The Ceasefire is at Risk

Ceasefire deal is in danger of collapse. Hamas is delaying hostage release because it claims that Israel has been in violation of the ceasefire terms by impeding aid delivery and killing people in Northern Gaza. There was an incident a few days ago where the IDF said they "fired warning shots" and killed three people. There's also video from Ceasefire Day One of a teenaged boy being killed by a sniper and a second Palestinian is shot and injured trying to recover the body. That's not the only incident - there are reports of multiple Gazans being killed by the IDF during this ceasefire.

I've been trying to find information about the truck volumes.  There's this story from the first week of the ceasefire, which says 4,200 trucks entered in six days - and that's including a drastic drop in volume on the sixth day down to 339 trucks. On average this is 700 trucks per day, above the minimum of 600 required under the deal - although it's not clear to me if an average is acceptable or if it has to be at least 600 every day. 

I also found this update saying it's "over 10,000" on February 6th. Meaning 5,800 trucks entered between January 25 and Feb. 6 - or over the span of 12 days - which is below 500 averaged over that time frame. And finally, there are stories like this one claiming "over 12,600 trucks" as of Feb. 9. This last one seems dodgy to me,  Feb. 9 marked 21 days of ceasefire - so if we assume the deal is for the average number of trucks, 12,600 is literally the bare minimum requirements. 

We do have a statement from Euro-Med Monitor that the amount of aid being allowed is insufficient and falling short of the agreed upon volumes.

Is it possible that the actual bare minimum number of trucks (using the assumption that it is 600 trucks averaged out over time) have been delivered and Hamas is lying about impeded aid? Yes. I do believe the possibility that Hamas is lying. Is it also possible that truck volume surged in the first five days of ceasefire while everyone's attention was being drawn and has since tailed off to below the required minimums? Also yes - this is definitely a distinct possibility.

Still, the fact remains that Israel is still shooting Gazan civilians to death under the "ceasefire" and judging by how the "ceasefire" in Lebanon has been going, it's entirely reasonable to believe that they are not abiding by the terms - and also that the "guarantors" are letting them get away with it.

The situation though - still vastly improved over what it was like at any point in 2024. But those improvements might not be durable at all. And now we are facing the challenge of trying to keep the fragile peace intact all while Trump continues to insist on ethnic cleansing and mainstream media keeps sanewashing the proposal.

What About a One State Solution?

Two states has been the de-facto solution, supported by basically every nation in the world - even notionally Israel. But a lot of people, now including the Israeli Knesset, have deemed this answer to be unworkable. It's an interesting point - the idea of two states peacefully co-existing beside one another - with the current levels of animosity between them - this sounds like it will never work. But of course, this is nonsense - Germany and France co-existed and shared a border through both World Wars and are now close allies. India and Pakistan were given arbitrarily drawn borders by the British and religiously segregated into unfriendly sides, and they co-exist with only low level belligerence between them - despite both being controlled by highly nationalistic fascist or near-fascist governing bodies. It certainly can work - it's only opposed because Israel sees this as a massive loss of power and influence.

So what is the alternative? It's a one-state solution. Israel - from the river to the sea. Technically the status quo. We can see the obvious problems with that - mostly deriving from the denial of the right to self-determination for the Palestinians. This manifests itself in problematic ways - whether you call it "resistance" or "terrorism" - it is the obvious response to oppressing a large mass of people. This is the point that the Abraham Accords dipshits refuse to acknowledge - "oh, let's just pretend that the Palestinians just don't exist and maybe they will go away". It is born of deep ignorance and stupidity and a whole lot of racism.

The other problem with that is legitimacy. This would not be seen as a legitimate solution by a large part of the world - it would be what it is now, an apartheid state. Fundamentally, it is being denied the right to vote but being subject to the laws and rules forced upon you. It's like the American Founding Fathers with their "no taxation without representation" - only "taxation" in this case means dehumanizing oppression in every single aspect of your life. It's kind of wild that the denial of the resistance of the oppressed is so strong in America, born from revolution and maniacally fixated on the notion of Freedom - but I guess racism is a helluva strong drug.

Apartheid regimes are limited in their legitimacy - much of the world will not recognize it as valid. While it is possible to have an apartheid regime in the modern world, don't expect to be a member in good standing of the global community. This is the story of Apartheid South Africa and the birth of the Boycott Divest Sanction movement. Even if the elites love the racism and want to support the racist state, the public won't accept it and will force change. And while Israel had many advantages in avoiding BDS given that the state was born out of the singular horror that was the Holocaust, the genocidal campaign in Gaza has burned much of that forbearance.

