When Russia Has Shown You Who They Are

 

All the videos of the Azerbaijan Airlines flight showing the damage show holes in the wreckage have entry holes on the port side and exit holes on the starboard side, likely with a slight angle from below. pic.twitter.com/z4NxEapLWd

— Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) December 25, 2024

Russia shot down that plane just like they shot down MH17 in 2014 and just like they shot down Korean flight 007 41 years ago. Soviet or Putin, we have a structure of murderousness and lying; and taking no responsibility for the loss of many human lives. 

Russia needs disinformation to exist, and this is why I deplore the idea that the structure for seeking out disinformation is being dismantled in the name of "free speech." Democracy can only exist with a well-informed public, yet US conservatives like the idea of a disinformed public softened up by foreign powers because they have so far benefitted from it. 

If I hadn't in the last 40 years of my political awareness seen a brilliant reason to not support the GOP ever--holy shit! Watergate, Iran/Contra and the yellow cake /WMD's lies are like tiddlers in comparison to any and every pretense that Russia is a reasonable honest nation we can do business with. We are absurdly weakened by such a stance. 

The Fall of Icarus

 

I've been thinking about one of my favorite poems, lately:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree....

 because suffering in the sense of grave and unmistakable tragedy has struck with alarming regularity. Of course, there's COVID-19, which has become the fatal backdrop, our mise en scene. But recently, a small town in Canada suffered a heat dome for several days, enduring temperatures wildly uncommon to that area, and basically spontaneously combusted. In Europe, massive flooding events have occurred, causing the loss of lives and previously unimaginable damage. In Florida, we have witnessed a residential building fall in the night, where residents went to sleep never suspecting the terrible changes to come.  (Sinkholes are so common to this area that I tend to assume either dramatic subsidence or building that didn't meet the requirements of the environment the building was sitting in.)

Our world is changing, and tragedy related to climate is becoming a norm,  And yet it stays, in some peculiar sense, a tragedy taking place as if always elsewhere and elsewhen. Faith might be part of the reason why--whether to laugh or cry about that, I can not say.  

I think the ancients knew the better part of the cause--hubris. Like the fall of  Icarus, tragedy befalls people when the protagonist (all of us) can not take the good advice of others and do sensible things, can not hear the warnings and portents of our Daedalus, but fall prey to a fatal flaw. We soar on technological wings, but can't moderate and bristle at the idea of accepting nature's limits. We are fucked and fall, hard, limbs thrashing into the drink. 

But it needn't be that way. Daedalus understood the dangers and as he flew, he did not fall. Also, I think of another case so similar--that of Phaethon driving the fiery chariot of Helios across the sky, and losing control (a metaphor for climate change if I ever heard one). His father had warned him, but this was because he was all too familiar with the rigors of the diurnal journey.

It's not that living with technology and doing it well and without further harm to environment can't be done, it's just that it has to be done skillfully and mindfully. We can survive as a species, but only if we pull our heads out of our asses. We need to grow up and be responsible and ever so careful. In the Anthropocene, we need to become the fathers and mothers, the good stewards, of the planet. 

Otherwise, we fail.

Grief is Not an "Opportunity"

The family of Harry Dunn wanted justice. The White House wanted a win. https://t.co/RJyt0k0amB

— Slate (@Slate) October 16, 2019

I can easily see how the Reality Show President's brain made the leap from "this is a meeting to resolve a difficult diplomatic situation involving a grieving family" to "this would work for me" (he's empathy-deficient and optics-obsessed), but I really can't fathom the people who would simply go along with it. From the story:

The Dunn family arrived in Washington, D.C. this week to personally make their case to President Trump. During a meeting at the White House, Trump tried to get the family to meet with Sacoolas, who he revealed was in the next room. The Dunn family refused for a host of personal and legal reasons, but the attempt to broker a meeting with the grieving family felt like “an ambush,” Radd Seiger, a spokesman for the family, told the BBC.

