Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part II

This is a truly touchy topic all around.  I'm listing here some of the aspects that I feel are critical to understand (no, be aware of is a more realistic goal).  Assume that I am torn in different directions and not pushing an answer one way or the other.  

Part I of these posts gives an intro to these posts and covers:

 1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

PART II

4.  GENOCIDE

The word "genocide" was coined to give a name to what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.   

"Seventy years ago this fall [2014], the word "genocide" made its debut into the English language, on page 79 of the 674-page Axis Rule in Occupied Europe [which you can find here in Reading 3], in a chapter called "Genocide—A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations."

The writer was Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who had fled the persecution of the Holocaust and moved to the United States in 1941. A few months after his arrival, he heard a radio address in which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told listeners about the horrors of World War II. . .

[Lemkin] decided to create a name for the crime without a name. He came up with genocide, which he defined as the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he created the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). In 1948, nearly three years after the concentration camps of World War II had been closed forever, the newly-formed United Nations (UN) used this new word in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," a treaty that was intended to prevent any future genocides."

The US Holocaust Museum defines the term in more detail 

"Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

• Killing members of the group
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing."

Netanyahu would argue that his intent is to secure Israel from terrorist attack, not to kill Palestinians.  

Whether what's happening in Gaza is genocide or one of the other crimes listed probably doesn't matter too much, but I'm sure those fighting against Israeli bombing in Gaza are relishing the irony of charging Israelis with genocide.   

Since I wrote these words on genocide, the South African complaints about Israeli genocide to the  International Court of Justice has become available.  In it, starting from page 60, they quote a number of Israeli officials, in different ways saying things that suggest Israeli intent to obliterate Gaza.  Here's just one example from Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.  And we do remember."

"The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses."

This is the tenor of the evidence of intent that the South African complaint offers to International Court of Justice.  And as I write this, I always keep in mind the possibility that this whole document is a fake, that the quotes are fabricated.  But I don't think so.  Some of the Prime Minister's remarks are almost identical to the "Civilization versus Savages" theme  I posted above in Section 2 on Netanyahu that appeared in his 1995 book.  

But remember, these are like the prosecutor's opening argument.  It's their side of the story.  The defense hasn't yet had a chance to put things in context or to refute the arguments.  

Because I'm taking forever to write this, I can add the Israeli response.  Ha'aretz, the oldest Israeli newspaper, has this report on the Israeli response to the South African allegations.

[Being mindful of Issue #1 - Propaganda, Misinformation - the first link in the previous sentence is to the Encyclopedia Brittanica  article on Ha'aretz.  The second links to their report.]

5.  ZIONISM

This is another term that gets bandied about.  I'm not going to try to define it here, but you can see a couple of differing definitions/commentaries at the links below.

Wikipedia's treatment

The Foreign Policy Institute's take

The Promise and Failure of Zionism

Many people seem to have trouble distinguishing between Zionists, Jews, and Israelis and use two or all of those terms interchangeably to mean the same thing.  As though all Christians believe the same thing or act the same way.  People who identify (or are labeled) Jews come in many flavors, beliefs, ideologies, lifestyles.  The same is true of Israelis.  

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

After World War II much of the world was shocked to learn of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis.  (If you don't believe the Holocaust happened, don't comment here.  I'll delete it as soon as I see it.  Rather educate yourself and get past your ignorance.)  Among Jews, the campaign to create a Jewish state in historic Israel was not universally supported.  But after the war, with many displaced Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, sentiment supported establishing the state of Israel.  The newly formed United Nations approved. 

For the first years, the world heard heartwarming stories of the "Land of Milk and Honey," of the miracle in Israel making the desert bloom  When Israel was attacked in 1967 by surrounding Arab countries, Israel fought back and quickly defeated their enemies and kept the territory they took.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero, easily recognized with his black eye patch.  

But from the beginning the story wasn't so rosy.  Jews forced Arabs to abandon their homes and land.  Many fled to other Arab countries.  Over the years attempts to establish peace were thwarted by Palestinian rejection of the idea of Israel even existing.  Israeli supporters in the West used this rejection to show the Arabs were intransigent.  But it's clear that from the Arab perspective, the creation of Israel was similar to other colonial conquests where the indigenous people were simply removed for the colonists.  Even if the colonists were themselves a displaced people.

In the last 20 years or more, Israel has increasingly been a very oppressive ruler over the occupied territories.  Israel's annexation of West Bank Arab lands to build settlements for Israelis has exacerbated things.  People began talking about an Israeli apartheid. One can easily see similarities between the occupation and the way Black Americans are frequently treated by the police in the US.  

It's clear that many Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians with disdain. There are many places you can read about this, but I would offer Colum McCann's Apeirogon as a good place to start. [I highly recommend  reading Apeirogon]  It's the story of one Palestinian and one Jewish father who have both lost teenage daughters to the violence in Israel.  They are brought together and work with a group that advocates for peace and understanding.  There are very detailed descriptions of the indignities that Palestinians suffer daily.  

I believe that this treatment comes from 

• Israelis always feeling threatened (and Hamas does its best to stir up those fears) and 
• the ethnocentrism evidenced in Netanyahu's belief they are fighting a noble war between civilization and savagery.  [See Part I on Netanyahu]

As I mentioned in the post on The Battle of Algiers, people with little or no power, dominated by another people with lots of power, have few options other than guerrilla warfare.  

