Blogging Never Changes Part Three - How is That Supposed to Work?

None of it ever makes sense. None of it.

How does one "destroy Hamas"? What does this even mean? 

Let's think about what Hamas is. It's a terror organization - motivated by antisemitism and a desire to wipe Israel off the map. Also it is the administrative body of what used to be Gaza - but let's put that part aside for the moment. That's not the problematic part of it - the problematic part is the terrorists. And how does the terror part work? 

There's the leadership - the people who plan and co-ordinate terror attacks, who craft the hateful recruiting messages and misinformation to sustain the manpower they need. Those people, for the large part, aren't in Gaza. They are in Qatar and Lebanon  and elsewhere in the region. Some of them may well be in Western nations even,  the leadership of the Qassam Brigades is kept secret. Bombing Gaza will not impact them. Even if it did, there is likely no shortage of people ready to step in to replace any of these guys.

There's the money. The powers that be say it's coming from Iran. Undoubtedly a lot of money does come from Iran. But also, some of this money comes from various people all around the world - even though it is literally illegal to support Hamas in many nations. Invading Gaza does nothing to hinder this aspect of Hamas. In fact, one might suggest that the invasion of Gaza will engender more sympathy for Hamas which may in turn translate to more funding.

Then there are the footsoldiers. These guys certainly will be impacted by the ground invasion. Israel certainly ought to be able to kill a very large fraction of these guys. But what isn't being acknowledged is that this does not lower the number of Hamas fighters. The notion that this is going to work is kind of like that last line of You'll Be Back from Hamilton - "I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love." 

At this point, even if - magically - Israel were to kill every single Hamas fighter that participated in the October 7th attacks and no one else - there would still be a much larger number of Hamas fighters then there were on October 6th. Half of the homes in Gaza are destroyed. Thousands of people have been killed - a great many of them children. There are people who will have very extreme grievances that they will want to act upon. And what's to stop them? Moreover, what do they have to lose? Their membership in a deeply oppressed territory that has rightly been called an open-air prison? They have nothing to lose, and more and more reasons to act every hour that passes.

The plan is broken on a fundamental level. Neither Hamas leadership nor Hamas funding is being effectively targeted - and the civilian death toll is already unimaginable after just three weeks, with the full scale offensive only getting rolling now. This is supposed to "destroy Hamas"? It's beyond stupid and doomed to failure.

On the plus side, failing to destroy Hamas is actually the better outcome. That grievance the Gazans rightfully feel? It's not going to just go away. Israel isn't going to be able to declare victory and then suddenly there's "no hard feelings". And without Hamas - where does that anger and resentment go? At least with Hamas, the guys running the show have a sense of self-preservation. They want to keep their positions of power. But into the power vacuum left among a people swirling with rage and an understandable sense of injustice levied on them?

The "destruction" of Al Qaeda is what gave rise to ISIS. The hate is already there - eliminating the self-interested schemers running the show allows for the truly extremist nutjobs to grab power. That's what "destroying Hamas" means - rolling the dice and betting that half a century of apartheid followed by the most brutal assault on civilians seen in a generation or more - that this will somehow result in the sieged public feeling all warm and rosy towards their oppressor. It is fucking insane.

Blogging Never Changes Part Two - Truth and Credibility

 Here’s the next bite of elephant. Truth and Credibility 

The assertion by the Biden Administration that the Hamas run Health Ministry is lying - despite the fact that the thing the lie they were telling could easily be determined to be accurate. Despite the fact that the administration isn’t even challenging the number.  They weren’t even attempting to correct the count - they solely wanted to discredit it, even though they should have known the number was in the range they should have expected. Based solely on “we don’t like the people associated with the people who produce this number”.

Let me note here a very important point that has gotten lost. The "Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Authority" is a health authority. They are tasked with providing healthcare and medical services in the open air prison that is Gaza. These are not the Hamas fighters that crossed the border on the 7th to commit horrific atrocities. These are not makeshift rocket engineers creating ordnance to fire into the Iron Dome. These are doctors and other health care professionals. Serving a population under massive air bombardment and now ground invasion. They are doing it without a steady supply of electricity, medical supplies, or clean water. These are the people that Biden and his defenders are saying that you cannot believe because they are bad people.

Back to Truth and Credibility. The answer to uncertainty is transparency. You show your work so others can verify for themselves. Which the Health Ministry did immediately. They released the full list of the names and ID numbers of everyone they had verified as killed at that time. 

