Courageous people

I saw some courageous people in this week's news. 

First of all, Heather Kuttai. 

She has been one of my personal heros for the last three decades. Heather has been a Human Rights Commissioner for nine years and I'm sure it broke her heart to have to resign in protest from a position she was so eminently suitable for and so good at. 

But she did it:

Heather Kuttai's resignation letter (Oct. 16, 2023) to Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.

Kuttai served for 9 years as a Commissioner on the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

(Letter posted in CBC Sask story by @jessieanton_ ) pic.twitter.com/806Vbe45H6

— Sean Tucker (@SeanTucker16) October 17, 2023

Comments about the Israel-Hamas War

I'm reading lots of thoughtful items about the Israel-Hamas War so I wanted to share them. 

By the way, one thing I have noticed is that posters on Twitter who say "Israel-Hamas War" are generally supportive of Israel while those who say "Israel-Palestinian Conflict" are generally not. Israel is trying to maintain a distinction between making war against "Hamas" but not against "Palestinians" but I am afraid this definition will be increasingly difficult to maintain as the suffering of the Palestinian people increases. 

This is well said:

An important message for the world to hear from the IDF International Spokesperson, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. pic.twitter.com/e9rmcgLgex

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 15, 2023

Yes, I can understand why people around the world are angry and terrified about what is happening in Gaza to the Palestinians. 

But remember, Hamas can stop this any time they want. They can release the innocent men, women and children they are now holding hostage, and they can abandon their war against Israel. 

There will be a ceasefire when Hamas unconditionally surrenders. If you hear your legislators ask for a ceasefire, tell them to pressure Hamas to surrender.

— Ethan Wolf 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@ethanmwolf) October 14, 2023

I read the news today, oh boy!

...The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity...

What an awful week it has been for news. 

First, the Israel-Hamas War is going to be terrible. 

I can't help but be reminded of Gary Kamiya's 2003 Salon article Sleepwalking toward Baghdad where he talked about the difference between "politics" and "history":

...For we have gone from being in a political moment to a historical one.

I use the words somewhat eccentrically, to distinguish between events that are simple enough to be fully explicable ("political") and those that are too complex to be defined ("historical"). ...

The distinction also has a moral dimension. To exist in history is to have passed beyond the pieties and slogans of the political. History is tragic: politics is not. History is glorious. It is also fatal.

The two great competing ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism, were both self-consciously historical movements. As Czeslaw Milosz brilliantly noted in his classic study "The Captive Mind," it was precisely the abstraction of communism, its claim to have attained the summit of morality and to have incorporated into itself all possible contradictions, that made it so meticulously horrifying. In similar fashion, fascism contained a kind of blankness at its core: the self-glorifying violence of the state simultaneously concealed and revealed the emptiness of its founding concept, the national tribe.

The lesson every government should have learned from the bloody 20th century, one written in blood across the tortured soil of old, very old Europe, is very simple: Avoid history at all costs. History is too big, too abstract, too dangerous. Avoid men with Big Ideas -- especially stupid men with Big Ideas. Take care of politics: let history take care of itself. In a word, don't play God.

We are, right now, living through another historical moment. 

In the coming weeks, I expect neither Israel nor any other country will be able to find a way to negotiate with Hamas thugs to rescue any of the hundreds of hostages abducted by Hamas last weekend. They are lost now, martyrs to a evil cause.

And it appears Israel is going to invade Gaza - the Israeli Defense Force will perceive no other way to regain their tattered reputation. 

Here is a New York Times article which describes in terrible detail what happened: The Secrets Hamas Knew about the Israeli Military

...Hamas, the militia that controls the Gaza Strip, managed to surprise and outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East last Saturday — storming across the border, overrunning more than 30 square miles, taking more than 150 hostages and killing more than 1,300 people in the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history.

With meticulous planning and extraordinary awareness of Israel’s secrets and weaknesses, Hamas and its allies overwhelmed the length of Israel’s front with Gaza shortly after dawn, shocking a nation that has long taken the superiority of its military as an article of faith.