I'd also mention that other Arab countries tended to not take Palestinians as refugees into their countries.  One explanation was that by making Israel the collective enemy of Arabs, they could distract the Arab world from intra-Arab conflicts, and they could distract their own citizens from protesting their own authoritarianism.  Another explanation has been they simply didn't think they could handle the influx of so many Arabs with a somewhat different history in their own countries. 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

There are lots of articles about how Palestinian schools teach hate, such as this 2022 Times of Israel headline:

"UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog

Israeli organization says that rather than taking the material out of the 2022 curriculum, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has merely taken it off its public education portal"

It takes a little more digging to find counter arguments such as this one from The Palestine Chronicle by Rima Najjar:

Zionism is an insidious ideology. Its ideologues often gain traction by well-placed and oft repeated constructs – in films and TV series, in posts and comments on social media, and even in academia. So, it is no wonder that people end up having ideas about certain things, like the nature of Israel, the Zionist Jewish state, or the nature of Palestinian Arab culture and identity, or the nature of Jewish culture and identity, as if by osmosis.

One of these “memes” in the air, if you will, is the oft repeated comment by hasbara agents on social media that says Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews. This notion can also be found in numerous attacks on the Palestinian Authority curriculum with the same accusation of “teaching children to hate Jews”, when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda (see Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education – Library of Modern Middle East Studies).

My understanding is that 

"'teaching children to hate Jews', when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda"  

doesn't mean the Palestinians teach their kids to love Jews, but rather means that Israelis teach their kids to hate Palestinians.  

Michael Kaplan gave this example, in 2014, of Jews teaching their kids to hate Palestinians.  When Israelis Teach Their Kids To Hate. 

Two, more thorough, academic studies of Israeli text books suggest it's more subtle, but just as invidious.  

Here's the abstract of 2012 book by Nurit Elhanan-Peled

"The present book presents a critical multimodal study of one aspect of the Israeli-Zionist narrative as it is reproduced in school books of three disciplines: history, geography and civic studies. It consists of an analysis of the visual and verbal texts that represent the 'others' of Zionist Jews, namely Palestinians – both the citizens of Israel and the non-citizens who have been living under a military regime in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.The book shows that Israeli textbooks use racist discourse, both visually and verbally to represent Palestinians."

I only could find a few passages at the link to the publisher, but here's one to give you a sense of the book:

"... Texts present Palestine before 1948 as barren land and empty territory, abandoned since biblical times, waiting for Jews to redeem it while expunging Palestinian history and culture transforming 'Palestinian Arab students into "present absentees" as they learn about "the land of Israel"' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 24) without them. These texts are 'designed to "de-educate", or dispossess, Indigenous Palestinian pupils of the knowledge of their own people and history' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 17;Al-Haj, 2015;Mazawi, 2011;Peled-Elhanen, 2012;Raz-Karkotzkin, 2001). Textbooks construct Palestinians as 'backward, unproductive and untrustworthy; or even more negatively as murderers or rioters' while Jews engage 'in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refused to accept or acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel' (Abu-Saad, 2019: 101; Bar-Tal, 2001;Meehan, 1999). ..."

A 2020 Ha'aretz article - eight years later than the Elhanen book -  describes a Tel Aviv University study:

"Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation 'interpretive denial.'”

Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation “interpretive denial.” . . .

In most textbooks, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about,” he writes in an article to be published in a book on teaching history edited by Eyal Naveh and Nimrod Tal. . . .

Ben-Amos says the textbooks’ ignoring of the occupation or attempts to normalize it stem from self-censorship. In the absence of clear guidelines, nobody wants to be blacklisted and denounced, which was the fate of teachers and publishers who tried to convey a more nuanced message than the one permitted by the Education Ministry. . . .

Elhanen has continued writing articles on the subject of how 'the other' is treated in Israeli schools and textbooks.  You can see a list of books and articles here, some with links to full text.

I did find one more book- Palestinians in Israeli Textbooks (2016) - which seems to  say that it was bad in the past, but things are much better now.  

It's hard to find ways to peace when Palestinian children are regularly taught in schools and in the streets  to hate Jews and when Jewish children are given texts that either omit Palestinians or reinforce the idea that Jewish superiority over Palestinians is the natural order of things. 

Though as one Palestinian responded (paraphrasing), "Palestinian kids don't need to be taught in schools to hate Jews.  They pick that up by living under Israeli occupation."

Part III is still being written.  Here's the link.  

AIFF: Great Alaskan Shorts/Amazing Narrative "Ariel: Back To Buenos Aires"

 The Alaska Shorts at noon was a great four film program.  All the films were technically well made and all told important stories.  I thought I'd given up on staying up late to post about the festival, but I feel compelled.  

All of these were worth watching and you can learn more about them all here.

 I'm going to focus on True Colors -  Film maker Brad Hillwig said he wanted to do a film about Anchorage having the most diverse schools in the country.  He focused on Bartlett High School,  its diversity, how the school works to make that diversity part of the curriculum, and highlighted two of the outstanding students - a Filipino/Pacific Islander football player and the daughter of an African, Muslim immigrant.  It was an inspiring film in lots of ways.   One of the students - Oumi - was there which was exciting too.  

There were film makers representing all the films there  

The afternoon and evening films at the Museum were also good to outstanding.   Below is Tora Johanna Turøy again, talking festival director Ida Myklebost after her film was shown at the museum.

Ariel: Back To Buenos Aires was amazing.  It was beautifully filmed - with the tango scenes and the Buenos Aires street scenes not just adding color but meaningfully adding to the story.  A few times the camera goes around and around the subjects in a way that is beautiful and heightens the emotional pitch of the scenes.  

The content is powerful!  A sister and brother in their 30s, fly to Argentina where they were born.  The older sister, on the plane, tells her brother she suspects he was adopted because she doesn't remember her mom being pregnant with him.  Anyone who know the history of Argentina will quickly figure out where this is leading.  

A powerful film, made even more powerful by the cinematography and editing so good you don't even think about it.

I'm sure this will be one of the top films at the festival and they will show the award winning films again the week after the festival.  Be sure to see it!!

Citizen Sleuth was also interesting.  A film maker making a film about a Crime podcaster.  We see a sincere podcaster digging deep into a car accident death that she suspects was murder. 