“I thought we were coming down to have a debate on the diplomatic immunity law and it soon became clear to us that the real reason for inviting us down was to try and get [Dunn’s mother] and Mrs Sacoolas in a room together,” Seiger said. “And then I looked to my side and I saw at least three photographers ready to almost… do a press call.” “I think the family feel a little bit ambushed to say the least,” he continued.

They were going to use these people for a photo op? Sure, it's been done before. But didn't they even consider that they should have given warning? Obtained consent?

Ghouls. The whole White House, at this point.

My Thoughts are with Mogadishu

The appalling truck bomb attack by al-Shabaab on the capital of Somalia has claimed the lives of over 270 people and injured hundreds more, making it the deadliest terror attack in Somalia, a country that had been ravaged by a quarter century of war. Among the victims were old and young, people with bright futures, people who were greatly loved. They were beloved children, admired community members, doting spouses, greatest friends. And after some carefully deliberated, planned, calculated moments of terror, they were gone, amidst the disarray and rubble.

It is part of the landscape of terror that we are stunned by the senselessness of so many deaths and so much pain, the injuries visited on completely innocent people and families and the brutal disruption of lives. It is, in a darker way, part of that landscape that people exist who do deliberate, plan, and calculate terrorist acts to maximize exactly this kind of extraordinary damage--who see it as a message, and a political tool. 

I can't see anything in this act but a hatred of humanity, and no aim that could be in the hearts of people capable of such monstrosity, but emptiness and continued brutality. My thoughts are with the people of Somalia, and the loved ones and mourners and sufferers with the victims of this tragedy, however far-flung.  Those who have such a viciousness towards life to have contributed to this can not prosper in in any way. Those who maintain faith in humanity reap their own reward.

The People You'll See After the Massacre

It feels like we do this too often, as in, we do this at all, right? Stay in some mode of attention after a horrific mass killing event looking for anything, anything at all, that helps us make sense of the senseless, that helps us frame this brutal chaos into an orderly worldview.

Of course, it doesn't help that some of the first people you see after the massacre are the hoaxers and conspiracy theorists. They bubble up from 4chan and fake news sites and get forwarded on by your halfwit news uncles like Gateway Pundit and Alex Jones. They aren't really interested in getting the story right--they basically are interested in clicks, chaos and creating zombie lies that never entirely die, even after being proven to be total bullshit. What they lack in character they make up for in industriousness. They spread lies before Truth even begins to pull her socks up.

Then there's the "Hopers". They hope you aren't going to politicize this thing (to the extent of this thing not being politicized counter to their own pet theory--you better not make this about guns when they want to make this about terrorism, or you better not make this about X privilege when they want to make it about Y social factors, like mental illness or economic anxiety). They usually prefer you wait until all the facts are in before counting the politicization they are already doing out. 

There's the people who greatly prefer you not blame the accessibility of guns for all this, because pea shooters and knives have also been used to kill people. To some extent. Or could. And it's too soon, anyway, to get into that subject. (Even if it isn't soon enough for the next shooting, which is almost certainly going to happen before we've the least opportunity to get any kind of effective gun regs ready for a vote.) 

We get to see the "thoughts and prayers" people--mostly harmless. Some of them legitimately just have thoughts and prayers at the ready and feel wrecked that an event like this happens and don't know anything else to do at this very second, and mean to give blood at the soonest opportunity, and will by all means contribute something to the Go Fund Me for the victims' medical bills and funerals. And some actually could be doing other stuff, but offer "thoughts and prayers" because if they did shit all about gun access, their campaign donations would get bricked. There's various layers of thoughts and varying qualities of prayers, and vice versa. 

There's the "call it terrorism" people and the "don't call it terrorism" people.  We hear from terrorists who want to claim the tragedy as their own, if it seems bloody enough, whether they even had anything to do with it.There's the "Thank fate this wasn't my political identity" people and the "Not all my political identity" people. There's "this random snippet about the shooter is conclusive" talk and "this random snippet about the shooter means nothing" discussions. There is even discussion about why the people getting shot were the people getting shot. Even though, in the days to come, we'll eventually hear about them, and from those that are living, and the family and friends of the deceased. And those people definitely matter, and it is great they get heard--

And then another of these things happen, and we hear from the hoaxers and the conspiracy theorists...