Israel cannot withstand BDS. It's not a major economic power like China or Russia, that can just ride it out. It's network of allies that will support it despite the apartheid is ever shrinking and support from those allies becomes more tenuous with every bomb the IDF drops. The only thing keeping Israel as an existing state right now is the unconditional support of the USA - which explains the ludicrous efforts and resources being expended by AIPAC. You don't even need a pro-BDS president, just one that's not a hardcore Zionist. This would basically undermine the entire existence of Israel as a sovereign state.

So that is the alternative. A one-state solution, Israel from the river to the sea. And believe it or not, this is what a lot of pro-Palestine activists want too - a one-state solution, only without the apartheid. Some Palestinians want to return to the lands their parents and grand-parents were expelled from during the Nakba. I imagine that there might even be some Nakba survivors remaining today. And adding some 5 million Arab voters to the Israeli electorate would certainly change the way Israel does anything - but also, is a scenario that much of the Israeli elite would despise even more than a two state solution.

The denial of a Palestinian state is thus a doubling down on what is now seen as a lost bet. Israel and the US put a bet down on Palestine suddenly not being a problem any more - because reasons. And the past sixteen months have shown that this was an incredibly stupid bet. I mean - what is the prize if they won this bet? A strip of land polluted with unexploded ordnance and still holding thousands of bodies buried under the rubble? Did they think that opening a US-Israel theme park in Gaza was going to be met with world-wide acceptance? Where do they think "terrorism" comes from?

But there's more in how badly they lost this bet. What they did not expect (and still refuse to acknowledge) is that Palestinians are fucking unbelievably amazing. The resilience and solidarity of the people of Palestine is mind blowing. As I have gotten older, I have become more jaded and cynical about human nature, but the spirit of the people of Palestine has shown me that I'm an idiot. It was back in December of 2023 that I thought their spirit might be broken - that would have been more than enough to have broken me. But time and again, even as the entirety of the Gaza Strip was completely destroyed and they suffered pain and losses unimaginable - they kept going. And they keep going. And they kept right on going. And I may never understand where they find the strength but they do. The amount of denial of reality that's required to look at what Gaza has been through and the people still standing tall despite it all and thinking that they can still be defeated? It would require a truly breathtaking amount of delusional stupidity and intense racism - but here too I guess I have underestimated the scope of human nature.

The Hostages

The ceasefire is holding - knock on wood. There was just an exchange of 3 Israelis for 183 Palestinians, and one aspect of the Palestinians released caught my attention. You might have missed it - I get caught up on some of the weirdest things. Let me quote it below:

Detained in Gaza on suspicion of militancy, the 111 Palestinians released Saturday have been held without trial since the day after the Oct. 7 attack.

Something I have been saying for a while is that the IDF is worse than Hamas. By every conceivable measure. One of these was hostages kidnapped - Hamas took a few hundred hostages on October 7th and these hostages are the only hostages that are referred to when the word hostages is used.  But as I said - the IDF is worse.

111 people in Gaza were taken by the IDF on October 8. "Detained", And now released. Not Hamas terrorists - as noted in the article, no prisoners that participated in the October 7th attack would be released. IOW, the IDF rounded up 111 Gazans on October 8th and just fucking held them in custody even after determining that they had nothing to do with October 7th. No charges let alone convictions - just held and now released, they have been in custody for 1 day less than the hostages that everyone is so concerned about.

To be clear - I am not defending Hamas. They attacked civilians, killed many of them, and kidnapped others. These are criminal acts - even given that they are resisting occupation and siege. They are a terrorist organization. But they are practically angels and boy scouts compared to the Israeli state and the IDF. Even going by the unbelievably biased standard of starting the clock on October 7th, Israel and the IDF are so much worse than Hamas. Fully an order of magnitude worse - likely much more than that.

Anyways - 3 hostages taken on October 7th were released, as well as 111 hostages taken on October 8.

Democracy is the Worst Form of Government Except for All of the Other Ones

One thing about gangs of thieves is that betrayal is a feature, not a bug. The buzz right now is that Trump is expanding Witkoff's mandate based on his securing the Gaza ceasefire. Specifically, the speculation is about getting Witkoff to do a deal with Iran. Traditional establishment types, the kind who loved McCain's Bomb Iran song, are getting booted and I'm pretty curious about how AIPAC is taking it.

It shouldn't be surprising - all of Trump's owners are making moves with Iran. Putin just finalized a military co-operation deal with Iran, and Saudi Arabia is moving forward with settling their long standing rivalry. There's definitely a current of bringing Iran into the club - it is one of the expansion nations in BRICS. While Trump does count on the Israel lobby to back him at every step, apparently he feels like he owes them nothing in return. They need him more than he needs them and he knows it.  

