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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. The closures of two Gaza border crossings prompt alarm over humanitarian aid.

    With its seizure of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, Israel has now closed two key crossings for aid into Gaza, drawing sharp warnings from international agencies and officials who said the moves could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

    Since the start of the war, Israel had limited aid entering the Gaza Strip to the two tightly controlled border crossings: Kerem Shalom and Rafah, which both access the enclave’s south.

    But Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas attack on Sunday killed four soldiers in the area, then mounted an incursion on Tuesday that closed the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt.

    Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian office, said in a news briefing that Israel had “choked off” the two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza. If fuel is not able to enter the enclave for some time, he added, “it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave.”

    The main United Nations agency that helps Palestinians in Gaza said Tuesday that the “catastrophic hunger faced by people especially in northern Gaza will get much worse” if aid shipments through the Rafah border crossing were interrupted.

    Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned the Rafah operation “in the strongest terms,” saying on Tuesday afternoon that Israeli control over the crossing jeopardized humanitarian aid deliveries as well as the ability of Gazans to leave the strip for medical treatment.

    “This dangerous escalation threatens the lives of more than a million Palestinians who depend primarily on this crossing, as it is the main lifeline of the Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement.

    Israel opened the crossing at Kerem Shalom on its border with Gaza in December after pressure from the United States to speed up the flow of humanitarian aid. However, Israeli protesters have regularly gathered at the crossing, trying to block aid convoys from entering the enclave in hope of raising the pressure on Hamas to release the hostages.

    Under pressure from the Biden administration after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers, Israel said last month that it would reopen the Erez border crossing into northern Gaza and that shipments bound for the enclave would be accepted at the Israeli port of Ashdod. On May 1, when the Erez crossing first opened, Israel said 30 aid trucks passed through.

    Figures from the United Nations show that on Sunday, the most recent day for which data is available, 128 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing and none entered through Rafah. With the closures of those two crossings, it was not immediately clear how much aid was getting through to Gaza through the other avenues on Tuesday. COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, said on Tuesday that 60 trucks had passed through the Erez crossing.

    Israel imposes stringent checks on incoming aid to keep out anything that might help Hamas, which it has pledged to eliminate. Since the start of the war, most of the aid for Gaza has moved through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

    Aid groups and foreign diplomats have said the inspections create bottlenecks, and have accused Israel of arbitrarily turning away aid and systematically limiting deliveries. Israel has denied those assertions, blaming the shortages on logistical failures by aid groups, and has recently increased the number of trucks entering the strip.

  2. Here are the latest developments.
    The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had sent tanks into Rafah and established control over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation. The move halted the flow of aid into the enclave, drawing immediate condemnation from international officials.

    The incursion — which the military said was aimed at destroying Hamas targets used to attack Israeli soldiers — did not appear to be the long-promised full ground invasion of Rafah, which Israel’s allies have been working to avert by pushing for a cease-fire deal. It came after a dizzying day that saw Israel order people to evacuate parts of the city, then Hamas claims that it had accepted the terms of a cease-fire, followed by an announcement by Israel’s military that it was carrying out “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing pressure to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas that is backed by the United States and Arab nations and that would secure the release of hostages still being held in Gaza. His government said that it would send negotiators to Cairo on Tuesday; analysts say Israel’s actions in Rafah could either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to make a deal or sabotage the talks.

    The head of a hospital in Rafah said that 27 bodies and 150 wounded people had been brought to his facility since the start of the incursion. The Egyptian state-owned television channel Al Qahera reported that sporadic fighting could be heard around the Rafah crossing, and humanitarian agencies said that no aid was passing through it. United Nations officials said that Israeli troops had now “choked off” both the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, the two main routes for getting aid into Gaza, and warned that the humanitarian crisis in the enclave would worsen.

     

  3. 4 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

    That's at least high EF3 and very likely EF4 damage.  

    Good eye. Last night, the Tulsa weather guys clocked wind speeds that would likely indicate an EF4 when all was said and done. Just a devastating situation for a community that doesn't look like it had much to begin with. I can only imagine the shock they're going through right now and the heartbreak they'll feel over the long haul.