Thinking of Barcelona, Cambrils, and Turku

This has been a week where, as a US blogger, I have been wrapped up in the confrontation in Charlottesville this past weekend and apprehensive of the coming events this coming weekend, to have addressed the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, and also in Finland.  However often such events occur, they are always senseless, and say nothing of politics or religion so much as the desperate and violent nature of the wretched people who carried them out. And I have always been amazed at the ability of communities to come together in strength and love, lean on one another, and rise above the terror and shock. 

My regards to these places and my condemnation of such violence are my only offering. Sympathy for the stricken and condemnation of violence being, I think, the least and most basic human position for such terrors. Anything more, perhaps, is too much, and unnecessary. I mourn with you and us all, in a world where terror and stupidity are like currency, but actual lives are spent.

Terror in Manchester Targets Youth and is Immeasurably Disgusting

Islamic State supporters celebrate Manchester attack online, no official claim https://t.co/mY2SzJtMqV pic.twitter.com/djpLb3lEis

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 23, 2017

The latest news out of Manchester indicates that explosions at an Ariana Grande concert were deliberate, involved shrapnel bombs, just like the Boston Marathon attack here in the US, and have taken the lives of 19 people and wounded 50 or more others. The people of Manchester have risen admirably to the tragedy as details are still unfolding, which highlights something I have said about the use of terror before, and still think is meaningful--

It's useless. It conveys nothing but the willingness of the perpetrator to kill, and conveys nothing about the hopes, the concerns, the world the perpetrator wants to see. It is a desperate shriek for help spoken in gibberish. It's nihilism, and indifferent from the wreckage wrought by a drunk or a mentally ill person. Whoever had done this attack may have had some ideology in their fevered brains, but what have they accomplished? A terrifying and tragic time for concertgoers and their family and loved ones? But what does it say?

Nothing at all. This stupid wasteful act says nothing, but reminds us all of how precious life is, how much we desperately love those we love, how much we abhor acts of terror and violence. My thoughts are with those affected by this tragedy. This violence is not our humanity, what we do in the face of it is. And I refuse to assign ideology or politics or religion to this senselessness. It remains that: senseless, the self-negating act of people who no longer gave a shit for their humanity, and my agnosticism almost yearns for a hell for them to understand what they have rejected.

It's So Hard to Say Goodbye

There's something that struck me as very poignant in the image of the empty frames lining the walls of the West Wing (well done, David Nakamura/WP). The "ghostly" quality of the empty frames prompts the mind to refill them with memory. It is hard to say "goodbye" to an exceptional president and his exceptional family. It will never be hard to recall them.

(Damn everyone seems so young there. Those little girls became young women before our eyes.)

The trust and affection of the Obama/Biden partnership always seemed unforced, natural, a real "friendship goals" situation.

The Dallas Demonstration Would have Been A Model

Dallas PD was posting pictures of peaceful protests before shooting started: https://t.co/VGNrmU2spJ pic.twitter.com/MuKzCzy4vW

— Slate (@Slate) July 8, 2016

The terroristic assault that Micah Johnson waged was everything wrong with terrorism--it didn't just end lives and create fear and tragedy, but it stepped right on over the positive action that was going on by Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Dallas with the police right there. Because the police department in Dallas is one of the really good ones--the kind of answerable institution that responds to its community. If this troubled young man had any issues with police forces run by white supremacy, he had surely picked the wrong one. In addition, his long-gun rampage could have been even more tragic if people had panicked, or didn't help one another, or didn't really have a commitment to non-violence, and took this act of raining down bullets as the go sign to set of the stupid "race war" that mostly white supremacist asshats periodically want to trigger.