Am I noting this because I think it'll be good for Gaza (because it is obviously bad for Israel)? Maybe? It's complicated. 

I don't think this is good for Gaza. Acting in opposition to Israel specifically with regards to the generations of occupation and apartheid and now this recent stage of full blown genocide? That is good - but it does not excuse the horrible shit that came with it. Hamas is a terrorist organization that specifically targeted civilians for violence and harm. More over, they were not and are not a responsive and fair governing authority. Violating human rights in the Gaza Strip is not a practice unique to the occupying IDF forces. Hamas, well they're no angels.  

Additionally, Iran is a far-right theocracy - not the type of people I want to see becoming more influential in our already broken world. So this is bad in many ways. That said - my objections are pretty high minded relative to the fact that it is a fucking genocide going on. I'm going off that Ben Franklin quote - " those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." But the fact is, Palestinians (especially those in Gaza) already have neither liberty nor safety. Worrying about the spread of far right religious extremists is a luxury that is pretty alien to a devastated territory that has been essentially bombed out of existence. These concerns are well into "let them eat cake" levels of out-of-touch.  

Here's where I am - the US has lost a fuckton of standing in the world, and the new Commander-in-Chief is absolutely not going to reverse that trend. And as terrible as US foreign policy has been, I still see this as a very bad thing. The West built up an international order, which had a lot of very real problems, but also too delivered a lot of real benefits. Maybe I can say this because I am not a citizen of the Global South, but I do believe that the "international rules based order" has been a net positive, and by a pretty significant margin. But the whole thing has been severely damaged by the ridiculous antics of the Biden Administration - just absolutely shredded and left with little to no legitimacy whatsoever.  

And it wasn't just Biden, although clearly he was the driving force behind it all. The whole lot of us -Canada, the EU, our allies like Japan and Australia - we all went along with it. Maybe some of us put up some resistance eventually, but certainly not enough. We are at this point because Western democracy has failed so spectacularly and now the consequences are starting to show themselves.  There are other games in town - and as much as we tell ourselves that "democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other ones" - well maybe we have been rating it too highly. 

Screams Without Words

I got a lot of pushback when I suggested that the accounts of Hamas using rape as a weapon of war might be lies. Hamas is a terrorist organization! Of course they were systemically raping people in their October 7th attack! Except of course, now we know that there was an active effort to lie about this. Basically every story that was exploded into the front pages was discredited. The big one - which this post is named after - was written by someone who approvingly liked some outright genocidal posts on social media. Where multiple people she interviewed said that they were misrepresented and interviewed under false pretenses.

The Israeli prosecutor who had charge of investigating these cases eventually conceded "we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different…"

As far as I know, there are zero substantiated cases of rape committed by Hamas on October 7th. Zero.

That's not necessarily evidence that Hamas terrorists did not commit rapes in the attack - but it is absolutely evidence that the accusations widespread use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war were bullshit. Also I would like to note - it is immensely more evidence than should be required. If we go by past behaviour, the assumption should be that the IDF is lying. They are shameless in their lying - they make Republican politicians look like an honest men. No really, they are that bad. Just awful, terrible purveyors of bullshit. 

Also too - it actually is believable that the Hamas fighters did not commit any rapes or sexual assaults. Now I said the IDF lies all the time, but that does not mean that Hamas is strictly honest. They are a terrorist organization, they deliberately targeted civilians, it is completely unsurprising that they too would lie and peddle bullshit stories to cover up their war crimes. Only thing is - the explanation for why their fighters didn't rape anyone actually makes Hamas look worse. And that was why I felt it was believable.

Hamas noted two items. First, their fighters are religious nutjob "holy warriors" on what was likely going to be a suicide mission. This was the blaze of glory they were going to go down in - and they are religious fundamentalist extremists - so they wouldn't sin by committing haram acts at that moment. This is hardly a flattering description - so it does ring true. Now it is also true that a lot of people claiming to be deeply religious also do a lot of systemic sexual abuse - but very few of them are the kind so committed to the cause that they go on suicide missions to slaughter civilians. Regardless, this is the less strong explanation for why Hamas did not rape on October 7th.

The second thing the Hamas spokesperson said was that their fighters knew they were on a clock - that the overwhelming response from the Israeli military was on its way and that they only had a short window to kill as many Israelis as they could. So they didn't commit rape because that would take away from their murdering time. Which, holy shit - this "excuse" kinda makes them seem even worse.

Anyways, this is still not complete exoneration. The explanations as to why Hamas would not have raped during their terror attack are believable and match the evidence so far - which is that there is no credible evidence of rape. But it still remains possible - perhaps the only rape victims were also murdered. A lot of people were murdered that day. But really, this is the extent we have to go to in order to substantiate a belief that Hamas committed rape.