  4. I guess those Baja bandits have poisoned the well for surfers who needed some tasty waves and a cool buzz who won't go looking at that wave and saying, "Hey bud, let's party!" anymore.

  5. 17 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

    Yeah, that's fair.  A lot of small town Oklahoma is pretty run down (no worse than a lot of Texas though, either in my experience) but I found Bartlesville to be better than most I've been through.

    I think with OK being this meeting point of the Midwest/South/Southwest, the more "Midwest" part of the state you're in (north and west of 44/40), the better off it tends to be compared to the more "South" parts (anything south of 44/east of 35).  Again, that's my bias coming through, but Bartlesville feeling more Midwest than South probably colored my perception.

    It likely has more to do with legacy oil money from Phillips Petroleum being founded there and that both Phillips 66 and Conoco Phillips still have a large footprint in the community. How many towns of its size can boast of having a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed tower in them, after all?

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  6. 2 minutes ago, MidTexHorn said:

    Man you are way out of touch with modern American evangelicalism. And citing your Methodist bonfides proves it. There is very little connection between the Methodist version of Christianity and evangelical version of Baptists, Church of Christ types and Bible church types. 


    I grew up in a Bible church, very fundamentalist evangelical. Parents went to Moody Bible Institute. They now go to a Baptist church because that’s where all of their old evangelical friends now go. When I decided to go to a Methodist church as an adult they thought that was the next worst thing to atheism or Catholicism. IMO You will never hear mainstream evangelical thought in the vast majority of Methodist churches. And my parents know that and despise it. 
     

    My very evangelical parents and in-laws very much support Israel both to support Gods chosen ones and for its end times implications. They also very much believe Jews (except Jews for Jesus) are going to hell. And they are very much all in on MAGA and all that stands for as are all of their evangelical friends from Bible churches and Baptist churches. We no longer discuss religion or politics, but I hear enough from this to know this. 

    You're from Midland, yes? Well, I grew up in Big Spring, 40 miles to the east. It's a wonder that our Baptist parents have the exact same beliefs. Helluva coincidence. I guess we're just making shit up to confound a Park Cities Methodist boy.

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  7. 1 hour ago, Rex Kramer said:

    I’m Methodist. Heard of all this shit - never seen it live, and I know tons of people, mostly of faith and diverse denominations at that. This is in no way mainstream. I’ve literally heard nobody discuss any of this. 

    When Gaza is discussed in church, prayers are offered for the conflict and everyone involved. 

    Yes, it's a belief that's so fringe one of its leading proponents, John Hagee, was invited to speak at the March for Israel, the largest pro-Israel rally in our nation's history, last November.

    Again, no one has said that it is the majority belief among American Christians, only that there are certainly a lot of Evangelicals who believe these things. As I said up above, I've personally known some of these people, two of whom were my own parents. I grew up hearing this stuff all the time.

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  8. 49 minutes ago, Parliament said:

    https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/columns/2022/12/08/columbus-police-proud-boys-high-five-drag-queen-storytime-protest/69701577007/ 

    During a Saturday protest that drew a motley assortment of right-wing extremists and an equally vocal contingent of counter-protesters, a Columbus police sergeant drew immediate scrutiny from members of the latter group when he high-fived a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist organization that Canada branded a terrorist group last year.

    Counter-protesters immediately called Sgt. Steven Dyer out, and their recorded exchange quickly spread across social media.

    "Seriously, what's that about?" asks a woman who identifies herself during the conversation as the mother of a gay child.

    "Building relationships," Dyer replies. During the conversation there is a persistent hint of a smile that suggests despite his apparent training in community discourse, Dyer is not at that particular moment even close to reading the room.

     

    Question: Have they been consistent in their equal application of the law and not enforcing it only against groups whose speech they disagree with?

    Hmm...it seems there were quite a few masked protesters present.

    image.png.e17f2f372a3d5944ed58db764463a39f.png

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  9. 1 minute ago, Captainant said:

    That's some real Herman Cain award shit

    It really was. I'd known him since the 2nd or 3rd grade when his family moved to town. He'd always been a cocky asshole, but we initially became friends because his family had the only in-ground swimming pool in the neighborhood that I knew of. We stayed relatively good friends through college, though, but he had an uncanny knack for always getting into some really stupid shit.

