Trolley Blogging

One of the things I keep discovering about the Gaza genocide is that all the shit I think is horrible is in fact a lot worse. I see the same stuff getting reported that everyone else does and have the same initial horrified response - but then I think about it some more and realize that I didn't understand how truly bad it was - and probably still don't.

Here's a less directly horrific but still terrible example of that. There's a meme about the trolley problem called "you can only watch" that's been particularly poignant in these times.

But, as I said, it's worse. We're not just watching. We're actively looking away so that we can go to work at the trolley factory. And when anyone voices any concerns about what these trolleys are doing, we're told that trolleys are an important tool in fighting climate change and that concern for the people getting slaughtered is actively opposing public transit and being pro-global warming.

Are We the Baddies?

As always with posts like this, I have to start off by stating that I do note support Iran. It is an autocratic theocracy run by extremist religious nutjobs. Human rights violations in the Islamic Republic are commonplace and I do believe that they are engaging in clandestine activities that harm regional and global stability.

But - objectively speaking - is the West not worse? I mean, I guess we're not as autocratic nor theocratic - and there are plenty of secular nutjobs interspersed with the "Mission from God" folks. But in terms of being a threat to regional and global stability, what Iran is doing seems is practically benign.

Let's just consider the situation as the fucking racist genocidal sociopaths at the US State Department see it. On October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel - killing over a thousand people and kidnapping hundreds more. In response - Israel has killed or injured over a hundred thousand, subjected hundreds of thousands more to famine like conditions, and displaced millions of people in Gaza, a territory with a population of 2.3 million. And the US says "this is regrettable but acceptable and we will provide infinite support to ensure it continues".

In comparison - Israel attacked an Iranian embassy in Syria, killing seven people. In response Iran does the following:

• Sought redress at the UN, which the US and its allies veto. For reference, there is still no official UNSC statement about the bombing of an embassy - a week and a half later.
• Offers to forego retaliation if there is a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which is denied.
• Launches a counter-attack which damages military targets and results in one girl getting injured.
• Says they are done with retaliation and that was the extent of it.

And now the nutjobs are out for blood, demanding a retaliatory strike against Tehran. So who are the badd guys here?

Okay, that was the post. What follows is random thoughts about the military implications of the strike. And this information may be dubious as no one wants to admit anything - but this attack does not look good for Israel. At all. Why do I say this even though 98% of the attack was intercepted? The reports are that 7 missiles went through and that these were 7 out of 7 of the hypersonic missiles that Iran launched - 5 of which hit Nevatim Air Base, and all of which were launched from Iran. IOW, Iran has established that they can reach fairly deep into Israel whenever they want and with a fair degree of accuracy. Despite the interception effort being backed up by multiple Arab states and a full on US carrier group.

Iran now also has information on the extent and capabilities of the missile defense systems. They now know exactly where the Iron Dome facilities are (and did I mention that they also have the ability to reach into Israel with hypersonic missiles with a fair degree of accuracy?) and which states will go all out to defend them (at enormous political cost to Jordan). At the cost of a bit more than three hundred drones and missiles. All that was missing from this attack was one hypersonic to have "misfired" and landed harmlessly in the Red Sea at a range which implies that Iran could take hit  USS Dwight D Eisenhower if it wanted to. Maybe Iran doesn't have that range - but pretty sure that the DoD is shitting bricks about it. This is almost certainly just coincidence, but 7 hypersonic missiles also coincides with the number of missile defense ships in Carrier Strike Group 2 (3 cruisers and 4 destroyers). Maybe a missile actually did hit the Red Sea and we're just not hearing about the "misfired" weapon since it didn't actually do anything. On the plus side, misfired missile or not, the US has already stated that they will not support a counterattack into Iran. That is a positive sign. Unfortunately it is one I have almost zero faith in - six months of admonishing Israel for killing too many civilians with no reduction in the supply of bombs will do that to your credibility.