OTOH, how do the “good guys” behave when confronted on their claims? The Al Ahli hospital explosion I has been confirmed by the US and her allies as being exactly what the IDF told them it was - a misfiring Palestinian Islamic Jihad  rocket. And even though many news outlets are still reporting it as “inconclusive” - the US and Israel have rejected all calls for any independent investigation. The evidence provided are audio recordings which people have now acknowledged to be doctored and edited - and citations to videos used to geolocation the rocket launch. Those same videos were cited in the days immediately following the hospital attack as proof the PIJ rocket came from Israel. 

So it’s not conclusive? A “he said/she said” situation? Well again, you go for transparency. Here’s an example of what showing your work might look like in this case. Also too, note the other IDF lie disproven by the video the IDF cited to prove their innocence. IDF claims they weren’t bombing anywhere near there at the time - but we clearly see two explosions nearby the hospital prior to the PIJ rocket barrage being launched.  Or the lie that the IDF doesn’t target hospitals despite there being an IDF artillery shell in the hospital, which had hit it a mere three days before the disaster  

Which brings me to the point. Truth and Credibility. At any time there are a lot of things which are the Truth. I’m hungry. It’s not raining. The Gaza Strip is a dangerous place to be right now. Everyone has their own perspectives and priorities. Things which they see as the Truth may well be true to them. But just because they believe it, that doesn’t mean that we should believe it too. That’s the credibility part.

One tool we use to judge credibility is reputation - which is often based on observed historical behaviour. For example, the Gaza Health Ministry death count is deemed by non-warmongers to be credible in part because their historic death counts have been accurate. OTOH, the IDF’s claim that they weren’t responsible for some unpopular killing - well this is so bad that it should be considered a joke. 

The oft cited example of the IDF lying to avoid blame for killing is the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh. A Palestinian journalist shot dead a couple hundred metres away from where an IDF squad was stationed. The IDF blamed the killing on Hamas and released a video of Hamas fighters firing their rifles. Months later after the video was shown to be unrelated and irrelevant and media investigations showed that it was almost definitely the IDF squad that killed Abu Akleh, the IDF admitted that maybe that squad might have accidentally killed Shireen. Implying that the IDF had spent months denying responsibility despite the fact that their squad had fired their weapons at the same time the killing occurred. But it totally wasn’t intentional and still might have been Hamas’ fault in the coincidence of the century. 

Another example was when 5 children were killed by an exploding thing that fell from the sky on August 7, 2022. Israel was conducting air strikes at the time, but the IDF insisted that it wasn’t them because killing children was super unpopular back in 2022 (oh how times have changed).  Their explanation for what happened might sound familiar - they claimed it was a misfiring Palestinian Islamic Juhad rocket  Well, they did backtrack on those claims after a rights group said that they had found shrapnel with part of a serial number on it.

In short, the IDF lies. All the time. Shamelessly. And in regards to what they said about Al Ahli Hospital, literally the same excuse they had to retract  using the same type of video disinformation they have engaged in before  the IDF is currently claiming that the Al Quds hospital is actually a front for Hamas terror operations. OTOH, the hospital denies this as does the Norwegian doctor working there now. They have again provided zero evidence of this underground network of Hamas super terror. It's Bin Laden's Mountain Fortress all over again.

I bring all this up because something else has gotten my panties in a twist. It was a podcast - and the host, who I actually think has a lot of good takes - managed to piss me off beyond any reasonable proportion. He cited the fact that multiple governments like the US and Canada (it's a Canadian podcast) as well as many major media outlets like CNN and the Wash Post had determined that it was PIJ rocket misfire - and that still believing that Israel was responsible meant that you had to believe in some sort of global Zionist conspiracy.

WTF?

Here is the "global Zionist conspiracy" I believe in - all sorts of people, many in government and media - give the IDF far more credibility than it deserves. That's it. The whole conspiracy - the IDF lies about something and then friendly governments and media report it as fact. Despite knowing the IDF's history of lying, they do no back checking of their own because, well who are you going to believe the IDF or Hamas? It was especially galling as the podcast is a media criticism podcast that is acutely aware of how this dynamic plays out - for example when cops issue press releases straight on to media home pages.

Blogging. Blogging Never Changes.

I would say that I am just as surprised as you are that something is getting written here - but then I realize that there is no "you". No one is reading this, a defunct blog that never had much readership even before it went dark almost a decade ago. That said, I started here because I had shit burning a hole inside my head and raging about it in the comments sections elsewhere seemed rude. I post here so I don't end up yelling at people IRL. So here I am, yelling into the internet void again - and I guess it isn't surprising that I'm doing this again now.

So, like they say about eating a whole elephant - start off with one bite. That bite is going to be Biden's criticism of the Gaza Health Ministry death numbers from a few days ago. But be warned, there is a lot more of the elephant to come.

