Man accused of murdering Iryna Zarutska found not competent to stand trial.

 

Iryna Zarutska before her death. New York Post.

Decarlos Brown Jr., the man accused of brutally murdering Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte North Carolina has been found not competent to stand trial. New York Post. The finding complicates his state murder charges and will delay the trial 180 days. If the judge in the case decides to accept the report, charges against Brown would be dismissed without prejudice. Under North Carolina law a defendant is found incompetent if they can't understand the charges against them and can't assist with their own defense. Brown is in federal custody for additional charges of violence against a railroad carrier, but has not been mentally evaluated in that case. Zarutska's murder caused massive outrage after it was caught on video and it was revealed that Brown was a habitual offender that was still on the street.  

My Comment:

This is not an unexpected outcome but folks are not going to be happy with it at all. The Iryna Zarutska case was hugely important and anything other than a life sentence or death penalty for Decarlos Brown Jr. is going to be extremely unpopular at the least, and could even lead to changes to how people are found incompetent to stand trial. 

To review, Zarutska was an Ukrainian refugee that fled the war. She was on her way home for work on a Charlotte light rail car. Decarlos Brown Jr. stabbed her in the neck and she died. High quality video of this murder were posted by the government and caused extreme outrage given the pitiful way she died and the total lack of remorse shown by Brown. 

Decarlos Brown Jr. was mentally ill. He was schizophrenic and obviously unwell. But mere mental illness isn't enough to declare someone not competent to stand trial. In order to do so you can't be able to understand the charges against you or help with your defense. It's supposed to be a high bar to clear and without seeing him personally I don't know if he clears that bar or not. 

People are also pointing out that if Brown was so out of it that he can't even understand the charges against him, why was he on the street in the first place? Decarlos Brown Jr. was a menace, having been arrested multiple times, some of them violent. But soft on crime laws let him out on the street and he also wasn't committed. Folks aren't going to tolerate a system where a man can't be held for his crimes and can't be sent to a mental hospital  

The murder of Zarutska might change things, especially in North Carolina. There is already legislation there to make it easier to hold people who have serious mental health concerns and if Brown is found to be permanently unable to stand trial and the case(s) gets dismissed the calls for changes will be even louder. 

Regardless, folks aren't going to be happy about this regardless of the outcome. I do understand that there should be some standards for trying people who are so out of it that they can't even show up in court, but there also has to be some justice. Given the horrific nature of the crime and the outrage already being about how Brown seemed to be immune to actual consequences for his actions, I can't see people accepting anything other than a long prison sentence or an execution. 

Fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States brokered by Pakistan.

 

President Trump and the Strait of Hormuz. UPI/Getty/Orbital Horizon. 

A fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States, brokered by Pakistan, has been called in the conflict. Fox News. President Trump had made threats against Iran, preparing a massive strike against Iran's infrastructure and power plants saying it could end the Iranian civilization if a deal was not made. However, a last minute deal, brokered by Pakistan, stopped the fighting for now and will reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides have agreed to start negotiations formally in Pakistan in Islamabad on Friday. 

My Comment:

This is a positive move towards and end to the five week war with Iran. Both sides have some major incentives to end the war and a ceasefire is the first step. But the real question is if the ceasefire will hold and if a real peace deal will be reached. 

To be clear, there is a chance that the deal could fall apart fairly quickly. There are other parties involved besides the Iranian government and the United States. Indeed, the elephant in the room is Israel. They have been more aggressive when it comes to Iran and they want actual regime change as opposed to a simple deal like Trump and Iran want. Israel will probably require, at the very least, and end to the Iranian nuclear program, and end to Iran's ballistic missiles and an end to Iran's support of their proxies, like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. Only the first, ending Iran's nuclear program, is likely to be agreed to. 

Iran could torpedo things on their end too. The Iranian secular government seems incredibly tired of this war and want it to end and it looks like the religious Mullahs want it done too. The real problem is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). They have a lot of hardliners and they are in control of some of Iran's forces. They could try to undermine any ceasefire and they actually have been doing so previously. 

Still, this is what is needed to end the war. It's also very possible that talks in Islamabad will end the war. Iran would be allowed to save a little face and Trump will be able to crow that he was able to defeat Iran with very little cost. There's a lot of incentive to make this work and I am cautiously optimistic that it will. 

I will also say that if it does work out it will vindicate a lot of Trump's actions over the past five weeks. Launching this war was controversial to say the least. Folks were mad about it to the point where a lot of folks when fully unhinged. 

But it also shows that brinkmanship does indeed work. Trump launched a very credible threat, one that Iran had to take seriously. If Trump had launched his energy attack it would have destroyed Iran. When a regime can't even keep the lights on that's the end of the road and a major reason why the Ukraine conflict has gone on so long is that Russia has refused to destroy Ukraine's remaining power generation. Seeing this, Iran finally blinked, possibly with a nudge from China as well. 

Some people are accusing Trump of chickening out, but it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what Trump is. He was always going to try and get a deal. It's like nobody has actually read his book, Art of the Deal, or failing that, a summary of it. Of course those people were also claiming that Trump was going to nuke Iran too, so we probably shouldn't be listening to them anyways.   

City councilor in Indianapolis attacked in anti-data center attack.

 

Bullet holes in the councilors home and a no data center note. CBS News/Ron Gibson.

A city councilor in Indianapolis reports that his home was attacked in an anti-data center attack. CBS News. Ron Gibson reported that his house was shot at 13 times at midnight. A note saying "no data centers" was left at the door. He was with his 8 year old son at the time, and neither were injured. Data centers are used for AI applications but have come under heavy criticism due to the effects on energy prices, water usage and reducing jobs. Gibson was advocating for a new data center in Indianapolis at a recent meeting and faced heavy opposition. 

My Comment:

Of all the things to get upset by, a new data center doesn't seem like it should be one of them. Certainly not to the point where you are trying murder people who disagree with you. That's obviously an extreme reaction, but it baffles me that opposition to an AI datacenter is that extreme. It's lucky that nobody was hurt and the fact that an 8 year old was put at risk is outrageous. I hope this shooter is caught and punished to the full extent of the law. 

To be fair, AI datacenters do have disadvantages for locals. They use a lot of water, most of which ends up being evaporated into the atmosphere. In arid regions where water use is already a problem, I could see that being a legitimate concern. Indiana is not one of those regions, they have the Great Lakes and many rivers to cool these data centers down. 

Power use is another problem and it does lead to higher prices. These datacenters do suck up power like nobody's business and some of those costs are put on consumers. This is compounded by the fact that the same NIMBY people who hate datacenters also hate building new powerplants, most notably nuclear ones. 

There's also general opposition to AI in general. Folks are indeed afraid that they are going to lose their jobs to AI and that isn't really inaccurate. A lot of tech jobs, for example, have already been lost and many of the white collar "do nothing daycare" jobs will probably go away as well. Stopping data centers isn't going fix that but people feel like doing something to oppose AI given how much of a major social change it is. Indeed, I feel a bit of this myself as it's pretty obvious that this blog is obsolete when AI chatbots exist...

Still, the AI genie is fully out of the bottle and these data centers are going to be built somewhere. The demand for more AI generation is extreme, and unless there is a massive crash in AI demand, more data centers will be needed. 

I would rather these data centers be built in the United States. Sure, there are some places they shouldn't be built, like anywhere with water issues, but I absolutely don't want what could be critical infrastructure to be built in foreign countries where China or other adversaries could target them. AI is going to be important and I don't want the United States to be cut off because NIMBY's couldn't deal with it. 

And it's not like the datacenters don't have benefits as well. They do involve some high paying construction jobs and when complete there are also some well paying maintenance tech jobs as well. Those jobs can help locals. Plus there is a large property tax base that these datacenters can provide which will offset some of the costs. 

Regardless, the pro and anti-datacenter arguments should remain those. When folks are shooting up the homes of politicians then things have gotten too heated too quickly. I do think that the anti-datacenter people are going to win a lot of these fights but if they keep resorting to violence it's not going to go well for them... 

US Military recovers two pilots from downed F-15E far behind enemy lines in Iran.

 

File photo of an F-15E Strike Eagle. US Government photo. 

The United States Military has rescued two pilots from a downed F-15E Strike Eagle far behind enemy lines in Iran. NBC News. The jet crashed in Iranian territory and the pilot was rescued immediately. However, the planes Weapons System Officer (WSO) was not and had to escape and evade on the ground. President Trump announced tonight that the WSO was saved by US forces in a major operation that resulted in no US casualties. The plane was shot down by enemy fire, most likely by a MANPADS system, and was joined by an A-10 Warthog which was shot down by enemy fire as well, though the pilot was able to escape to Kuwait before ejecting. 

My Comment:

Late breaking news that deserves a brief post, this is very welcome news. Though the rumors of the rescue have been going on since this evening, it wasn't confirmed until just recently that the WSO was safe. It's very good news to say the least. 

It's also a blow to Iran's pride. They, and their backers online, had been hoping that the WSO would be captured, and that there would be serious casualties in a failed rescue operation. Some accounts were even posting that the WSO had been captured and that the Iranians had set a trap, and were even cheering on the idea that Special Forces troops were in danger. 

Instead they got embarrassed. Shooting down two planes was not much of an accomplishment, but capturing a pilot would have been an embarrassment for the United States. But having both pilots not only survive, but be extracted in complex rescue missions that resulted in no US deaths whatsoever shows just how much the United States is dominating the skies over Iran. 

To be fair, we don't quite have air dominance. Iran still has some anti-air weapons left, obviously. Those weapons are probably mostly MANPADS, shoulder launched missiles, and possibly a few mobile SAM launchers and AAA guns. But it's telling that they weren't able to prevent this rescue with their remaining air defenses. And the F-15 and A-10 were likely shot down in a case of "wrong place, wrong time". They just happened to be over an area that happened to have a guy with a missile launcher. 

Indeed, US air loses have been almost non-existent in this conflict. We have lost five planes, along with a few planes and helicopters being damaged (most notably a couple of E3 Sentry's being damage on the ground). Three of those planes were lost in a friendly fire incident, but we will count them anyways. There have also been about a dozen drones lost as well, not counting our Kamikaze ones. That's insanely low given how absurdly intense our operations against Iran have been. 

Regardless, this incident will likely be turned into a Hollywood movie at some point. People like stories of this kind of heroism and people surviving against all odds. Folks may not all approve of this conflict with Iran but they do like seeing the United States military engage in the kind of professionalism we saw this weekend. 

US Attorney General Pam Bondi will leave the Trump administration.

 

Pam Bondi and her replacement Todd Blanche. BBC/Getty.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi will leave the Trump administration and will be replaced by her deputy, Todd Blanche. BBC. Bondi's term had been dominated by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, first promising the release of an "Epstein list" of clients of Epstein but then failing to deliver when no such list existed. Trump had praised her for a crackdown on crime that appears to have had results but the Epstein issue was a drag on his administration. Bondi also faced criticism from Trump for not competently prosecuting Democrats suspected of crimes. Bondi is only the third major Cabinet official to resign or be fired in Trump's 2nd term, along with Kristi Noem and Mike Waltz.

My Comment:

I've got mixed feelings on this one. There is an argument to be made that Bondi was more effective in her role than people give her credit for. After all, there was a major decrease in crime under President Trump and Bondi probably does deserve credit for it. And she has done a competent job of defending Trump's policies in court, but that could be due to the weaknesses of the cases.

Regardless, it's pretty obvious that Bondi made a massive error in how she handled to Epstein files. She made a promise that she couldn't keep and made the issue extremely damaging for the Trump administration. Her presentation that suggested the existence of a "client list" that simply didn't exist sent conspiracy theorists into a frenzy and when she couldn't deliver on that it had the appearance of a coverup. 

It was an own-goal because there really was not a client list. There were a few people that were accused of wrong doing but it was mostly figures that we already knew, like Bill Richardson, Marin Minsky, Jean-Luc Brunel and Prince Andrew. None of those cases were prosecutable and that lead to folks feeling like justice was not being done. 

This was damaging to President Trump. I get the feeling that the general public doesn't care, other than the few people out there that care about nothing else. But it did cause a few prominent Republicans to break with the President, most notable Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I was never a fan of either of them, but still, it made enemies. 

Bondi was also having trouble prosecuting some prominent Democrats. Adam Schiff, James Comey and Laticia James should be awaiting trial right now, but Bondi wasn't able to secure an arrest in any of these cases. It's another point of contention with the Trump administration and the Republican base, we generally want to see these people in jail and Bondi wasn't able to get it done. 

So why did Bondi last so long? Like I said before, she did have some successes, but I am guessing it was because she was loyal to President Trump. Bondi helped to defend Trump during his 2020 impeachment and was seen as a personal friend to Trump. But that couldn't protect her forever.