OTOH, we do have criminal charges about rape and the use of sexual assault as torture on Palestinian prisoners held by Israel at Sde Teiman. IOW, if we use as a standard - the number of criminal charges for rape laid by the Israeli criminal justice system - the IDF is still worse than Hamas.

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

A fun book and maybe worth looking back into in these dark times ahead. The title comes from a story of a small town fire department being dispatched to a building with smoke billowing out the window. They found a man lying down on a smouldering mattress. After dousing the burning bed, they questioned the man - was he smoking before going to sleep? That sort of thing. His answer is the title of this post.

There's a lot of things this title could refer to. The most apt topic - admitting something truly monumentally ridiculous just to avoid conceding that they may have done something wrong. Even if that excuse is way more wrong.  Very relevant for our times now. This post is not that - it's about the LA wildfires.

Wait, those are still a thing? Yes, those are still a thing. 10,000 acres near Bel Air has gone up in flames. And still the reporting on it is likely to not say anything about climate change. These fires are 100% due to climate change, even though there are countless people desperately seeking the one initial cause of these fires.

Wildfires happen. All the time. There are countless different things which might start them. And most of the time, they aren't an issue. They burn themselves out before become a big deal - or firefighting gets dispatched and they get the blaze contained in short order. This is how things normally work - and there are a lot of resources put into monitoring for new fires as well as respond to them as quickly and effectively as possible. This is how it has always gone - tall towers out in the sticks with a person regularly scanning the forest for wisps of smoke - calling incidents in and having aircraft at the ready to be dispatched. The methodology we have used for generations.

But these fires are around LA. The population of Greater Los Angeles is over 18 million people - these fires were going to be spotted very early, and there are massive resources sitting right there, ready to deploy in no time flat. This is why we normally don't get fires threatening large metropolitan areas - the concentration of people automatically makes the area exceptionally well suited to preventing wildfire outbreaks. It takes a very rapidly growing fire - one with access to a lot of high quality fuel - to actually get out of control. And that only happened because of the climate change inflicted drought.

Typically, fires that do major damage to cities are fires that start in the city - because many buildings are exactly the sorts of high fuel density structures that result in out of control fires. Building codes and urban planning have done a lot to reduce this problem - but there are still bad decisions that can result in very bad outcomes.  The 2023 Tantallon Fire in suburban Halifax for example - subdivisions built right into the forest had to be evacuated. Not just because they were built into the wildlands, but also because they were built with "dry hydrants" - essentially a pipe that leads out to a lake. In hindsight, these were recognized as inadequate. Also too, these were subdivisions with houses scattered across half a dozen blocks or more - maybe a hundred houses or so - all with a single 2 lane road as a gateway to the main arterial. Suboptimal for getting firefighting crews in and evacuating residents out.

The other threat to urban areas is when remote wildfires grow out of control and then continue growing until they start to encroach on cities. In 2016, the Fort McMurray fires started 15 km away from the city. This one also was enabled by climate change and the drought induced build up and drying out of fuel. Fire crews responded and were spraying within an hour. Under normal circumstances, this would have been another contained wildfire, but that's not how it went.

The Pacific Palisades fire started about 5 km away and fire trucks were on the scene 45 minutes after getting the call. This is problematic - they should have responded faster, but apparently they were already dispatched to numerous other fires happening at the time. Because, as I noted initially, wildfires happen all the time. And as we have seen - the conditions were extremely conducive for wildfires. Perhaps LAFD needed more resources - that certainly seems believable. Still, 45 minutes is not a long time for a forest fire under normal conditions. It should have been contained - and only wasn't because the entire area was a tinderbox full of fuel that had been dried out after literally nine months without rain.

So climate change is 100% the cause of the damage. You cannot prevent all wildfires from happening - they always happen and have always happened. But we've developed methods for containing the threat and respond to the danger - only problem is that those methods were developed in a pre-climate change environment, and they are now woefully inadequate in our more extreme weather world. That's what happened here - and it is going to happen more and more frequently. 

Fun fact - preventing wildfires has been recognized as one of the causes of extreme wildfire damage. When you stop all wildfires as soon as you can, the amount of fuel builds up. More trees die or drop branches, which sit on the ground, drying out over time. If these don't burn normally, then they just contribute to the danger when the next wildfire eventually does come close. 

How it's Going in Gaza

Been a while since we looked in on this. It's just so goddamned depressing - reviewing the circumstances at any point in the past half year or so means grappling with the fact that the Gaza Strip has been destroyed. Most of the buildings have been demolished or are severely damaged that they will need to be demolished. All of the normal infrastructure that's associated with human habitation, also destroyed. Water, sewer, electrical, libraries, schools, markets, and of course the entire healthcare system - pretty much wiped out.