How Long Should It Take To Build Or Repair Public Works?

 [A note.  I thought I posted this this morning.  But when I came back, it was not there.  Not even the draft.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  I'm pretty sure I hit publish.  I know for sure I had a complete draft.  I wasn't ready to rewrite it, so I took a walk, hoping it would mysteriously show up.  It hasn't.  Maybe this second attempt will be better than the first.  I had a bunch of links.  Maybe you don't need them.  But I don't like to post half-assed either.  Let's see what happens.  I'm going to save this much.  Shut blogger down.  Turn it back on, then see if the missing post was hiding somewhere and decided to stop messing with me.]

[Note 2:  I shut down all the Blogspot windows and then opened one back up and there was my old post.  Glad I didn't start writing it all over.  I highly recommend taking walks.] 

[Note 3:  I see the problem now.  I wrote this as a "Page" which is what Blogger calls 'tabs'.  So it didn't show up as a Post, but rather as a Tab, which doesn't show up on the main page. You can find the current tabs up on top, below the orange header.]

An article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times reports that a damaged part of a critical freeway (The 10, or the Santa Monica Freeway as I knew it when it was first built) would be completed by Tuesday instead of the original five week estimate.  

"Publicly, state officials stood by that timeline for most of this week, saying the freeway was likely to reopen in December. But behind the scenes, according to a Caltrans engineer familiar with the project, crews were scrambling to hit a more ambitious target and have the overpass ready for Thanksgiving travel.

The work paid off, and on Thursday, Newsom confirmed what the Caltrans crews had been working toward: All lanes in both directions will be open to traffic by Tuesday “at the latest,” he announced, though repair work will be ongoing."

The damage was caused by a large fire under the bridge a week ago Saturday.  If the Tuesday date pans out, then will be 10 days from damage to repair.  

Earlier this year a major bridge in Philadelphia collapsed.  The initial repair time estimates were "weeks or months."

"Workers are beginning to rebuild the collapsed section of Interstate 95 outside Philadelphia. Construction is expected to take weeks or months, and have ramifications up and down the East Coast."

In the end it took just 12 days. 

"Six lanes reopened to motorists at noon on Friday, 12 days after a bridge collapsed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced."

In the case of LA, the quick reopening was credited to  the bridge structure not being as severely damaged as expected.  An unnamed engineer told the LA Times political pressure was also involved::

“'Go faster. The political heat is on.'

There has been 'a dead-heat, crazy push to get this bridge open by Monday or Tuesday,'”

I've been wondering, in recent years, why things like road construction in Anchorage seem to take forever. 

•  Is it because the work can only be done in the summer so contractors take on lots of projects and work on one project for a while, then another, then back to the first ones?  
• Are they just stretching out the work for more pay?  That seems unlikely because the pay should be settled in the contract with bonuses for being early and penalties for being late.  
• Is the Municipality or the State Department of Transportation just not writing good contracts? 
• And why do the same roads seem to need to be redone over and over again? 
• I know there's an unhealthy relationship between the State DOT and the construction industry [a major engineering company has the contract to do public engagement and while the presentations to the public are first class, their financial interests have to bias them toward building every project and I've several projects where the public was overwhelmingly opposed but the state ignored the public]

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I know there are lots of complaints about driving around construction, but I don't know that anyone has undertaken a study to find out why things take so long.  

But these two highway projects that were completed much faster than originally scheduled  (in LA I'm assuming the Tuesday deadline will be met) reminded me of a visit to the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California some years ago.  

They built ships there for World War II and I recalled they were built in phenomenal speed.  So I looked it up again today.  

 "The Liberty ship Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a competition among shipyards. By 1944, the yard routinely needed only a bit more than two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship.^[3]"  (From Wikipedia) 

A whole ship built in five days!!!!!

That's a model we should have before us at all times.  But also remember the conditions:

• That five day record was part of a competition among shipyards, so competition (in this case I don't think there were rewards other than psychic rewards) played a factor.
• There was the collective will to win a war.
• And women did much if not most of the work  (Need I say more?)

There's also another aspect that needs to be considered.  From the Rosie The Riveter Park site:

"Working conditions on the Home Front were difficult and dangerous. Between the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and the D-Day Invasion of Europe in June of 1944, there were more Home Front industrial casualties than military casualties." (emphasis added) (from the National Park Service)

And there were some unanticipated benefits as well:  

"This high number of industrial casualties would lead to improved workplace safety and regulations, as well as better access to affordable health care. 

Another challenge faced by working women on the Home Front was childcare, as mothers comprised a significant portion of the work force. This led to the establishment of child development centers and the professional field of early childhood development."

Given the state of child care in the US today, I'd say these were short lived benefits, since after the war, when soldiers returned home, the women lost their jobs and were expected to go back to being housewives.  

I'd also note than when I wrote about Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park ten years ago, Bill Butler pointed out in the comments that the ships weren't meant to last long and they had lots and lots of workers putting together modular ships.  

I do hope though that we start getting reporters looking into the title question - how long should public projects take?  Why do they take so long?  When and how can they be sped up if necessary?  

And it's not just public projects.  Alaska Communications (ACS) started putting fiber optic into my neighborhood last June or July.  The door to door salesman said the new high speed internet would be ready in three to four weeks.  The confirmation email from ACS said 12-14 weeks.  Then at the end of summer,  a new email said something like, "Well, you know, construction doesn't always go as planned. This project won't be ready until next year." 

We saw signs of work - bright orange cables lying around - and sometimes we even saw workers digging trenches.  But it seemed like there was far more work to do than workers to do it.  Meanwhile ACS has my (and how many others') payment for the high speed internet we were supposed to be enjoying as of several months ago, but haven't gotten yet.  

 

COVID Is Still Here And Where To Check The New Expiration Date Of Your Home COVID Tests

With vaccinations people are feeling more secure that COVID won't kill them.  I see fewer masks indoors these days.  

