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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. I can't keep up. Too many moving parts, which I suspect is kind of the point with drones, cruise missiles, and now ballistic ones. It'll be a joy (/s) if Hezbollah and the Houthis start shooting off shit next.
  2. Well, we know that Iraq and Jordan have closed theirs. I doubt Saudi and Turkey want Iranian shit flying above. So, really, that just leaves Syria/Lebanon, which is back to Square 1. 12 minutes, right?
  3. I'm assuming it's Anti-AirCraft. Acronyms get thrown around way too often on this site.
  4. Jordan and the US forces (present in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq) are between Israel and Iran. Maybe not a lot of these slow-ass drones even make it Israel? I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to the technical details though.
  5. Lots of talking heads are speculating that this was Iran's intention. They felt obligated to respond to the Damascus embassy attack but have been communicating for a week that they were going to respond, giving Israel time to prepare and now sending slow shit. In other words, a "measured response." I guess we'll have to wait and see what is targeted, what the damage will be, and how Israel will respond.
  6. BBC News is reporting that some drones have already been shot down over Syria and Jordan. Jordan is assisting Israel in air defense. Reports that there are about 100 drones/cruise missiles on their way.
  7. To be clear, I don't have cable, but I can watch BBC World News from here. That's where I'm passing on information from. https://thetvapp.to/tv/bbc-world-news-hd-live-stream/ They have someone on who is saying that Jordan is NOT a fan of Iran, and they feel like it's a nightmare to be caught between Iran and Israel. At the same time, they've been highly critical of Israel's action in Gaza, basically accusing them of genocide. That said, they're siding with Israel on this one.
  8. Jordan has announced that their air defense will help in shooting shit down. I have no idea their capabilities.
  9. Is this confirmed? I've just started scanning sites and haven't seen this yet.
  10. Fuck. I guess this is what all the crazies have wanted. Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't this be the first time that Iran has directly attacked Israel?
  11. At 52, I'll admit I'm starting to get a little old, but my age is also beginning to give me perspective. I was born in 1971, and it's shocking to see that Black undergrads were not admitted into any of those last 16 schools in the 10 years before I was born. When I went to high school in the late 1980s and college in the early 1990s, I first learned about Civil Rights, but honestly, I didn't give it much thought. The 1960s seemed like such ancient history, and, hell, the world had changed. That was on in the past, right? Now, I can look back on the past decade. In those 10 years, gay marriage was made legal across the US. Still, also, half of the country went crazy and elected Trump, Roe was overturned, and diversity programs are being taken away. I guess what I'm unartfully trying to say is that a whole lot can happen in a decade, but apparently, shit takes a long time to change.
  12. Ukrainians' love for coffee PROVES they belong with the West. But seriously, this is a good read, and I hope it makes everyone's weekend a little brighter by making y'all feel better about Ukraine. War or No War, Ukrainians Aren’t Giving Up Their Coffee Coffee shops and kiosks are everywhere in Ukraine’s capital, their popularity both an act of wartime defiance and a symbol of closer ties to the rest of Europe. When Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine more than two years ago, Artem Vradii was sure his business was bound to suffer. “Who would think about coffee in this situation?” thought Mr. Vradii, the co-founder of a Kyiv coffee roastery named Mad Heads. “Nobody would care.” But over the next few days after the invasion began, he started receiving messages from Ukrainian soldiers. One asked for bags of ground coffee because he could not stand the energy drinks supplied by the army. Another simply requested beans: He had taken his own grinder to the front. “I was really shocked,” Mr. Vradii said in a recent interview at his roastery, a 40-foot-high brick building buzzing with the sound of grinding coffee and filled with the smell of freshly ground beans. “Despite the war, people were still thinking about coffee. They could leave their homes, their habits. But they could not live without coffee.” The soldiers’ requests are just one facet of a little-known cornerstone of the Ukrainian lifestyle today: its vibrant coffee culture. Over the past decade, coffee shops have proliferated across Ukraine, in cities large and small. That is particularly true in Kyiv, the capital, where small coffee kiosks staffed by trained baristas serving tasty mochas for less than $2 have become a fixture of the streetscape. Walk into one of Kyiv’s hidden courtyards and there’s a good chance you’ll find a coffee shop with baristas busy perfecting their latte art behind the counter. Coffee culture has flourished globally — even in tea-obsessed Britain — but in Ukraine over the past two years, it has taken on a special meaning as a sign of resilience and defiance. “Everything will be fine,” said Maria Yevstafieva, an 18-year-old barista who was preparing a latte on a recent morning in a Kyiv coffee shop that had just been damaged by a missile attack. The shop’s glass window had been shattered by the blast and had fallen onto the counter, but Ms. Yevstafieva was unfazed. “How can they break us?” she is heard saying in a video, referring to the Russian Army. “We have a strike, we make coffee.” THIS BUBBLY GIRL SEEMS LIKE A TYPICAL AMERICAN TEENAGER. CONT'D: In the spoiler below are a bunch of photos taken for this story.
