About That Hospital in Gaza

There’s been a lot of discussion back and forth about the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza.  Hamas claims it was an Israeli bomb or missile attack, Israel claims it’s the result of a failed rocket launched from within Gaza. 

I have thoughts about this.  Certainly, I agree that the site does not look like a typical high explosive device went off.  That is a point that leans away from the standard bombs that Israel has been using.  

The Israeli claim is that the rocket failed, sprayed fuel around which subsequently caught fire after something at or near ground level exploded.  The part about this that doesn’t add up entirely for me with this is twofold: 

1). The alleged rocket appears to have failed at a fairly high altitude, and if it exploded, there should be evidence of  both fuel and rocket debris in the vicinity.  That hasn’t been identified yet. 

2). IF the rocket’s fuel canisters had managed to fall to the ground, and exploded there, that might explain the smaller crater at the site, but where’s the bits of the canister?  

3). The cars - the cars really bother me here.  The pictures I’ve seen show cars that clearly were subjected to intense heat - not the kind of heat that you see when a car catches fire and causes the one adjacent to burn as well.  Assuming that the Gaza rockets use something like Hydrogen Peroxide as a fuel (it’s relatively easily made, and burns plenty hot), I’m not sure that a fuel load would result in a strong enough fire to do what has been observed.  

*For clarity - I am not an explosives or rocket expert, so I will concede that it seems possible that it could have been a failed rocket.

My concern with the failed rocket scenario is it seems just a little too pat, and too specific.  It’s the kind of specificity that I would expect with an actual forensic report of the site itself, and yet Israel trotted it out within hours. 

It also seems that the world is ignoring another line of explanation:  The use of a Thermobaric Weapon.  Those devices are designed to produce exactly the kind of effect that we see at the hospital, and they’re intended to explode above ground level as a rule.  According to Wikipedia (perhaps not the most reliable source), Israel is rumoured to have had these weapons since about 1990, and they could easily have bought them from the US as well.  

Dropping a moderate sized thermobaric weapon in the courtyard of the hospital would produce a considerable amount of damage, and more specifically could explain the damage to the cars, which were clearly subjected to an intense blast of fire.  Further, thermobaric munitions can be delivered in a variety of ways, ranging from aircraft to traditional ground based artillery.  

Even here, we need to go through the site and find any pieces of whatever container held the explosive.  That requires a far more detailed forensic analysis than is likely possible in the heat of active warfare, but it seems necessary.  Both parties in this conflict have too many reasons to assign blame to the other side to be credible. 

[Update Oct 22, 2023]:  Independent reviews by people with more knowledge than I do are lining up on the “errant rocket” hypothesis.  Although I remain somewhat skeptical of that explanation, I have no compelling evidence to the contrary. 

Games Without Frontiers, War With Tears

The pressure cooker that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exploded this weekend. 

Normally, I stay out of making comment about anything to do with this particular conflict because quite frankly it appears to be intractable on so many fronts.  Between religious and cultural conflicts that go back not merely years, but arguably centuries; and a plethora of issues around everything from territory to resources, and the fallout from the dissolution of Europe’s colonial era political constructs, it’s just one big ugly mess.  

However, I’m seeing lots of posts on social media that are blindly supporting either the Israeli or the Palestinian “sides” in this dispute.  This is one of those rare times where “both sides are wrong” really does apply.  

Nothing justifies the actions of Hamas - nothing.  Going after civilians and massacring them is just plain wrong.  However, Hamas is a political entity, and like all such entities it represents a portion of the people. Once in power, I suspect that they have used their position to spread propaganda to feed their agenda.  I can only imagine the language at use within Gaza that has been used to desensitize Hamas members to the point that they are willing to engage in these horrors.  

Israel’s response is predictably heavy-handed - although as of this writing they haven’t yet rolled tanks into Gaza, just resorted to aerial bombing / missile attacks - which are frankly just as likely to kill innocent civilians as members of Hamas.  That is an understandable reaction to Hamas’ actions - but that doesn’t make it justified either.   

Since the first Arab-Israeli war, we have watched the Israeli state steadily erode the lands originally allocated to the Palestinian peoples.  In the last 20 years we have watched Israel build walls around Palestinian settlements, and restrict resource access for those settlements.  The border to Gaza is one of the most fortified in the world.  Then, the Israeli government has encouraged the formation of “settlements” on those occupied lands.  

Whatever the political justification for these actions, they serve ultimately to create a pressure cooker environment for the people caught within those walls, and those forcibly removed from their homes and lands.  It’s not hard to understand how that would over time alienate the peoples affected, and make them vulnerable to propaganda. While Hamas is not all Palestinian people, you can be absolutely certain that Hamas leadership has taken full advantage of the opportunity that continued oppression by the State of Israel has created. 

The tragedy here is that cynical political leadership on both sides has chosen to use the situation to justify further entrenchment in the conflict. While Netanyahu continues to talk about a "two state solution", his government's actions have done little to move towards any kind of peace.  Similarly Hamas profits from the stalemate, using it to justify continuing to lash out at Israel with violence while petitioning its allies in states like Iran for more weapons.  

It will take statesmen with bigger visions than the leadership on either side of this conflict currently demonstrates to move in the direction of some kind of peace, and it will also take major steps from the leadership of countries like the US, Iran, and Russia to facilitate a meaningful peace.

The Spat With India

 So, India is expanding its temper tantrum over Canada expressing concerns over the suspected role of the Modi government in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.  To a certain extent, this is a “meh, so what?” kind of move, but on other fronts its more significant and an indicator of the Modi government’s larger agenda.  

One could infer from the level of outrage coming out of India that in fact the Canadian government’s expressed worries that in fact the allegations have some merit.  It’s very much a case of “India doth protest too much” - if they really had nothing to do with this Nijjar’s murder a few months ago, then why such a public temper tantrum? 

Part of it, no doubt, has to do with the Khalistan movement to create a “Sikh homeland”. The idea of a Sikh homeland isn’t new - it’s been rattling about for decades, and was very much the driving force behind a bombing launched from within Canada back in the 1980s. I don’t particularly want to spend a pile of time rehashing the Air India bombing here, I mention it to draw attention to the somewhat fraught relationship it created within Canada regarding the Khalistan movement.

Canada’s government might well be more reactive here in part because of the fallout from the Air India bombing - which many still feel has never been fully resolved in our courts.  There have been a few cases brought to trial, but many in the Canadian public felt the outcomes were deeply unsatisfying.  Canada would be naturally sensitive to any action which would appear to be an escalation of violence relating to the Khalistan movement taking place within its borders.  A repeat of the Air India bombing is hardly a desirable thing.

I won’t attempt to go deep into the Khalistan movement and the politics around it - I simply lack the background knowledge to do the subject justice.  What I can remark upon is the Modi government’s propensity for passing arbitrary laws with deliberately discriminatory consequences.  The BJP party is described as “Hindu Nationalist”, and over time we have also observed Modi becoming increasingly authoritarian.  

To be frank, ever since Trudeau’s disastrous trip to India in 2015/16, my trust of the Modi government has been very low. It was fairly obvious that Modi participated in setting a political booby trap engineered by Harper through the IDU.  Subsequently, numerous second-rate conservative politicians have attempted to polish their image with junkets to India as a result of the Modi government inviting them to visit.  So, on that alone, I am suspicious of the Modi government’s actions here.  

It’s entirely possible that this is a setup so that the CPC here can spend the next year or so making itself out to be “the reconcilers” where India is concerned.  India gets to play the “offended party” with its nose out of joint, and effectively cuts the current Canadian government out of the picture, making any diplomatic progress impossible.  Then the CPC can rail on about how Trudeau simply doesn’t have the standing on the world stage to be taken seriously …blah blah blah… I think you get the picture. 

Then, when in 2024/5 when a new government is elected (presumably CPC, or so the plotters imagine), India suddenly stops being hostile … mostly because an IDU-aligned government is in power, and the newly elected Conservative government gets a nice little “slam-dunk” win on the world stage to set its credentials in.  

From Modi’s perspective, it’s a win too, because he gets to deal a blow to a movement that he sees as a political danger with relative impunity.  

That might be a bit of a reach, but I don’t think it’s all that far off the mark. We already have evidence of close ties between Harper and Modi, and it’s fairly clear that they’ve collaborated on schemes to bolster conservative fortunes in Canada.  