The State went from daily reporting to weekday reporting to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, reporting to once a week reporting.  

But people are still dying of COVID, right here in Alaska.  28 new deaths were reported this week. (Although there's a new report each week, deaths seem to get accumulated over a period of time and then are reported in bulk.  These were the first deaths reported since August 24, 2022)

I'm still reporting these every week, but not in the main part of the blog.  They're reported in the Alaska Daily COVID-19 Count 3 tab just below the blog header.

Here's my latest report from that page:

Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - I'm getting this up on Thursday.  People are treating COVID as though it were gone.  To the extent that I even forgot to update this yesterday.  But the numbers are a reminder that this isn't over.  And that people are still dying of COVID, even here in Alaska.  

25 new deaths were reported this week.  These are the first deaths reported in three weeks because, I'm assuming, it takes a while to gather these numbers.  It would be truly shocking if these were all in the last week. It would be useful to know what the vaccination status of those dying was.  They may report that somewhere, but I'm not digging deeper than the main dashboards now.

21 more people were hospitalized in the last week.  Actual number of COVID patients in the hospital reported as 66, up four from last week.  Number of vents is down two to zero.

Number of ICU beds available statewide is 21 (down from 34 last week) and one in Anchorage (down from two.)  I believe this is not a COVID specific number, but includes all ICU beds in the state regardless of illness.  

Even new resident cases are up - 980/950 compared to last week's 879/902.  Ditto for non-resident new cases:  544 new cases, up from 519 last week.  A regular warning on these last numbers - many, if not most, tests are self tests which tend not to be reported, so the reported numbers don't tell the whole story.  

 

COVID Home Test Expiration Extension

Are your at home COVID tests expired?  The FDA has extended expiration dates. My June - Aug 2022 expired home tests are now good to Dec 2022 to February 2023.  Check yours here: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/home-otc-covid-19-diagnostic-tests#list

A little ways down it has a list of many different products for home testing. Each has a link to see the updated expiration dates.  That's where you'll find the details.  

Choking The Secret Service, Smashing China, Taking Down Security Magnetometer - Thoughts From Today's Jan6 Committee Hearing

The headlines are expressing surprise at how much the the January 6 Hearings are revealing and Republicans are claiming not to have understood how serious things were.  

From @PalmerReport:

CNN says many Republican officials are “stunned” by today’s bombshells about Trump. No. They knew he was every bit this evil. They’re only stunned that the January 6th Committee was this successful at digging it all up.

No one who has paid any attention whatsoever, didn't know how bad it was.  Only those who had a  vested interest in believing Trump should have known.  

Here are some thoughts which I started jotting down after the first break today:

1.  Most pressing question for me was: what motivates a person like Cassidy Hutchinson, who has served a number of far right politicians before moving to the White House, to now testify about what she saw?  How did she make the decision?  I understand that we tolerate flaws in people we love or people we hope will achieve important outcomes.  Democrats defended Clinton during his impeachment trial because they thought his presidency was more important.  I'm just curious how people decide their hero has cross one line too many?  

Later, Hutchinson actually told us it was watching the her big boss actually encouraging the insurrection.  

 "As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie,".  

2.  Dripping Ketchup, Smashing China:  In regards to that first question,  I'm sure there are some very proper GOP women who will finally be convinced after hearing that he smashed the china against the wall.  

Hutchinson testified that T was so mad at Barr for an interview with the media (AP I think) that he threw his lunch against the wall, getting it full of ketchup, and breaking the (White House presumably) china.  

They might think that groping 'those kind of women' was just boys being boys.  But visualizing the ketchup dripping down the wall and seeing the broken china pieces on the floor will be enough for some to draw the line.  

3.  The Magnetometer,  steering wheel, and the neck.  Hutchinson testified that Trump learned the audience for his speech wasn't as big as he wanted because his supporters didn't want to go through the Magnetometer machines and have their weapons confiscated.  He said they weren't going to hurt him and should keep their weapons and take them to the Capitol

“I don’t fucking care they have weapons,” he allegedly said. “Take the fucking mags away.” Then in his speech, he urged those same supporters to march down to the Capitol. 

And then when the secret service refused his order to drive to the Capitol, Hutchinson testified that he grabbed the steering wheel and the neck of the secret service guarding him trying to get them to turn around and drive to the Capitol with the mob.  

"“I’m the f—-ing president, take me to the Capitol now,” he told his staff, according to Hutchinson. The president lunged for the steering wheel, Ornato told Hutchinson, and when Engel tried to restrain him, Trump lunged for Engel and tried to grab him around his throat area."  (MSNBC)

I'd note T has denied these events ever happened.  Of course.  Maybe he should call up Rep. Thompson and volunteer to testify under oath.  

4.  Hanged versus Hung.  She talked about T encouraging the people who wanted Pence 'hung.'  Just for the record, pictures and clothes and even juries can be hung.  But when talking about people executed with ropes around their necks, the right word is 'hanged'.  I don't think it matters too much, but it is a curiosity of the English language.  

5.  Cassidy Hutchinson is merely 25 years old and has had positions working for various powerful Republican politicians since graduating from college.  She was remarkably composed at the hearing today.  

People might tell you we need to get past this and just move on. We don't do that for most crimes where there's an accused unless the prosecution doesn't think there is enough evidence, or the accused is a white police officer or very wealthy and/or well connected.  

Not enforcing the law vigorously against those who tried to overthrow the election and end American democracy as we know it, by people who continue to call the visible leader of that movement their hero and want him to run again in 2024, only encourages such behavior to continue. Putting every insurrectionist  in  prison isn't going to change their minds, just as imprisoning a murderer isn't going to change his mind.  We put them away to stop them from committing more crimes. Though a civilized country would find far more humane and effective ways to deter and rehabilitate then the US prison system. 

