A friend of mine went to canvass in Milwaukee yesterday (from Chicago) and 75 volunteers showed up for one neighborhood. I am out of the country now but an looking forward to canvassing as soon as I get back.
Our band of mighty gray haired warriors just wrote almost 1400 postcards in one week to Montana and Ohio via Activate America. We have over 100 yard signs out, replaced the stolen ones, and quite a few Harris flags. It is little but it is what we can do, and the research shows the handwritten postcards have an impact on voters. Mighty band of warriors on tiny horses are fierce like the Lilliputians. Couldn’t help myself; I love the image.
Plus, we painted our pumpkins blue. Sick of orange.
Blue pumpkins are a great idea! What kind of paint did you lose? I will do the same. Kudos to you and your group on turning out so many postcards, yard signs, etc. 👏👏
The Indivisible group I lead has been writing postcards since 2017. Like your folks, we are a small but powerful and dedicated group of people. My postcard coordinator texted me last night that we passed the 35K mark of postcards sent since January. 💪🏼. Our last in-person monthly postcard party this year is next Saturday. We write all the time but meeting once a month in person is more for the camaraderie than anything else.
I am planning an election night pot-luck watch party. The need to be together that night overweighs the fears that we all share.
Hey! Our Indivisible group on Martha’s Vineyard was writing postcards for Connor Lamb in 2017. He was the first special election after trump was elected. Next up was Doug Jones. Now it’s the biggest thing going! Personally i think it’s the most effective we can do plus it’s great therapy!
I agree. A few weeks ago My esthetician asked if she could write a few postcards. She’s now on her third “order” - she said writing postcards makes her feel like she’s going something positive for Harris/Walz.
This is not looking for kudos (we're all doing something, right?) but to give you 2 snapshots of contested areas.
I canvassed for 6 hours in East Stroudsburg, PA on Friday. This is an area hard hit by economic downturn. I was thrilled to see (slightly) more Harris/Walz signs than Trump signs. Interestingly, none of the Trump signs included Vance. Maybe convinced a few non-voters to vote. This was a GOTV, so I was not advocating for any candidate.
Canvassed 5 hours Saturday for Mondaire Jones in NY-17, one of the districts the Republicans flipped in 2022. Ring doorbells everywhere meant lots of people did not come to the door, but everyone was friendly, even those who said they were voting Republican. Found a few former Rs who said they were done with that party, and voting Dem this year. Dems were all really enthusiastic about the election.
Not canvassing Sunday, because I have a 24-hour on-call EMT shift.
I know East Stroudsberg a little because we have friends there. Last spring it was littered with Trump signs so the fact that it is changing is very encouraging! Thank you so much for your work!!
Anderson Clayton has worked hard to have the North Carolina Democratic Party supporting its candidates and getting out the vote across all of North Carolina, including previously neglected rural and mountain regions. Now western North Carolina, along with Georgia, Florida, and other states, have towns and areas utterly devastated by Hurricane Helene--flooding, power lines down, no Internet, roads and bridges wiped out with no way to get in or out.
Here are a few resources for organizations helping people in those areas. What else have folks found?
Ellie. I am originally from NC and still have plenty of friends there. They are in a state of shock. Asheville, one of the most beautiful cities has been flattened and it breaks my heart. Bridges collapsed as well as roads, houses were completely under water. I have friends who live in those gorgeous mountains and I haven’t heard from them yet. My hometown got hit really badly also. I am worried.
Speaking about Anderson Clayton, she is by far, the most exciting person NC has ever had! So smart, so energetic, and so young enough to guide even the oldsters to canvassing areas. I just don’t know how these areas will recover quickly. Hoping Pete Buttigieg and the feds have a plan.
People’s basic needs for food and shelter take priority before anything else. North Carolina has a centralized agency for collecting and distributing donations to vetted aid organizations in need:
I love waking up to star clusters here in Wales! All that energy and light surrounded by darkness and something else. Maybe it only looks dark as we peer into the void from our tiny speck of earth, our spaceship traveling highly piggly to god knows where. Perhaps the blackness is really the hope and joy and every good and true thing that has floated up from our collective souls to feed the universe? And the stars are smiling back at us saying thanks for all the blackness, we have made it into light.. see you soon.
I'm betting Wales has darker skies than anywhere in the US east of the Mississippi. Enjoy! I live in the same Boston suburb where I lived as a kid. Plenty of stars in the '60s, and Comet Bennett cut a massive swath across the sky in March 1970. Just about nothing to see now.
