Thanks to the late Taral Wayne for once having used this APOD photo by David Lane of the Milky Way over Devil's Tower as his October profile pic. (Original APOD page here.)
Scott Hechinger in Teen Vogue, "Robert Roberson Will Be Executed Because It's Legal to Execute Innocent People in the US: For one week in September 2024, it seemed like everyone knew the name Marcellus Williams. Williams, a Black man who firmly maintained his innocence, was about to be executed by the state of Missouri for a murder that countless legal experts say there's no evidence he committed. [...] But then horror and shock spread as the United States Supreme Court and Parson declined to intervene and news of yet another state killing emerged. How could this happen? How could Missouri kill a man when all signs pointed to his innocence?"
Marcy Wheeler on "John Roberts' Sordid Legacy: 14 Pages of Mean Tweets: John Roberts not only rewrote the Constitution to protect Donald Trump. He forced prosecutors to spend 14 pages arguing that it is not among the job duties of the President of the United States to attack Republicans who've crossed him on Twitter. This is what the Chief Justice wants to protect. This is the all-powerful President John Roberts wants to have. Someone who can sit in his dining room siccing mobs on fellow Republicans. Who knows whether it will work? Who knows whether these right wing Justices will go that far — to argue that even the President's mean Tweets targeting members of his own party must be protected from any accountability?"
Israel came up with a novel reason for attacking a hospital in Lebanon when it claimed there is a bunker with a pot of gold underneath it, presumably hidden there by the Leprechaun peacekeeping squad from Ireland. "Israel has accused Hezbollah of keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker under a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, though it said it would not strike the complex. The Sahel hospital in Dahiyeh was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Fadi Alame, its director, told Reuters that the allegations were untrue. Israel did not provide evidence for its claim that cash was being kept under the hospital. Instead, it published an animated graphic that purported to show a bunker under the hospital and said it had previously been used to hide the former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel appealed to the Lebanese government to confiscate the money it said the Shia militant organisation had stolen from the Lebanese people. Shortly after, Israel issued a series of warnings to residents of Dahiyeh that it would begin striking buildings in the area and that they should move at least 500 metres away. Those who remained in the area began to flee." So, they showed a cartoon, so it must be true, and of course everyone knows it's necessary to Israel's self-defense to root out any theft of monies from "the Lebanese people" by Hezbolla. The hitch in this lie is that, unlike in Gaza, the press is allowed in to check things out, and the BBC didn't see any tunnels, bunker, or gold there.
One of the more frustrating contributions to the discourse is when Israel's defenders dismiss any counter as coming from "Hamas propaganda". Although we occassionally see quotes dropped into newspaper articles that purport to be from some kind of official Hamas statement, almost everything else is coming from Israelis — including statements of intent by Israeli leaders and Tik-Tok and Instagram posts by IDF soldiers. Drop Site has published a lengthy investigation of one battalion's mission of destruction, and their social media posts, "'Our Job Is to Flatten Gaza. No One Will Stop Us.' [...] The footage Drop Site News has documented in this investigation comes from just one battalion and yet the level of destruction remains absolutely staggering. It seems as if the battalion is in a desperate race against time, flattening as much as possible with disturbing intensity even as it becomes a daily routine. None of this is actual combat. It's pure devastation aimed at civilians, aided and abetted by the staggering level of impunity given to them by their western benefactors in the Biden White House. Nowhere in these videos is there any mention of Hamas. Instead, soldiers make mocking comments, calling it 'Urban Renewal,' while others joke about 'pre-registration for lands within walking distance of the sea.'"
Gee, it sounds like the whole State Department and Pentagon were trying to warn Blinken and McGurk not to do what they were doing: "The emails, which haven't been reported before, reveal alarm early on in the State Department and Pentagon that a rising death toll in Gaza could violate international law and jeopardize U.S. ties in the Arab world." And it's funny how often people talk like we have no ties in the Arab world, as if Israel is our only friend. (And the claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is a bit strange, too, when Iran is a democracy, and Israel doesn't allow most of the people who live under its control to be called citizens and to vote for its government.) But it's clear now that whatever they may have said in public, Biden's people really wanted a wider war. And what are we to make of this? "Blinken Approved Policy to Bomb Aid Trucks, Israeli Cabinet Members Suggest." There was a time when I would have been very surprised to see this in TNR: "Joe Biden Chose This Catastrophic Path Every Step of the Way."
You can watch Al-Jazeera's "Inside Western media's reporting on Gaza | The Listening Post," about the blatant, enforced bias of the establishment media's coverage of the genocide, free on YouTube.
Doctorow, "Return to office and dying on the job: Denise Prudhomme's bosses at Wells Fargo insisted that the in-person camaraderie of their offices warranted a mandatory return-to-office policy, but when she died at her desk in her Tempe, AZ office, no one noticed for four days. That was in August. Now, Wells Fargo United has published a statement on her death, one that vibrates with anger at the callously selective surveillance that Wells Fargo inflicts on its workforce "— This one particularly angered me. We've known since at least 2008 that Wells Fargo's business model is one big crime spree and I want to know why these people still aren't in prison.
Kuttner in the Prospect, "An Epic Dystopia: How a near-monopoly gained control of most of the nation's electronic medical records, to the detriment of medical practice and doctor morale: I periodically see three wonderful doctors, my internist and two specialists. They all know that I'm a journalist who once wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine. Every time I see them, even before they examine me, each one spends several minutes railing about something called Epic. That sort of thing tends to pique a journalist's curiosity." They're supposed to be a just-plain medical database, but the priority is finding ways to jack up prices. Cory Doctorow has more on the evils of Epic's upcoding.
The American Prospect is devoting the current issue to "The Cold Civil War: States have always diverged on policies, but it's grown more intense. And for red states, that's not enough. [...] In 1967 in a speech at Stanford University, Martin Luther King described 'two Americas': One with all the 'material necessities for their bodies' and the other 'perishing on a lonely island of poverty.' Nearly 60 years later, King perfectly captures the two Americas that we're dealing with right now, bounded by a geographical reality: The laws that you live under are determined by the policymakers in the state where you live." And red state laws are much less generous than blue state laws, which means a lot more people are being hurt there - and having shorter life expectancy. "This wide gulf between healthy and ailing America is bad enough. But red states in particular want their policy preferences to be reflected across the nation, and have engaged in numerous aggressive tactics to make that a reality." Kalena Thomhave's article, "The Chasm Between Oklahoma and Connecticut," takes a look at how that happens: "The two states weren't always such polar opposites. For instance, in 1959, Oklahoma and Connecticut residents had roughly the same life expectancy. But fast-forward 60 years, and the numbers have significantly diverged. Connecticut now ranks among the top ten states in average lifespan, with an average life expectancy at birth of 80.8 years in 2019. That same year in Oklahoma, the average lifespan at birth was more than four years lower at 76.1 years, among the bottom ten states in life expectancy. The national average life expectancy in 2019 was roughly 79 years."
RIP: "Kris Kristofferson, US country singer and actor, dies aged 88 — He came from a military family and for a long time he did them proud, but when he quit to pursue songwriting, they disowned him. A Rhodes Scholar who started off supporting the Vietnam war, he ultimately repudiated that view as he heard more from the VVAW. Nice photogallery here.
RIP: Taral Wayne (1951-2024)— This happened in July and was an enormous shock, even though I knew he wasn't well. Taral was a huge part of my fandom for so many years and never stopped mattering. Just before I moved to England, Taral created a giant card with a fake Bergeron cover that everyone at the 1985 Disclave signed, and it's had pride of place on my sitting room mantel ever since. He was quirky and grumpy and a lot of other things, but he was always fair, and generous with his art, and I'm so sorry that he's gone.
RIP: "Controversial all-time MLB hits leader Pete Rose dies at 83: Pete Rose, baseball's career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83." One thing Trump said that was absolutely true is that Pete Rose belonged in the Hall of Fame. I swear I saw him take flight during what he called "The World Serious". He was amazing.
I completely missed the fact last year that The Washington Post had completed its purge of quality by firing Radley Balko, one of the only reasons to read the decreasingly relevant rag, and he started his own Substack as a result. He's got a good piece up right now detailing just what an impossible, frightening, terrible idea Trump's deportation plan really is.
Dave Johnson on The Era Of The Oligarchs: Let me tell you about the billionaires. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy whatever they want, and it does something to them. [...] Imagine the disappointment of becoming a billionaire (or even only achieving $8 or 900,000,000) and NOTHING HAPPENS. (We've seen how the tech bros think they should be immortal and then use their money to try to get there.) They really thought there'd be something more. Some award, some elevation. One thing is for sure, though. They are better than regular people and they know it. It's the entire point of society! They've reached the top. They're smarter. They deserve what they have. And more than anything they deserve more. Elevation. They deserve elevation."
I had assumed most people would have seen this about the Lancet report but since it seems a lot haven't: "Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential: By June 19, 2024, 37,396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.1 The Ministry's figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services,2 the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry,3 which found claims of data fabrication implausible. Collecting data is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure.5 The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35,091 deaths were unidentified. Some officials and news agencies have used this development, designed to improve data quality, to undermine the veracity of the data. However, the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate. The non-governmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of identifiable victims are included in the Ministry's list.6 Furthermore, the UN estimates that, by Feb 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed,5 so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10,000. [...] In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58,260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85,750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024."
I'd also assumed everyone saw this. There seem to be a number of people who only ever see the hasbara but don't see any contradictory facts: "Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured: ICC Prosecutor Should Investigate Attacks on Health Care, Detainee Abuses. (Jerusalem) – Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military's repeated attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory's healthcare system. Released doctors, nurses and paramedics described to Human Rights Watch their mistreatment in Israeli custody, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing and blindfolding, and denial of medical care. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care, and poor detention conditions for the general detainee population."
"Fact check: Debunking Trump's October lying spree about immigration" has some good verbal karate on the issue, but is most notable for seeing someone in the establishment media who is actually good at doing it.
"Harris and the Enthusiasm Gap: Can she restore anything like the excitement of the campaign's early days when Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate? Can she win without it?" Kuttner says Harris has made unforced errors that are hurting her campaign. He's right, and she's now down on the electoral vote map. I don't think the parade of Cheneys and Mark Cuban have helped her, and I still think she needed to show some kind of break with Biden's foreign policy. Snubbing a Palestinian speaker at the convention was more than a little troubling, and continuing to double down on unconditional support for Israel can't be good. But those ties to Wall Street trouble a lot of people, and I also frankly wish that Clinton and Obama would just keep quiet, they are doing more harm than good.
Does anyone remember this? From July 2020: "Federal Officers Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab People In Portland, DHS Confirms"
"Why typewriters are having a renaissance in the digital age" (video and transcript)
"30 Times Architects And Engineers Created Weird Building Designs"
"Bill Hicks Final Unaired Letterman Performance 1993"
A much younger Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin.
I'd always wondered what she was doing in the (Bobby Darren version of) this song, but I didn't know until now that Louis Armstrong had put it into the original when he sang it with her and Darren kept it. Louis Armstrong & Lotte Lenya - "Mack the Knife"