More than a few old favourites

 

A Few thoughts On Ukraine

 Today, September 16, 2024, is day 936 of Rusia’s genocidal war against Ukraine. There may not be much on TV about it, other than Biden’s continued refusal to allow Ukraine to use U.S. made MGM-140 tactical ballistic missiles to strike targets deep into Russia, even though Starmer would approve it. Free world leaders, except of course Schroeder, are all calling for approval. The war is still going on, Ukrainians are still being killed and Ukraine destroyed.

However, Jake Sullivan, Russia’s greatest American asset besides Trump, is engaged in Escalation Management aka appeasement. From the beginning in February 2022, the White House has been terrified of crossing Putin’s red lines. Putin has successfully cowed America by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons. It's bullshit.  If Russia used battlefield tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Russian forces would suffer an immediate overwhelming NATO conventional response that would wipe out the entire Russian military. Putin is not even sabre rattling; he is rattling the empty scabbard.

America has NOT been stingy in supplying Ukraine with intelligence, and highly accurate U.S. intelligence about Russian troop movements.

The war is fought two ways, on the ground along a 1200 km front, between soldiers of the AFU and the Orcs, and by terror attacks against civilian targets in Ukrainian cities using bombs, rockets, missiles, drones, and tube artillery.

The terror war targets schools, hospitals, apartment blocks and infrastructure. Ukrainian First Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Khomenko stated that Russian forces launched over 1,000 strikes on 200 energy infrastructure facilities since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine faces a winter with power blackouts from 4 to 12 hours per day. Generators are needed to keep the hospitals going.

Putin’s military has rained down every kind of ballistic missile, drone, and cruise missile in their arsenal on targets in Ukraine including civilian targets in population centers such as Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Lviv, not to mention all the smaller towns and villages that haven wiped by the Russian military during this war.  Russia has fired so many missiles at Ukraine, they have had to import missiles from North Korea and Iran. 

The Korean missiles are dangerously highly maneuverable but seem to be a high percentage of duds. The ballistic missiles recently sent by Iran via the Caspian sea, are a different matter, and have led to the call of deep strikes into Russia. Iran has previously supplied smaller Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar short range missiles to Russia as well as large stocks of its Shahed Kamikaze drones. 

Ukraine has been supplied with Patriot missiles and shoots down a very high percentage of incoming drones and missile, protecting Kyiv and to an extent other major centres but the downed missiles and drones cause damage where they fall and always some get through. Russia has launched so many massed drone attacks that the supply of Patriot missiles is running low.

Ukraine has developed long range kamikaze drones of its own, striking military targets deep into Russia, oil refineries, tank factories, airports and lately civilian targets in Moscow itself. Russia cannot protect itself, as it is so large with so many good targets. With no sense of irony, Putin has declared these terrorist attacks and threatened all sorts of terrible things in response.

The ground war resembles WWI, well entrenched static lines, using artillery and massed attacks by the Russians who lose about 1200 men per day and large amounts of equipment. The difference is the extensive use of drones, both to target artillery fire and as artillery.

In early August the AFU in a surprise move crossed the border into Kursk Oblast and successfully captured and held a substantial amount of territory. This is hugely embarrassing to Putin who has tried to shrug it off and banned any news reporting other than approved by the Kremlin. Russia has committed about 60,000 troops, many of them conscripts, to drive them out so far unsuccessfully. Ukraine has since penetrated the border in a couple more locations surrounding some 1000 conscripts to be useful as trades for Ukrainian POWs.  

The hope was to draw Russian troops from the Donbas front where Ukraine is struggling against constant Russian attacks. To an extent this has worked, but Russian attacks on Pokrovsk, and Vuhledar continue to make slow progress at the cost of tens of thousands of Russians. Russia no longer tries to capture a community. They simply destroy it and the AFU retreat to the next defensive position. Bakhmut in 2023, Avdiivka by /February 2024, and now Pokrovsk.

Avdiivka

Avdiivka

Russia is on a war economy, oil exports are keeping it afloat, China and Kazakhstan are making end runs around sanctions supplying banned inputs such as chips and other electronic parts. There appears to be no end in sight.

Driving Miss Daisy Crazy

 A few things came together to inspire today’s blog. First, Americans on Xitter constantly complaining about gas prices, second, a new toy called Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/?utm_source=onboardingemail1 which not only answers questions but provides sources for the answers and finally, an article in The Economist describing how Americans are killing each other with heavy ‘light trucks’ which include SUVs.