So, what was achieved? What can Biden and Netanyahu say they managed to accomplish over these fifteen months of genocidal rage?

Nothing. And that's being as generous to them as possible about it. Even if you don't count a literal genocide as negative (because you are a racist fuckhead like Joe Biden or his foreign policy brain trust) - this whole tragedy has only incurred massive costs on the US and Israel. Israeli society was allowed to sink into the darkest depths of genocidal fever - which is going to result in a very serious reckoning when the time comes. But even aside from these future implications, they've paid a significant cost now.

The international standing of these countries is in tatters. And their strenuous efforts at postponing and delaying accountability means that this continuous harm to their reputations will persist. The ICC and ICJ cases will continue to have developments keeping the genocide as an active issue - all while we start getting information out from Gaza about how hellish the situation really is. The Hind Rajab Foundation's pursuit of IDF soldiers with complaints and requests for arrests being made anywhere exposed IDF soldiers travel is eventually going to have a hit and lead to an arrest. As much as everyone just wants to move on and not think about the genocide, we will be confronted by it repeatedly in the coming years.

Here's something I did not see as being part of the cost to Israel and their lobby in the US. That control over US foreign policy has been shaken. The genocide is so bad that large swaths of the American public and many people in the system itself - are now doing the previously unthinkable - questioning US support of Israel. This has been a forbidden topic for so long - it was always taken for granted that the US would back Israel no matter what. Well, the absolute shitshow this has resulted in has changed the game. Also too - and it's wild that someone as evil and shitty as he is - Donald Trump's return to power has changed the game. While most politicians, and basically anyone prior to Trump that could make it as a viable candidate for president, must have had extreme loyalty to Israel - Trump doesn't. Trump's only loyalty is to Trump. The fact that he's even worse than your usual politician is the gamechanger.  For him, there are no sacred cows - anything can be sacrificed to the higher purpose of appeasing whatever shiny thing has his attention at that moment in time. And that includes the US' ironclad support of Israel.

Nearly a thousand IDF soldiers have died. Many times more than that have been injured. And many times more than that have been traumatized. Israel had been scraping the bottom of their conscription reserves for some time - forcing people who had retired out of service to pick up guns and cutting off time for reservists to lower than had previously been legally allowed. Worse - Iran now knows how to defeat the missile defense system. Even the Houthis were able to successfully hit Israel through the Iron Dome and with a US carrier group assisting the interception efforts. This easily offsets whatever deterrence impact they managed to get from the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership. Hell, Sinwar died in a manner that made him a frigging hero. Holding off an IDF squad single handedly. Literally single handed - he lost one in the fighting, and still managed to push a squad back, forcing them to fall back on a quadcopter to kill him. And he went down fighting to the very end. On the front line.

The traumatization of IDF soldiers is going to get worse. As I mentioned before, there will be a reckoning as Israeli society starts to come to grips with what they have done. Now to be clear - there are definitely parts of Israeli society that won't give a shit - but it's absolutely not everybody. Some of them will see how they got played by Netanyahu and the far right. The harm to Gaza was especially bad because so many children were killed and maimed - and not every Israeli will continue to be able to justify this by ralling back on being racist shits and discounting those children just because they are Arabs. Some Israelis are going to realize what's happened - what they did. And some of those people are drone operators and snipers.

Their stated goals were to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages. Hamas is not destroyed. The US believes that Hamas has essentially replenished their ranks by recruiting as many fighters as had been killed. Also too - it's not like that boost in recruiting ability is temporary, so undoubtedly - the military arm of Hamas is in better position now than they were on October 7. As for rescuing hostages? They did manage to rescue some hostages by force. Something like 8 hostages have been rescued alive by the IDF. This is fewer than the IDF has killed with their bombings.

Biden's position on any post-war Gaza was that Hamas could not have any role in it - in any way, shape, or form. But this was always stupid - who the hell is the ceasefire deal with then? If Hamas doesn't exist, there can be no ceasefire deal since there's no one to deal with. And sure enough, Hamas is not only still around, but remains the de-facto government of Gaza. The PA has stated that they are ready to take over in Gaza, but this will be pure theatre. It will be the same people who are doing the job now that will be doing the job after. And also too, even if Hamas steps away from their governance role, there is nothing in the ceasefire agreement about Hamas disarming or dismantling itself. And why should there be? As noted - Hamas is in a stronger position now than they were over a year ago.