  13. Seconded. This is an excellent series, and I highly recommend it.
  14. If Texans actually had the opportunity to have a direct vote on abortion rights, I'm sure it'd pass here, too. So, I'm not exactly sure that I'd say we're redder than them. In 2016, both Texas and Ohio voted for Hillary at the exact same percentage: 43.24%. In 2020, the share of Texans who voted for Biden exceeded that of Ohio. I made this quick chart to show how Democratic presidential candidates have performed in elections in the two states during my lifetime. The patterns are pretty similar, but they really diverged in the Bush/Obama years. Now, focus your eyes on the orange columns from 2000 to 2020 and tell me you don't see incremental improvement. It's still too soon, I think, for Texas to be one of the good guys in 2024, but we've been heading in the right direction. Let's keep focus on getting Joe reelected nationally in 2024, and we may get there by 2030.
  15. Without looking at any maps or data, it might be similar to the phenomenon that was going on for so long following Civil Rights in the Solid South, where all/most of the states immediately flipped from Democratic to Republican in presidential elections. However, because of traditions, habits, and incumbents, it took them 2-3 decades for that to make its way down the ballot.
  16. Believe me, I think we've all done the same or similar at some point. This morning, I really hesitated because the answer did seem way too obvious.
  17. A few DT morons have been actively calling for ethnic cleansing, saying Palestinians should be forced to leave the Gaza Strip. I guess advocating for actual war crimes isn't considered too political for the News section of this site.
  18. You're right that it's long been considered a bell-weather state in the elections, but it's historically more important to the GOP, as no Republican has EVER won the presidency in the entire history of this country without winning Ohio. That said, from the 1964 election through 2016, its vote accurately predicted the outcome of the Electoral College (but not the popular vote that Hillary won in 2016). So, it's likely moving away from that bell-weather status based on the past two elections.
  19. A few days ago, I got curious about when the schools that Texas affiliates with (or will soon) began accepting Black undergrad students and was taken aback by how late some of them came around. This is what I found based on either Wikipedia or school websites. 1948 Arkansas (first public school below the Mason-Dixon line) 1949 1950 Missouri, Tennessee 1951 1952 1953 1954 Kentucky 1955 Oklahoma, Oklahoma State 1956 Texas 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 Georgia, Texas Tech 1962 Ole Miss, Florida, SMU, Houston, Rice 1963 Alabama, South Carolina 1964 Texas A&M, LSU, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Baylor, TCU 1965 Mississippi State
  20. While I'm at it, look closely at the timeline of which religious groups have controlled Jerusalem since 2000 BCE. Now, consider who has the "legitimate" claim to the land. Based on our upbringing within a Judeo-Christian culture, it's natural that we automatically assume that piece of dirt ought to belong to Israel because that's what we read in the Bible and were taught in Sunday school. That's our default. But look at it from the perspective of the Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim. Who has actually occupied the land longer? Now, to be clear, I'm a supporter of Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself. That opinion is based largely on the fact that Israel already does exist; it's based on the reality that 7 million Jews now inhabit the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. That's just the way it is. But there's also the reality that 7 million Palestinians also live there and have just as deep of roots and just as much of a historical claim to that territory as them. I, obviously, also understand why the British and, subsequently, the UN decided to give some of the land to the Jews after the Holocaust. What I don't understand, and can only attribute to ethnoreligious bias, fear, and/or hatred, is the mindset of those in the DT thread and the wider world who don't recognize that Palestinians have just as much of a right to some of that land.
  21. The West Bank is heating up. While this is "news," it doesn't directly involve what's going on in Gaza, so per Blacklab's wishes, I'll refrain from posting this piece in the DT thread. Since we're already here, I'll take the opportunity to editorialize. Think about the bolded phrase and consider that the Israeli government calls matters in the West Bank its "internal affairs." To me, this is key to understanding their mindset. To them, the West Bank is already theirs; they've staked their claim. The only complication is what to do with the Palestinians, and their solution is to keep squeezing them into tighter enclaves until it's unbearable for the Palestinians to continue to exist. Conveniently, incrementally increasing the pressure also ramps up the backlash from Palestinians, who can then be labeled violent extremists and terrorists. Also, consider what the Israeli government officially calls the West Bank, the Judea and Samaria Area, while the rest of the world recognizes it as Occupied Palestinian Territory. This is the crux of the entire problem, including the Gaza Strip. The current Israeli government and Right Wingers, including in the US, already consider the West Bank and Gaza, and all the Holy Land, as de facto Israeli territory...from the river to the sea. Meanwhile, the people who have continuously lived there for millennia are, ironically, the interlopers. And so what do we do with people who don't "belong" somewhere? The death of a 14-year-old could further inflame tensions in the West Bank. An Israeli teenager whose disappearance had led to riots by Israeli settlers in the West Bank was found dead on Saturday, the Israeli authorities said, threatening to further inflame tensions in the Israeli-occupied territory. Binyamin Achimair, 14, had left a farming settlement in the West Bank to herd sheep on Friday morning, but never returned, according to the Israeli police. The Israeli forces later found his corpse, and the military said, without providing evidence, that he had been “murdered in a terrorist attack.” After Binyamin’s disappearance on Friday, armed Israeli settlers stormed a Palestinian village near Ramallah, torching several buildings and cars, according to Palestinian officials and Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group. One Palestinian man — Jihad Abu Aliya — was killed during the clashes and at least 25 others wounded, according to the village mayor, Amin Abu Aliya. Binyamin’s death and the possibility of further Israeli reprisals could ratchet up violence in the West Bank, where roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers live alongside about 2.7 million Palestinians. Over 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces across the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 sparked Israel’s campaign in Gaza, according to the United Nations. There was another violent Israeli riot on Saturday in Al Mughayir, the village attacked on Friday, as well as one in a different Palestinian village, Duma, said an Israeli security official. Israeli settlers, some of them armed, entered the villages, the official added, and there were reports that they had opened fire. The clashes on Saturday in Al Mughayir left at least three Palestinians wounded, one critically, the Palestinian health ministry said. Israeli troops and the police had largely dispersed the disturbances, the Israeli official said. “There’s no order, there’s no safety,” said Na’asan Na’asan, 28, a resident of Al Mughayir. “They’re shooting at us — why isn’t there anyone to protect us?” The Biden administration has said Israel must do more to clamp down on violence by extremist Israeli settlers, and it has imposed sanctions on several whom it said were involved in attacks on Palestinians. Israeli leaders denounced that move as interference in the country’s internal affairs. As Israeli troops and police officers searched for Binyamin on Friday afternoon, armed Israeli settlers burst into Al Mughayir, setting buildings and cars on fire, said Mr. Abu Aliya. In video circulated by Yesh Din, smoke can be seen billowing from some burning cars and buildings. In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel decried Binyamin’s “heinous murder” and vowed that Israel would “close accounts” with whomever killed him. He did not explicitly mention the riot, instead telling the Israeli public to “allow the security forces to conduct their work unmolested” as they investigate the killing. Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, similarly condemned the teenager’s murder. But he also denounced the settler attacks, saying “the violent riots by settlers are a dangerous violation of the law, and they are hampering the forces operating on the ground.” The Israeli military confirmed that multiple “violent riots” had taken place in the area during the search efforts on Friday. At one point, “rocks were hurled” at Israeli soldiers, leading them to open fire in response, the Israeli military said. The Israeli police and soldiers had also removed Israeli settlers who had entered Al Mughayir, the military said. Israeli soldiers were in the area “even before the settlers arrived,” both Mr. Abu Aliya and Mr. Na’asan said, but did not block them from entering the village and torching buildings and cars. It was not immediately clear how Jihad Abu Aliya, the village resident, was killed. Human rights groups have long charged that the Israeli authorities do not do enough to prevent violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and that the perpetrators are rarely arrested. An Israeli police spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment as to whether any Israelis had been arrested during the incident. Last February, an attack by Israeli settlers devastated the Palestinian town of Huwara in the northern West Bank. At least one Palestinian was killed and 390 were wounded in the riot, according to Palestinian officials, in which Israelis burned a number of buildings and cars while terrified Palestinians fled burning homes.
  22. Trump Says He Intends to Testify in His Manhattan Criminal Case Donald J. Trump, having failed to fend off a criminal trial in Manhattan that begins on Monday, said that he planned to testify in the case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star. Taking questions Friday from reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump, when asked whether he would take the stand, responded that he would. “I’m testifying. I tell the truth,” he said, standing just off a sunny patio of the private club with Speaker Mike Johnson behind him. “I mean, all I can do is tell the truth. And the truth is that there’s no case. They have no case.” A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has charged Mr. Trump with 34 felonies, declined to comment on his remarks. Despite Mr. Trump’s comments, it is far from a sure thing that he will testify. Instead, his comments initiate a familiar two-step: It will not be clear whether the former president will take the stand until the moment he actually does. Mr. Trump will most likely wait to see whether the prosecution presents a strong case — and whether the judge presiding over the trial plans to restrict prosecutors’ efforts to cross-examine him, according to people with knowledge of his planning. In past cases, Mr. Trump has wavered after saying that he would testify, including during his civil fraud trial last year, when he canceled his defense testimony the day before he was scheduled to take the stand. When he was called to testify by the New York attorney general’s office, which filed the case, it did not go well. The judge in the case, who found Mr. Trump liable for conspiring to inflate his net worth, criticized the former president for not answering directly and questioned his credibility. Testifying in a criminal case would be even riskier. In the trial scheduled to start next week, Mr. Trump is for the first time facing the threat of criminal conviction. He will be at a disadvantage with a jury in Manhattan, a heavily Democratic county. “Jury selection is largely luck,” Mr. Trump said in his remarks on Friday. “It depends who you get.” The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, accused Mr. Trump of coordinating the hush-money payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 election. The $130,000 payment bought her silence as she was shopping a story about a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump was charged with falsifying documents to cover up that payment. Mr. Trump denies the charges, and having had sex with Ms. Daniels. He has cast Mr. Bragg’s case as a politically motivated witch hunt. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday.
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