First I will deal with gas prices, driving distances, and fuel efficiency in Canada and USA. All of this came from asking Perplexity the right questions. I didn’t bother with sources. If you want them, play with the app. And my thanks to an Iowa corn farmer from DC for the tip off.

The average gasoline price in Canada as of August 26, 2024, is approximately CAD 1.79 per liter (USD $1.32 per liter or USD $4.99 per gallon). This includes crude oil costs, refining costs, wholesale and retail markups, and federal and provincial taxes, including the federal carbon tax. This is slightly higher than the world average of USD 1.24 per liter.

The current national average gas price in the United States is $3.32 (CAD $4.48) per gallon (CAD $1.19 per liter) as of September 5, 2024. This is down from $3.44 in mid-August, but higher than the 6-year national average of $3.05 per gallon since 2018

In 2023, the average gas price in USA was $3.52 ($4.76, $1.26/l) per gallon, down from $3.95 ($5.34, $141/l) in 2022. The highest weekly national average since 2018 was $4.99 ($6.74, $1.78/l) per gallon in June 2022 and the lowest weekly national average since 2018 was $1.84 ($2.49, $0.66/l)) per gallon in April 2020 during the pandemic.

The average Canadian driver typically travels around 15,200 kilometers (9400 miles) per year, ranging from Newfoundland and Labrador: 18,100 km (11,200 miles), Prairies 15,300 km (9,500 miles) to BC 13,100 (8,100 miles).

The average American drives approximately 13,500 miles (21,700 km) per year or 37 miles (60 km) per day, with drivers aged 35-54 averaging 15,291 miles (24,600 km) per year. Wyoming has the highest average of 24,000 miles (38,600 km) per year while DC has the lowest with only 6,700 (10,800 km). American men average 16,550 miles (26,650 km) per year and American women average 10,142 miles (16,300 km) annually.

The average gasoline mileage for new vehicles in America in 2022 is currently 26 mpg (11.1 l/100 km), reflecting ongoing improvements in fuel efficiency despite challenges in meeting stricter fuel economy standards. According to recent data, the average fuel consumption for vehicles in Canada is approximately 8.9 L/100 km (20.9 mpg).

Canadian fuel economy is roughly 25% better than USA. The reason for that becomes apparent in these articles from The Economist.

America’s Love Affair With Big Cars is Killing Them

When two vehicles collide, it is usually the heavier one that prevails. When a passenger car crashes with a pickup truck or sport-utility vehicle (SUV), the driver of the car is likely to die around three times as often. 

Between 1990 and 2005 the market share of SUVs in America grew from 6% to 26%, pushing up the weight of an average new car from 3,400lb to nearly 4,100lb.

For every deadly crash avoided by an SUV or pickup truck, there were an additional 4.3 deaths among other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Studies have estimated that when a car crashes with an SUV or pickup, rather than another car, the driver’s fatality rate increased by 31%. When two cars crash, a 1,000lb increase in the weight of one vehicle raised the fatality rate in the other by 47%.

The Economist compiled ten years’ worth of crash data from across 14 states, including millions of crashes between 2013 and 2023. These data yielded roughly 10m crashes. After dropping observations with missing data, we were left with around 7.5m two-vehicle crashes involving more than 15m cars.

Their data show that heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants than lighter ones. The fatality rate is roughly seven times higher when colliding with a heavy pickup truck than with a compact car. As the weight of your car increases, the risk of killing others increases dramatically.

The heaviest 1% of vehicles in their dataset—those weighing around 6,800lb—suffer 4.1 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average but were responsible for 37 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes. Cars in the middle of the sample weighing 3,500lb, suffer around 6.6 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, but were responsible for 5.7 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average. The lightest 1% of vehicles weighing just 2,300lb, had 15.8 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes. and 2.6 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes.

Vehicles in the top 10% of the sample—those weighing at least 5,000lb—are involved in roughly 26 deaths per 10,000 crashes, on average, including 5.9 in their own car and 20.2 in partner vehicles. For vehicles in the next-heaviest 10% of the sample—those weighing between 4,500lb and 5,000lb—the equivalent figures are 5.4 and 10.3 deaths per 10,000 crashes.

 In 2023 vehicles weighing more than 5,000lb accounted for a whopping 31% of new cars, up from 22% five years earlier. “As you see the vehicle fleet around you getting heavier, then you want to protect yourself rationally by buying a bigger and heavier car.” a Cold War scenario. Such rational individual decisions have led to a suboptimal outcome for society as a whole, as people are rationally concerned about their own safety.