The Israel-Hamas War: stories of courage, stories of terror

We are finding out more now about the horror that Israelis experienced as Hamas was hunting and killing them - the stories are incredible, some courageous, others terrifying.

The New York Times has a major article today about what Israeli soldiers are now finding after the Hamas terrorists ran back to Gaza - Hamas Leaves Trail of Terror in Israel:

They were killed waiting for the bus, dancing at a festival, doing morning chores and hiding as best they could. Searching bullet-riddled houses, streets and lawns, Israeli soldiers are still finding them.

The soldiers, retaking control of the kibbutzim, towns and settlements near the Gaza Strip that came under attack by Palestinian terrorists over the weekend, have recovered body after body after body.

Hamas gunmen, hitting more than 20 sites in southern Israel, killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children, and abducted an estimated 150 more people... Palestinian gunmen attacked Israeli civilians in all the mundane places of a Saturday morning in southern Israel — at an outdoor festival and in their homes, on familiar roads and in the middle of town — places where soldiers and the police were as surprised by the violence as neighbors, families and friends.

From tweets by Gadi Shamia comes these stories of courage:

If you don't live in Israel or consume Israeli media, you don't know who Yair Golan is. He is a 61-year-old retired Major General in the Israel army and a former parliament MP. Spend a minute to read this story.

Yesterday, when IDF and the police were in complete chaos, Golan put on his old uniform, took his weapon, and drove into the war zone multiple times to rescue civilians under fire. He rescued two young adults hiding under a bush after 260 of their friends were murdered at an outdoor party. He answered a call from a journalist that his son was hiding under fire and simply said, "Give me his location, and I will bring him back home." An hour later, the son called his father from Golan's car.

Golan collected a small crew and went in and out of the war zone, rescuing dozens of people while exchanging fire with Hamas terrorists. He is 61, he could have stayed home, but he chose to risk his life for people he does not know.

Golan is one of the strongest voices from the Israeli left and was constantly attacked by the right wing in Israel. But when the time came, he was first fighting the barbaric attack. The same brain wiring that supports peace, is often the same wiring that drives people to do the right thing.

A true hero.

By the way, he is not the only one. Major General Noam Tivon, also 61, drove from Tel Aviv, joined the troops on the ground and rescued his son and grandkids. He stayed and help the troops fight the terrorists that were still there.

Another family's story from this tweet:

Adar and Itai Berdichevsky from Kfar Aza hid their 10-month-old twins in a mamada (air-raid shelter), while they waited for the militants in the house to divert the terrorists' attention from the children.

Both served in the army, both were officers, there were weapons at home, and the guys did not give up and, wounded, shot until the last bullet while they had strength left...

Adar and Itay died. On the threshold of their house lay the corpses of 7 terrorists.

The kids were alone in the room for 13 hours.

They are safe, surrounded by love and care.

They were found by Itaya’s brother and father Adar, who had been fighting the terrorists all this time, saved dozens of people, but were unable to get to their loved ones in time.

Opinion Roundup on the Israel-Hamas War

There is absolutely no excuse for the horrific war that Hamas has now started against Israel. 

Israel will defend itself, the Palestinians in Gaza are likely going to be slaughtered as a result. and it may well cause a wider war between the US and Iran. 

The leadership of the world is displaying Israel's flag on buildings everywhere:

Extremely meaningful to see the Peace Tower at #Canada’s Parliament light up in friendship and in solidarity with the people of #Israel 🇨🇦🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/1AILivHrad

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) October 9, 2023

To honour those whose lives have been cut short by Hamas’ terror attacks against Israel, we’re lighting the Peace Tower in blue and white – and we’ve lowered the flags on the Peace Tower, at the Prime Minister’s Office, and across Parliament Hill. Canada stands with Israel.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 8, 2023

Here is some of the perceptive commentary I am reading this weekend: 

Charlotte Clymer - Hamas Does Not Care About Palestinians. Please stop saying otherwise. 

... Hamas has decided to attack innocent Israeli civilians because they are self-serving terrorists who exploit others’ suffering as a vehicle for their unrelenting antisemitism. 