    I'm pretty sure he had Oppositional Defiance Disorder or something, so no one from our high school clique was at all surprised.

  10. I know of at least a half-dozen from my HS graduating class (1989) of about 225 who died from it, but I was still friends with only a couple of them, though. One of them had some health issues, and it got him quickly in the spring. The other was just a cavalier asshole about it, who a mutual friend of ours later showed me one of his last FB messages to him that read, and I quote, "I ain't skeered." He caught it about a week later and was dead within the month.

    Then, there was my dad, along with another half-dozen or so from my parents' close social/church group, who died from it that first fall/winter before the vaccine came out. My dad died an absolutely miserable death alone in his hospital bed the day after Christmas 2020. That was especially devasting for my mom because they'd been married 57 years, and there were only a few left in her social circle afterward. She never fully recovered emotionally from it until she passed away a couple of years later.

    But no big deal, right? Right?!?

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  11. 10 minutes ago, CoTex said:

    From time to time I travel for work and, as fate would have it, I’m at the Colcord hotel in downtown OKC.  
    Next door is a tall building with a bar on top so, if it starts to get sporty I’ll do some on location reporting.

    Make sure your phone is fully charged for photos and videos.

  12. It'd be a shame if they had an accident.

    Russia to Hold Drills on Tactical Nuclear Weapons in New Tensions With West
    Russian officials claimed the order was in response to comments from the West about the possibility of more direct involvement in Ukraine. NATO called Russia’s announcement “irresponsible.”

    Russia said on Monday that it would hold military exercises with troops based near Ukraine to practice for the possible use of battlefield nuclear weapons, a provocative warning aimed at discouraging the West from deepening its support for Ukraine.

    These weapons, often referred to as “tactical,” are designed for battlefield use and have smaller warheads than the “strategic” nuclear weapons meant to target cities. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered an exercise for missile, aviation and naval personnel to “increase the readiness of nonstrategic nuclear forces to carry out combat missions.”

    The announcement of the exercise was Russia’s most explicit warning in its more than two-year invasion of Ukraine that it could use tactical nuclear weapons there. The Kremlin said it came in response to comments by two European leaders that raised the prospect of more direct Western intervention in the war.

    The exercise, the Defense Ministry said, would involve forces of the Southern Military District, an area that covers Russian-occupied Ukraine and part of Russia’s border region with Ukraine. It said the exercise would take place “in the near future.”

    cont'd:

    Spoiler

    The order ratchets up tensions with the West at the start of a week of extensive publicity for Mr. Putin. His inauguration scheduled for Tuesday, followed on Thursday by the annual Victory Day celebration, which commemorates the Soviet victory in World War II.

    It also coincided with a visit to Europe by President Xi Jinping of China, which has pledged a “no limits” alliance with Russia. China has provided support to Russia’s military industry, U.S. officials say, despite persistent lobbying from the West that it refrain from aiding Russia’s war effort.

    Western officials have long worried that Russia could deploy tactical nuclear weapons, especially if it faced serious setbacks on the battlefield. But Mr. Putin denied as recently as March that he had ever considered it, even as he regularly reminds the world of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal as a way of keeping in check the West’s military support for Ukraine.

    On Monday, however, Russian officials claimed that warnings about the possibility of more direct Western involvement in the war had changed the situation. The Defense Ministry said the exercise would be held “to unconditionally ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state in response to provocative statements and threats of individual Western officials against the Russian Federation.”

    Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said the Western “threats” in question included a recent interview with President Emmanuel Macron of France published by The Economist, in which the French leader repeated his refusal to rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine.

    Mr. Peskov also alluded to a comment made last week by David Cameron, Britain’s top diplomat, in which he said that Ukraine was free to use British weapons to strike inside Russia — a departure from Western governments’ typical policy of discouraging such strikes in order to avoid being drawn deeper into the war.

    “This is a completely new round of escalation of tensions — it is unprecedented,” Mr. Peskov told reporters on Monday. “And, of course, it requires special attention and special measures.”