Regulators are ill-equipped to fix the problem. America’s tax system subsidises heavier vehicles by setting more lenient fuel-efficiency standards for light trucks (including SUVs) and allowing bosses who purchase heavy-duty vehicles for business purposes to deduct part of the cost from their taxable income. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), America’s top auto-safety agency only takes account of the safety of the occupants of the vehicle in question, not that of other drivers.

The shift towards electric power is likely to increase their weight further, as battery-powered vehicles tend to be heavier than their internal-combustion equivalents. (Note: as they are virtually friction free they can travel at very high speeds unless speed controls are built into their computer systems. My son has seen them on the Edmonton-Calgary highway traveling at super speeds)

Why American cars are so big

In 1975, in response to the 1973 oil crisis, the federal government imposed fuel-economy standards on carmakers. To ease the burden on small businesses that relied on big vehicles, the government exempted “light trucks”, any vehicle that could be used off road and weighed less than 8,500lb (3855kg). That meant SUVs—typically among the biggest and least-efficient cars—were swept into the category and avoided the new fuel standards.

Because making light trucks held to lower environmental standards was more profitable, automakers marketed big models, including SUVs, enthusiastically. They portrayed them as quintessentially American, embodying freedom, strength and adventurousness. By 2002 light trucks, including SUVs, made up a bigger share of light-duty vehicle sales than cars. By the 1990s gasoline had become cheaper in America than in other rich countries—so the cost of running a big car did not deter buyers. Such models are convenient for suburban living, and consumers see them as safe. 

And EVs are developing the same weight problem as conventional cars. The EPA does not regulate EVs’ indirect emissions, even though heavier models require more electricity to charge, and need bigger batteries, which contain more of the scarce metals used to make those batteries. In 2022 60% of electric-vehicle sales in America were SUVs.

Conclusion

Nothing is likely to change in the near or medium term, though the EPA is tightening the definition of light trucks. Running on a platform of higher gas prices, slower speeds and smaller vehicles is a recipe for political suicide. Canada’s Carbon Tax is about as popular as a skunk at a picnic.

Back in the Saddle Again

 September 1st and time to start blogging again. Summer has come and gone. My intentions are to blog weekly or is it weakly? Anyway we all know which road is paved with good intentions. 

 Once more for old time's sake. Hey, I got a grandson out of that sort of thing. I wrote this for Debra at She who Seeks https://shewhoseeks.blogspot.com/. I used one of her sketches and promised to give her credit. She does some terrific black and white sketches.

The Spy Who Came In With a Cold

As I have noted before, all my troubles as a PI concern dames. They want someone killed, someone wants to kill them, or they want to kill me. If you saw me sitting in my office, nursing a glass of Johnny Walker Red Label, you would realize that I had fallen on hard times. The sign on my door may say Rick O’Shea, PI, but today PI stands for Poor Idiot.

A knock on the door perked me up. Maybe someone needed my services after all. I reached in the drawer for my gat in case it was someone who didn’t need my services. A brunette in a trench coat, dripping wet from the rain, entered carefully, looking left and right. The right hand in her pocket told me she was carrying, too.

Woman  in a trench coat by
Debra from She who Seeks

Someone must have told her to get stuffed, as she had a head cold to die from. Too much time hiding in the cold and damp

“You hab to helb me”, she gasped. “Deethith and RDMB are abter me. I dow doo mudch for dem to let me libe”.

“OK, lady, calm down, and here, use this. And stay away from me”, I handed her some nasal decongestant spray. I keep it in the same drawer as my gun. Emergencies, you know. Then I poured her a drink, “This will warm you up. Now when you can breathe, tell me your story and we’ll make a plan”.

She collapsed into a chair, used the nasal spray with her left hand and picked up the drink the same way, keeping her right hand in her pocket. In a few minutes she breathed easier but never relaxed.  She was scared.

“Never mind who I work for”, she said, finally, when she could breath. “I accidentally learned of a huge cover up by CSIS and the RCMP of a major political scandal. Heads will roll when it gets out unless they can roll mine first. It is all on this flash drive”. And she pulled her right hand out of her pocket and handed me the flash drive she had been holding onto for dear life. No gun.

“Oh, good”, I thought, “now they will want to kill me too”.

“Can you get this to The Globe and Mail? It must not get to The National Post, or they will bury it deep. I can’t send it from my phone as they are monitoring it for my location.”

Being a sucker for a good deed, I agreed, and took the flash drive. “Now what do I do with you?”

“Get me out of the country,” she said. I can pay cash for the ticket, but I need fake ID that will get me through airport security.” Like I have that in my desk drawer. “That won’t be cheap. Have you enough cash for that?”, I mentally calculated an exorbitant sum and added 20% finders fee for myself. “I know people who know people”.