 Nothing is to be gained for innocent Palestinians from these cowardly actions by Hamas, and they know that. 

 This is about hatred of Jewish people and a denial of Israel’s right to exist and a rejection of their rumored, historic peace deal with Saudi Arabia, and it is an astonishing moral failure for anyone to suggest otherwise. 

 It is completely absurd on the part of some to take advantage of the sheer complexity of this horrific conflict to justify the intentional targeting of civilians. You can criticize the Israeli government and not be antisemitic. You can speak out against Netanyahu’s atrocious leadership without being anti-Israel. But you cannot justify the intentional murder of civilians with criticism of the Israeli government.

 There is no rationalizing this. There is no moral basis for it. There is no nuance to be found here, however much some might wish there were.

 ...They are intentionally using innocent civilians as shields while they carry out their senseless acts of violent bigotry against Jewish people. 

 Whatever happens next, it is clear that children and the elderly will suffer most, and it is obvious that Hamas is at peace with that. 

 They need to be defeated and dismantled for the sake of all innocents, and the world needs to unite against them with that objective in mind.

Don't worry, be happy

I have been feeling pretty gloomy latey about the state of politics, here and in the United States. Then yesterday David Moscrop gave us this piece on substack -- Does Something Feel Off To You? -- and it rang a bell for me:

 ...In the last few months, I’ve been thinking more about an under-specified sense that’s hard to pinpoint and put into words. It’s a feeling, something beyond the clarity of rational apprehension. It’s a feeling that something is off. That feeling is insecurity... 

We are now living at a time of prolonged and overlapping crises at home and abroad, domestic and geopolitical. The pandemic, climate change, war, unaffordability, and runaway housing costs meet us at every turn — them and other challenges, too. And we’ve buried our best hope, collective action through state intervention. We’ve landed on a dangerous island and burned our ships. 

It’s hard to imagine a time in the foreseeable future where things are going to be better. The affordability crisis will linger. So will the housing crisis. Covid-19 is surging. Climate change will continue to produce extreme weather, crop failure, refugees, and conflict. The free market will exploit workers and the rise of high-tech automation and artificial intelligence will undermine labour power, putting us at high-risk of even lower-paying, precarious jobs. Our world is a world of insecurity. 

The feeling that something is “off” comes in part an expression of anxiety, recognition that we are in deep, deep trouble and that we’ve been abandoned, without sufficient resources, to sort it out for ourselves. 

As our communities collapse under the weight of exploitation and life moves further online — where we can be lonely together — it will become harder to shake that feeling. 

 To the extent that there is to be hope of something better, there must commitments to community-building, social movement building, and state capacity building... 

History is just one damn thing after another

Like everyone, I have been following the uproar with House of Commons speaker Anthony Rota and his ineptitude in hosting and applauding Yaroslav Hunka, who as a WW2 Ukrainian teenager was fighting for the Nazis against the Russians. 

When this first hit the news, I thought "Doesn't anybody know history anymore? Who couldn't have figured out that of course the people fighting the Russians in Ukraine in WW2 were the Nazis?" 

But it's actually not quite that simple. 

Justin Ling wrote a brilliant column yesterday that delves into the politics around that period of the war in Europe - About the SS Officer in the Gallery: History is messy, horrible, complicated. All we can do is face it:

 ...Dozens of veterans of the Ukrainian 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the Galicia Division, came to North America after the war. As did soldiers from the 15th and 19th Waffen Grenadier Divisions, the Latvian Legion. As did others from Estonia, Lithuania, and elsewhere. 

Back then, we considered their actions and, ultimately, welcomed them here. And then we tried to forget about it. 

While there are occasions where crying “Nazi!” should be the beginning and ending of the conversation, this isn’t one of them. 

 ...Yaroslav Hunka was 14 years old when Nazi Germany and Communist Russia signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, invading Poland and divvying up Ukraine. ...

Ling continues to summarize the events of WW2 in Ukraine, the shifting alliances as the war evolved, and how peace was achieved. He concludes: 

The Galician Division, like many aspects of the war along the eastern front, is caught in a tension. It exists in a difficult space between one genocidal regime and another. 