[Update:  21/09/23 17:00]:  Well, it seems that Canada does have “the receipts” that implicate the Indian government.  The whole thing just got a lot harder for the CPC to leverage credibly. 

The CPC Went Full SoCon

The brief summary of yesterday’s policy votes at the CPC 2023 convention was published by CBC. Go there first, and read it - but I really think they missed more than a few things, so this is going to be a bit more of a deep dive into the policies they passed and how much worse for women and minorities it really is.

This Afternoon We Find Out

This afternoon, we find out which of the 50+ policy resolutions get adopted by the CPC.  Back here, I reviewed 3 policy resolutions in context, and questioned just how “broad” the conservative tent really is.  If any of those 3 resolutions is adopted, we can safely conclude that the CPC continues to tilt at the windmills of women’s rights, 2SLGBTQ+ rights, and in particular transgender rights. 

Make no mistake about it, by openly attacking transgender rights, the CPC is lining up to attack a whole host of social issues, ranging from education to women’s healthcare.

Something I want to emphasize is that the current focus of the political right on transgender women has enormous negative implications for women as a whole.  In particular, it represents a return to policing women’s bodies and appearance through peer pressure.  If you don’t look sufficiently “feminine” by someone else’s standards, you will find yourself challenged when you try to use a washroom in a public space - and by “not looking sufficiently feminine”, that could be as simple as wearing a bunch of old clothes when you pop out of the house to pick up some new paint brushes while you’re in the midst of painting your home. Whoops - you’re not dressed in the latest fashions, your hair isn’t done, and you *gasp* forgot your makeup!  I assure you that there will be someone who decides that means you’re not really a woman.  

I wish I was joking.  I’m not.  Stereotypes like the so-called Stepford Wives exist because in numerous religious subgroups, women are not merely expected to be “obedient to their husbands”, but they come under enormous scrutiny and pressure to conform (and while I write this from a generally Anglo-Christian perspective, these same pressures exist in many cultural milieus).  The ultimate goal here is very much to return women to the social role that they were forced into prior to the civil rights era, and potentially even pre-personhood where biology - specifically the ability to bear children - defines womanhood entirely. 

Transgender people present a fundamental threat to that worldview because they demand a separation of “the body” and the social roles associated with that body.  A core demand of feminism has always been autonomy, and in particular bodily autonomy.  Women have long sought the means to control their own fertility, but it has only been in the last 6 decades or so that the tools to do so have come to exist in a reasonably safe form.  To many, the changes that resulted from this autonomy, ranging from women having careers (and demanding equality in the workplace), to having actual public discourse about things like reproduction, have been an existential threat not only to existing power structures, but to their own sense of security.  The old models of “dad goes to work, mom stays home and looks after the household” have given way to much more complex structures that make old biblical adages about “the woman shall submit to her husband” very difficult to place in the modern world. 

Just as the recognition of sexual diversity has challenged the idea that “marriage” only exists for the purposes of producing children (a very utilitarian concept), or that sex only exists between “man and woman”, the mere existence of transgender people challenges previously rigid categories of “masculine” and “feminine”.  That is something which more socially conservative elements in our society have long regarded as an existential threat because not only does it require deconstructing and separating the social and the biological aspects of being human, it undermines centuries old scriptures that they hold as “divine truth”.  

That’s the whole problem here.  We have an entire segment of the population that is struggling to cope with change, and are completely unable to reconcile the “truth” of their faith with the world we exist in.  They desperately seek to roll things back to a “simpler time” where absolutes of the past still functioned - and they can only do that by erasing hard fought rights and freedoms.  

It may seem easy to look at it and say “well, they’re just going after trans people”, but spend any amount of time poking through the content on sites like LifeSite News and others that the Social Conservative set control, and it’s quite clear that if they were to ever gain actual power, a rollback of rights and freedoms across the board is their plan … in some cases think in terms of “yeah - mandatory church attendance” type stuff.  

This afternoon’s votes will tell us how much influence the SoCon right has over the CPC.  My guesstimate based on what I’ve seen over the last 20 years is that the answer is “far too much”.  Remember, this is the party which only grudgingly removed its opposition to same sex marriage in 2015 or 16 (and it did not endorse it - just removed their opposition to it), and coming up on the last election refused to admit that global warming is a thing. 