She pulled out a wad of USD that would choke a goat. I don’t want to know. Her nose was running, I handed her a box of tissues whereupon she did a good imitation of a barge asking the drawbridge to be raised.

I called Pete “the Fence” Picket. “I need a set of ID for a mid-thirties brunette female, that will clear airport security leaving Canada. Where she is going and who she is when she gets there is not my business. Money is no object, I’ll meet you at the café across the street from the bus stop at 12^th and Crocus. Oh, and bring me two burners”.

“Pete says it will be Five Grand USD in hundreds. Give it to me and I’ll meet him to pick it up. It will take an hour. You have to trust me, you have no choice”.

An hour later I was back with the ID and two burner phones in my pocket, (along with $1000 USD “finders fee”). I gave her one of the burners. “Dump your phone in the sewer grate outside the entrance door.”

I called a taxi and went with her to the airport just in case we were tailed. She went inside alone, and I went back to my office. 

I hooked the flash drive to the burner and downloaded the files. I did NOT read them. Found a number for the paper and fired them off. Ran the flash and the burner through my industrial strength shredder and poured the pieces down the sewer grate. Not foolproof but the best I could do.

Then I went out and bought a bottle of 18-year-old Laphroaig but kept the Red Label in case hard times come again.

Dear Friends and Followers, it isn't fun anymore

 I have been blogging for 20 years. It has been enjoyable as I have met some good friends through my blog, I have learned a great deal is doing the background work for many of them. But I am tired. Ukraine wears me out. Palestine really wore me out. 

I am reminded of the man going on a honeymoon cruise who stopped to buy seasick pills and condoms. The druggest said, "If it makes you sick, why do you do it?"

I will keep my blog in case I get the urge again. And will drop in on yours from time to time too. 

Many thank for your friendship over the years

The Six-Day War of June 1967

 In the Six-Day War of June 1967, Israel expanded and occupied the rest of the Arab territory of Mandated Palestine, including Jerusalem.  It also took control of and occupied the Golan Heights of neighbouring Syria and the Sinai of Egypt. The 1967 war brought the second great Palestinian exodus. Half-a-million Palestinian people were uprooted and fled, half of them refugees for the second time.

The preemptive war began with an Israeli air assault in Egypt and Syria. An Israeli ground offensive was also launched in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. These territories were all captured by Israel, though the Sinai Peninsula was later returned to Egypt. Golan Heights and West Bank gave Israel control over precious water resources.

Source Israel Committee Against Housing 
Demonstrations https://icahd.org/

The war was sold as necessary because Israel faced an existential threat from Egypt and Syria. 15,000 Arab soldiers were killed and only 700 Israelis. Miko Peled examined the minutes of the meeting of Israeli generals, of which his father was one. He learned that the Egyptian army was at least a year and a half away from becoming a fighting force and that the Syrian army was even farther behind. The Six-Day War was one of taking advantage of Arab weakness and of territorial expansion within Palestine

Miko Peled, is an author, writer, speaker, and human rights activist living in the United States. He was born in Jerusalem in 1961. His grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer on the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father, Matti Peled was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the Six-Day War. General Peled then turned peacemaker, urging a fair settlement with the Palestinians. Miko’s unlikely opinions reflect his father’s legacy.

If you  go to YouTube you can find several presentatins by Miko Peled https://youtu.be/jI2K5ZnOHUg?si=khOA1fvVxpoGb-zF. Also by Ilan Pappe https://youtu.be/qxQNk81ELbI?si=cz1G5wuiFkSqzduF 

Prior to the 1960s Palestinian history was fairly easy to follow. The players were primarily Zionists, Palestinians, British and other Arab states. In the 1960s it gets more complicated. America becomes  involved in a major way as does the UN. There are many oganizations and leaders appearing and many actions, reactions and negotiations taking place. I am still sorting these out as best I can.

I have enough energy for one major physical activity and one major mental activity per day, so I am often behind in reading other blogs or writing my own. Some days I feel like there is something wearing me out from the inside. So far the doctors have found nothing. They even examined my head. (straight line for some wit to capitalize on). They are still looking. Once I get some of that fixed, I am going to go for new knees.

From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free

When the events of October 7^th led to the Israeli continued genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, I said I would stay out of it. But there are so many Zionist attacks on anyone supporting Palestinians that it made me angry.