When prompted by a reporter asking about the death numbers from the "Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry" he said he had "no notion that the Palestinians were telling the truth about how many people were killed". A t the time, the Health Ministry had said that it was over 6,500 - nearly half of whom were children

There was pushback on this, he was called out for trying to minimize the death and destruction being handed out by Israel. To those of us who view what Israel is doing right now as active and undeniable genocide, we had the president of the United States engaging in genocide denialism. Much of the response the handful of not completely-in-the-tank-for-ethnic-cleansing media outlets pushed was about how everybody - NGOs, the US government, the UN, doctors working in Gaza - everybody had faith in the numbers. That numbers reported historically have proven to be quite accurate. They have pointed at the videos and images of destruction already widely circulated, the piles of bodies, the accounts of people on the ground.

I'm pretty sure the few people who might find their way to this post don't need convincing, but again - the point is to get this out of my head. The question is how does one go about verifying a number like this? Well the Health Ministry's approach was to provide the names. A 212 page long list of the names and ID numbers of the 7,000 people the Health Ministry had verified. That seems pretty conclusive. My verification at the time was to cross-check against the UNRWA death numbers.  There are "over 10,000 in the Gaza Field Office" serving over 2 million Gazans. Roughly one UNRWA worker for every 200 Gazans.  At the time, the UNRWA had reported 35 of its number had been killed - which implies a death toll of 7,000 Gazans. The number reported by the Health Ministry was exactly the number that we would have expected if Israel was making no effort to avoid bombing UN facilities. But Israel is avoiding attacks on UN buildings - which means the Gaza Health Ministry number is obviously an undercount - which makes sense, the Gaza Strip is under constant bombardment. Of course there are people killed that have not been catalogued yet, like the hundreds that are trapped beneath the rubble.

This was an easy analysis that took almost no time at all. The numbers are primary sourced from publicly accessible UN sources. It should have been clearly and plainly obvious to anyone giving it a moment's thought that the number was in the right range, that it was credible - even without knowing that this number has historically been credible. But Biden said it anyways in a presser. Was he shooting off the cuff? Talking about shit he had no clue about? That seems bad - but the alternatives are worse. One alternative is that he doesn't know and no one else knew that the number was believable because no one advising the president gives a shit. Literally zero people with any concern about the Palestinian death toll. That seems a lot worse - but the other alternative is worse than that.  The other possibility is that they knew - that they actually have their own estimate of the numbers killed by Israeli airstrikes and they know that the official Health Ministry number is a serious undercount - but they did this anyways. That this genocide denialism is intentional.

There's been no apology yet. Despite demands from Muslim groups which apparently the White House is supposed to be doing outreach on. They are just ignoring it and moving on. Sadly, this makes sense - because the rate of killing is going to escalate.  6,500 killed in 18 days. 1.500 in the three days since. And that number is a greater undercount because they lost all communications for a big chunk of time in there. It is getting worse, and will continue to do so. And we have been promised a “long and difficult war”. Yesterday, the UNRWA reported its number of lost colleagues at 53. So the number of Gazans killed so far in this "operation" is almost certainly above 10,000.

Red Dawn

A Liberal majority government.  184 seats.  Significantly higher than the polls predicted.  I have never been a fan of the Liberal Party of Canada, but this is good news.  Not only because Harper and his Conservatives are finally out - but because he's so god damn young.  Finally, we're moving away from those geezers that have been screwing things up for so long.  Note how fucked up this is - Justin Trudeau turns 45 on Christmas Day - he's not really all that "young".

Harper was pretty young by geezebag standards when he first got in, and he did so after turfing out the Liberal dynasty that Chretien unceremoniously dumped on Paul Martin.  And this was the first election for the "new" Conservative party, having done their soul searching out in the woods, spawning a splinter protest group, and then getting swallowed by the upstart Reformers.  This ushered in a new era where Harper did not give a shit about "the way things are done".

Trudeau's got a similar plate.  The Liberals were going into yesterday as the third party - a long way from their usual position of "Canada's natural governing party".  And while he is the son of a former Prime Minister, those days are ancient history.  He's new.  The Conservative criticism of him - that he's just not ready - I think that's his best feature.  That he's "not ready" by the standards of the geezebag pants to their armpits offa mah lawn crowd.

Pot legalization for example sums up the dynamic perfectly.  This is something that has majority popular support - but you won't find anyone other than young people thinking that it's a thing that's worth doing right now.  So it takes someone under 50 to push for it - which is crazy because I'm pretty sure it's old folks who are lighting up all the time. Anyways Mulcair, purportedly to the left of the Liberals, was still acting like an oldster on it.  Sure he was going to make it a "priority" but all he was going to do was decriminalize - which basically is the status quo.

