The news thread

[Psy-Fi]

Wow, that reminds me of that case with the woman who hit that guy with her car.. was he homeless? And as he was injured and stuck to the windshield, she just drove on home, parked the car in the garage and let him die there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Gregory_Glenn_Biggs

That case was the first thing I thought of when I read that news story. After checking that wiki entry, I was very surprised to see that it happened in 2001. I remember it quite well but I would've guessed it happened closer to 5 or 6 years ago. 

[Mindy]

Juan Guaidó should be president

[Mindy]

[DJChameleon]

These Parents Let Their Kids Determine Their Own Gender Identity. Here's How It Works.

Dennis and their partners also have an older child, 12-year-old Hazel, who was identified as female at birth and addressed with she/her pronouns. But around age 4, Hazel began to explore their own gender identity and decided to change their pronouns. This prompted their parents to pursue a different path when handling the question of Sparrow's gender.

Critics say that gender-creative parents are imposing their own agenda onto children. But Dennis and members of other families told HuffPost that what they are actually doing is freeing their kids from people's gendered expectations.

"It's the rest of the world — kids on the playground, parents at school, teachers, a stranger at the grocery store," Dennis said. "They all are going to have different interactions with the child based on an assumption of the gender."

[Nimbly9]

The comments section on that article is 99.9% negative.  Interesting.

[Mindy]

[Psy-Fi]

I wonder why the perp in that first clip wasn't at least in handcuffs during that hearing? Gotta say that was an impressive jump, though.

As far as the second clip, maybe it's time for America to adopt some Singaporean style of laws and punishments to get things under control.

[jadis]

Oh no... I've been doing serious numbers on Instagram speaking out against antisemitism and this guy has gone and ruined it all.

https://twitter.com/NYPDTips/status/1744564097473970358

Maybe he was letting off steam after the whole tunnel thing got blown... The tribe taking L after L these days but I'm confident they'll turn it around as they always have. 

[jimmy jazz]

Thoughts on Yemen @Jwb

[Jwb]

Well I dunno if you caught this post I made a while back in the global politics thread.  In it,  I embedded a long ass post in spoilers that basically described my thoughts on the potential for the war in Gaza to expand to a broader regional conflict.

very interesting that you posted this Mindy. I was working on a thread about the current situation in the middle east and the potential for it to spill into a wider regional conflict. But I gave up on it.

Here's a few videos I'd  recommend.

Skip to 3:35 to avoid the intro and embedded ad. That's where the real video starts.

skip the embedded ad which starts at 1:23 and ends at 3:30.

long ass post

The key points are basically that since the Hamas attack on Oct 7th, there has been a lot of speculation about the potential causes or motivations behind the attack.  Although we don't know that Iran or any other power had any insight whatsoever into the attack,  let alone anything to do with it,  they do have some plausible motivations,  as well as known ties to Hamas, though not nearly as close as Hezbollah.

So it's not like it's outside of either their means or even their usual modus operandi of how they project soft power in the region.  As such, there has been a lot of speculation in certain circles from day 1 over Iran's potential involvement in the attack. 

The most prominent theory is that the normalization agreement that was being pursued between Israel and Saudi Arabia presented a severe threat to Iran, and as such they sought to throw a monkey wrench in that process via Oct 7th.

It's worth pointing out that the normalization process is not so much a peace agreement,  as is often presented.  There hasn't been any state of war between Israel and Saudi Arabia for quite some time.

In fact,  over the years,  they have grown closer militarily and have formed a covert alliance against Iran, as a response to the nuclear deal that Obama signed with Iran.

Netanyahu was by far the biggest critic of and the biggest obstacle to America trying to reach any sort of diplomatic understanding with the regime in Iran. Frustrated with the Obama administration for pursuing that route, Israel and Saudi Arabia grew closer in ties. 

Though not so much officially,  because of the optics. The vast majority of the Saudi population is very much anti Israel, and even though they are a monarchy and so you would think they could do what they want, the amount of radical religious thinking that exists in Saudi Arabia has always presented an internal threat to their rule. So they need the optics of at least getting something for the Palestinians in exchange for officially recognizing Israel and normalizing relations.