The Breach published a long article about the crackdown on pro-Palestinian statements and activities that is happening in Medical Schools and hospitals around the country. https://breachmedia.ca/abuse-of-power-hospitals-med-schools-crack-down-on-palestine-advocacy/ . Most of it concerns hospitals and Universities in Ontario but the last part of the article writes about the Medical School at the University of Calgary. That is getting close to home.

Netanyahu was warned a year in advance in great detail by Egypt, exactly what Hamas was planning. He was warned again close to October 7^th. He chose to ignore the warnings and leave Gaza more lightly defended than West Bank. It was said that Hamas massacred 1200 Israelis including 400+ IDF in a most horrific fashion, however more reports are showing that many of the people killed were murdered in “friendly fire” by the IDF. To date the IDF has murdered around 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while many more are injured (70,000) and experiencing famine. Israel fires on starving people as they come for food, the recent one killing and injuring over 1000 people in The Great Flour Massacre. The IDF restrict supplies going into Gaza, banning insulin and restricting medical supplies such that many children have had amputations without anesthetic.

More than half of Gazan homes have been destroyed or damaged, 390 educational facilities damaged, hospitals have been attacked by bombs and IDF dressed as civilians, 267 places of worship have been damaged including some of the oldest Christian churches, and 1.7 million people live in refugee camps as 85% of the population has been displaced. The IDF push the Palestinians southward, crowding  2 million people into tighter and tighter areas, intending to force them into the Egyptian desert.

If Hamas set out to put the Palestinian occupation by Israel back on the front burner, they have succeeded beyond their wildest hopes. Arguments for and against Israel are everywhere and the Israeli genocide is turning world opinion against Israel. However, the Zionists are fighting back to silence support for Palestine, using their favourite weapon, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Judaism. Biden has said he is a Zionist, that without Israel, Jews are not safe anywhere. Jews are not any safer in Israel than in America. Claiming Zionism and Judaism are one and the same has now put Jews in danger all over as many people cannot differentiate. Zionism is a fascist political movement and has more registered evangelical Christian members than Jewish members.

Zionists have always deliberately conflated Zionism and Judaism and to oppose Israel is to be an Antisemite. ADL attacks and smears anyone who dares criticize Israel in Canada and USA. It has the politicians running scared. ADL targets Universities, all media, hospitals, doctors, any people or institutions of importance and credibility. In the USA, Canary Mission doxxes university students and professors whom it perceives as anti-Israel. Where does it get its funding?. “You can help expose hatred by alerting us to anti-Semitic activity on your college campus and beyond”. AIPAC spends millions to primary and defeat any American politician that is perceived as anti-Israel. Canada and some American states have passed laws against BDS which opposes companies doing business in occupied West Bank. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre also asks people to report anyone they perceive to be  anti-Israel.

The Cumming School of Medicine has received over $20 million dollars since 2003 from the Libin Institute, founded by the wealthy Libin family. The main lecture room is called Libin and an entire floor in the main research building also has their name. The current Dean was the Director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta from July 1, 2010 to July 31, 2019. 

A collective of medical students put up an art display for a student art show called Names not Numbers, with the names of over 6,500 murdered Palestinians. The display was ordered to be torn down by the Vice Dean.  The Dean claimed seeing the names of dead Palestinians treated with respect harmed students, and while Deans Anderson and Adams did not apologize for ordering the destruction of the art piece, they both did express regret for the manner in which it was removed.

Names, Not Numbers

The destroyed display

After the students met with the Dean, all the Deans from Canadian medical schools met with two American Deans to discuss how to handle current events. We do not know what was said, but a student ethics presentation on censorship was censored.

Several Deans continue to speak about “Jewish” people when they mean Zionist, a form of antisemitism which would be laughable if it wasn’t so insidious. These Deans also continue to ignore that the student collective is multi-faith.

A faculty member who witnessed the destruction of the art display, informed Global Media, who interviewed them for a story. The story never appeared. Fortunately, CBC published an article detailing the chilling effect as people expressing pro-Palestinian views are censured and suspended from work and school.

CBC documented many instances across Canada in which employees and students have faced firings, suspensions or calls for them to not be hired based on their publicly stated political stance on the Israel-Hamas war. It's a trend that has been reported not just in Canada but also in the U.S. and Europe, and across various industries, including media, law, health care and the service sector. "A lot of the time, what's happening to them is a result of anonymous sources reaching out to their employers or to their institutions, raising concerns with either their behaviour or something they have said or [are] alleged to have said."

None of the lawyers who spoke with CBC News had been notified of similar cases relating to expressions of support for Israel. "I've certainly seen stories of people who have chosen to leave jobs where they … don't feel supported as an Israeli or as a Jewish person [or] don't feel comfortable with statements that the organization [they] work for has made.”