What Exactly Is A “Broad Coalition Of Conservatives”?

This morning, on the news one of the headline stories was about the CPC policy convention, where they are going to debate a range of policies, and two of them are outright eliminationist anti-transgender crap. (We’ll come back to that) One of the party talking heads said some inane drivel about the CPC being a “democratic party with a broad coalition of conservatives”. 

Besides being a somewhat silly attempt to define the party as “big tent”, what does the term really mean? It certainly doesn’t mean inclusion - the CPC continues to pander to extreme libertarians whose idea of “economic policy” is basically “let them eat cake”.  So if you’re somewhere in the middle and lower income ranges, they sure as hell aren’t including you - your pockets are the first ones they are going to pick through user fees, means testing programs, etc.  They also continue to be very much in the thrall of social conservative movements that want to exclude people who don’t fit into a particularly narrow idea of the world (usually one based on a bad reading of Old Testament texts).  So yeah, if you’re a woman, a member of the 2SLGBTQ community, or you belong to one of those “other religions”, don’t think for a moment that you’re safe in that party - you aren’t.

I did take a look through the CPC policy proposals, and there are some doozies in there.  Let's go exploring, shall we?

"Return To The Office" Policies

So, now that we are 3 years past the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a sizeable number of companies are beginning to demand people "be back in the office".  For many good reasons, workers are pushing back.  

Here's the first thing about "back to the office" policies.  The vast majority of them are little more than a return to "how do I know work is being done if I can't see a bum in a seat every day?" management.  While there are definitely business contexts where the work requires someone to be physically present (e.g. you're assembling physical parts on an assembly line, you work in retail, etc.).  

So-called "bum-in-a-chair" managers argue that people being out of the office means that problems don't get solved as quickly, there's less opportunity for "collaboration", "communication" etc.  Yet, they ignore that for 3 years, a lot of people worked remotely just fine, and online platforms that facilitate communication worked out pretty well.  

Does managing a team that works "by remote control" turn out to be different from managing a team of people in an office?  Yes, in some respects it is.  If you're a manager, at the end of the day, it's still your job to bring people together when needed, and to help your team achieve their objectives.  

What companies need to acknowledge and deal with is the fact that people are asserting their right to a degree of self-determination in their work.  Over the last few decades, workplaces have increasingly erased any sense of personal identity in workspaces.  Cubicle farms are the beginning of the fall, and so-called open plan offices with open desk arrangements, or worse yet, unassigned "hotel" desk arrangements mean that people going to the office feel absolutely no sense of ownership of their workspace. 

Would you want to go in to sit at a random desk daily where you aren't even allowed so much as a couple of ornaments to make the space feel a bit like it's your own? I wouldn't.  

Then there is the hellish environment that these spaces create.  There's constant noise and activity, and for anybody who has to concentrate to accomplish their job, it's a losing battle.  Out come the noise cancelling headphones - anything to create some kind of barrier between yourself and the chaos around you. 

I don't care what gimmicks you add to make the workplace seem "fun" - whether that's games rooms, cafes, or "privacy booths".  At best you're putting a bandage over the sucking chest wound that is your workspaces suck.

Workers are pushing back because when they work from home, they have some control over their workspace, they have a bit more privacy than sitting at seemingly endless rows of desks with no privacy, and a world of distractions.  

From a worker's perspective, they've already shown that they are perfectly capable of being productive without sitting in the office 8 hours a day - for the last 3 years no less. Workers are asserting a very simple demand for a degree of reasonable autonomy and control over when and how they do their jobs.  They have learned that not only can they do most, if not all of their jobs without "going into the office", they are realizing that their quality of life is better. 

If businesses want people "in the office" then things need to change. Workspaces need to become something people want to go to. They have to be places that people actually want to experience. 

Second, plan on compensating people for the time they spend commuting to / from your workplace.  Yes, that should be paid time - if I have to spend half an hour to an hour each way getting to and from work - especially when the alternative is a few seconds walk down the hall at home, then yes, some compensation is justified.  IMO, we should be insisting that employers pay people for commute time and costs regardless  of the work.