For those of us in North America, whose democracies sided with one over the other, we often pretend as though the choice was a simple one. 

It wasn’t. 

The compromise we settled on long ago is, I think, a good one: For those who fought with the SS in Eastern Ukraine and the Baltics, we looked for evidence of war crimes and, finding none, we accepted that war is hell. We let these men go about their lives, without ever forgetting that history. We chose not smear that fight for independence — which is still happening today in Ukraine — with the decisions made during the war. 

Rota’s decision to put Hunka in that gallery upset that fragile compromise. The histrionics have only made things worse. 

As Shkandrij concludes: “The force’s controversial, complex, and long story presents contemporaries with a range of lessons and challenges, and obliges them to consider how a previous generation reacted when trapped in the maelstrom of war.” ... 

Farewell to twitter, I guess

Apparently Musk is going to try to start charging for his platform.  

He simply doesn't understand Twitter at all - he never did. Its like a pulp and paper company thinking it can collect a nickel from everyone who reads advertising handout flyers. 

If he tries to charge us all just for using the site, Twitter as a social network will be over - it will spiral down very quickly to become just few people yelling at each other. Nobody will bother to pay for such a platform and no business will buy ads on it, so that will be the end it. 

Musk deserves some kind of "Christ, What an Asshole" award for destroying his $44 billion investment in less than a year!

And at that point I will finally have to delete my account. 

Its going to take a little while for Threads and Substack to pick up the slack but I don't doubt that they will do it. 

So here's a few tweets I can still share.

First, an excellent summary:

Austria doctors:“COVID-19 is not a cold. It is not influenza. It is a systemic, vascular-damaging disease that only spreads via the respiratory route, via aerosols. COVID is neither over, nor is it a harmless infection without consequences.”https://t.co/GWu5HzXcpv via @tonline

— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️‍🌈 (@CathieCanada) September 23, 2023

I will miss all of the wisdom about COVID that Twitter distributed to everyone around the world. 

Today's News: Brandolini's Law and the Gish Gallop and existential stupidity

As Samwise says, Well, I'm back! 

Lately I have been trying to figure out why everything in American politics has become such a shit-show -- the Trump disaster, abortion rights, LBGTQ rights, Jan 6 prosecutions, watching Republicans try to destroy Hunter Biden for the crime of his dad being president, the list goes on and on. 

I have been reading some stuff about what the media is doing wrong in adopting its usual "rowboat journalism" model - you know, when a journalist writes "on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that; journalists aren't supposed to pick sides, ya know!" 

The most recent example is Trump's abysmal NBC Meet The Press interview on Sunday.

Trump doesn’t do interviews. He tells long fake stories that provide an alternate reality in which he’s the hero and allow his audience to conflate themselves with him as he pretends to vanquish imaginary enemies like “Sleepy Joe” “Crooked Hillary” “the Deep State” & “Fake News”

— Luke Zaleski (@ZaleskiLuke) September 17, 2023

Meet the Press...I really hoped for the best. But it serves as proof that most corporate media isn't built for this fight against fascism, not made for this moment, and they just don't have the skill set to take on right-wing authoritarianism & lies. They haven't learned a thing.

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) September 17, 2023

You know what though, when our democratic republic is lost and we are living in a right-wing autocracy that suppresses and threatens a free press, journalists can take comfort in knowing that they treated the man who destroyed it with the utmost respect along the way.

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 17, 2023

There may be several concepts that explain what happened. For example, this:

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle (2013): The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. 

Or this:

Gish Gallop: a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. ...a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. 

I'll be back

Sorry, I have to pause on posting for a little while. 

I'll be back.

 

Why School Deadname Policies are wrong: "If a child cannot discuss their identity with their parents, the problem is with the parents, not the child"

I found both of these posts so shocking. 

The first one is a reminder about AIDS and how only within the last 20 years has our society learned to respect gender identity and gender expression. 