And for those Republicans, particularly in Congress, who want to just let it go, I'd remind them that there were ten Congressional Benghazi investigations from April 2013 to December 2016.

"Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations."

And then there was the Clinton email investigations.  The Republicans are less effective in investigations that end up in prosecutions.  They're more effective in creating 'scandals' to hurt their opponents' election chances.   

Finally,  John Durham is still investigating the FBI investigation of the Russian connections to Trump.  He was appointed in May 2019.  The recent trial jury in that investigation found attorney John Sussman not guilty.  That's over three years for people whose math is rusty.  At about $1 million per year.  

"when this conscience business starts, ain't no telling where it'll stop": Willie Stark Shakes Down Judge Irwin

When I left off in the first post about William Penn Warren's All The King's Men, the Boss, Willie Stark, used Jack, for whom Judge Irwin had been like a second father, to get into the judge's house.
The newspaper just announced that Irwin had endorsed the opponent of one of Stark's candidates.  Jack had gotten the judge to open the front door, late at night.

This is how I imagine Trump and his henchmen leaning on Republican Senators.  Though they probably are not as skilled as Willie Stark.  And the Senators appear far much less able to stand up to Trump the way the Judge does.   But the same sort of dynamics.



Once the Judge sees it's Jack at his door, the judge asks Jack how he is and what he can do for him.  Jack asks if the judge  could talk to ---

'"He turned to shut the door, and if his ticker hadn't been in good shape for all his near three score and ten he'd have dropped dead.  For the Boss was standing there in the door.  He hadn't made a sound."

The Boss forces his way in and the judge asks if he has anything to say, and the Boss says:

"'Not at the moment.'
'Well,' the Judge said, 'in that case --'
'Oh, something might develop,' the Boss broke in.  'You never can tell.  If we get the weight off our arches.'
'In that case,' the Judge returned, and it was an old needle and an old record and it was scraping ike a file on cold tin and nothing human, "I may say that I was about to retire.'
'Oh, it's early yet,' the Boss said, and took his time giving Judge Irwin the once-over from head to toe.  The Judge was wearing an old-fashioned velvet smoking jacket and tuxedo pants and a boiled shirt, but he had taken off his collar and tie, and the gold collar button was shining just under the big old red Adam's apple.  'Yea,' the boss went on after he'd finished his once-over, 'and you'll sleep better if you wait before going to bed and give that fine dinner you had a chance to digest.' (p 64)

'This verbal duel continues for couple of pages with the screws tightening slowly.  The Boss sits down as the narrator describes the room in detail.  The Boss tells Jack to get him a drink and pour one for himself.

"Judge Irwin didn't answer him.  He turned to me, and said, 'I didn't realize, Jack, that your duties included those of a body servant, but, of course, if I am mistaken -'
I could have slapped his face.  I could have slapped that God-damned handsome, eagle-beaked, strong-boned, rubiginous-hided old face, in which the eyes weren't old but were hard and bright without any depth to them and were an insult to look into.  And the Boss laughed, and I could have slapped his God-damned face.  I could have walked right out and left the two of them there, alone in that cheese-smelling room together  till hell froze over, and just kept walking.  But I didn't, and perhaps it was just as well, for maybe you cannot ever really walk out from the things you want most to walk away from."  (p. 66)

Do you think Michael Cohen began to feel like Jack?

The Boss gets up and pours Jack a drink and hands it to him.

'. . . the Boss look[s] up at Judge Irwin and say[s], 'Sometimes Jack pours me a drink, and sometimes I put him a drink and  - -' he stepped toward the desk again - - 'sometimes I pour myself a drink.'
He poured the drink, added water, and looked again at the Judge, leering with a kind of comic cunning.  "Whether I'm asked or not,' he said.  And added, 'There's lots of thing you never get, Judge, if you wait till you are asked.  And I am an impatient man.  I am a very impatient man, Judge.   That is why I am not a gentleman, Judge.' (p. 66)

The Boss offers the Judge a drink of his own liquor, but the judge refuses.

'The Boss looked up at him from the chair and said, 'Judge, you happen to have an evening paper round here?'
The paper was lying over on another chair by the fireplace, with the judge's collar and tie on top of it, and his white jacket hung on the back of the chair  I saw the Judge's eyes snap over there to it, and then back at the Boss.
'Yes,' the Judge said, 'as a matter of fact, I have'
'I haven't had a chance to see one, rushing round the country today.  Mind if I take a look?'
"Not in the slightest,' Judge Irwin said, and the sound was the file scraping on that cold tin again, ' but perhaps I can relieve your curiosity on one point.  The paper publishes my endorsement of Callahan for the Senate nomination.  If that is of interest to you.'
'Just wanted to hear you say it, Judge.  Somebody told me, but you know how rumor hath a thousand tongues, and how the newspaper boys tend to exaggeration, and the truth ain't in 'em.'
'There was no exaggeration in this case,' the Judge said.
'Just wanted to hear you say it.  With your own silver tongue.'
'Well, you've heard it,' the judge said, standing straight in the middle of the floor, 'and in that case, at your leisure --' the Judge's face was the color of calf's liver again, even if the words did come out cold and spaced - -'if you have finished your drink.'
'Why thanks, Judge,' the boss said, sweet as chess pie, 'I reckon I will take another spot.'  (pp. 67-68)

The Boss gets another drink, sits down, and asks the Judge if he's checked his decision with the Lord.

