Yahoo Tries to Tell you Inflation is Making you RICH?!, Iraq Vets Think the Gaza Invasion Looks Unwinnable? Sad? Canada Wishes You'd Just Kill Yourself (The Five for 10/24/23)
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It’s another heavy one today…so make sure you find your way back here on Friday for Culture & Commentary. This is a bi-weekly publication, with one news issue and one culture issue each week, the latter of which is to remind you that there’s more to life than doom-scrolling.
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With that being said…let’s dive into some rather somber events.
[one]
As Israel prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza (with the aid of U.S. advisors), American veterans of the Iraq war are describing the hunt for Hamas in a highly urbanized area as…potentially unwinnable.
Urban warfare studies and American officials offer dire comparisons to Iraq: Think of Falluja in 2004, the most intense battles that American troops had faced since Vietnam, or the nine-month fight to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul in 2016, which led to 10,000 civilian deaths. Then multiply the destructive toll, possibly exponentially.
Hamas has three to five times as many fighters — perhaps 40,000 in all — as the Islamic State had in Mosul. It can draw reserves from a young, restive population, and has international support from countries like Iran. Even on its own, Hamas’s leadership has had years to prepare for battle across Gaza, including in city streets, where the superiority of tanks and precise munitions can be stymied by guerrilla tactics.
“It’s going to be ugly,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Arnold, a U.S. Army strategist who has published studies on urban operations in the Middle East. “Cities are the devil’s playground — they make everything infinitely more difficult.”
[two]
A Jewish woman was stabbed to death outside her home in Detroit, which led to media coverage with truck-sized holes in it.
Detroit police are investigating the fatal stabbing of Woll, 40, who was found Saturday, Oct. 21 outside of her home in Lafayette Park, a neighborhood just east of downtown. Police were called to the scene by a witness who saw the woman lying on the ground unresponsive. A “trail of blood” led officers to Woll’s home, where investigators believe she was killed, officials said.
Some details about Woll’s death have been made public as of Monday, Oct. 23. The FBI and Michigan State Police are assisting with the investigation, and were said to be helping to establish a timeline leading to Woll’s death.
So far, police have said there was no sign of forced entry at Woll’s home, or any defensive wounds on Woll. The woman’s death is being investigated as a homicide, though police say there is no evidence indicating that it was a hate crime.
Investigators found a large Israeli flag in Woll’s home that was untouched, leading them to believe her killing was not an antisemitic act. Detroit police Chief James White on Sunday asked the community not to draw any quick conclusions, and said that more information would be provided Monday.
Wait, let’s run that back. Woll was killed OUTSIDE her home, but a Jewish flag was found INSIDE her home and no one stole it or defaced it…therefore this wasn’t an antisemitic killing?!
I try not to attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, but considering Detroit is a heavily Muslim area…one has to wonder if the police and media alike aren’t just pandering here.
[three]
Uhhh…wut?
Yahoo reports (badly)
The equation flips for the upper middle class, however. Americans in the 60th to 80th wealth percentile—today, that means a household net worth of roughly $200,000 to $550,000—tend to have a high portion of their wealth in real estate. As a result, for this group, inflation led to a NIG of $12,700, or 16% of their mean yearly income between 1983 and 2019. Essentially, inflation eroded these consumers’ mortgage payments and inflated their assets more than enough to make up for the losses their income took from having to pay more for other goods and services.
The boost was even bigger for squarely middle-class households, or those in the 40th to 60th wealth percentile. This group saw an NIG of nearly $40,000, or two-thirds of their annual income. “Indeed, inflation has been a boon to the middle class in terms of its balance sheet,” Wolff wrote of the findings.
For the bottom two quintiles of the wealth distribution, however, inflation remains a nightmare. Wolff found that this group’s NIG was -$19,300, or almost half of their mean income. “It is clear that poor households were particularly hard hit by inflation,” he wrote.
Wolff said his findings pose an urgent question: “Why is the public, particularly the middle class, so opposed to inflation?”
His answer was that consumers tend to feel the psychological effects caused by inflation eroding their incomes, but they are often “not aware” of the commonly positive effects that it can have on their assets and debt. It’s easy to see rising prices at the grocery store or while filling up at the gas station, but for many consumers, the positive wealth effect that comes from inflation lowering the lifetime real cost of a mortgage is less obvious.
I try not to let this publication slip into just “dunking on the media” territory here, but what the heck? Who cares if your home is increasing in value if rent is also sky high…for many people, their net worth on paper doesn’t buy gas or groceries.
In the age of ad-supported journalism, outlets are turning to headlines that spur outrage and social media reactions to keep legacy outlets afloat…and even by those standards, this is a particularly egregious, and highly inaccurate, take on inflation.
[four]
An Israeli woman who was freed by Hamas has given a grim report on how deeply the terrorist group is dug in…quite literally.
A hostage freed by Hamas described the nightmare she lived through after being abducted from her home in Israel and taken to a “spider’s web” of tunnels below Gaza.
Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, said Tuesday that she was beaten with sticks as she was taken by motorcycle from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. She was finally released along with her 79-year-old neighbor Nurit Cooper on Monday, making them just the third and fourth people of the more than 200 kidnapped by Hamas to be set free since the attacks began earlier this month. Lifshitz’s husband, 83, is still being held hostage.
The Israeli grandmother said she was beaten along the way and struggled to breathe, adding that Hamas militants took her watch and jewelry. Lifshitz also criticized failures in security that allowed her abduction to take place. “They blew up the electronic fence, that special fence that cost $2.5 billion to build but didn’t help with anything,” she said. “Masses mobbed our homes. They beat people, took some hostage. They didn’t distinguish between young and elderly, it was very painful.”
She says she was taken to Hamas’ network of tunnels, which she likened to a spiderweb.
To connect this account to the first story in today’s issue…it just makes a ground invasion look that much more deadly and difficult.
[five]
Canada’s MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) has been legal since 2016, but as of next year, our northern neighbor will allow those with mental illness to kill themselves with the help of the state.
Individuals with only a mental health condition are due to receive MAID access in March 2024, allowing them to seek life-ending procedures from government health care providers.
Beyond Canada, 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have made physician assisted suicide legal with 10 other states proposing similar laws in 2023.
The states include California, Montana, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey and Hawaii.
I have…no words. Even during a week of particularly horrible news, this story chills me to the bone.
Until the next one,
-sth