Post by @beingliberal

View on Threads

The AIDS crisis was a terrible time - and the casual cruelty experienced by LGBT people was so shameful.  

The second post is about how our society is reverting back to that terrible time, as conservatives seize on LBGT as a culture war issue:

Sorry for the crooked photo. I'm so angry, I'm shaking. There are 496 bills targeting LGBTQ folks in the US.

The only states that have ZERO anti-LGBTQ bills are Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, & Delaware. Y Te veo, Puerto Rico. 👀🥰 🌈

I'm in orange Idaho. How apropos.🙄 pic.twitter.com/ItHLpFha8Z

— Heather 🌈✡️🟦 (@WillSing4TP) August 31, 2023

And its happening in Canada too. Our Conservative politicians are pandering to the far right in New Brunswick and in Saskatchewan --and soon to come to Ontario and to the CPC convention - by promoting school policies which the media describes as innocuous "pronoun policies" but which are actually hostile "deadname policies".

Too many Canadian voters do not see these policies for what they are - a political pander to anti-trans homophobia. The Conservative goal here is a political one, not a social one. They aren't trying to protect parents' rights, but rather to create another culture war front. 

Trying out Threads

Threads is finally available on a desktop and it has an "embed this post" button!

So I am trying it out with this post -- I really really hope I can use it in addition to "X, formerly known as Twitter" for my posts. 

X seems to be a dying platform these days, and while I have tried out others (Bluesky, Post, Spoutible, Mastodon, Countersocial, Tribel), none of them have the "embed" capacity until Threads.

Unfortunately Threads doesn't seem to have Bookmarks yet to keep track of posts, nor can I keep track of people with Lists, so its harder to scroll through posts I am interested in and then keep track of items to use when I am blogging later. But maybe that will come too. 

In the meantime, here's some great posts I found:

Post by @newyorkermag

View on Threads

Post by @buitengebeiden

View on Threads

Post by @brittlestar

View on Threads

This week in stupid: from Sask Ed policies, to Trump-fatigue, to Trudeau polls

Like Arthur Clark said way back when on possibility of extraterrestrial life in the universe:
"We're either alone, or we're not. And either way you look at it, it's staggering."

— Dame Kerrin ☮ - Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦 (@Barking52731887) August 25, 2023

What a stupid week it has been! 

First, Saskatchewan is following New Brunswick's lead and requiring teachers to deadname trans students. 

But this isn't an issue of "parent's rights". It's an issue of respect for students. 

Teachers know this. 

Our Scott Moe government apparently does not.

Great interview by @SLangeneggerCBC on the Saskatchewan policy around LGBTQ+ students, and absolutely frustrating to hear a straight white male minister absolutely refusing to understand why queer and trans students may feel unsafe at home. #canqueer https://t.co/LOVIppKtsD

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) August 24, 2023

Rallies are being organized against Sask Ed:

Sunday at noon in Saskatoon. Protest the Sask United lapdog Scott Moe's anti-trans school regulations. pic.twitter.com/12uT5izs9G

— Kyle Anderson (@DrKyle) August 26, 2023

Star Phoenix reporter Julia Peterson writes a very comprehensive article about the Saskatoon rally this weekend: "I think there's going to be an army there': Advocates to rally in Saskatoon against new Sask. education policies

...Fran Forsberg is one of the organizers of a rally set to take place Sunday afternoon at Saskatoon MLA Don Morgan’s office, where she and others will voice their opposition to the policies. 

When Forsberg heard about the new policies on Tuesday, she recalled a conversation she had with now-Education Minister Dustin Duncan about rights and dignity for transgender people in Saskatchewan more than six years ago. 

“He said to me that he was a 40-year-old from (Weyburn), so he didn’t really understand or know about all this,” she said. “And I said, in this day and age, where this information is so readily available, his kind of ignorance is not acceptable. 

 “Now, he’s had a lot of time to learn. And I’m older than him by 20 years. I learned about transgender people. I educated myself and I understand how important this issue is. What’s his excuse?” 

 Jolene Brown, who sits on the board of Prince Albert Pride, says these new policies are “harming more than helping, while pretending to help.” Prince Albert Pride is calling on the government to rescind Tuesday’s announcement. 

