Two News Bits
So, the news is full of Really Not Nice Things today; it's yet another Cast Lead anniversary, among other things. Amira Hass has this piece which - with that core incident and that punch, I understand the atypical demagogy earlier in the piece. Hopefully it'll show up in English at some point.
(I do like to register - again - my protest over the fundamental different between targetting errors and deliberate abuse. Targeting errors - e.g. taking down a family fleeing the battle zone when you're looking for rocket launchers, taking out the school instead of the command center next door - are the nightmare of people who work targeting. These errors still happen, because when you establish targets in real time - well, it's the most fucked-up job after front-line combat and heli repair. Putting this and deliberate, clear-cut abuse and cruelty in the same cateogry is really unhelpful in convincing more people that cruelty is unjustified and in garnering institutional cooperation, not to mention unfair to people who do their damn best to not hurt innocents, but are only human.)
I really wasn't going to talk about that. I was going to point at this and laugh.
So statistically speaking, young drivers get into more accidents than older ones, yes? So statistically speaking, a huge proportion of Israeli young drivers are soldiers, which means they get very little opportunities to drive and when they do, there's a good chance it'll be late at night and they'll be underslept, exhausted, more drunk than is ideally desirable and also in a vehicle full of others of similar state and age - aka, on the way to or returning from weekend parties, when they are finally on liberty.
Given these conditions, it's really a wonder soldiers on liberty aren't involved in an even larger proportion of motor accidents. (~1,100 serious traffic offences by soldiers on liberty registered in the past year.) Still, they're a risk group if there ever was one. So, the Traffic Police and the IDF sat down and talked, and decided that soldiers who got a traffic ticket on liberty will be dealt with through the military, not the civilian system.
This means no fines. This means that if you screwed up, you get license suspension or brig time - and it goes on both your traffic and military records. The program also includes coordinating police enforcement efforts with IDF training activity. (I'm thinking combat training: it's the youngest soldiers who get the least liberty and are the most prone for doing stupid things, and they come in easy-to-register masses.)
This? Just might work. And i'm still laughing.
This entry was originally posted at http://hagar-972.dreamwidth.org/1846902.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
(I do like to register - again - my protest over the fundamental different between targetting errors and deliberate abuse. Targeting errors - e.g. taking down a family fleeing the battle zone when you're looking for rocket launchers, taking out the school instead of the command center next door - are the nightmare of people who work targeting. These errors still happen, because when you establish targets in real time - well, it's the most fucked-up job after front-line combat and heli repair. Putting this and deliberate, clear-cut abuse and cruelty in the same cateogry is really unhelpful in convincing more people that cruelty is unjustified and in garnering institutional cooperation, not to mention unfair to people who do their damn best to not hurt innocents, but are only human.)
I really wasn't going to talk about that. I was going to point at this and laugh.
So statistically speaking, young drivers get into more accidents than older ones, yes? So statistically speaking, a huge proportion of Israeli young drivers are soldiers, which means they get very little opportunities to drive and when they do, there's a good chance it'll be late at night and they'll be underslept, exhausted, more drunk than is ideally desirable and also in a vehicle full of others of similar state and age - aka, on the way to or returning from weekend parties, when they are finally on liberty.
Given these conditions, it's really a wonder soldiers on liberty aren't involved in an even larger proportion of motor accidents. (~1,100 serious traffic offences by soldiers on liberty registered in the past year.) Still, they're a risk group if there ever was one. So, the Traffic Police and the IDF sat down and talked, and decided that soldiers who got a traffic ticket on liberty will be dealt with through the military, not the civilian system.
This means no fines. This means that if you screwed up, you get license suspension or brig time - and it goes on both your traffic and military records. The program also includes coordinating police enforcement efforts with IDF training activity. (I'm thinking combat training: it's the youngest soldiers who get the least liberty and are the most prone for doing stupid things, and they come in easy-to-register masses.)
This? Just might work. And i'm still laughing.
This entry was originally posted at http://hagar-972.dreamwidth.org/1846902.html. Please comment there using OpenID.