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said later in the day that it had summoned the British ambassador to lodge Russia’s “strong protest” over Mr. Cameron’s statement, asserting that he was “de facto recognizing his country as a party to the conflict.”

    “The ambassador was called upon to think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

    A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said later that the ambassador met with Russian officials “for a diplomatic meeting” and was not officially summoned. The spokesperson said the ambassador, Nigel Casey, “reiterated the U.K.’s support for Ukraine in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression.”

    Russia has seized the battlefield initiative after a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive last year. But Moscow’s advances remain slow and bloody, and new deliveries of Western weapons are on their way, including those from a $61 billion military aid package that the United States approved last month.

    Beyond discouraging the West from greater involvement in Ukraine’s war effort, the Kremlin wants to exploit divisions within the NATO military alliance over the risks of doing so. That schism was on display in February after Mr. Macron first mentioned the possibility of putting Western troops in Ukraine. Mr. Peskov said then that such a move would lead to a direct clash with Russian forces.

    Recent months have marked a hawkish shift for Mr. Macron, who more than two years ago tried to head off the invasion of Ukraine by dangling the possibility of integrating Russia into a new European security architecture.

    Russia’s announcement of tactical nuclear drills drew a sharp response from NATO on Monday.

    “Russia’s nuclear rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Farah Dakhlallah, a NATO spokeswoman. “NATO remains vigilant.”

    She added: “Ukraine has a right to self-defense, which is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, and NATO allies will continue to support Ukraine. Russia has started this illegal war and must end it.”

    Pavel Podvig, a scholar on Russian nuclear forces based in Geneva, said in an interview that Russia had conducted such exercises before, though it rarely made them public. This time, however, the aim is to send a loud message, he said.

    “This is a reaction to specific statements, a signal saying that Russia has nuclear weapons,” Mr. Podvig said in a phone interview.

    Unlike strategic nuclear weapons, which are always in a state of combat readiness, nonstrategic ones are stored in warehouses away from the bombers, missiles, or ships that are supposed to deliver them, Mr. Podvig said. During the exercise, Russian army formations are likely to practice how they could be deployed, he said.

    But it would make little sense to use them in the context of the war in Ukraine, Mr. Podvig added, because the absence of large-scale, concentrated troop formations would limit their impact on the battlefield.

    Other analysts have also cast doubt on the military efficacy of using battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, given the spread-out nature of Ukrainian forces. The Institute for the Study of War said in 2022 that doing so would be “a massive gamble for limited gains” for Russia.

    “This weapon system exists to send a signal,” Mr. Podvig said, adding that its main purpose is to make an impression on the opponent.

    Mr. Putin has not made any public comments about the drills. On Tuesday, he is scheduled to be inaugurated to his fifth term as president.

    Western governments have previously looked to China — Russia’s most important international partner — to head off Russian nuclear use, as they did when Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany visited Beijing amid a previous scare in 2022.

    At the time, Mr. Xi made a public statement warning that nuclear weapons had no place in the war in Ukraine. On Monday, the topic came up again as Mr. Xi met with European leaders in Paris on his first visit to the continent in five years.

    “President Xi has played an important role in de-escalating Russia’s irresponsible nuclear threats,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, told reporters after meeting with Mr. Xi and Mr. Macron on Monday. “I’m confident that President Xi will continue to do so against the backdrop of the ongoing nuclear threats by Russia.”

    She also urged Beijing to “use all its influence on Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine.”

     

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  13. 28 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

    That is a load of horseshit. First, the article doesn’t tie “end times” directly to too many of these pastors mouths.  Second, I’ve literally never heard any pastor (of probably 6 I’ve seen since 10/7/2023) mention the rapture in association with Israel. I’ve never heard anyone discuss it amongst friends. I don’t know one person that believes we are living in end times. This isn’t mainstream. 

    You clearly never met my rural Southern Baptist parents or any of their peers. Shit, my mom (RIP) actually suspected Obama was the anti-Christ and thought his election portended the End Times. I even recall something along the lines of "four generations after the re-establishment of Israel" would be when the Rapture was supposed to occur. There are loads of Evangelicals, especially in rural Texas, who believe this stuff.

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