Thunder Bay Owes Georjann Morriseau an Apology

Today, Sylvie Hauth the former Police Chief of Thunder Bay, has been charged with obstruction of justice, obstruction of a public official, and breach of trust by a public officer.

Here's a fun bit of this news - she announced her retirement the same day that the civilian oversight agency announced that they would hold hearings about her behaviour. Her retirement meant that those hearings never happened. A lesson learned (which has been blatantly obvious for a long time) is that if you are implementing police reform - ensure that your oversight agency had mandate over former police officers who committed their violations while they were police officers. That also means that these oversight agencies need to be able to impose penalties beyond even the harshest punishment a police officer can possibly imagine - losing the badge. Literally worse than capital punishment! /s Anywho - I believe these charges are related to Hauth's campaign to discredit Georgjann Morriseau, the Thunder Bay Police Services Board Chair at the time. And this was possibly related to recent reports of Thunder Bay Police being deeply and intensely racist and completely indifferent to the killings of multiple Indigenous youth. This period of time put Thunder Bay up as the number one contender against Winnipeg for being Canada's Most Racist City.

So hooray I guess for getting to actual charges? Anyways, the reason I'm mentioning this is that - yes there has been coverage of the arrest of and charges being laid against a former police chief. But AFAICT, there has been zero information about the victim. No one has yet to report how Georjann Morriseau feels about this, nor has anyone offered up any apology to her. In fact, none of the stories I've seen thus far even mention what the charges are about or names Morriseau at all.

Anyways, if you're looking into information as to what a police chief possibly could have done to warrant getting criminal charges - you'll have to go back to when the civilian oversight board announced hearings. And again, those hearings never took place because Sylvie Hauth resigned.

UPDATE: I was mistaken about no one discussing the actual things that Sylvie Hauth is alleged to have done. There is ONE news story from April 12th that covers it - and weirdly, that fact makes the news sites look even worse. The one story that covered it was the Canadian Press wire service.

Independent Blogging Investigations

So the "independent investigation" into the strike that killed the World Central Kitchen workers which found that it was all a big oopsie? Well, you already know that it was conducted by an IDF veteran but did you know this?

The investigation into Col Mandel and his colleagues was led by retired Maj Gen Yoav Har-Even, president and CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, sparking claims of bias.

The IDF is one of Rafael's biggest buyers. The company, which sells nearly half of its arms to Israeli clients, makes the 'Spike missiles' which are reported to have been used to kill the aid workers.

Judging Things by Different Standards

There's a lotta calls for Sotomayor to retire so that Biden can appoint a replacement. Call it post-RBG syndrome. There's been some pushback suggesting that this is racist and sexist - demanding that the only ever Latina SCOTUS justice step down. Also there's backlash from institutional power defending folks who reflexively believe that any criticism of powerful people is the same as violent terrorism.

I'm anti-authority (I know - shocking admission) - but I have to agree with the Sotomayor defenders. It's racist and sexist.

Justice Sotomayor is 69. This isn't young, but it's way lower than the age that the rumbling for retirement gets trotted out for non-Latinas. For example:

RBG herself, did not face pushes for retirement until Obama's second term. So the early calls for RBG to retire - which were vehemently opposed I'd like to note - did not start until 2012 at the earliest, when RBG was 79. Two and a half presidential terms older than Sotomayor is now.

The calls for Stephen Breyer to retire only began in 2021, after Joe took the oath in the wake of a literal attempted insurrection. He would have been 81. Meaning that during Obama's second term, he would have been 73 to 78 - and no one said shit.

I have disagreements with all of the SCOTUS justices, but I find that Sotomayor is the least likely to do shit that pisses me off.  And based on the weird index they created for this, Sonia Sotomayor is indeed the most Liberal justice on SCOTUS - and by a significant margin.  More liberal than RBG. In fact, among the most liberal justices that SCOTUS has ever had with only two previous justices that have rated as more so.

Look, I acknowledge that losing her and having a GOP asshole like Trump picking her replacement, that would be super bad. But the standard being used here is bullshit. If you feel bad for not supporting calls for RBG to retire when she was in her 80s - that's a you problem. Stop using that to attack a woman a full decade younger than what you felt was okay for a non-Latina.