 “To me, this policy change is not positive,” said Brown. “It solves no existing problem. It just shackles teachers’ ability to help (and) all this is doing is removing resources. It’s putting a cage around teachers, and it’s putting a cage around kids, too. I just can’t imagine how a parent would want that.” 

 Forsberg says schools need to be a safe place for children to be themselves — whether or not they come from an accepting home. 

 “Being a foster parent, I’ve seen so many kids literally kicked out of their homes because of their sexual or gender diversity,” she said. “I’ve seen physical violence towards these children and youth.

“The government is saying this is for the safety and well-being of children and youth, but I think they’re just pandering to the far-right. It’s ridiculous, and it’s so backwards.” 

Brenda Montgrand, who works as a school counsellor at Hector Thiboutot Community School in the village of Sandy Bay, says that especially in remote, isolated communities like hers schools need to be safe havens for LGBTQ2S+ youth. 

 “They hang out in the school, even after classes in the evening,” she said. “If I was doing something in the evening — even showing a movie and having a talk about it afterwards — they’ll stay for that. Because a lot of them don’t want to go home. It’s not comfortable there, or they may not feel safe. So it’s nice to have them here, and we don’t mind being there for them.” 

Some of Montgrand’s gay, trans and two-spirit students have recently started a GSA. She says these students are “brave, and they want to do something,” and eager to learn more about their own identities and those of their friends. 

“We want to be able to talk openly amongst each other,” she said. “We all need to be able to look and talk more openly. But we need more, in that area, for them to learn about what it is to live a gay life and to be more comfortable. And if these kids are getting treated differently because they’re changing how they want to be called, that’s going to have an effect on them.” 

 Forsberg also worries about how the changes to sex education in schools will affect the rates of STIs and unplanned pregnancies in Saskatchewan, which are already much higher than the national average.

“When we know better, we do better,” she said. “This education can do nothing but help kids make the right decisions for them. I know of nobody who has ever been harmed by too much education; quite the contrary.” ...

Words of Wisdom: Hamilton Nolan, Dale Smith, Evan Scrimshaw, Robert Reich, Oliver Willis. And Pogo.

I've read a number of great substack articles and tweet threads recently by Hamilton Nolan, Dale Smith, Evan Scrimshaw, Robert Reich, and Oliver Willis, among others (and Pogo, of course).

But first, I have to start with this great tweet thread by a tweeter calling herself Aurelia Cotta:

RW and LW politicians both complain and moan and groan about spending on things that “no one will need anyway.”
The RW wants spending cuts and tax cuts. The LW wants us to redirect spending to non-emergency regular program spending 2/8#cdnpoli #kelownafires #Yellowknife #covid19

— Aurelia Cotta (@AureliaCotta) August 20, 2023

And all govts around the world bought fewer waterbomber planes, fire trucks, and stopped hiring firefighters, and stopped zoning buildings right—because putting homes in forests and on flood plains is AOK, right? 4/8 #KelownaWildfires #Yellowknifewildfire #covid19 #cdnpoli

— Aurelia Cotta (@AureliaCotta) August 20, 2023

And the RW delighted in tax cuts and the LW spent the money on current programs.

Public Health spoke up and we ignored them.

Rural areas and low income countries asked what the plan to help them was…and we ignored them. 6/8#yellowknife #cdnpoli #covid19 #kelownafires

— Aurelia Cotta (@AureliaCotta) August 20, 2023

I know we all want to find one single person to blame. One single cause.

But it’s not a conspiracy…it’s not organized. That would be a simple fix.

No, we all have screwed up our world together.

Now we have to fix it. 8/8#covid19 #cdnpoli #Yellowknife #kelownafires

Fin

— Aurelia Cotta (@AureliaCotta) August 20, 2023

Weekend Funny Stuff

Starting here:

How to lure me to my death pic.twitter.com/X0sVRGJOWK

— Hermeshuns 🤍 (@hermeshuns) August 13, 2023

I saw these on Bluesky: