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Anastasis

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Anastasis

  1. 10 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

    I think we will. And I agree about citizenship for those who want it. I think most will.

    The issue are these.

    1- How do you ever fix the animosity on both sides?

    2- What do you do with those who do not want this solution? The hardline on both sides.

    3- How to integrate?

    4- How do you stop the expansion of settlements?

    The existence of Arab Israelis, many who serve in the IDF, shows it can work.

    First, the things that we actually have direct control over. Stop just free dumping military arms and money into the region.  

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    Quincy Institute produces poll that aligns with Quincy Institute. 

    I understand that you are going to fall in opposition to their goal to "promote ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war, toward military restraint and diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace". But it is certainly overrepresented among the posters of this board, and particularly posters like brisket, that such positions are considered indefensible. 

  3. 15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Because - and this is important - he knows that his actual position is indefensible.

    My positions are generally aligned with the majority of Americans. As posted earlier. 

      

    On 2/22/2024 at 7:51 AM, Anastasis said:

    Here is another recent poll that gets more to policy.

    https://quincyinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Quincy-Institute_rev-tabs.pdf

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-peace-talks-poll/

     

    Full data at first link, excerpts from the summary article: 

    The Harris/Quincy Institute poll involved an online survey of 2,090 American adults from Feb. 8 to 12. The results are weighted to ensure a representative sample of the U.S. population. The margin of error is 2.5% using a 95% confidence level.

    ...

    Roughly 70% of Americans want the Biden administration to push Ukraine toward a negotiated peace with Russia as soon as possible, according to a new survey from the Harris Poll and the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft.

    Support for negotiations remained high when respondents were told such a move would include compromises by all parties, with two out of three respondents saying the U.S. should still pursue talks despite potential downsides. The survey shows a nine-point jump from a poll in late 2022 that surveyed likely voters. In that poll, 57% of respondents said they backed talks that would involve compromises.

    ...

    As the House weighs whether to approve new aid for Ukraine, 48% of respondents said they support new funding as long as it is conditioned on progress toward a diplomatic solution to the war. Others disagreed over whether the U.S. should halt all aid (30%) or continue funding without specific conditions (22%).

    This question revealed a sharp partisan divide on whether to continue Ukraine funding in any form. Fully 46% of Republicans favor an immediate shutoff of the aid spigot, as compared to 17% of Democrats.

    Meanwhile, 54% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans favored conditioning aid on diplomatic talks.

     

    • Haha 1
  4. 2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    You seem to have missed a question, accidentally I'm sure.

    It's been discussed a few pages back, with the same posters.  I am sure that you missed the exchange. Accidently I'm sure.

    13 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

    @Anastasis Do you think that the U.S. has been giving the appropriate amount of military aid to Ukraine, too much, too little? Don't need to get too specific but it is difficult to understand what your criticism of U.S. policy here is vs criticism of the tone of this board. Apologies if you've stated this before, I may just not be recalling.

    Prior posts below. If you want full context you can start at page 185 or so.

     

    On 2/10/2024 at 11:34 AM, Brisketexan said:

    Then let me ask the questions that follow that:
    Do you think the Ukrainians would choose some version of the map has Russia excluded from Ukraine either in whole or in large part (i.e., no more territory than it already holds)?
    And, do you think the Ukrainians should receive western support, including weapons, to help them achieve/get closer to that goal?

    I’ll even give you my answers first: they want Russia gone completely. But they will likely settle for something less, eventually.[emphasis mine] And we should continue to supply them the ammo and weapons they request, at similar levels to what we’ve done the past two years (it has varied, I’d prefer towards the higher end).

     

     

    On 2/10/2024 at 11:44 AM, Anastasis said:

    We are not too far apart. I agree that the bolded probably reflects reality.

    I don't think that the US taxpayer should be on the hook for a blank check. To the extent that our solution to the issue is to dump more arms and weapons into the region, I think that we need to have robust controls on arms and money from US taxpayers. I know that unintended consequences are not real though, and we shouldn't spend any time thinking about them with a longer run time horizon.   

     

     

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  5. 12 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    "I haven't been openly rooting for Russia" isn't the strong rebuttal that you think it is. 

    Sorry I guess for directly responding to the specific charge and in the same terms that it was made. Oh, and below still suits. 

    On 4/16/2024 at 9:40 PM, Anastasis said:

    “Ana openly roots for Russia since this thing started”

    ”You won’t find a single post where I have openly rooted for Russia”

    ”aha, he admits that he secretly roots for Russia. Got ‘em.”

    You guys actually make John Bolton look compelling in comparison.

     

    • Like 1
  6. 14 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

    It's okay, they didn't mean to hit a playground. They were aiming at a food convoy.

    Not enough Brits or Australians on the playground to generate a full blown western media outrage.  

    • Hook 'Em 1
  7. 11 hours ago, JohnnyRage said:

    Not seeing this in a mainstream places. Did this happen, a playground in Rafah being droned?

     

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/24258389.gaza-children-killed-israeli-strike-playground-leaves-11-dead/

    It’s a refugee camp in central Gaza. CNN has a blurb on it but it’s been reported in AJ more extensively. Video of the aftermath is out there, but you can only watch so many videos of parents weeping while they cradle their dead child before they all start to run together. 

    • Like 1
    • Rage+1 1
  8. On 4/15/2024 at 5:03 PM, 'stache said:

    But setting that aside, let's suppose that someone can prove pretty strongly that China is responsible by either developing it and releasing it intentionally or negligently, or were negligent when it was discovered at a wet market, what next?

    Crazy thought here, but maybe we stop using US taxpayer dollars to support off-shored risky virus research through funding cutouts without adequate audit procedures and  controls in place. This is like crazy world that these things are obvious.  

    • Hook 'Em 2
  9. 41 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


    See, guys…he doesn’t OPENLY root for Russia to steamroll Ukraine and have total military success against the west from the Baltic on down. Nope. He just opposes every single measure, step, or action that might stand in the way of or impede in any way Russia doing just that.
    And you morons can’t see the clear difference. Brain worms.

    lol. What a bunch of clowns.  
     

    “Ana openly roots for Russia since this thing started”

    ”You won’t find a single post where I have openly rooted for Russia”

    ”aha, he admits that he secretly roots for Russia. Got ‘em.”

    You guys actually make John Bolton look compelling in comparison.

     

     

  10. 8 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

    Ana has pretty openly been rooting for Russia for this entire conflict. 

    You won’t find a single post where I have been openly rooting for Russia. Some of you get very confused when someone is critical of American foreign policy, historical context, and has the capability to pull together an attention span longer than my dog. 

  11. 24 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    This is what being "cancelled" actually is, as opposed to what right wing mouth breathers cry about.

    Wtf?

  12. 1 minute ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

    your posts are better in chamberlain's

    All that tells me is that you have a poor grasp of both the content of my posts and history. 

  13. 9 minutes ago, Da Fino said:

    Paywalled. I’m honestly curious about the numbers. Do they give an estimate? 

    Behind the tags.

    Spoiler

    Where Is Hamas Getting Its Weapons? Increasingly, From Israel.

    The very weapons that Israeli forces have used to enforce a blockade of Gaza are now being used against them.

    Share full article

    370

    Israeli soldiers standing in what they say is a rocket factory that was photographed in January during an escorted tour by the military for international journalists in the central Gaza Strip.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

    By Maria Abi-Habib and Sheera Frenkel

    Maria Abi-Habib reported from London, and Sheera Frenkel from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

    Published Jan. 28, 2024Updated Jan. 29, 2024

    Leer en español

    Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

    Israeli military and intelligence officials have concluded that a significant number of weapons used by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks and in the war in Gaza came from an unlikely source: the Israeli military itself.

    For years, analysts have pointed to underground smuggling routes to explain how Hamas stayed so heavily armed despite an Israeli military blockade of the Gaza Strip. But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.

    Intelligence gathered during months of fighting revealed that, just as the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions before Oct. 7, they also underestimated its ability to obtain arms.

    What is clear now is that the very weapons that Israeli forces have used to enforce a blockade of Gaza over the past 17 years are now being used against them. Israeli and American military explosives have enabled Hamas to shower Israel with rockets and, for the first time, invade Israeli towns from Gaza.

    “Unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the Israeli National Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police consultant. “They are cutting open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a lot of them are being used, of course, and repurposed for their explosives and rockets.”

    Image

    Explosives engineers in 2021 removing an unexploded Israeli missile in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

    Weapons experts say that roughly 10 percent of munitions typically fail to detonate, but in Israel’s case, the figure could be higher. Israel’s arsenal includes Vietnam-era missiles, long discontinued by the United States and other military powers. The failure rate on some of those missiles could be as high as 15 percent, said one Israeli intelligence officer who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

    By either count, years of sporadic bombing and the recent bombardment of Gaza have littered the area with thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance just waiting to be reused. One 750-pound bomb that fails to detonate can become hundreds of missiles or rockets.

    Hamas did not respond to messages seeking comment. The Israeli military said in a statement that it was committed to dismantling Hamas but did not answer specific questions about the group’s weapons.

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    Israeli officials knew before the October attacks that Hamas could salvage some Israeli-made weapons, but the scope has startled weapons experts and diplomats alike.

    Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing.  The latest news about the conflict. Get it sent to your inbox.

    Israeli authorities also knew that their armories were vulnerable to theft. A military report from early last year noted that thousands of bullets and hundreds of guns and grenades had been stolen from poorly guarded bases.

    From there, the report said, some made their way to the West Bank, and others to Gaza by way of Sinai. But the report focused on military security. The consequences were treated almost as an afterthought: “We are fueling our enemies with our own weapons,” read one line of the report, which was viewed by The New York Times.

    The consequences became apparent on Oct. 7. Hours after Hamas breached the border, four Israeli soldiers discovered the body of a Hamas gunman who was killed outside the Re’im military base. Hebrew writing was visible on a grenade on his belt, said one of the soldiers, who recognized it as a bulletproof Israeli grenade, a recent model. Other Hamas fighters overran the base, and Israeli military officials say some weapons were looted and returned to Gaza.

    Image

    An Israeli police officer in Ashkelon, Israel, carrying part of a mangled rocket fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel on Oct. 9.Credit...Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

    A few miles away, members of an Israeli forensic team collected one of the 5,000 rockets fired by Hamas that day. Examining the rocket, they discovered that its military-grade explosives had most likely come from an unexploded Israeli missile fired into Gaza during a previous war, according to an Israeli intelligence officer.

    The Oct. 7 attacks showcased the patchwork arsenal that Hamas had stitched together. It included Iranian-made attack drones and North Korean-made rocket launchers, the types of weapons that Hamas is known to smuggle into Gaza through tunnels. Iran remains a major source of Hamas’s money and weapons.

    But other weapons, like anti-tank explosives, RPG warheads, thermobaric grenades and improvised devices, were repurposed Israeli arms, according to Hamas videos and remnants uncovered by Israel.

    Israel-Hamas War: Live Updates

    Updated 

    April 11, 2024, 4:45 p.m. ETApril 11, 2024

    April 11, 2024

    Here’s what to know about the hunger crisis in Gaza.

    UNICEF says one of its vehicles was hit by fire.

    Gen. Michael Kurilla is in Israel to help coordinate on military strategy.

    Rockets and missiles require huge quantities of explosive material, which officials say is the most difficult item to smuggle into Gaza.

    Yet Hamas fired so many rockets and missiles on Oct. 7 that Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system could not keep up. Rockets struck towns, cities and military bases, giving cover to the militants who stormed into Israel. One rocket hit a military base believed to house part of Israel’s nuclear missile program.

    Image

    Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system intercepting rockets launched on Oct. 20 from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Ashkelon, in southern Israel.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters

    Hamas once relied on material like fertilizer and powdered sugar — which, pound for pound, are not as powerful as military-grade explosives — to build rockets. But since 2007, Israel has enforced a strict blockade, restricting the import of goods, including electronics and computer equipment, that could be used to make weapons.

    That blockade and a crackdown on smuggling tunnels leading into and out of Gaza forced Hamas to get creative.

    Its manufacturing abilities are now sophisticated enough to saw into the warheads of bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds, to harvest the explosives and to repurpose them.

    “They have a military industry in Gaza. Some of it is above ground, some of it is below ground, and they are able to manufacture a lot of what they need,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s national security adviser and head of its National Security Council before stepping down early last year.

    One Western military official said that most of the explosives that Hamas is using in its war with Israel appear to have been manufactured using unexploded Israeli-launched munitions. One example, the official said, was an explosive booby trap that killed 10 Israeli soldiers in December.

    The military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, has flaunted its manufacturing abilities for years. After a war in 2014 with Israel, it established engineering teams to collect unexploded munitions like howitzer rounds and American-made MK-84 bombs.

    These teams work with the police’s explosive ordnance-disposal units, allowing people to safely return to their homes. They also help Hamas gear up for the next war.

    “Our strategy aimed to repurpose these pieces, turning this crisis into an opportunity,” a Qassam Brigades commander told Al Jazeera in 2020.

    Image

    A Hamas explosives expert at a local police precinct in Khan Younis in 2021 laying out unexploded projectiles from the aftermath of a conflict with Israel that May. Credit...Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

    Qassam’s media arm has released videos in recent years showing exactly what they were doing: sawing into warheads, scooping out explosive material — usually a powder — and melting it down to reuse.

    In 2019, Qassam commandos discovered hundreds of munitions on two World War I-era British military vessels that had sunk off the coast of Gaza a century earlier. The discovery, Qassam boasted, allowed it to make hundreds of new rockets.

    Early in the current war, a Qassam video showed militants assembling Yassin 105 rockets in a sunless manufacturing facility.

    “The most essential way for Hamas to obtain weaponry is through domestic manufacture,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Middle East policy analyst who grew up in Gaza. “It’s just a tweak of chemistry and you can make pretty much whatever you want.”

    Image

    Rockets being fired toward Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct 7.Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

    Israel restricts the mass importation of construction materials that can be used to build rockets and other weapons. But each new round of fighting leaves behind neighborhoods of rubble from which militants can pluck pipes, concrete and other valuable material, Mr. Alkhatib said.

    Hamas cannot manufacture everything. Some things are easier to buy from the black market and smuggle into Gaza. Sinai, the largely uninhabited desert region between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip, remains a hub for arms smuggling. Weapons from conflicts in Libya, Eritrea and Afghanistan have been discovered in Sinai, according to Israeli intelligence assessments.

    According to two Israeli intelligence officials, at least a dozen small tunnels were still running between Gaza and Egypt before Oct. 7. A spokesman for the Egyptian government said its military had done its part to shut down tunnels on its side of the border. “Many of the weapons currently inside the Gaza Strip are the result of smuggling from within Israel,” the spokesman said in an email.

    But the besieged streets of Gaza itself are increasingly a source of weapons.

    Israel estimates that it has conducted at least 22,000 strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7. Each often involves multiple rounds, meaning tens of thousands of munitions have likely been dropped or fired — and thousands failed to detonate.

    “Artillery, hand grenades, other munitions — tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance will be left after this war,” said Charles Birch, the head of the U.N. Mine Action Service in Gaza. These “are like a free gift to Hamas.”

    Vivian Yee contributed reporting from Cairo, and Zakaria Zakaria from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

    Image

    An Israeli soldier standing near armaments during an official media tour organized by the military where it displayed a variety of weapons recovered from areas hit by the Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack.Credit...Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

    Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent based in Mexico City, covering Latin America. She previously reported from Afghanistan, across the Middle East and in India, where she covered South Asia. More about Maria Abi-Habib

    Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

    A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 28, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hamas Stocks Its Arsenal With Duds Fired by Israel. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

     

  14. 1 minute ago, Make em eat Taco Bell said:

    explanation of what is happening on the ground there. Take it as you will. 

    We don't need nun of dem damn liberal explanations, we just need moar c130s full of the booms booms delivered to Tel Aviv. These are apparently core conservative values. Reckless spending of American taxpayer dollars to facilitate war crimes and humanitarian catastrophes committed by foreign nations that will thumb their fn nose at us and laugh at the dumbasses talking about the American rules-based order. 

  15. 41 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

    Israel was no threat to Gaza after disengagement in 2005.

    Please consider an alternative perspective of the "disengagement" in 2005. 

    Video and short thread. Full video is also linked in a subsequent post. 

     

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  16. Why would individual run quicker than trust, esp if that trust already has recently approved NFA items?

    And apparently if I die the transfers run faster. 

  17. I didn't see a definitive replay, and didn't get to watch the whole game so no idea how the ref was calling it overall, but what I saw in real time looked light to me. Good job by the canuck drawing the call. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  18. 10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    How'd the lakes do?  Any projections on lake level rises?

    LCRA seems unimpressed.

    Apr 10 2024 7:45AM

    Short term lake level forecasts for Buchanan and Travis:

    Buchanan
    Tomorrow = 995.1 ft msl
    One Week = 995.0 ft msl

    Travis
    Tomorrow = 630.7 ft msl
    One Week = 630.4 ft msl

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