"'I have settled the matter in my own mind,' the Judge said.
'Well, if I recollect right --' the Boss ruminatively turned the glass in his hands --'back in town, when we had our little talk, you sort of felt my boy Masters was all right."
'I made no commitment,' the Judge said sharply, 'I didn't make any commitment except to my conscience.'
'You been messing in politics for a long time, Judge,' the Boss said, easy, 'and --' he took a drag from the glass --'so has your conscience.'
'I beg your pardon,' the Judge snapped.
'Nuts,' the boss said, and grinned, ' but what got you off Master?!'
'Certain features of his career came to my attention.'
'Somebody dug up some dirt for you, huh?'
'If you choose to call it that,' the Judge said.
'Dirt's a funny thing,' the Boss said.  'Come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too.  It's dirt makes the grass grow.  A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot.  And God-a-Might picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension.  It all depends on what you do with the dirt.  That right?'
'It doesn't alter the fact,' the Judge said from way up there where his head was, above the rays of the desk lamp, 'that Masters doesn't strike me as a responsible man.'
'He better be responsible,' the Boss said, 'or I'll break his God-damned neck!'
'That's the trouble.  Masters would be responsible to you.'
'It's a fact,' the Boss admitted ruefully, lifting his face under the light, and shaking his head in fatalist sadness. 'Masters'd be responsible to me.  I can't help it.  But Callahan -- now take Callahan -- it sort of seems to me he's gonna be responsible to you and Alta Power and God knows who else before he's through.  And what's the difference? Huh?'
'Well --'
'Well, hell!'  The Boss popped straight up in the chair with that inner explosions he had when, all of a sudden, he would snatch a fly out of the air or whip his head at you and his eyes would snap open.  He popped up and his heels dug into the red carpet.  Some of the liquor sloshed out of his glass onto his Palm Beach pants.  'Well, I'll tell you the difference, Judge!  I can deliver Masters and you can't deliver Callahan.  And that's a big difference.'
'I'll have to take my chance,' the Judge said from way up there.
'Chance?' And the Boss laughed.  'Judge,' he said, and quit laughing, ' you haven't got but one chance.  You been guessing right in this state going on forty years.  You been sitting back here in this room and n*** boys been single-footing in here bringing you toddies and you been guessing right.  You been sitting  back here and grinning to yourself while the rest of 'em were out sweating on the stump and snapping their suspenders, and when you wanted anything you just reached out and took it.  Oh, if you had a little time off from duck hunting and corporation law you might do a hitch as Attorney General.  So you did.  Or play at being a judge.  You been a judge a long time.  How would it feel not to be a judge anymore?'
'No man,' Judge Irwin said, and stood up there straight in the middle of the floor, 'has ever been able to intimate me.'
'Well, I never tried,' the Boss said, 'yet.  And I'm not trying now.  I'm going to give you a chance.  You said somebody gave you some dirt on Masters?  Well, suppose I gave you some dirt on Callahan? --Oh, don't interrupt!  Keep your shirt on!'  --and he held up his hand.  'I haven't been doing any digging, but I might, and if I went out in the barn lot and stuck my shovel in and  brought you some of the sweetest-smelling and put it under the nose of your conscience, then do you know what your conscience would tell you to do?  It would tell you to withdraw your endorsement of Callahan.  And the newspaper boys would be over here thicker'n bluebottle flies on a dead dog, and you could tell 'em all about you and your conscience.  You wouldn't even have to back Masters.  You and your conscience could just go off arm in arm and have a fine time telling each other how much you think of each other."  (pp. 67-70)

I know these are getting to be longer and longer quotes.  But this all fits in together as the screws tighten.  It's a slow steady build up.  The Judge doesn't budge.  Jack listens to the ticks and tocks of the grandfather clock.

'The Boss quit studying Judge Irwin's face, which didn't show anything.  He let himself sink back in the chair, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted the glass up for a drink.  Then he said, 'Suit yourself, Judge.  But you know there's another way to play it.  Maybe somebody might give Callahan a little shovelful on somebody else and Callahan might grow a conscience all of a sudden and repudiate his endorser.  You know, when this conscience business starts, ain't no telling where it'll stop, and when you start the digging --'
'I'll thank you  sir --' Judge Irwin took a step toward the big chair, and his face wasn't the color of calf's liver now --it was long past that and streaked white back from the base of the jutting nose --'I'll thank you sir, to get out of that chair and get out of this house!'
The Boss didn't lift his head off the leather.  He looked up at the Judge, sweet and trusting, and then cocked his eyes over to to me.  'Jack,' he said, 'you were sure right.  The Judge don't scare easy.'
'Get out,' the Judge said, not loud this time.
'These old bones don't move fast,' the Boss murmured sadly, 'but now I have tried to do my bounden duty, let me go.'  Then he drained his glass, set it on the floor beside the chair, and rose.  He stood in front of the Judge, looking up at him, squinting again, cocking his head to one side again, like a farmer getting ready to buy a horse.  .  .
Then, as though he had decided against buying the horse, the Boss shook his head and passed around the Judge, as though the Judge weren't a man at all, or even a horse, as though he were the corner of a house or a tree, and headed for the hall door, putting his feet down slow and easy on the red carpet.  No hurry. . .
The Boss laid his hand on the doorknob, opened the door and then, with his hand still on the knob, he looked back.  'Well  Judge,' he said, more in pain than with wrath I go.  And if your conscience decides it could gag at Callahan, just let me know.  In, of course---' and he grinned --'a reasonable time.' (pp 71-72)

The Boss may not have gotten all he wanted in this visit, but this was nothing less than a political home invasion.  And the Judge had to endure the Boss' taking over his house and his liquor and had to endure his threat.

And if a Senate were trying to impeach Willie Stark for this political arm twisting, how much hard evidence of any actual crime would there be?

[I had to look up rubiginous.  It means 'rust-colored.']

Enstar Digs Up Newly Paved Street A Month After Anchorage Paves It

There's an alley across the street.  The alley became a street a couple of years ago and even got a name.  Apparently because a house was remodeled and has an entrance and street number facing what was an alley.   It's been unpaved since.