Nearly 650 lawyers, law students and professors across Canada allege that some in the profession are "contacting the employers of lawyers and encouraging they be fired for their pro-Palestinian advocacy" and that those engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy — many of whom are younger and people of colour — are being bullied for it. 

Screenshot sent to CBC News by a member of a closed Facebook group called Canadian Jewish Physicians show a handful of members saying they have compiled a list of 271 medical students who signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire and an end to targeting health-care facilities and workers in Gaza. 

The stated intention is to share this list with program directors ahead of residency interviews.

There are many more examples in the CBC article. And for detailed information about anti-Palestinian Racism see this website Understanding Anti-Palestinian Racism Antipalestinianracism.com

 

Life begins at…?

If you want to drive yourself bonkers, start thinking deeply about life. What is it? What does it mean? What is its purpose? Why are you here? When does life begin?

When does life begin? The question at the heart of America’s abortion debate is the most elemental — and the most complicated. This article from NYT is the most comprehensive look at this scientific, philosophical, and theological question I have ever read. Skip my blog and read this.

Andy Borowitz says life begins when you leave Arkansas. He has a point. The Alabama Supreme Court in deference to the loony tunes who think zygotes and embryos are humans, went one step further and declared 8 cell frozen embryos to be human. This immediately put IVF in jeopardy and IVF clinics started closing shop before they were guilty of murder. The Alabama House and Senate recognized the problem for women from using IVF who wanting to get pregnant but unable to. They are passing laws that declare embryos are only human beings after they are implanted in the uterus.

An 8 cell embryo, ready for IVF transfer

A human embryo or...?

Heretics, recognizing the stupidity of declaring embryos to be human made a great deal of fun asking for example if they could claim child support or be an income tax deduction. The forced-birthers responded. Lawmakers in at least six states have proposed measures similar to a Georgia law that allows women to seek child support back to conception to cover expenses from a pregnancy. Georgia also allows prospective parents to claim its income tax deduction for dependent children before birth, Utah enacted a pregnancy tax break last year, and variations of those measures are before lawmakers in at least four other states.

A few red states are even recognizing that if they are forcing a woman to give birth, they need to provide more in the way of pre- and post-natal care. Which is progress of sorts, I guess.

There is a huge fuss about how late in pregnancy abortions should be allowed. Everyone seems opposed to third trimester abortions. There is no such thing as “late term” abortions, a term crafted by anti-abortion extremists that holds no medical merit. In pregnancy, to be "late term" means to be past 41 weeks gestation, or past a patient's due date. Abortions do not occur in this time period, so the phrase is contradictory," According to Dr. Barbara Levy, vice president of health policy at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Abortions later in pregnancy are typically carried out due to either "lethal fetal anomalies or threats to the health of the mother," and to make the decision to abort is devastating to make but can ultimately save a life.

Pete Buttigieg summed it up better than anyone.

Why am I writing about this? Because Canada has six Conservative Premiers and one Prime Minister wannabe set on destroying Canada.  

A Short History of Palestine from 1947

 In early 1947, the British government announced it would be handing over the disaster it had created in Palestine to the United Nations and ending its colonial project there. On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

UN proposal for a two state Palestine

At the time, the Jews in Palestine constituted less than one third of the population and owned less than six percent of the total land area. Under the UN partition plan, they were allocated 55 percent of the land, encompassing many of the main cities with Palestinian Arab majorities and the important coastline from Haifa to Jaffa. The Arab state would be deprived of key agricultural lands and seaports which led the Palestinians to reject the proposal, especially since they had never been asked. Zionists were ecstatic. It was not as much as they wanted but they knew they could and would add to it with their armed militia groups, (Irgun headed by Menachim Begin, Lehi aka Stern, and Haganah).

From the moment the UN passed the two state resolution, the Zionists swung into action. The terrorist groups fused to constitute a 40,000 strong, armed and battle seasoned militia (Haganah) from fighting in WWII and training in Poland. The Palestinians had no armed forces to speak of and fled before the terror inflicted by the Zionist’s ethnic cleansing. From December 1947 to May 15^th 1948, half the Palestinian refugees had already been driven from their homes.

On May 15^th, the last British soldier left Palestine and the state of Israel was declared. Other Arab nations, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel in defense of the Palestinians. The Arab-Israeli War lasted about a year. Between December 1947 and March 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

The armistice lines established in 1949 left Israel controlling a total of 67 per cent of the territory of Palestine.  Egypt and Jordan administered the remaining territorial portions allotted for the Arab State in the Partition Resolution.  

