round of "is this enough yet?" is coming soon. Children have been dying of malnutrition from this intentional starvation campaign. That's not going to slow down. We've been warned that famine an disease are going to eclipse the toll from violent deaths, with the official count already over 30K. That's now on the horizon, and the reports of the numbers of malnourished children dying is going to start coming in.

Will that be enough? Will that finally motivate the US to stop enabling this genocide?

No. It won't. We've been told how many Palestinians have to die. And if this was wrong - some sort of exaggeration, then there would have been consequences for Salzman and Ogles.