The details on what those concessions were going to be are vague,  though the general impression is that it would involve some amount of increased autonomy for the Palestianian Authority or PA, the government of the West Bank, along with freezing the expansion of settlements. So really not much of a game changer for the Palestians in the West Bank,  let alone in Gaza, which seems to have been left out of the considerations altogether. 

Although the Saudis did negotiate some wins for themselves,  including a defense pact with the United States and assistance with developing nuclear energy.

Which kind of emphasizes the point.  Historically,  the idea was that broader recognition of Israel by the Arab and even broader Muslim world was a bargaining chip that was to be withheld until they resolved the situation with the Palestinians, the assumed framework being a two state solution.

By seeking to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and some of the gulf states which was seen as a launching pad for broader recognition of Israel in other Muslim countries,  Israel was attempting to bypass the idea of having to resolve the  Palestinian issue before getting broader recognition in that part of the world. Their mechanism for doing so was citing their mutual opposition to Iran as grounds for a common cause.  Netanyahu makes this clear here:

you'll notice this video was posted less than a month before the Hamas attack.  so this was what Netanyahu was saying about the prospective deal at the time.  The red marker speech he refers to in this video was made in 2012, while the Obama  administration was still considering negotiations with Iran. 

Another dimension to consider is Saudi Arabia.  They are enemies with Iran for a number of reasons.  The obvious recent one being the prolonged civil war in Yemen, in which Iran is funding Shia militants known as the Houthis. These same rebels not coincidentally have declared war on Israel in response to the latest Gaza war. Yet another reminder that Iran has many such vectors of soft power in the region. 

Even though concerns about Iran have drawn Saudi Arabia and Israel closer together,  the Saudis are not so cut and dry as far as being an ally. Just 8 months ago they enraged Netanyahu and his regime as well as spooked the US when they apparently decided to enter into a normalization process with Iran, in a deal brokered by China.

And yet, despite this apparent pivot, we ended up back in the situation in the months leading up to Oct 7th, with the United States apparently putting extensive effort into brokering a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Part of the reason the Saudis might have been drifting out of Washington's orbit could have been Biden's early disposition to the regime. I think this segment from Mehdi Hasan's show where he was criticizing this deal highlights a few important details. This video is long but really I'm only referencing 2 specific parts for clues. Here's the video and below I will identify the points I want to cite.

The first is at the very beginning of the video,  around 2:20 where Hasan shows Biden on the campaign trail condemning Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi regime. He then notes the subsequent change of attitude Biden has taken,  including fist bumping MBS and touting the prospects of the normalization process as a "mega-deal."
14:07-15:30  He highlights concerns about Saudi Arabia getting nuclear energy because it's not clear they don't want nuclear weapons, including a video of MBS saying that if Iran got a nuke, Saudi Arabia would have to get one.

So these details combine to give some insight on not only the change of heart MBS had,  but also how this deal could have easily ended up leading to a nuclear arms race between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Another interesting detail is that in addition to us having clear statements from both Netanyahu and MBS regarding their attitudes towards the normalization process in the run up to Oct 7th, we also have a similar statement the leader of Iran.  This is him from Oct 3.

So the Saudis are "betting on the wrong horse," and Israel will "soon be eradicated by the Palestinians." Obviously that doesn't prove anything as far as knowing what was going to happen, since I'm pretty sure they are always predicting Israel's eradication  but it's pretty clear what their stance towards the prospective deal is and where their interests lie. Not that this should be any mystery,  considering that Netanyahu made it crystal clear that Iran was a major target of said alliance.

Whatever progress was made on pursuing a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel doesn't seem to matter now because with Israel bombing Gaza,  Saudi Arabia naturally pivoted once more,  not necessarily towards Iran though somewhat distancing themselves from Isreal.

In fact you might wonder why any of this matters if say Hamas carried out the attacks without consulting Iran,  which seems likely enough considering there's no hard evidence to the contrary. It would still matter because since the war in Gaza has started,  Iranian proxies have not only been striking US assets (not personnel in most cases,  from what I understand) but Hezbollah,  their main proxy has also been ratcheting up tensions with Israel.  Regardless of how the conflict started, the longer it goes on the more opportunities there are for it to expand.