No stars tonight on the Cambrian coast. It is blowing a gale. With the Irish Sea before us and Snowdonia National forest behind we are completely exposed to the elements. It sounds as if mutant raccoons are wrestling in the back of the house. We live up a hill and tomorrow all the yard furniture will be down in the street. My cat Tink is siting on a cushion next to me by the radiator and her eyes keep getting bigger. and bigger. But when it passes the stars will return. The cats eyes will soon get heavy and we will sleep. Tomorrow our own star will rise again. ⭐️😻
Comet Bennett was named for John Caister Bennett, the South African amateur astronomer who discovered it December 28, 1969. It was one gorgeous comet! It was huge across the sky, like 15-20 moon diameters in length.
Comets are generally named for the people who discover them.
Well, my comment was a bit tongue in cheek but I should have used an eyewink emoji. I guess I will have to take up astronomy now and discover a comment to rectify the Darcy situation. He has been a shining light to so many women. 🤩
Give me strength. It was over 100° yesterday in Chandler, Arizona when we all went out canvassing between nine and noon. The high was 114° yesterday. LD13 will be back at it today. In person early voting and early ballots start to be mailed October 9.
Please don't go out in 100 degree days to canvass! That's just too much stress on your bodies and I can almost guess, like me, you're no "spring chickens!" I just looked at the weather forecast for the coming week, and here in middle California, all week 100 degrees plus! This is unbearable for me. I will stay in my air-conditioned senior apartment and write postcards except that I can't FIND any more blank postcards, and will have to resort to making them! But it is very comforting to know that we're helping to get Harris/Walz elected by all our efforts. I love that so many folks are doing the postcard writing! I just can't wait for this election to be over, it has me so worried, and I won't really relax until November 6th or 7th when the final results are tallied.
Thank you to everyone who is getting involved this time around--I've never seen such effort and it's because we KNOW that it's also Democracy that is being challenged like never before!
Don't worry, we go out early and have designated drivers with great air conditioning in their cars and we take frequent breaks. Hey when you're used to temperatures over 110° then over 100° feels like a break!
The next big thing from an election perspective is the VP debate on a Tuesday. It’s up to Tim to expose the hypocrisy of Vance and remind him of his comments about Trump which at the time were the only honest thing he has said. Walz needs to remind people that Vance is a heartbeat way from the Presidency and Trump is 78:years old.
We used to put our bed outside for 6-7 months of the year. I had never realized that I often opened my eyes as I turned over until outside I would awaken to the shock of this astonishing endless starry night above. It was holy.
When we lived in Colorado (at 8500’), we’d frequently drag our mattress outside on summer nights to watch meteor showers, the Milky Way, or just the stars. Definitely holy.
I vacation in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Northern Minnesota in August every couple of years just to get my fill of sleeping under a star-filled sky. Meteor showers, star gazing and Northern lights fill me up, body and soul! (And the bugs aren’t too bad at that time of year!)
Friends I was at dinner with last night feel that Bibi Netanyahu is escalating the war to help Trump win and that if the US gets even more involved in a war in the ME, Harris will not win. So, I hope Biden prioritizes the Americans over helping our allies.
Netanyahu is the terrorist leader in our lives these days. He, like Trump, has no moral compass at all. It was amazing that he actually had the chutzpah to speak at the UN gathering even as he was prepared not to keep his word. Read the following from The Guardian:
The leaders of the countries at play - Iran with proxies and Israel - seem willing to fight to the death. Literally, as long as it is the other guy’s death. I’m holding on to one last sliver of hope and that is that someone within Hezbollah must be feeding Israel some very important information. If Iran loses its proxy in Lebanon, and the Lebanese people can regain something of their own independent rule, maybe there can be progress in peaceful coexistence. Am I naive or what?
I am no admirer of Netanyahu, overall, but I feel compelled to reply to John D. Cooper’s post.
It takes quite a stretch to call Netanyahu, for all his manifest faults, a “terrorist leader”. As Israel’s Prime Minister, he is defending his nation from external attacks.
Hamas invaded Israel last October, committing wanton crimes against humanity, including kidnapping, mutilation, and rape. Hezbollah rocketed Israel, ostensibly to show “moral” support for Hamas. Both were clearly aggressors.
I find it puzzling and even disgusting that otherwise moral people defend such aggressors and paint them as victims. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have publicly stated that they aim to exterminate Israel; it inverts logic and morality when such people claim that Israel, the nation under attack, is called the aggressor.
Hamas is not the same as the many thousands of children killed in Gaza. And now Netanyahu is bombing residential areas in Lebanon with 2,000 pound bombs made in the USA. I am beyond horrified at the ineptitude of the current administration and believe this may well impact the outcome of the election.
From news reports: Hezbollah emplaced their military headquarters in residential buildings in Beirut (probably a war crime). In order to neutralize those military installations, Israel had to attack those buildings.
*Hezbollah* intentionally put those civilians at risk.
As it did in Gaza under similar circumstances, Israel did something that, to the best of my knowledge, is unparalleled in the history of warfare: they warned potentially affected civilians of impending attack, telling them they should get out of the way.
In so doing, Israel forfeited the advantage of military surprise, opting instead to make possible the saving of civilian lives. For this, Israel is being criticized? Why?
When you ask them, Hezbollah self identify as "Syrian" not Lebanese. We (make that Reagan) forgot 241 Marines they killed in 1983. They target civilians worldwide. E.G. the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in 1994. In 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) stated that at least 306,887 civilians had been killed in Syria during the conflict between March 2011 and March 2021, representing about 1.5% of its pre-war population. This figure did not include indirect and non-civilian deaths.
Where you live there are proportionally more Syrian refugees than here, so we haven't gotten the ripple effect.
Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies for Iran. They killed US troops in Syria, shoot missiles indiscriminately. Still American hostages un accounted for in Gaza.
I'd like to think that there is a pro-western concurrent majority within Iran....
In Lebanon, half the government was supposed to be Christian...eclipsed by Hezbollah.
I do currently see nothing happening with the remaining hostages. We have Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as Isis, and other groups that make the region a horrid one. The Jews coming from Eastern European countries have certainly helped to shift Israel into a more conservative direction just as the Eastern Europeans coming to the US seem to as well. I realize this is an overgeneralization, but people who grow up under fascism don't necessarily understand of value democracy, they just want the things that come with capitalism it seems to me. I have noted how many of them vote Republican or push Israel to expand their territories into the West Bank. The kettle has boiled over. I guess Trump's son-in-law did not bring peace to the ME, and Biden is not going to either. Neither will Trump, as his son-in-law as envoy did not even as he claimed he did.
Actually, more than a million Israeli Jews speak Arabic -- families expelled from Moslem countries in 1948. They enable the Likud Party. Most of the postwar refugees from Europe were/are more liberal and more tolerant.
When Hezbollah killed students recently in a missile strike, all were Israeli Arabs.
Many of the troublemakers in the West Bank are ultra religious orthodox -- some from the US and Britain -- who refuse to serve in the . military. They are a small minority -- but are the darlings of the religious right in the US.
I'm a film/TV editor in Los Angeles. I'm proud to share this film I created for George Whitesides running for House of Reps. in CA 27th Congressional District, currently held by a Maga, Trump, lying, cheating loyalist. We can flip this district. Enjoy this inside peek at George's wonderful wife and in-laws and their story… https://vimeo.com/1014006196?share=copy
I took a break from politics, after doing some Substack each morning, and watch several PBS shows my husband would not watch, while he is away.Have been on hurricane watch, but while the rifer is high, and my egress road floods over daily, all is well. Today, while listening to Strongmen (Ruth Ben-Ghiat) I finished a 200 card stack pf post cards to voters, and now on to TImothy Snyders new book.
I find the stunning photos of stars, nebulae, space clouds, etc. and the sizes and distances of these entities, just mind blowing. Can you imagine we once thought our tiny Earth the center of the cosmos? And yet, for practical and immediate purposes, it is. And at the center of that is the coming election because, as climate scientist Michael Mann importantly said, "A second Trump term is game over for the climate..." Which means bye-bye life as we know it and bye-bye (fragile) humanity - including billionaires and climate deniers. It won't make much difference, if any, to the cosmos, but it sure will make a cataclysmic difference to us. Personally, I'm voting, at least partially, for Kamala Harris because I don't want to become a dinosaur. So I'm writing lots of post cards, giving lots of donations, and voting early. And praying really hard. While there's no guarantee on the positive side of this, you can bet your life on the negative. For all our sakes, Let's Make Trump Toast. It's Kamala Harris, for the people - all the people.