Working Tirelessly for a Ceasefire Deal

So we have a ceasefire deal. And it was Trump that made it happen. I mean - how long has he neem working tirelessly for a ceasefire deal? And then the Democrats lose the White House and pow - ceasefire deal. Also - as Biden so proudly notes - it's the same deal as from May 31. 229 days of stall and delay and genocide, all endorsed by Joe. For what? Blinken admitted yesterday that they assess that Hamas has recruited as many fighters as have been killed, so they didn't do shit to eliminate Hamas. Earlier on, I said that this all would have been for nothing - that Hamas was going to survive the onslaught, thereby annulling the primary reason for the violence. But I was young and naive - I did not believe that Biden's actual goal was to kill a lot of Arabs. How stupid of me - of course America's unstated goal was killing Arabs - it's as American as apple pie.

And that Trump is getting credit, that's actually what Biden wants. He did not contest that Trump made it happen. When pushed on it, he just said "are you kidding?" and then walked away. Why? Because he does not want to be tied to anything that results in less killing of Arabs. He thinks that being responsible for a ceasefire will make him a bad Zionist, which is what he fears most of all.

How else can we explain it? The fact is that Israel is the client state - it is entirely dependent on the US for its very existence. If the president wanted anything out of Israel, he can get it - Israel has no choice but to agree. There's that story of how Reagan ended an Israeli massacre of Muslims with a single phone call. Because that is the reality. POTUS has full control over Israel - it exists solely at the American president's discretion. If Israel wasn't such a fucking violent racist nation with a long history of just overwhelmingly bullshit war crimes - this would not be true. If it made any effort at reconciliation with the rest of the region and ended the occupation - it could continue on its own merits. But they won't - largely due to the fact that the US is more than happy to support their racist aggression.

What's Trump's motivation here? Who the hell knows! It's Trump - dude is "a very stable genius". He's erratic and irrational. If someone got a chance to pitch this idea to him and just out of random chance, it took - then that's the new policy. Maybe Trump was in a good mood when someone told him "if you force Bibi into a ceasefire, you'll look like a genius statesman and Biden will look like a useless wimp" - and that's all it took. Or maybe he got orders from MBS. Or maybe there's a secret side deal for more genocide after Trump is sworn in. Anything's possible with Trump.

So now - Democrats have a choice. Joe Biden's legacy will be genocide - his administration will be forever tied to these fifteen months of mass slaughter. And - if it truly is a ceasefire deal with international humanitarian agencies being given access to the killing fields - it's going to be current news for quite some time. So what are Democrats going to do? Will they break from their Islamophobic past - throwing Biden and the rest of the genocide enthusiasts under the bus? Imagine - putting the Clintons out to pasture, never to speak at a major Democratic event again. Or will they double down on "actually, genocide is good when you do it to Arabs"?

I'm not optimistic. It'll be progressives and minorities and special interests pitted against the old guard. And while the playing field is tilted against the old guard - I don't see them relinquishing power even if it does mean tying the party to racist bullshit and genocide.

Returning the World to a Sense of Normalcy

Here's another attempt at doing a post-mortem on the Harris campaign - an interesting exercise as us Canucks are due for a spring election and the Liberals seem dead set on running a candidate that will promise to be exactly the same as the one the public despises right now. Anyways, I came across an interesting tweet. It's a good argument - the expanding of Israel's fun-time bombing into Lebanon in October and the materializing reality of the dreaded "wider regional war" really highlighted Trump's argument about how the world was going to hell under Biden.

I think it was especially damaging to Harris because of their whole argument for getting elected in the first place. If you recall it went something like "wow, that Trump guy sure was a lot of nonsense. Wouldn't you like to return to a more normal world where America isn't the butt of jokes? Look, the Democrats are running the boring-est, most cookie cutter standard old white guy possible." Going back to normal - that was the actual value proposition. "Build Back Better" - a brilliant slogan of returning to the way things were before Trump fucked it over.

And in Joe's defense - he delivered on this, except on foreign policy. It wasn't just Trump that was causing instability, COVID messed the world up something fierce. And Biden did fix this. He was a great steward of the economy despite being given enormous issues to deal with. The rate of people dying to the mysterious disease dropped, and maybe Biden didn't do much to make this happen as this is the pathway for all pandemic diseases over time - the fact that he treated COVID like a real threat was a breath of fresh not-contaminated air. Deferring to experts instead of promoting horse paste and injecting bleach is exactly the type of thing Joe promised in the 2020 campaign. 

Now to be clear - he did not fix everything (other than foreign policy), The housing crisis got worse. A lot worse. That probably hurt the Democrats chances. Also, he did basically nothing on criminal justice reform - but that probably didn't hurt them much as this was more of a return to the way things were - an embracing of the good old days when police brutality was something you only pretended to disapprove of. And wildly - that worked. The anger and outrage in the summer of George Floyd just quieted down as people continued ignoring how racist and garbage our police forces have become. A return to normalcy.

