Earthquakes don’t kill people, badly built buildings do

My friend and debate partner responded to yesterday’s post as part of our ongoing debate about whether music can change the world. In that debate I had included a quote from Maya Angelou:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I had also talked again about the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra made up of Israelis and Arabs. My friend wrote:

I made a point of praising music's capability to convey emotion as one of its strengths, and I do value that. But notice that Angelou only claims that "people will never forget how you made them feel". There is no claim that said emotion(s) lead those feeling people to change their behavior. If music is to change the world to the degree we are discussing, it must change behavior in large numbers of people. I don't credit music with that, although I do seek music out and care about it. To return briefly to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, I do not doubt that it has a great effect on those who participate in it and I'm happy it exists. But I doubt that it changes even its participants -- instead, I think appreciation for this politically charged music-making is a prerequisite for becoming a participant. These are people who are being the change they wish to create -- essential in creating change. But changing the world was our subject. Everything I know about Israel / Palestine says that the world around these musicians is not listening very much and, sadly, not changing. Instead, the Us vs Them cultures on both sides grow steadily more bitter. The Middle East is riven with "honor" cultures where people never forget and are committed to revenge. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is not to blame for that, but it is also not an effective agent of change.

All excellent points. I confirm that my friend is an avid music lover, though of tastes different from mine, so we don’t attend events together. I’ll go back to one of the responses in my post from last Saturday that started this debate. Can music change the world? Hasn’t yet. And I’ll set this debate aside. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed a report by Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis of Rolling Stone saying the nasty guy has been talking in campaign meetings about expanding the federal death penalty to apply to less serious crimes and then turning the executions into flashy televised shows featuring the firing squad, hanging, and maybe even the guillotine. The nasty guy had wanted to do this during his firs term but was dissuaded by staff. No doubt they knew most Americans would be horrified. Most. But those in his base who shrug at an attempted coup would love to see such spectacles. On the one hand this is a reminder that the nasty guy is a stupid, malignant boor. On the other, he appears to be completely serious about it. Hunter concluded:

Trump's admiration for murderous authoritarian regimes remains quite real. His base's enthusiasm for maximum cruelty, whether it is aimed at refugees or schoolchildren, protestors or criminals, has only grown. A very large chunk of Donald Trump's base consists of Americans who like the idea of watching other Americans be executed on television. These are people who frothed for the capture of lawmakers during an attempted coup; there is no depth to which they will not willingly sink, so long as they have a leader willing to point the way. Trump is a sociopathic and seditionist would-be dictator, but the Republican base loves him for it. This malignant, poisonous presence could very well decide to turn "flashier state murders" into a major campaign theme so that he can bellow that all the other Republican contenders are too "soft."

Mark Sumner of Kos, in discussing the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, noted that the city of Erzin had no major damage and no deaths. Osmaniye and Iskenderun on either side of Erzin were heavily damaged and many died. The mayor of Erzin explained:

Earthquakes don’t kill people, badly built buildings do. Not a single building collapsed in Erzin, Hatay, perhaps because the Mayor never signed off on unsafe or “kaçak” buildings. Residents were angry at him, he says. But he was saving their lives.

Erzin has a history of mayors that insisted on adhering to the earthquake resistant building codes. In other cities most of the buildings that collapsed were because of corruption. The builders did not build them according to earthquake codes. And that corruption goes all the way to Turkish President Erdogan. Sumner quoted NPR, which said Erdogan bragged about his zoning amnesty. He allowed contracts to ignore building codes that would make houses and offices more resistant to earthquakes. Then he gave amnesty to the unscrupulous builders. Sumner added:

As anger over both the response and the unsafe building increases, it’s very much worth noting that the area most affected by this quake is also the area that gave the heaviest support to Erdogan in the last election. Erdogan won that election with 52.6% of the national vote, but he carried those same areas around Osmaniye and Iskenderun and Erzin with over 70% of the local vote. Anger toward his government isn’t just growing, it’s growing in the area of Turkey he needs most to win reelection. That election is coming soon. A “snap” presidential election is scheduled for June 23. That election was already considered to be competitive. Now it will be taking place against the background of fallen cities and videos of Erdogan bragging about how he allowed contractors to skimp on safety.

Also, American Republicans want to get rid of government oversight. In a Ukraine update from last weekend Sumner reported the hottest area of fighting right now isn’t Bakhmut, the city that Russia has been trying to take for months (it is still in Ukrainian hands). The hottest area is Vuhledar. Unlike Bakhmut, Vuhledar actually has some strategic value – taking it would protect fragile Russian supply lines. The assault on Vuhledar and Bakhmut and other areas is not going in Russia’s favor. Sumner wrote:

Four days ago, it was big news when Ukraine reported 1,030 Russian soldiers killed in a day, with most of those losses taking place near Vuhledar or Bakhmut. That marked Tuesday as the biggest day for Russian losses since the invasion began. Then Russia lost over 900 more on Wednesday, and 900 more on Thursday as another catastrophic advance at Vuhledar was followed by that failure at Kreminna. The Friday number was something of a decline, with “only” 750 Russian troops eliminated — a rate that, if it continued, would still see more than 270,000 losses in a year. But then the astoundingly foolish assault on Avdiivka combined with more bad decisions at all of the above, and the end result is that on Saturday the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that Russia had lost an absolutely staggering 1,140 men in one day. There are estimates that Russia now has 320,000 troops in Ukraine. If they keep falling at the rate they were lost this week, all of them will be dead before the end of the year. It’s worth noting that those Russian losses haven’t come in the form we’ve become familiar with after watching months of activity near Bakhmut — small companies of men sent across fields or along streets between ruined buildings with little to no armor support. All week long the losses have come in the form of entire armored units blasted to smithereens along roadways. In part this has come because Russia has done what Ukraine refused to do: attempt to assault fortified positions in conditions that meant armor was restricted to traveling along a few narrow roadways. In part it’s because Russia seems to be replicating with its armored forces the tactics that it had “mastered” with infantry — if at first everyone gets killed, just send more. The result of this is that each of these days has come not just with astounding losses of men, but almost equally staggering losses of equipment. Since Tuesday, Ukrainian forces have destroyed 36 Russian tanks. Twenty five tanks were lost in two days. These are unsustainable levels of loss.

