Friday, April 7: Fish in a Barrel Once Again
Where do you run and hide when there's nowhere to run or hide?
As it so often does, the situation in Palestine worsened significantly yesterday, as apartheid Israel began a bombing campaign on Gaza and Lebanon. For context, Gaza is home to approximately 2 million people, most of whom have no way of leaving the open-air prison. So airstrikes from the apartheid enthusiasts have an outsized and devastating impact on an occupied population with no recourse for escape.
To think this all started because cowardly Israeli forces detained hundreds of Palestinians spending the night worshipping in Al-Aqsa Mosque this week. Adding insult to injury, apartheid Israel called on the UN to condemn Lebanon and Hamas for sporadic rockets that were fired in retaliation to their constant bombardment. Of course the vast majority of rockets fired at the apartheid state were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. But Gaza has no such protective defense system, so when these bombs drop they do every bit of calculated damage that the settlers and colonizers hope and plan for. Meanwhile, the US rushed to block a UN security council condemnation of Israel’s horrific crimes.
Sadly, this cycle of violence has become routine. Every Ramadan Israeli forces punish Palestinians for trying to celebrate while under occupation. No Palestinian knows how much worse today might be than yesterday, and often the only indication is when the floor is shaking because the fighter jets overhead are already dropping ordinance.
Side Items
Waste of Money: After news broke earlier this week that many New York City agencies were facing budget cuts, Mayor Eric Adams somehow reached an agreement to pay NYPD officers even more. Adams and the absurdly-named ‘Police Benevolent Association’ negotiated a new NYPD contract that will cost the city $5.5 billion (with a B). To give you an idea of how ridiculous the terms of this agreement are, cops who are 5 years into wasting their professional lives will now earn $130,000, which is a $40,000 increase. That's not including overtime. I challenge you to show me any other profession where employees are getting a $40k pay bump for twiddling their thumbs and harassing poor people
Drama in the Tennessee House: Two young black democratic lawmakers were expelled from the Tennessee state legislature yesterday for their role in a protest calling for more gun control. The overwhelmingly white republican representatives were evidently upset that these lawmakers called for gun control in the aftermath of last week’s deadly school shooting in Nashville. Banishment like this is a legal move that the legislative body has used only a handful of times since the Civil War. Most state legislatures have the power to expel members, but it is generally reserved as punishment for lawmakers accused of serious criminal misconduct, not as a weapon against political opponents. Evidently that’s changed
Classic Fed Mixup: Members of the FBI and the US Army Special Operations Command who were conducting a training exercise in downtown Boston raided the wrong hotel room and detained the innocent person inside for close to an hour before realizing their mistake. The exercise was apparently intended to “enhance soldiers’ skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments”, but what it really did was illustrate, once again, how feckless and idiotic the people with the big guns often are