This summer, the street got paved for the first time.  I guess that's good.  Less dust and mud, but pavement has environmental problems too, and this alley never got much traffic.  The other alleys in the neighborhood remain unpaved.

Today, Enstar was digging a big hole right in the new pavement.

When I went over to find out why they were digging up the newly paved street, Arthur told me they were replacing the old copper pipe and connectors for ones that had fewer connections and thus fewer opportunities to leak.  Below is one of he old ones.

But don't the Municipality and Enstar communicate on things like this?  He said he thought they did, but not this time.  They came out at the beginning of the summer to see what they were going to do and there was a dirt alley way.  And now they show up today and it's paved.  

I left a message with the Municipality Street Maintenance people.  I'll update when (I'm pretty sure it's when, not if) I hear back.  My basic concern is to be sure they have a system and this just was an odd situation that fell through the cracks.  If not, they need a way not to do double the work.  It was just paved, maybe a month ago.  Today Enstar had to dig through that paving and then patch it up.  Well, it's flat and even with the paved part, but it's not repaved yet.  And they've got another cut out a little further down that I guess they'll dig up tomorrow.  

Airport Runway Repairs Update

[Last year I reported in some detail on the repairs and widening of Anchorage Airport's north-south runway, diverting jets to take off over Anchorage last summer and this summer.  This post is something of a follow-up]

I'd been meaning to call the airport and find out where they are on the fixing and widening the north-south runway.  After all, we've had almost no rain this summer (none in August, normally a rainy month) and so it seemed they should be ahead.  I got a couple of people who passed me on to Jason Lamoreaux and I left him a message yesterday afternoon.

He called back today.

It should be completed on time.  They have to (sorry my notes are sketchy) do some coordination of flight checks before the runway is back up.

Q:  But since you're a bit ahead now because of no rain, can't we get this done early so we can stop the noisy planes flying over Anchorage?

A:  FAA folks who do the checking come from out of town so hard to coordinate.

He told me I could sign up for the update emails, but I said, since the update video was from early 2018, I wasn't sure waiting for updates was better than just calling the airport.

The rest that needs to be done is some paving and painting and electrical which are weather dependent, so we can't predict finishing early.

So, basically he said it would be done by end of September and by beginning of October planes can use the north-south runway instead of taking off to the east over Anchorage.

I did look around on the website before calling to get as much info from there as I could. I did get to the runway project page. But the "Construction Update Video" appears to be the one they put up at the beginning last year.  It's pretty pictures and PR talk.  No real details at all.  And no updates.

The FAQ link goes to a bad link.

There's two maps - last year and this year, without much detail about the work.

These maps made more sense later, but they still don't show much.  The talk last year was that they were going to widen the runway so bigger planes could use it.  There's still only going to be one runway I guess.

So after looking around the site I finally found a number related to the project that I could call.

Today I took my son-in-law to the airport.  He's got to go back (but my daughter and nieta have more time here, yeah!).  So I decided to go see if I could find out what they were doing and how far they'd gotten.

Across the road and over the fence, past the tractor but in front of the plane, is the north-south runway.  We're looking northward.  (Yes the smoke from the various forest fires north and south of Anchorage totally obscured the mountains.)  So this part is in.

And here's the runway looking north.  It looks like it's paved all the way.  Lamoreaux did say it needed painting and electrical.  But there were parts that had stripes and little things sticking out of the ground that looked like they might hold lights.

And there didn't seem to be many people working.

This tractor was digging something.  This is another track of pavement that I thought, at the time, they still had to finish to the north end.  But when I got home and looked at the maps (above) that didn't seem to be the case.  Just one runway.  This must be a road or taxi way.  This was very close to the exterior fence.  (*You can see it on the map with the green and yellow markings below.  It's on the far left side.)

And here in the middle it was shiny - wet asphalt?  water?  something else?  I don't know.
There was equipment here and there, but I didn't see any movement.

So now I had more questions.  It doesn't look like the noise over Anchorage is much of a priority.  They've got until October and they seem not to be in much of a hurry.  OK, I can't make a judgment like that from one short visit to the airport.

But when I got home I went poking around on the website again and this time I found a little bit more.

I found the document library.  There's another map there and there are three 2019 updates.  One from January, one from March, which doesn't say anything they hadn't said before:

"2019 Construction
In 2019, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities will rehabilitate and widen the remaining portion of the North/South Runway. The magnitude of this construction effort will require a full runway closure in summer 2019. Operations and noise levels will return to normal upon completion in October 2019."

And one from August 16, 2019 which says a little bit more.

"The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) North/South Runway Renewal project is progressing well through the final phase of construction. Active work on the runway started in April.  As of today, the construction work effort is about 75% complete.  All paving south of Taxiway T is complete.

Currently, the contractor is grooving the runway.  This will provide traction so that airplanes can come to a stop on the runway when it rains. Grooving the runway takes about 45 days to complete. Next up, the contractor will begin work on painting runway markings.
We recognize that construction has resulted in increased aircraft noise in different parts of Anchorage. The construction team is working hard to keep construction on schedule in order to minimize those impacts and complete the renewal work as quickly as possible.  We anticipate the runway will be open early October 2019, and the airport will return to normal aircraft operations."

Now I have a bunch more questions.  Mostly they have to do with why it takes so long.  How does it take 45 days to put grooves in the runway?  Really?  In China they build ten story buildings in three months.  I'm not sure I want to live in one of those, but putting grooves in the runway seems a lot less complicated than putting up a building.  

Besides, 45 days from August 16 gets us to the end of September.  That would mean it will NOT be the beginning of October.  (I'm hoping this is wrong.  It's not what I heard from Lamoreaux.)

It says (as of August 16 when the memo is dated) they are 75% done.  Counting just this summer, they had used up 75% of their allotted time.  But what about work?  Are they really only 75% done?  