Palestine after the UN Armastice agreement in 1949

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. It is illegal for Israeli Palestinians to observe Nakba.

 United Nations dispatched a mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden. His plan included specific territorial adjustments in the borders, return of all Palestinian Arab refugees, and some limitations on Jewish immigration.   He reported that the Arab refugees (later estimated at 726,000) had “fled or were expelled from the area under Jewish occupation”.  On 17 September 1948, Bernadotte was assassinated by the Stern gang.

In December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the entitlement of the refugees to return. However, Israel prohibited Palestinians from returning to their homes and refuses to recognize them as refugees.

In December 1949, the General Assembly established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) to assist the Palestinian refugees who had been displaced and deprived of their homes and means of livelihood.  Until 1967 the world treated the Palestine issue mainly as a refugee problem. By making it specific to Palestinians, donors can control it without it affecting other refugee programs (as they have done since October 17^th by cutting funding).

In the war of June 1967, Israel expanded and occupied the rest of the Arab territory of Mandated Palestine, including Jerusalem.  It also took control of and occupied the Golan Heights of neighbouring Syria and the Sinai of Egypt. The 1967 war brought the second great Palestinian exodus. Half-a-million Palestinian people were uprooted and fled.

To be continued

A Few Things to Read While I Work on the Next Palestinian History Chapter

 

A Short History of Palestine from 1900

 If Hamas set out to draw the world’s attention to the plight of the Palestinians, they succeeded beyond their fondest dreams. Contrary to what Israel would have you believe, October 17, 2023 did not come out of nowhere. Hamas may have in their charter a resolution to kill all Jews but there is no record of them saying such that I have found. On the other hand there is a long history of Israeli Zionists desire to kill all Palestinians including statements by Netanyahu.

“The Palestinians have never been at war with Jews; they have been resisting a unilateral settler colonial project whose declared aim is the take-over of their homeland, the transformation of Palestine into Israel and the erasure of the Palestinian people, its culture and heritage. Calls to “end the violence” are not enough. On the contrary, they create a false dichotomy between military conquest, occupation, displacement, repression and the war crimes of a settler state on the one hand and the resistance of a colonized people with no state of their own, no army and no support from the major political powers on the other. Under the guise of “security” and “self-defense,” the United States and Europe have supported Israel’s killing and displacement of Palestinians – routinely described as “terrorists” – while ignoring and even justifying Israeli state terrorism.” Israeli Committee Against HouseDemolitions

 The subject of on-going Israeli genocide of Palestinians is something I said I would not blog about. I changed my mind. Robert Reich’s substack column Howto understand the politics of Israel and Palestine? was interesting reading though he danced around too many things for my liking. It was the comments section that really got to me. One commenter repeated every Zionist lie I ever heard.

This map shows how Israel has over time taken over Palestinian lands. Brought up to today would show even less green area. An article purporting to prove the map false begins by stating that Palestine never existed. How stupid do they think we are?

Many of us grew up in a culture that believed the Jews were God’s chosen people, that they were entitled to reclaim their ancient homeland after the Holocaust of WWII. We believed no one lived there except a few wandering Bedouins and that the Israelis made the desert blossom like a rose.  We believed that the surrounding Arab states first attacked Israel on May 15^th, 1948, and that the Palestinians were asked to leave by their leaders so they could more easily destroy Israel.

We believed that Israel was under existential threat in 1967 and that the preemptive 6 day saved the country. We believed that the Palestinians and other Arabs constantly attacked Israelis because they were Jews. We believed Israel was a democracy and that Arabs living in Israel had the same rights as Jews. We believed that the Palestinians were offered a two-state solution and rejected it every time. Most importantly we believed that opposing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians or opposing Zionism was opposing Judaism and was antisemitic.

These are lies promoted by Zionists to justify Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Land and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. These lies are propagated by the well-oiled and sophisticated Hasbara, Israel’s PR machine. It is reinforced by pro-Israeli organizations such as ADL and AIPAC. However, in the past 20 years, Israeli historians have begun validating Palestinian claims so they can no longer be ignored.

The truth is that Israel is a European settler colony and like all settler colonies was established by killing the indigenous people or driving them out or forcing them into small fully controlled enclaves. Promised by God or Manifest Destiny.