And also - Joe very rarely featured in the monologues of late night talk shows. The president wasn't the butt of jokes all day, every day. Just occasionally, as it was in the olden pre-Trump days. One part of this was that Trump lied all the time. Just big fat whoppers every time he opened his YUGE yapper. Trump is the reason so many people now know who Daniel Dale is - his existence elevated "fact checking" to a lofty position in the discourse. Even harmless shit like pretending that "covfefe" actually meant something, to crazy nonsense like making up a brand new hurricane track forecast with a Sharpie just to avoid acknowledging that forecasts sometimes change.

Let's acknowledge the truth here - Joe was never a strong candidate. Even four years ago before his age really started catching up to him. He was never charismatic and he did not project an image of leadership. He is a self-acknowledged "gaffe machine" that also says stupid shit all the time. His main selling point as a politician is that he is likable - and also, that he is not Donald Trump.

And then October 7th happened and Joe's Israel-Palestine policy flushed the whole thing down the crapper. The Biden administration just kept feeding tens of thousands of tons of bombs into the suffering factory being run by the most fascist far-right government Israel has ever known. A coalition that literally includes someone convicted for terrorism as the Minister of National Security. 

Sure, the pre-Trump world had a lot of violence in it. Obama was the king of drone warfare and the use of high tech death machines to unalive brown people was a feature in the way things used to be. But Gaza is different. Even people who acknowledge that it is genocide keep downplaying how fucking horrific the situation in Gaza is. How incredibly sick and twisted the IDF has been and how we are all seeing it play out in real time.

And as noted - an October surprise of the expanding Middle East war, with the threat of Iran getting actively drawn in and the possibly US boots on the ground with the flag draped coffins that implies - that probably did not help the Harris campaign in the least bit. It completely undermined the entire foundation of the campaign - that they were not Trump. Chaos in the Middle East had started to grow under Biden and threatened to force the US into sending in the troops. And the Biden administration was coming out regularly and telling Trump-sized lies in order to defend it all. The campaign was basically saying "but Trump will lie to your face with zero sense of shame - and also Israel is doing way more than required in order to protect civilians."

The entirety of the appeal of Democrats was to be the steady hand on the tiller and just keeping things calm and normal - to being not-Donald-Trump. Their slogan might well have been Orange Man Bad. And then they just fully embraced bombing hospitals and sniping children. They looked at the horrific images and videos coming out of Gaza and going viral across the world and said "we're paying for that." Thousands of videos of IDF soldiers playing with children's toys and women's lingerie in the burnt out husks of houses was explained by the State Department repeatedly insisting that Israel is minimizing civilian suffering.

Trudeau Replacement Update

Here's an update on the names being bandied around to take over for Trudeau to lead the Liberals into the inevitable spring election.

FRONT RUNNERS

Mark Carney, never previously run for office, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Rumour is that he is going to announce his candidacy next week. He is the favourite because he is the absolute most establishment candidate that can be imagined. And what is more centre-left moderate than picking the most establishment candidate possible at a time of extreme anti-establishment anger.

Chrystia Freeland, the trigger for Trudeau's resignation - former Deputy Minister and former Minister of Finance. She's a pretty good pick too - as she would represent a complete and total continuation of Trudeau, and what would be more centre-left than picking a candidate that most represents continuity with a deeply unpopular incumbent. I guess she's hoping that her shivving of Trudeau when he tried to demote her might give her enough space to be viable - but that's crazy naive.

NOT RUNNING

Dominic LeBlanc, the current Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs who also picked up Freeland's jobs as Deputy PM and Minister of Finance. Not running.

Melanie Joly, our Minister of Foreign Affairs  - with an increased profile with all the foreign affairs going on. Not running.

Anita Anand, former Minister of Defense and current Minister of Transport - not running.

LONGSHOTS

Christy Clark, former premier of BC - who resigned in 2017. Her party, the BC Liberals, was left so screwed over by her term that they no longer exist as a party, but solely as a target for irregular fundraising practices. That party rebranded for the latest election this past year knowing that the brand was toxic. They still failed to win a seat and in fact went on to endorse Conservative candidates they were notionally running against. Still, that all happened after she retired from politics eight years ago. This will be an uphill slog if she decides to run, a decision she will be making this coming week.

Karina Gould, the Liberal House Leader.  The youngest person in contention at the age of 37. Says she is considering a run. As House Leader, she's spent the past year defending Trudeau's stubborn refusal to resign, which isn't going to help her at all.