Love the pictures and explanations. How is it known that the clusters are really clusters, and not just a bunch of stars behind each other? When you talk of the distances and diameters of nebulae, is there a way to determine their depth (from our perspective)?
A friend of mine went to canvass in Milwaukee yesterday (from Chicago) and 75 volunteers showed up for one neighborhood. I am out of the country now but an looking forward to canvassing as soon as I get back.
Our band of mighty gray haired warriors just wrote almost 1400 postcards in one week to Montana and Ohio via Activate America. We have over 100 yard signs out, replaced the stolen ones, and quite a few Harris flags. It is little but it is what we can do, and the research shows the handwritten postcards have an impact on voters. Mighty band of warriors on tiny horses are fierce like the Lilliputians. Couldn’t help myself; I love the image.
Plus, we painted our pumpkins blue. Sick of orange.
Well done! I had s group of friends over yesterday and we knocked out 600 cards for PA GOTV.
Hats off to your group of friends! That's a huge amount of postcards done in a day. 👏💙👏
Blue pumpkins 💙
Blue pumpkins are a great idea! What kind of paint did you lose? I will do the same. Kudos to you and your group on turning out so many postcards, yard signs, etc. 👏👏
The Indivisible group I lead has been writing postcards since 2017. Like your folks, we are a small but powerful and dedicated group of people. My postcard coordinator texted me last night that we passed the 35K mark of postcards sent since January. 💪🏼. Our last in-person monthly postcard party this year is next Saturday. We write all the time but meeting once a month in person is more for the camaraderie than anything else.
I am planning an election night pot-luck watch party. The need to be together that night overweighs the fears that we all share.
Hey! Our Indivisible group on Martha’s Vineyard was writing postcards for Connor Lamb in 2017. He was the first special election after trump was elected. Next up was Doug Jones. Now it’s the biggest thing going! Personally i think it’s the most effective we can do plus it’s great therapy!
I agree. A few weeks ago My esthetician asked if she could write a few postcards. She’s now on her third “order” - she said writing postcards makes her feel like she’s going something positive for Harris/Walz.
I love working with Activate America.
Blue pumpkins! Fabu!
Good for you. I find the postcard writing therapeutic.
HA!! Good for you!
AMAZING!!
I think I would have left the pumpkins their natural color, but after all you have done, who am I to criticize you? Thank you Carole Furguson!!!
Some people are nervous about signs so this is a way to show their support. Also blue porch lights are popular
This is not looking for kudos (we're all doing something, right?) but to give you 2 snapshots of contested areas.
I canvassed for 6 hours in East Stroudsburg, PA on Friday. This is an area hard hit by economic downturn. I was thrilled to see (slightly) more Harris/Walz signs than Trump signs. Interestingly, none of the Trump signs included Vance. Maybe convinced a few non-voters to vote. This was a GOTV, so I was not advocating for any candidate.
Canvassed 5 hours Saturday for Mondaire Jones in NY-17, one of the districts the Republicans flipped in 2022. Ring doorbells everywhere meant lots of people did not come to the door, but everyone was friendly, even those who said they were voting Republican. Found a few former Rs who said they were done with that party, and voting Dem this year. Dems were all really enthusiastic about the election.
Not canvassing Sunday, because I have a 24-hour on-call EMT shift.
You deserve kudos for those efforts - Kudos!
I know East Stroudsberg a little because we have friends there. Last spring it was littered with Trump signs so the fact that it is changing is very encouraging! Thank you so much for your work!!
Thank you Jim!
Anderson Clayton has worked hard to have the North Carolina Democratic Party supporting its candidates and getting out the vote across all of North Carolina, including previously neglected rural and mountain regions. Now western North Carolina, along with Georgia, Florida, and other states, have towns and areas utterly devastated by Hurricane Helene--flooding, power lines down, no Internet, roads and bridges wiped out with no way to get in or out.
Here are a few resources for organizations helping people in those areas. What else have folks found?
https://www.hungerhealthcoalition.com/
https://operationbbqrelief.org/
World Central Kitchen:
https://wck.org/news/hurricanes-helene-john
A key fact is Governor Cooper and the federal government through FEMA are hard at work helping residents.
Second Harvest of The Big Bend
The Big Bend is where Helene made landfall and is home to 5 of the top 10 counties in Florida with the highest rates of food insecurity.
https://fightinghunger.org/
Two umbrella aid resources for NC:
Annotated list with links for aid organizations in western NC:
https://www.bpr.org/bpr-news/2024-09-28/list-ways-to-donate-and-help-flood-victims-in-western-north-carolina-after-hurricane-helene
NC's Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters lists food banks, churches, foundations, nonprofits, animal rescue organizations and more:
https://www.ncvoad.org/members/
Ellie. I am originally from NC and still have plenty of friends there. They are in a state of shock. Asheville, one of the most beautiful cities has been flattened and it breaks my heart. Bridges collapsed as well as roads, houses were completely under water. I have friends who live in those gorgeous mountains and I haven’t heard from them yet. My hometown got hit really badly also. I am worried.
Speaking about Anderson Clayton, she is by far, the most exciting person NC has ever had! So smart, so energetic, and so young enough to guide even the oldsters to canvassing areas. I just don’t know how these areas will recover quickly. Hoping Pete Buttigieg and the feds have a plan.
People’s basic needs for food and shelter take priority before anything else. North Carolina has a centralized agency for collecting and distributing donations to vetted aid organizations in need:
https://pay.payitgov.com/ncdonations
I love waking up to star clusters here in Wales! All that energy and light surrounded by darkness and something else. Maybe it only looks dark as we peer into the void from our tiny speck of earth, our spaceship traveling highly piggly to god knows where. Perhaps the blackness is really the hope and joy and every good and true thing that has floated up from our collective souls to feed the universe? And the stars are smiling back at us saying thanks for all the blackness, we have made it into light.. see you soon.
❤️
I'm betting Wales has darker skies than anywhere in the US east of the Mississippi. Enjoy! I live in the same Boston suburb where I lived as a kid. Plenty of stars in the '60s, and Comet Bennett cut a massive swath across the sky in March 1970. Just about nothing to see now.
No stars tonight on the Cambrian coast. It is blowing a gale. With the Irish Sea before us and Snowdonia National forest behind we are completely exposed to the elements. It sounds as if mutant raccoons are wrestling in the back of the house. We live up a hill and tomorrow all the yard furniture will be down in the street. My cat Tink is siting on a cushion next to me by the radiator and her eyes keep getting bigger. and bigger. But when it passes the stars will return. The cats eyes will soon get heavy and we will sleep. Tomorrow our own star will rise again. ⭐️😻
So you're in the east of Ireland? A beautiful country, even though I've never been. But I've looked at lots of photos. Some day...
Is that comment named for Elizabeth Bennet? Is there a comet Darcy?
Comet Bennett was named for John Caister Bennett, the South African amateur astronomer who discovered it December 28, 1969. It was one gorgeous comet! It was huge across the sky, like 15-20 moon diameters in length.
Comets are generally named for the people who discover them.
I'm not aware of a Comet Darcy.
Well, my comment was a bit tongue in cheek but I should have used an eyewink emoji. I guess I will have to take up astronomy now and discover a comment to rectify the Darcy situation. He has been a shining light to so many women. 🤩
Give me strength. It was over 100° yesterday in Chandler, Arizona when we all went out canvassing between nine and noon. The high was 114° yesterday. LD13 will be back at it today. In person early voting and early ballots start to be mailed October 9.
Stay well hydrated in Arizona. There is no fun in becoming dehydrated. Drink up as you canvas. Thank you.
Please don't go out in 100 degree days to canvass! That's just too much stress on your bodies and I can almost guess, like me, you're no "spring chickens!" I just looked at the weather forecast for the coming week, and here in middle California, all week 100 degrees plus! This is unbearable for me. I will stay in my air-conditioned senior apartment and write postcards except that I can't FIND any more blank postcards, and will have to resort to making them! But it is very comforting to know that we're helping to get Harris/Walz elected by all our efforts. I love that so many folks are doing the postcard writing! I just can't wait for this election to be over, it has me so worried, and I won't really relax until November 6th or 7th when the final results are tallied.
Thank you to everyone who is getting involved this time around--I've never seen such effort and it's because we KNOW that it's also Democracy that is being challenged like never before!
Robert Hubbell's recent wise words are posted near my computer: "The antidote to anxiety is action." I do postcard writing too and love it!
Don’t; too dangerous
And thank you
Don't worry, we go out early and have designated drivers with great air conditioning in their cars and we take frequent breaks. Hey when you're used to temperatures over 110° then over 100° feels like a break!