Judaism and Zionism are very different. One is religious, the other political. Judaism is a monotheistic religious belief practiced by Jews, an ethnoreligious group and nation by continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people. Zionism is a nationalist political movement based on Jewish Supremacy and the inferiority of Palestinians based on the biblical concept of the "Return to Zion", a way of proving the occupation is legitimate. By conflating anti-Zionism with Anti-Judaism and calling it antisemitism, the Zionists have legitimized antisemitism, as decent people everywhere oppose Israeli Zionist treatment of Palestinians. This is very dangerous to Jews everywhere who may be lumped in with Zionists.

In 1938, Ben Gurion described the conflict with the Arabs as "in its essence a political one... politically we are the aggressors and they [the Arabs] defend themselves." From the beginning, Zionist ideology, the goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine necessitated ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine, displacing and dispossessing the Arab population.

Israel is touted as the only democracy in the Middle East. It is a democracy for Jews only. Palestinian citizens of Israel have over 30 laws narrowly defining what they can do and where they can go. They can vote and have their own political party. Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza live in a police state and are subject to the whims of the IDF.

When Israel declared itself a nation May 14, 1948, most of the Jews had arrived only in the last few decades. From 1882 onwards, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine; pushed by the anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in the Russian Empire, and the appeal of Zionism promising a Jewish Homeland. In 1882 there were 24,000 Jews in Palestine, increasing to 50,000 by 1900. There were about 88,000 in 1922 when the total population was officially 750,00, roughly 12%. By 1939, the Jewish population had increased to 445,000 out of a total population of about 1.5 million, roughly 30%.

The Zionist Organization also acquired land to settle the Jewish immigrants, buying from absentee landlords and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants.  In 1920, Jewish holdings in Palestine were about 2 1/2 per cent of the total land area.  By 1939, they had increased their holdings to over 5.7 per cent of the total land area.

The Ottoman Empire fought on the side of Germany in WW I. The British and French seized and divided up the Middle East according to a series of Mandates from the newly formed League of Nations. The Palestinian Mandate, lasting from 1920 to 1947, included a strongly worded version of the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was a letter written in 1917 by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild, in which he expressed the British government's support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It marked the true beginning of an Israeli state.

Palestinians openly warned against the motives of the Zionist movement in the press as early as 1908. They regarded the Zionist Organization’s activities to increase Jewish immigration to and land holdings in Palestine as colonization of their ancestral land by foreigners.  Not yet politically organized, the Palestinians vented their anger through violence.  Anti-Zionist riots erupted in 1920, 1921, 1929, eventually culminating into a full-scale rebellion from 1936 to 1939. The British authorities violently crushed the revolt, destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders.

Britain tried to control the situation by halting all Jewish immigration to Palestine from 1939 onwards and announcing that instead of partition, Palestine would in 1949 become a unified independent State with both Jews and Arabs sharing in government administration and rule. This was rejected by both sides.

In 1944, several Zionist armed groups (Irgun headed by Menachim Begin, Lehi (aka Stern) and Haganah) declared war on Britain for trying to put limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine at a time when Jews were fleeing the Holocaust. The Zionist paramilitary organizations launched a number of attacks against the British – the most notable of which was the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 where the British administrative headquarters were housed; 91 people were killed in the attack.

In 1947, the British turned the disaster they had created over to the United Nations.

To be continued

Help. I've fallen down a rabbit hole and I can't get out

 I started working on a blog post about a week ago and started doing some research on the subject. Of course this is no Mickey Mouse topic and there is no end of information some good some bad. I have 11 pages of notes and another post written I am still waiting for clearance from those concerned before I can post it. 

It is not so much of a rabit hole as an ant colony. Watch this as they pour molten aluminum into a fire ant colony. Once you open it to play, YouTube suggests serveral others like it. Enjoy complexity

You can read this in the meantime. Very well written article on the current Israeli-Palestinian war.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-netanyahu-self-destruction

 

A Dog's Breakfast of Memes

 

My To-Do list

Foods safe for dogs

Foods not safe for dogs

Hard to take religion seriously

Why I despise missionaries

This got me a three day ban on Facebook and Messenger

Truth. We are suddenly old

Read his poetry. So thought provoking

Saskatchewan Party has cut the education budget over $2500 per student

I should try this

Useful floechart of coffee addicts like me

Saskatchewan Party motto

I will hear about this

My favourite Calvin cartoon

Pro Forced Birth People are woefully ignorant

I never suffered from over motivation

Just who is doing the grooming here?

My ignorance is equal in value to your knowledge

This always astounds me

I love this wisdom

Abortion bans make people feel righteous and cost them nothing

The Bible on Abortion

There, their, they're

Anti-Vaxxers love to use these

How to positively reinforce kids

I like trolling the Trolls