Women's reproductive rights.  Even political parties that are pro-choice will accomodate anti-choice members and will openly welcome anti-abortionists with the caveat that they keep the whole abortion thing on the DL.  They allow members to "vote their conscience" or whatever because State ownership of uteruses is apparently a moral issue.  Not Trudeau.  He was lambasted for expecting his caucus to vote against human rights violations.  He was attacked for recognizing that one person's religion does not justify control over another person's body.  And this is a young person's view - the perspective of  people who grew up in a world where organized religion had ebbed and waned in cultural importance.

For clarity - I'm not trying to lump all geezers in together.  Bernie Sanders for example is older than dirt.  But Sanders and his platform appeal to young people.  People who the System has had less time to beat "Common Sense" into.

I'm trying to temper my optimism.  It is still the Liberal Party of Canada.  The 2011 drubbing may have winnowed some of the "only there for power" asswipes but there are shitbags of that stripe to spare in the Liberal Party of Canada,  And now that Justin has a majority, they'll all come slinking back to the no longer sinking ship.  And just because he has some ideas that are freed from the shackles of ancestor worship - that doesn't mean that all of them are.  Or even that the new ideas are any good.  But considering where we're coming from, I'm pretty happy for almost any change at all.

Whoa, I Still Remember My Password

Hey.

Probably would have left things alone until Toilet Day, but we've got an election on Monday so I figured I ought to say something.  Uh, don;t forget to vote?  Eh?

Also too, teh Globe and Mail's endorsement.  My head is spinning.  The sheer unabated wankeriness.  Ferd Hiatt of teh War Criminal Post only dreams of this level of unaware delusional self-importance.  It's a bit niche as you'll have to have an inkling about Canadian politics to get it but if you have that, prepare to be astounded

A thing of beauty.  It's like the editorial board wants to have their cake and eat it too, but only about wanking instead of cake.  Not that I'm suggesting that they eat their own spunk - well maybe but without the spunk #MoreGlobeEndorsements

Actually #MoreGlobeEndorsements are now a thing.  First up, a Shorter of the Globe's endorsement.

Some more samples:
https://twitter.com/ZackSiezmagraff/status/655079688075763712
https://twitter.com/LeyneLes/status/655084628798148609
https://twitter.com/AndrewTumilty/status/655072411113512960
https://twitter.com/InvPac/status/655146387705851904
https://twitter.com/MichaelBrowneNL/status/655090065799016448

This one also needs some Canadian politics background but it's a winner.

Anywho - I might be back after teh polls close.  As in back to my historic active ignoring of this blog instead of forgetting about it completely.  Silly Season's been on us for a while now - Donald Trump, really? - so I might have some stuff to yell into teh ether.

World Toilet Day 2014

This year I am going to remind all y'all that World Toilet Day is a (pdf warning) feminist cause, plus a link to last year's entry to in case anyone has forgotten the context.  This woman gets it.

Speaking of which, an update on the POOP transplant thing.  The FDA is trying not to get in the way of effective treatment.

And now, on to the POOP.

A YouTube embed taken straight out of Inside Amy Schumer:

And a chance to slag Montreal.  What a shithole.

Election Day

LEAFS SUCK as well as all other municipalities in Ontario go to the polls today. Well actually, advance polls have been more active than historically, so some folks have already exercised their franchise.

You might imagine that I might be happy with the end of the White Bronco days. Sadly, he will likely be re-elected as councillor for his ward. He stepped out of the mayoral race when he got back his cancer diagnosis.  Instead older brother Doug is running. And polling second.

The front runner has a comfortable lead, and if anything LEAFS SUCK loves the bandwagon, so we are looking at John Tory finally winning an election. John Tory is not only his actual name, but also the ridiculous conservative caraciature he plays.

The man has made what he calls "SmartTrack" the centre point of his campaign. It is dumb. As in actively and aggressively stupid. It appears to have been developed by drawing lines on an out of date map running surface rail through substantial buildings and subdivisions. It is an electrified rail system  that uses passenger cars from our existing diesel commuter rail fleet. Even with the oversized two floor cars, at the ridership levels Tory promises, trains will be over twenty cars long, 50% longer than the stations will be. And the plan to pay for it is even more ludicrous than that. But hey, subways!  Anything to prevent more traffic on the streets. Despite the fact that the plan involves massive densification along the route (which still won't be close to enough to finance it).  Like I said, actively and aggressively stupid.

We have a progressive candidate, but she is polling a distant third. After the fiasco that was Rob Ford, LEAFS SUCK is trying to decide between which of the two conservative douchebags to lead the next term. It is so bad, I'm beginning to feel bad that the Leafs have to represent such a terrible shithole of a town.