I love your pictures. They’re a great juxtaposition of our infinitesimally insignificance along side the importance of this election. Keep it up
The next big thing from an election perspective is the VP debate on a Tuesday. It’s up to Tim to expose the hypocrisy of Vance and remind him of his comments about Trump which at the time were the only honest thing he has said. Walz needs to remind people that Vance is a heartbeat way from the Presidency and Trump is 78:years old.
Does Vance hold Truth Social stock?
Wear Trump gold tennis shoes? Wear a Trump watch? Have “Trump Coins” he can show the TV audience?
Does he benefit from Trump merch?
We used to put our bed outside for 6-7 months of the year. I had never realized that I often opened my eyes as I turned over until outside I would awaken to the shock of this astonishing endless starry night above. It was holy.
When we lived in Colorado (at 8500’), we’d frequently drag our mattress outside on summer nights to watch meteor showers, the Milky Way, or just the stars. Definitely holy.
That’s so beautiful - wow. The ancients enjoyed many advantages and that’s a big one.
I vacation in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Northern Minnesota in August every couple of years just to get my fill of sleeping under a star-filled sky. Meteor showers, star gazing and Northern lights fill me up, body and soul! (And the bugs aren’t too bad at that time of year!)
Read in Spy Talk yesterday that Iran has commissioned a hit on Trump for 1 mil.
https://www.spytalk.co/p/new-in-spyweek-beyond-deadly-pagers
Friends I was at dinner with last night feel that Bibi Netanyahu is escalating the war to help Trump win and that if the US gets even more involved in a war in the ME, Harris will not win. So, I hope Biden prioritizes the Americans over helping our allies.
Netanyahu is the terrorist leader in our lives these days. He, like Trump, has no moral compass at all. It was amazing that he actually had the chutzpah to speak at the UN gathering even as he was prepared not to keep his word. Read the following from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/28/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-iran-lebanon-israel-us-analysis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The leaders of the countries at play - Iran with proxies and Israel - seem willing to fight to the death. Literally, as long as it is the other guy’s death. I’m holding on to one last sliver of hope and that is that someone within Hezbollah must be feeding Israel some very important information. If Iran loses its proxy in Lebanon, and the Lebanese people can regain something of their own independent rule, maybe there can be progress in peaceful coexistence. Am I naive or what?
Not naive, hopeful
I am no admirer of Netanyahu, overall, but I feel compelled to reply to John D. Cooper’s post.
It takes quite a stretch to call Netanyahu, for all his manifest faults, a “terrorist leader”. As Israel’s Prime Minister, he is defending his nation from external attacks.
Hamas invaded Israel last October, committing wanton crimes against humanity, including kidnapping, mutilation, and rape. Hezbollah rocketed Israel, ostensibly to show “moral” support for Hamas. Both were clearly aggressors.
I find it puzzling and even disgusting that otherwise moral people defend such aggressors and paint them as victims. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have publicly stated that they aim to exterminate Israel; it inverts logic and morality when such people claim that Israel, the nation under attack, is called the aggressor.
Hamas is not the same as the many thousands of children killed in Gaza. And now Netanyahu is bombing residential areas in Lebanon with 2,000 pound bombs made in the USA. I am beyond horrified at the ineptitude of the current administration and believe this may well impact the outcome of the election.
From news reports: Hezbollah emplaced their military headquarters in residential buildings in Beirut (probably a war crime). In order to neutralize those military installations, Israel had to attack those buildings.
*Hezbollah* intentionally put those civilians at risk.
As it did in Gaza under similar circumstances, Israel did something that, to the best of my knowledge, is unparalleled in the history of warfare: they warned potentially affected civilians of impending attack, telling them they should get out of the way.
In so doing, Israel forfeited the advantage of military surprise, opting instead to make possible the saving of civilian lives. For this, Israel is being criticized? Why?
Here is another view of the "human shields" defense, written by Muhammed Shehada, a Gazan writer. https://open.substack.com/pub/zeteo/p/the-myth-of-human-shields-israel-gaza?r=qjdyg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Need to change dinner plans.