May The Market Forces Be With You

Back in May, a YouTuber posted a four hour long video dissecting what went wrong with Disney's Star Wars hotel. A four hour long YouTube of Jenny Nicholson just talking about the problems of a failed theme-hotel experience project. It has 11 million views.

The Star Wars hotel served 71,000 guests.

Now sure, it's not a fair comparison - a Star Wars hotel cost thousands of dollars for a two night stay. That was one of the criticisms - even at Disney-level premiums, this experience was a huge rip-off, whereas watching a YouTube video only costs whatever time you are willing to spend watching it. And also, the hotel can only accommodate 370 people at a time, whereas any number of people can click on a link.

But I think it is still informative. The idea of a deeply immersive ultra-premium experience set in the Star Wars universe seems like a no-brainer. There has got to be demand for this sort of thing - to engage in getting as close to actually being in Star Wars as reasonably possible. It is one of the biggest and most iconic franchises in the world and has a very large and very devoted fan base.

But it is less than niche when compared to the thing that Jenny Nicholson gets around to talking about. And that is the garbage that capitalism and the equity fund/MBA approach to delivering services is inflicting on us. The 2023 Word of the Year from the American Dialect Association was that wonderful term coined by Cory Doctorow - "enshittification".

We're all mad as hell about enshittification. The gradual monetization of things we've taken for granted - all of the service fees for stuff that should just be included. In Galactic Starcruiser's case - there was added insult in that charging more for all of the "optional extras" still resulted in a blistering base price. Nicholson nails this buy noting that having extra charge add-ons for an already very expensive premium experience just undercuts the thing at its heart. Your extra special super expensive vacation has stuff you are going to miss out on. The money guys probably thought of this as a feature as it would naturally push the upsell by itself instead of just undermining the whole experience completely.

But we're stuck in this weird Catch-22. Discourse about enshittification is always going to be niche and marginal despite their being massive demand for it. Because that message will not have access to platforms where the business model is enshittification. If we want to stop enshittification, we need a non-enshittified platform to talk about it but we won't get that platform until we talk about it.

Which sadly gets us to the point where everyone knows what's wrong - we all know what enshittification looks like - but nothing gets done about it and it all gets normalized. That's just the way it is. Some things will never change? Don't you believe it - it's going to just get worse.

The LA Fires have nothing to do with Climate Change

There's a lot of stuff about the fires that enrages me - but I'm just going to focus on some of the pettier items.

It's not climate change - it's just tweakers and the homeless setting off fires.

As if tweakers and homeless people in LA is a brand new phenomenon that only started in 2025.

This fucking ludicrous nonsense doesn't even answer the question - why are these fires so bad right now? Why do we have crazy wildfires starting the end of the first week of January? "Oh it's homeless tweakers." Really? Does not make a lick of sense.

Does anyone remember Smokey the Bear? About preventing forest fires? Remember what the evil culprit of forest fires was? Discarded cigarettes. Tobacco use among adults in California has dropped from over 15% in 2001 to 6.2% twenty years later. Even if somehow homeless tweakers were a fire hazard, this does not make up for the three and a half million fewer smokers. FFS.

OTOH, here's a look at 2024 rainfall versus normals:

The fact that it has not rained in LA since May might have something to do with the fires. And these extreme weather patterns - of longer drought periods followed by more extreme heavy rainfall - exactly what the climate change people have been saying is coming since forever.

Greater Los Angeles has a population of over 18 million. The solution is not expecting that none of these people are ever going to cause fires, intentionally or unintentionally. Lightning still happens. Fires are going to happen - they always have. The issue isn't the starting of the fire, it's the fuel conditions around the fire.

It's like - storing multiple open drums of gasoline in your house and then blaming the loss of the building on static electricity or somesuch. 

Are We The Baddies?

Here's another way of looking at the Gaza genocide. There are two nations that are firmly and fully supporting of the ongoing massacres - Israel and the US. Both becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage.

The current prime minster of Israel has an active international warrant out for his arrest for committing war crimes. Also, he is being tried domestically for multiple cases of corruption.

The incoming president of the United States of America was just sentenced for his felony convictions for cheating the electoral system.

The leaders of these nations are criminals - and that's by the assessment of those nations themselves. 

The Best Commentary on International Law is on Twitch.tv

Not even joking. Alonso Gurmendi does weekly 2 hour streams where he talks about international law and then Chat forces him to play FIFA. It's wild - he's getting questions about colonialism and the predicates for statehood and answering them in real time. And his answers are all really good.

Here's the link.

If you'd like some "try before you buy" snippets (his Twitch streams are free) - there's a bunch of stuff editted out of the streams on his YouTube channel.