That prompted Sumner to chart out how quickly Russia is losing tanks compared to how quickly they can build new ones. At his computed rate they may have only 37% in working order at the end of the year. Sumner reminded us Ukraine cannot build its own tanks – an important manufacturing site was in Crimea and captured in 2014. So all of Ukraine’s tanks come from the West – and from Russia through battleground captures. Charles Johnson tweeted a page from “The KGB’s Magical War for ‘Peace’” by John Barron. It was written some time in the Soviet era. Johnson highlighted a paragraph that is a quote from Maj. Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko, who fled the KGB and came to America. The quote is about how the KGB distorted reality (something Putin, a former KGB person, still does). Here’s part of it:

Almost everybody wants peace and fears war. Therefore, by every conceivable means, the KGB plans and coordinates campaigns to persuade the public that whatever America does endangers peace and that whatever the Soviet Union proposes furthers peace. To be for America is to be for war; to be for the Soviets is to be for peace. That’s the art of Active Measures, a sort of made-in-Moscow black magic. It is tragic to see how well it works.

Charles Jay of the Kos community told the story of Vladimir Romanenko, age 24. He had been working for the Russian propaganda site Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP). He had become disillusioned with the war and its propaganda. So as the one year anniversary of the start of the war approaches, he posted a series of ten articles on KP. For example, one was titled “The Russian Federation committed crimes in Bucha, Izyum, and Hostomel.” Of course, the articles were removed within ten minutes. Romanenko is physically safe. When the mobilization was announced in September he left Russia, even though media workers wouldn’t be called up. He won’t say in which country he is living. He had been working remotely and is now, of course, out of a job. There was another mass shooting in Michigan, this one on the Michigan State University campus. It happened on Monday. In a report on Tuesday Aysha Qamar of Kos discussed what had been learned by then. Qamar reported that Jackie Matthews is a senior at MSU. She had been a student at Sandy Hook Elementary when fellow students were gunned down. She said “The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through is incomprehensible.” There is also a student described as having “witnessed the shooting” who is wearing an Oxford Strong shirt. The shooting at Oxford was only 15 months ago. Qamar included a quote by Dan Hodges:

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.

That’s an important insight, but maybe it isn’t over. Since Tuesday Michigan Radio has reported on vigils on campus and rallies at the state Capitol, just a few miles from campus. There Democrats, now in control of the legislature and governor’s office, vow they will have bills to curb a bit of the violence. Rick Pluta reported:

House Democratic leaders said bills are still being finalized. But they said the legislation will almost certainly include universal background checks, red-flag rules that would allow guns to be taken from people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others, and a requirement that guns be locked up when not in use. Governor Gretchen Whitmer says she is ready to sign the bills.

Those laws will help, but won’t be enough. David Horsley of the Seattle Times tweeted a cartoon of a family lying on the ground as bullets zip overhead. The mother says, “I don’t know what to call this, but it isn’t freedom!” To that Amy Mader replied:

Exactly! Those bullets have the freedom to pierce human flesh but I can't go to the movies, concerts, bars, school, college, church, grocery shopping, etc. Guns in Walmart, guns in target, guns in Starbucks. Can't piss off a driver, might have a gun.

Neda Ulaby of NPR reported that an art gallery in Washington DC is displaying the work of Stephanie Mercedes. The art is bells cast from bullet casings and parts of old guns that she has melted down. She makes bells with the metal because they carry spiritual significance across cultures and they are tolled for mourning. She is gay and Latina and the project was inspired by the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Many of these bells are not beautiful and some look like the weapons they used to be. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the White House has released a fact sheet on the federal budget and Republican hypocrisy. McCarter included this WH tweet that sums it up:

President Biden’s budget will cut the deficit by around $2 trillion over 10 years. Congressional Republicans are backing plans that will add more than $3 trillion to the debt over 10 years.

In a speech on Tuesday Biden said he told McCarthy they should meet to compare budgets, compare what gets spent where, what gets cuts, and who does and doesn’t get taxed. But McCarthy won’t raise taxes and just wants to cut. McCarter laid out why the budget will increase by $3 trillion under Republican plans.

It’s all true, and Biden proceeded to lay it all out in his speech, and the White House backed it up in that fact sheet: The $114 billion they would add to the debt in their bill to protect wealthy tax cheats (the first bill they passed this year); the $159 billion they’d add to the debt by repealing reforms that lower prescription drug costs from Medicare; trying to repeal corporate tax increases to the tune of $269 billion in debt increases; and their insistence that the Trump tax cuts continue, “a $2.7 trillion debt increase that would give the top 0.1% (with incomes over $4 million per year) a $175,000 annual tax cut, over 2.5 times a typical family’s annual income.”

McCarter titled the piece using the phrase “GOP deficit peacocks” which seems to be quite accurate. CameronProf of the Kos community echoed a story from Outsports that reported Jakub Jankto has come out as gay. He is the first active men’s player in international football (what we call soccer) to come out. His Czech team is fully supportive, as is UEFA, European football’s governing body.