EDIT: Also, these concerns are obviously only Democratic and liberal concerns. Thomas and Alito are both older than Sotomayor - but the thing which hammers home how bullshit the double standards is - Chief Justice John Roberts is a whole seven months younger than Sotomayor.

From the River to the C is for Censorship

So, the CBC has a radio program called Reclaimed. It's a program for contemporary Indigenous music an is hosted by Jarrett Martineau. Part of CBC's own description of the program includes this:

Equal parts celebration, resistance, and reclamation 

This past weekend he played a song by Handsome Tiger.  You might be able to view the playlist here - but it might also be scrubbed. If you close the playlist you'll notice that this one show is not on the list, even though a more recent one from the 10th is listed (at the time I looked).   

The song in question that sparked this censorship? RIVER 2 THE SEA. It's just been scrubbed. Dropped into the memory hole. Apparently reconciliation for the historical and ongoing genocide of Canada's Indigenous populations does not extend to allowing them to express solidarity with Palestinians.   

Useful link available here: https://twitter.com/Terrilltf/status/1777850388668186687

The Rent is Too Damn High

One thing that's been kind of mulled over recently is why people are so down on Biden's handling of the economy. By every traditional measure, the US economy is doing amazingly well. GDP is growing at a healthy slightly above long term average rate, which is strong considering global factors. US GDP growth is outpacing the rest of the developed countries. Unemployment has remained at incredibly low levels for a very sustained period of time - and inflation has come mostly under control. It's certainly a lot lower than you would expect after having more than two full years of under 4% unemployment. Inequality, while high, is actually going down. Going by income quintiles, it is the lowest wage earners that have gained the most.

The economy is doing great under Biden - and yet everyone tells pollsters that they think we're in a recession. Even consumer confidence - it's still well below pre-pandemic levels, but it's not that far off - which is amazing considering that people think the economy is in the dumps.

Why?  People should have more disposable income now. But they are behaving as if they don't.

There's been an argument that it's media coverage. There's probably some truth to this - media outlets are hooked on the bullshit narrative that the more conservative you are, the better a job you do with the economy. Literally the reverse is true. Conservatives suck at managing the economy for everybody except the groups getting tax cuts. Their entire ethos is about wealth extraction for the already powerful. But good luck getting this perspective published on a major op-ed page.

BUT - it's 2024. No one follows that shit anymore - or at least no one whose opinion can be swayed. Media just echoes comfortable messages to their audience in order to keep the subscription money flowing in. Maybe in the olden days when there was no other game in town and your bullshit proclamations couldn't be challenged by anyone with any audience at all - back then this sort of shit was important. But today? No one picking up these cues doesn't already believe them 100%.

So what is it then?  What has everyone down in the dumps? It's housing.

These numbers are harder to parse - people move because their rents are too damn high. So they end up paying around the same amount in shelter costs but get shittier homes. We don't have a housing decent-ness indicator - so what we end up seeing is that CPI Shelter is only a bit higher than headline inflation. But we do have other numbers - like housing index costs or the inflation of median rental prices of similar units in similar neighbourhoods. And by those measures - housing costs are bonkers.

Now bear in mind that housing markets are very local, and high volatility can make the worst situations seem way shittier than the typical conditions - but some of the horror stories are so ludicrously nuts that even if they are distant outliers, we're still looking at the median values being way off what we would expect. That said, here's a horror story that sums it up:

As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables

Shit is not normal.

So this is where the pessimism about the economy is coming from. Maybe people do have more money - in real terms. Maybe they can afford more stuff than they could in the Before Times prior to COVID. But it all feels shitty right now because the biggest line item in their budget buys like half of what it used to - even though it still takes the same fraction of their paychecks. IOW, people feel the economy sucks shit because The Rent is Too Damn High.

Anyways - that's my current take on why we're seeing this disconnect between people's opinions on The Economy and the actual performance of The Economy.