Iran has a number of vectors for soft power in the region,  but Hezbollah are by far their biggest asset. Iran gives them 700m annually in military aid and they are the largest non state military in the world,  operating out of the failed state of Lebanon which has no control over them.  They  have a  massive arsenal of missiles, some of which are quite advanced. Israel cannot properly defend against an all out missile attack launched by Hezbollah. That's an inherent vulnerability Israel has had for some time and it's also a useful form of deterrence for direct attacks against Iran.  If the John Boltons of the world got their way for example,  and we pursued a policy of regime change in Iran as we did in Iraq, Iran could unleash hellfire on Israel in retaliation via Hezbollah.

For that reason,  Iran isn't necessarily eager to have Hezbollah launch their missiles at Israel and turn this into a two front war,  because then they lose that significant deterrence.

So far they haven't gotten significantly involved in the conflict,  despite posturing that they might be willing to do so. By providing a sense of ambiguity as to their intentions,  they keep Israel on alert which potentially deviates some of their attention from the war.  But so far I think it's safe to say they've been a non factor.

That's a good thing,  because if they did get involved, unlike with Hamas, Iran might be implicated by default in the eyes of US and Israel.  Their ties are far too close to overlook that relationship.

[close]

This is why I gave up on this post lol cause I don't know how to not go on tangent after tangent on this topic.

At least read the bolded portion at the end.  I don't expect you to read that entire post. The long and short of it is that Iran is a powerful and active player in the region  with a number of vectors of soft power with which to prod at their enemies.  The Houthis in Yemen are one of these proxies.

I sort of slept on the Houthis early on. It has been apparent since soon after the war in Gaza thar the Houthis and other Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria were ratcheting up hostilities towards Israeli and American assets. Though as I mentioned in my post these attacks have shown a certain restraint in terms of inflicting bloodshed.  Instead they seem to be targeting rather expensive equipment and assets, often using comparably cheap drones, in a cyberpunk 21th century form of asymmetric warfare.

But though I was aware of the Houthis and the escalation on that front,  I regarded it as a sort of sideline skirmish, while considering the potential involvement of Hezbollah as the main threat of expansion of this conflict,  as you will probably notice in the bolded section of that post of mine I quoted.

What I was failing to realize was the geography allowed the houthis much more leverage than I was anticipating, since the ships going through the Suez Canal also have to pass through the Bab al-Mandab strait, and the Houthis have made it so dangerous that ships are literally opting to sail all the way around Africa instead. Which needless to say is pretty bad for business.

For a while the US has been studiously trying to avoid a lot of these hostilities,  wanting nothing less than to actually get dragged into another mid east conflict. But it seems to me we are closer than ever to that happening once again.

[DJChameleon]

Houthis are basically acting like pirates and saying they align with Hamas and support them.

US and UK got involved to stop them from terrorizing merchants in the Red Sea or that's the current story.

[Jwb]

[Psy-Fi]

Hundreds of UK postal workers wrongly accused of fraud to have convictions overturned

LONDON -- Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday he will introduce measures to overturn the convictions of more than 900 post office branch managers who were wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.

Sunak said the scandal, which saw hundreds of postmasters falsely convicted of stealing money because Post Office computers wrongly showed that funds were missing from their shops, was "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history."

Of the more than 900 postal branch managers who were convicted of theft or fraud between 1999 and 2015, just 95 have managed to overturn their convictions, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said.

Some were sent to prison, and many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the state-owned Post Office. Several killed themselves. In total, over 2,000 people were affected by the scandal.

The real culprit was a defective accounting software package called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, which was rolled out across Post Office branches starting in the late 1990s.

[Lisnaholic]

Hundreds of UK postal workers wrongly accused of fraud to have convictions overturned

^ Yeah, this is a very sad story to me, because most of the victims were ordinary mom+pop shopkeeper types who found themselves in a real-life  Kafkaesque situation, condemned by the false evidence in the Horizon computer system.  It's taken 20 years, and a TV prog to bring this case to people's attention; that's a long time if you were a victim

Will Post Office officials and the Fujitsu company be held accountable? Well, the boss lady of the PO has returned her some medal she received, which is a very small symbolic gesture, and the Fujitsu company is still picking up lucrative long-term contracts with the Brit govt., who seem to be adopting a policy of "better the devil you know" when it comes to outsourcing IT work to foreign-owned companies.

[Guybrush]

Oh man, that post office case is awful. It shows how helpless you can be against the system, even when you have the truth on your side.

Is there a documentary on this on some streaming service?