1. Iran and Putin are allies --- Trump isn't worried.
2. Hezbollah killed more Palestinians in its various operations (think Syria) than have been killed in Gaza.
I see no good solutions to the situation. Lucien K. Truscott talks about this today in his Substack letter. https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/hassan-nasrallah-is-dead-assassination
When you ask them, Hezbollah self identify as "Syrian" not Lebanese. We (make that Reagan) forgot 241 Marines they killed in 1983. They target civilians worldwide. E.G. the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in 1994. In 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) stated that at least 306,887 civilians had been killed in Syria during the conflict between March 2011 and March 2021, representing about 1.5% of its pre-war population. This figure did not include indirect and non-civilian deaths.
Where you live there are proportionally more Syrian refugees than here, so we haven't gotten the ripple effect.
Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies for Iran. They killed US troops in Syria, shoot missiles indiscriminately. Still American hostages un accounted for in Gaza.
I'd like to think that there is a pro-western concurrent majority within Iran....
In Lebanon, half the government was supposed to be Christian...eclipsed by Hezbollah.
I do currently see nothing happening with the remaining hostages. We have Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as Isis, and other groups that make the region a horrid one. The Jews coming from Eastern European countries have certainly helped to shift Israel into a more conservative direction just as the Eastern Europeans coming to the US seem to as well. I realize this is an overgeneralization, but people who grow up under fascism don't necessarily understand of value democracy, they just want the things that come with capitalism it seems to me. I have noted how many of them vote Republican or push Israel to expand their territories into the West Bank. The kettle has boiled over. I guess Trump's son-in-law did not bring peace to the ME, and Biden is not going to either. Neither will Trump, as his son-in-law as envoy did not even as he claimed he did.
Actually, more than a million Israeli Jews speak Arabic -- families expelled from Moslem countries in 1948. They enable the Likud Party. Most of the postwar refugees from Europe were/are more liberal and more tolerant.
When Hezbollah killed students recently in a missile strike, all were Israeli Arabs.
Many of the troublemakers in the West Bank are ultra religious orthodox -- some from the US and Britain -- who refuse to serve in the . military. They are a small minority -- but are the darlings of the religious right in the US.
I thought most of the settlers came from Eastern European countries. Can you give me some references to these waves from US and Britain?
I’ve wondered if that was Netanyahu’s strategy, too. Biden and our Middle East allies are in a tight spot.
I doubt it. This is Isreal’s big chance to wile out their enemies no matter the cost.
I don’t think Bibi is escalating the war for anyone but himself. What would be horrible is if he said he’d end it for trump. Can you imagine?
I'm a film/TV editor in Los Angeles. I'm proud to share this film I created for George Whitesides running for House of Reps. in CA 27th Congressional District, currently held by a Maga, Trump, lying, cheating loyalist. We can flip this district. Enjoy this inside peek at George's wonderful wife and in-laws and their story… https://vimeo.com/1014006196?share=copy
Nicely done!
Thank you Jason!
That's interesting, Robert. I didn't realize there were clusters like that close enough to us to be seen by the naked eye.
I took a break from politics, after doing some Substack each morning, and watch several PBS shows my husband would not watch, while he is away.Have been on hurricane watch, but while the rifer is high, and my egress road floods over daily, all is well. Today, while listening to Strongmen (Ruth Ben-Ghiat) I finished a 200 card stack pf post cards to voters, and now on to TImothy Snyders new book.
Just doing what I can and wishing you all peace
I find the stunning photos of stars, nebulae, space clouds, etc. and the sizes and distances of these entities, just mind blowing. Can you imagine we once thought our tiny Earth the center of the cosmos? And yet, for practical and immediate purposes, it is. And at the center of that is the coming election because, as climate scientist Michael Mann importantly said, "A second Trump term is game over for the climate..." Which means bye-bye life as we know it and bye-bye (fragile) humanity - including billionaires and climate deniers. It won't make much difference, if any, to the cosmos, but it sure will make a cataclysmic difference to us. Personally, I'm voting, at least partially, for Kamala Harris because I don't want to become a dinosaur. So I'm writing lots of post cards, giving lots of donations, and voting early. And praying really hard. While there's no guarantee on the positive side of this, you can bet your life on the negative. For all our sakes, Let's Make Trump Toast. It's Kamala Harris, for the people - all the people.
Love the pictures and explanations. How is it known that the clusters are really clusters, and not just a bunch of stars behind each other? When you talk of the distances and diameters of nebulae, is there a way to determine their depth (from our perspective)?
I wonder Robert what your favorite books on astronomy are— and cosmology?