But the defining truth behind law enforcement, when it's done right, and civil protest against bad government, when it is done right--is that we are just people. Just human creatures trying to get though our lives. BLM isn't anti-police any more than the actual existence of law enforcement should in any way denote anti-blackness. There are integrated police forces. There are places where police brutality and bias are addressed. The question isn't about whether police lives matter--but whether policing itself takes seriously the concept that all lives matter, and lives up to it. Otherwise, all lives do matter--but we have to take special consideration of lives that have been made circumstantially more vulnerable.

Arresting the WBC?

One of the most understandable impulses upon hearing that the always-inappropriate haters of Westboro Baptist Church are coming to disrupt funerals in your community with their brand of nastiness is exactly what LA Governor Bobby Jindal wants to do--he wants them arrested.

I sympathize, because really, they seem like awful people, and it bothers me that they use their religion to get in the faces of others at a burial--I consider that a kind of sacred space that they are violating.

But he does know how WBC will respond, I hope? Because this is what they do: they will sue. They will claim that their freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and civil rights were violated all to heck.

They've won in court with those claims before. Non-violent protests pinning them a distance away from the mourners staged by civilians seem to work, but arresting them, I'm afraid, just gives them exactly the kind of attention they crave.

They pretty much are awful people, though.

Dylann Storm Roof is A Terrorist

Nine people died in a massacre that was horrifically out of place--a young white male opened fire on a mid-week prayer meeting at an historic AME church, explicitly saying for the benefit of the person he left alive, that he had to commit these murders because "You rape our women and you're taking over our country."

That's quite an assertion to unload at prayer meeting. "You rape our women", Dylann Roof told a group that was mostly church-going women, an allegation against black people reminiscent of D.W. Griffith's 100 year old pioneering film, Birth of a Nation, "and you're taking over our country." 

Although the shooting took place in a church, I don't see a lot of reason to consider this an attack "on religion" or "religious liberty".  This young man, who is seen in the above picture in a jacket adorned with patches showing the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, is broadcasting fairly undiluted anti-black racism and white supremacy. Not acknowledging the ideology of the shooter might seem like not giving his pernicious creed any more mileage than it deserves, but I think it's wrong to try and smooth this act of terror over with a sin of omission in denying its racist component, and yet more wrong to hijack this tragedy to try and serve some trumped-up idea that it's part of some larger war on "churches" or "religious people".

The Copenhagen Dip

The gunman who shot up a free speech conference and later a synagogue has been killed and identified as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a 22 year old who was already on the criminal radar as running with gangs.

He seems to meet the description of a "lone wolf" so far. It's not unlikely that he was inspired by the Charlie Hebdo attack to do what he did, but he's dead and there seems to have been no accomplice or connection to any larger organization.

I would not be surprised if this inspired additional attacks on Muslims in Europe, though. We've had a bit of that sort of thing here and in Europe post-Hebdo attack.

I blame Ismaayil Brinsley.

It is possible to mourn the loss of life BY police and OF police. That is true humanity.
— Baratunde (@baratunde) December 20, 2014

The deaths of two NY police officers by one assailant who started his spree with the shooting of a former girlfriend and ended it by shooting himself are tragic and grotesque. These officers in no way deserved what befell them, and my condolences are offered to the families and associates of the fallen. There is no good that comes of unreasoning and deadly actions such as this, and the pain of what has happened will doubtless last.

But blame has to be laid where it is due. I think it's revolting that Ismaayil Brinsley tied his actions to the protests against police brutality, as if his personal drama assumed meaning by it. No. He didn't shoot his girlfriend because he thought "black lives matter", and he didn't shoot those officers because he believed an unarmed man shouldn't be killed by police. It looks like this person had a criminal record of some size and a reason to have feelings about law enforcement well before the events in Fergusen, New York or Cleveland went down. He doesn't seem to have given a shit about it before the day he shot his ex-girlfriend. (Now, someone may dig up that he protested somewhere--but I doubt it. He wasn't a New Yorker--he drove up from Baltimore. I don't care what he posted on Instagram at the last moment--and if he's dropping 50 Cent lyrics with his ex-girlfriend's blood on his leg he was a huge posing useless waste of space.)