DL Open Thread: Friday, November 3, 2023
More Proof That Israel Doesn’t Give A Shit What The World Thinks:
The Jabaliya neighborhood north of Gaza City was pummeled with Israeli airstrikes for a third consecutive day on Thursday, while doctors treating the victims described nightmarish scenes of operating without basic supplies or anesthesia.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, director of the pediatric ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where many of the casualties from the Jabaliya strikes were taken, said the majority of the people arriving were children. Many were severely burned or were missing limbs.
On Tuesday, after the first strike in Jabaliya, the hospital received about 40 people who did not survive, and 250 others who were wounded, he said. The numbers were nearly the same on Wednesday, when another strike hit. On Thursday, a strike damaged a United Nations school being used as a shelter and sent in another wave of patients: 10 dead and 80 others wounded.
“I’ve never in my life seen injuries this bad,” Dr. Abu Safyia said on Thursday by phone, adding, “We saw children without heads.”
Tell me again why Israel needs more of our military aid. I guess that when they’re beheading children from the air, it’s more humane. Kinda like the Laws Of Kashrut. They seem quite capable of annihilating humans without our help.
Sam Bankman-Fried Headed To The Slammer:
The decision was reached after less than five hours of deliberation by a jury of nine women and three men, who found Bankman-Fried guilty on all charges: two counts of wire fraud, four counts of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He could be sentenced to decades in prison.
Bankman-Fried is accused of being one of the largest financial fraudsters in history, whose victims suffered nearly $10 billion in losses after FTX misappropriated customer funds to spend lavishly on luxury real estate, investments, and “dark money” political donations, all at his direction, the jury found.
“The cryptocurrency industry might be new; players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. But this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time, and we have no patience for it,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said.
Citizens United Goes After Texas School Funding. Specifically, one, one, Texas billionaire is using dark money to:
…create a private-school voucher system that could weaken public schools across the state. Meanwhile, Dunn’s associates in his hometown of Midland are working to defeat a local school bond proposal that his district says it desperately needs.
Dunn, an evangelical Christian, is best known for a mostly successful two-decade effort to push the Texas GOP ever further to the right. His political action committees have spent millions to elect pro-voucher candidates and derail Republicans who oppose them. Defend Texas Liberty, the influential PAC he funds with other West Texas oil barons, has come under fire after The Texas Tribune revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes for an October meeting and that the organization has connections to other white nationalists.
Less known are Dunn’s efforts to shape politics in his hometown of Midland, which will come to a head next week. On Tuesday, residents in the Midland Independent School District will vote on a $1.4 billion bond, the largest in its history, after rejecting a smaller measure four years ago. A dark-money organization whose leaders have ties to Dunn’s Midland oil and gas company, as well as to a prominent conservative public policy organization where Dunn serves as vice chairman, have become among the loudest voices against the bond.
Democracy is, at best, hanging by a thread. When that thread is severed, the Citizens United decision will go a long way toward explaining democracy’s extinction.
Ohio And Virginia Voters Purged From Rolls Right Before Election Day. Coincidence?:
Ohio’s Republican secretary of state quietly canceled the voter registrations of more than 26,000 voters in late September, less than two weeks before the deadline to register to vote in next week’s hotly contested abortion referendum in the state.
Voting rights advocates say the process lacked transparency and departed from Frank LaRose’s usual practice of alerting groups before removing registrations from the rolls. And it comes as LaRose campaigns hard against the 7 November constitutional amendment vote – when Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution – as well as a vote on a separate measure to legalize marijuana.
(Secretary Of State) LaRose, who is also running for a US Senate seat and is looking to endear himself with conservative voters, was a prominent supporter of that failed campaign.
“This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution,” LaRose said in June. “The left wants to jam it in there this coming November.”
Virginia:
Virginia election officials wrongly removed almost 3,400 eligible voters from the state’s voter rolls, a significant error that has caused alarm among voting rights groups just days before critical state elections that will determine which party controls the state legislature.
Officials announced the number of voters affected by the purge on Friday – more than 10 times the number of people they had initially said were affected.
All of the people who were removed had a prior felony conviction but had had their rights restored by the governor. Virginia has long stripped anyone convicted of a felony of their voting rights and is one of three states that gives the governor the sole authority to restore them.
Earlier this year, Virginia announced it had identified 10,558 people who had had their rights restored but had subsequently committed a new felony. That data wasn’t accurate. The Virginia state police, which had been supplying the data to the state, had been wrongly flagging people as having committed a new felony if they had received a technical violation of their probation – something like failing to show up for a meeting or failing a urine test.
It’s voter suppression, pure and simple. Just one more sign of democracy’s demise.
Yet Another Cop-Beating That We’re Just Finding Out About. Hey, it’s Delaware. Cops have rights to beat suspects senseless with impunity:
A Dover police officer seeking to detain Michael Jarrett for trespassing in the downtown area brought the man to the pavement using a “leg sweep,” the department previously said. Mr. Jarrett, a cook and father of three, was brought to Christiana Hospital on Oct. 20 for injuries that included brain hemorrhages.
Mr. Jarrett, who is Black, was picked up by officers at the hospital Wednesday evening and taken to the Dover Police Department, where he was processed and arraigned, according to department spokesman Master Cpl. Ryan Schmid. He was released the same night on his own recognizance, he added.
The officer, whose name has not been released, is also Black, according to prior interviews with two witnesses.
In the wake of a Wednesday report about the incident in the Delaware State News, members of Dover’s Black and Brown communities are calling for unity — and for change in the police department. Meanwhile, Mr. Jarrett’s family plans to hold a protest at the Dover Police Department on Saturday at noon.
The department has said that the officer used force only after Mr. Jarrett resisted being handcuffed. Two witnesses said Mr. Jarrett was already restrained at the time the officer allegedly brought him to the ground.
Well, cops can lie with impunity as well. Nothing will change as long as the Speaker Of The House has a six-figure sinecure with the Police Athletic League. They pay her, she buries bills they don’t want. Anybody have a problem with that?
What do you want to talk about?
nothing says American “progressive” like taking a swipe at Jews in general because of the actions of the Likkud party and the Israeli right.
and yes, you did.
No reference to Halal and the Israeli children who were r*ped and beheaded? no? is that inappropriate? asshole.
Gotta love how that terror attack has already been memory holed. I know I know, those anti-Netanyahu hippies were asking for it.
Ever wonder WHY Israel exists where it does? I know you probably think because some Elders of Zion invaded after causing the Great Depression and WW2.
Actually…. and this is a little known fact… in the 30s and 40s, Europe tried to kill every Jew….. I know, hard to fathom, but it happened. After they failed and pretended they weren’t all in on it, they decided Jews should be safe….. somewhere…. somewhere else.
It was made pretty clear that Europe wasn’t that safe space. So in another attempt to cleanse those Kashrut Barbarians, they said ‘go over there”.
mind blowing, i know.
Ben, if you are referring to El Som, you have missed the mark.
But in general, the “world” doesn’t care if all Jews die. Or disperse to some NIMBY zone. So yeah, Israel doesn’t and shouldn’t give a shit about “world” opinion.
World opinion is deafeningly silent about Israel’s security. Why does world opinion only kick into gear when Israel strikes back?
It’s easy to be a pacifist about other conflicts when you live in the continental US.
Tell me, is it easier to kill other people’s children if your own have been killed by their relatives?
I hope never to have to test my answer to that question. Because I live in a strong nation-state that defends and responds against attacks on its citizens.
One that killed a lot of Iraqi children to boast of its strength after failing to act to stop a terrorist act.
Sound at all familiar?
Hello, is this mic on? From the beginning, I wrote that Israel had every right to defend itself in the wake of the horrific attack by Hamas. Ben and Puck, you read this blog every day, so you know that. So does delacrat, who criticized me for my position.
What Israel, and yes I mean the government, is doing is inhumane. They are wantonly killing Palestinians including Palestinian children. As a Jew, I am far from alone in criticizing Israel for that.
I guess I take after my dad in that way. When Israel started establishing settlements in the Golan Heights, he stopped contributing to Trees For Israel. Because the Israeli government had abandoned what he saw as traditional Jewish values.
I know you referenced Jewish dietary law as… what, a joke? in your criticism of the genocide Netanyahu is comitting. I know your history on this as well, which is why that remark is so galling.
As a Jew you must certainly recognize that the waters are being intentionally muddled to advance antisemitism. Even …. especially by, Christians who only “support” Israel until the Temple is rebuilt and Jesus comes back to send us all to hell.
The world’s opinion is indifference to hostility. The only reason any western Christian power claims to support Israel is because they hate Muslims more. Many leftists reflexively hate anything the Christian right claims to support and there are just as many meme-knowledge only leftists are magats, so it isnt hard to drum up anti Israeli sentiment among progressives…. and again, maybe 10% of the non-Jewish population actually understand that Jewish doesnt mean “supportive of Likkud”. it’s irresponsible to help that narrative in any way.
Not a joke. Said out of anger. You can’t humanely slaughter people–whether it’s by raiding unsuspecting communities, or by bombing the shit out of civilian areas from the air.
It’s inhumane. So save your faux outrage about referencing Jewish dietary law.
“Israel” and “Jews in general” are the same thing only in your mind. In this instance, “Israel” doesn’t even mean the country, it means its leadership.
Go ask Hamas what they call the people they are fighting.
So Hamas’ thinking is automatically transmitted to an American Jew who thinks the Israeli government is wrong to act as it’s acting?
As Lincoln once observed, both sides cannot be right, but both can be wrong.
Israel’s “leadership” has much to answer for…
In your mounting frenzy, you failed to answer El Som’s question:
“Tell me again why Israel needs more of our military aid?”
Our silence is probably deadlier than any weapons we could send.
I suspect that act addresses other actors more than benefits Israel.
There is a line that connects the actions of Hamas to other actors both in the region and beyond.