What does completed mean here?  That the green part is all paved?  Because from what I saw today, the yellow part is paved too.  Does it mean the green is paved and grooved?  Surely it can't take 45 days to grove the yellow part.   Does it really need to take 45 more days to paint the lines and put in the electrical?

The website is treating us like children.  It's not giving us much information at all.  Lamoreaux didn't even mention grooving.  He just talked about painting and electrical.  The amount of time has more to do with scheduling.  There's work the FAA needs to do and their contractor will apparently only come as scheduled originally, not early if, because of the good weather, they ready for them ahead of schedule.  And the same is true with the FAA inspectors.

My sense is there's no need to rush - from the airport administration's perspective.  They really don't seem concerned about relieving us from the noise of jets taking off over our houses and whatever jet fuel exhaust is added to our air.  They've set what appears to be a fairly comfortable schedule and they're expecting to be able to say it was done on time and - we'll see, or not- within the budget.

*As I look at the map with the green and yellow, the tractor that was actually working today when I was there, seems to be at the end of the pavement on the left of the green/yellow markings.  So that stretch of pavement doesn't seem like it's going any further.

I expect that asking all these questions, at this point, probably won't make any difference.  They're scheduled to open the north-south runway at the beginning of October and until then we (depending on how close you live to the pathways of the jets) will continue to endure 24 hours a day of jets taking off over us.

But maybe we can find out when the runway needs to be repaired again, so we can start earlier to  get more consideration of noise in their planning process.

Denali Day Two - More Bears, Some Ducks, Weather Change

We've been comparing how little snow there was this year compared to last year.  But now that I've checked last year's posts, it's clear.  Yes, last year was a heavy snow year and this year it was lighter and warmer.  But last year we were there May 3 and  May 4  and this year May 17 and 18.
You can go to the links to see the differences.

After Friday's magnificent day, Saturday gave us a contrast.  Clouds started coming in and by the time we were walking back up from the Teklanika bridge, the first drops began.  But even a rainy day in Denali is a treat.  So here are a few more pictures.

After a few caribou driving to Savage River (where the paved road ends) we (and many others) got to watch this bear fairly close to the road.

There were lots more caribou throughout the drive.  Saturday we were pretty much headed for Teklanika.  This is a campground 30 miles into the park with an overview and lots of bathrooms.  It's a stop for the tourist buses, which don't start running until tomorrow.  Well, that turns out to be not completely true.  There were tan guided tour buses that were running pretty frequently.  In any case, the Denali road is normally closed to private cars at Savage River.  But in the spring, as they clear the road of snow and repair any damage from winter, they open the road - up to Teklanika.  So it's a chance to drive in and stop where you want and watch animals, hike, bike, picnic.  Whatever.  Friday we'd hiked the short Savage River trail (one mile each way.)  It's a loose, but we only did the west side because there was a big glaciated spot that blocked the trail on the east side.  We met people who'd climbed around the ice, but we aren't that young any more.  

We did stop at a pullout about mile 25 and I rode the bike a couple of miles, until there were trees on both sides (and it's harder to spot nearby bears.  Though I don't think there's ever been a biker attacked on the road, but I'm not sure.  Very few people - under five I believe - have been killed by bears in Denali.

So after the bike ride we got to the first small pond before the Teklanika campground which had a Northern Shoveler floating around.  (I'm having trouble focusing my Canon Rebel on objects in the distance, so that's why this bird is so small.  If you enlarge it, you'll see how out of focus it is.  I need to work on this problem.  The manual is challenging and I haven't found good sites on this particular problem online yet.)

The next pond, just past the campground, had a bufflehead pair and a pintail duck.

The Teklanika overlook area was packed with cars - so much so people were parking on the road.  And lots of people had their bikes.  And on the hill not far from the bridge (about a mile away) there was a wildlife ranger (Jake) monitoring a bear sow with two cubs that was about 150 yards below the road.  Well, he said, that they try not to intervene with the wildlife, leaving them as free as possible.  Normal distance to be kept between people and bears is minimum of 300 yards, but since the bears were down below in the river bed and they'd been there for several hours, he wasn't concerned.  Though earlier there'd been about 40 people including barking dogs (they can be on the road on a leash) so he had to quiet down the people.

They were digging for roots he said.  The vast majority of their diet is vegetation in the park.

Here you can see the mom digging.

She had her head down and her claws in the earth most of the time.

Jake noted that the cubs were making noises.  Eventually they get hungrier than roots satisfy, and they wanted to nurse.  I wouldn't know that that is what they are doing in this picture if he hadn't told me.  She's lying down and they're on top of her.









As we headed back up the hill to the car, the first drops began to fall.  Here are some contrasts to yesterday's pictures.


Here's from the viewpoint where I took the pictures of Denali.   This was an idea I had 40 years ago after our first several trips to the park - a postcard of what Denali looks like to most tourists.

Here's yesterday's view from the same spot.  You can't even see the foothills.

It wasn't all just a grey mass, mostly we could see more.

And for a contrast with yesterday's ptarmigan picture, here's one whose feathers are still more in the winter than summer phase.

And here's yesterday's ptarmigan picture again.  Much more brown, less white.

Here's one from yesterday.  I didn't put it up because she was mooning me.  But so you can see the contrast I'll post it here.

We only saw one moose yesterday - while I was on the bike and didn't have my camera.  And it was so close to the road I didn't want to dawdle.  And we see moose often enough in Anchorage, even on our street and chewing on the trees in front of our house, that moose are not that big a deal.  In fact, Friday, the first animal we saw on the tip was a moose beside the Glenn Highway still in the Anchorage city limits.

Nevertheless, they're still magnificent animals, and seeing them in more natural settings like this is still a thrill.  And this rain-dulled picture is pretty much what it looked like up on the hill.  There were a couple other moose with it.

We're back home with lots to do