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Bevo

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Everything posted by Bevo

  1. I was thinking it was more of a touchdown than a home run.
  2. I hope that is what it is and not simply the lack of desire to fight Russia. But, even if it is true that soldiers don't want to fight because of the lack of weapons, it then becomes a chicken or the egg argument. I don't want to spend a lot of money and pay high oil prices, to a nation who doesn't want to fight for its independence. If the support inside Ukraine is there to fight for its independence from Russia, I'll support it, though.
  3. I read the article when you posted it last night so I may get some facts wrong but as I remember it, the article that you posted said that they need a draft to make 17 year olds to 27 year olds enlist. No one wants to volunteer. And the government won't change to a draft and lower the age because there is no support for it. If it truly is an existential war for survival, the lack of support internally is extremely alarming. Maybe that is how all wars go, but like I said it runs counter to how I think. Maybe, in the end, people in today's world would rather lose their home and their country than run the risk of dying. If that is the case, why prolong the inevitable and have volunteers die for a cause others aren't willing to sacrifice for?
  4. That is terrible news - like it makes me doubt my support. Maybe it is typical for people not to want to fight when their country is in peril but that is at odds with my thoughts.
  5. I did a quick search and the first article that I read, well let's just say I disagreed with pretty much all of it. The author was Marco Carnelos who was an Italian diplomat, who I know nothing about. I also know nothing about the publisher, the Middle Eastern Eye. Victoria Nuland: Farewell to the queen of US foreign policy disasters Marco Carnelos 22 March 2024 14:07 GMT | Last update: 1 day 7 hours ago For 30 years, from Iraq, Syria and China to Ukraine, Russia and Israel, Nuland's impact on US foreign policy has been disastrous. Let's hope her successor is an improvement Sometimes, major policy changes are anticipated and even symbolised by mere bureaucratic decisions. This could certainly be the case for the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who recently announced her retirement after three and a half decades serving as a senior US foreign policy official under ten different secretaries of state. She has probably decided to leave what appears more and more like a sinking ship. The decision, which has been accompanied by scant coverage in western mainstream media, incontrovertibly signals the abject failures of the Biden administration’s policies, especially in Ukraine and the Middle East. The first was supposed to isolate and sanction Russia and bring it to its knees, hopefully triggering a regime change in Moscow. The second was the unwavering support extended to Israel to reaffirm a Pax Americana in the region through the Abraham Accords, crowned by a deal with Saudi Arabia, and to silently sweep the Palestinian question under the rug. Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv, short of funding and weapons, seems to have no capability left to affect the war's trajectory. Sanctions against Russia backfired spectacularly, creating massive problems for Europe’s industrial competitiveness. Ultimately, Moscow has been isolated only by the western countries, while its political and trade relations with the rest of the world are unaffected. On the contrary, they are growing, as is its economy. In the Middle East, notwithstanding Washington's massive support to Israel in its war in Gaza - for which the US is borderline complicit in a genocide - the Netanyahu government is blatantly ignoring the Biden administration’s pleas to restrain its military offensive and to allow humanitarian aid to a starved Palestinian population. A ceasefire, or a humanitarian truce, remains elusive, as does a deal for the dual release of the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian prisoners. Finally, an Israeli-Saudi deal seems more distant than before. In the pantheon of US power, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs is the third-ranking member of the US State Department, after the secretary and their deputy. Nevertheless, it is the real engine of US foreign policy. Nuland has not been just a high-level US diplomat, she has been the spearhead, the golden girl of the US warmongering neoconservative and liberal interventionist movements, which in barely two decades have given humanity the Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine and Palestinian disasters. In such a desolate landscape, then, if any face should be associated with the last decade's US policy on Russia and, particularly, with the critical file of Ukraine, it is Nuland’s. Her career, in which she held top positions within the US foreign service, witnessed the progressive deterioration of US-Russian relations and also US-China relations, to the point where the risks of military confrontation in Europe and East Asia haven't been as high since the most hectic days of the Cold War. Nuland married Robert Kagan, one of the key founders of the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, which strongly advocated aggressive US military intervention around the world. Nuland shared Kagan's views on Russia, and pursued an obsessive anti-Russian policy, becoming one of the most vocal advocates of the fateful Nato’s eastwards expansion. In fact, so relentlessly has she pursued them, that she has now helped create an increased risk of a major global conflict that could affect three strategic theatres at the same time: Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. It is a rare thing, even in the glorious annals of US diplomacy, to have had an official combine Russophobia, Sinophobia and Islamophobia to produce so much damage. From 1993 to 1996, Nuland was chief of staff to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the architect of the Clinton’s administration policy on Russia. The 1990s were the happy years of the US-Russia relationship, at least from the American standpoint. Russia's then President Boris Yeltsin was much loved by the US foreign policy establishment because he was weak and ready to execute all the “instructions” coming from Washington. Among them, the disastrous economic shock therapies, including fake privatisations, which created a class of oligarchs that seized control of the country's resources and accumulated immense fortunes that were syphoned out of the country. But these were not good years for the general Russian population, whose level of poverty plunged to Stalin-era levels. These were the years that slowly created the conditions for Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. Under Yeltsin, Russia was not only keen to adopt US-prescribed economic remedies but also to tolerate acts blatantly detrimental to its historical interests, such as the Nato-led war which broke Kosovo from Serbia in 1999. In the George W Bush administration, Nuland served on the foreign policy staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. History can tell us how much damage US foreign policy caused at that time, starting with the Iraq disaster. From 2005 to 2008, Nuland was the US ambassador to Nato. At the infamous Nato summit in Bucharest in April 2008, she pressed allies to grant membership action plans to Ukraine and Georgia. When the German and French governments refused, she was involved in the blunder in which Nato promised that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be admitted. Later, in the first Obama administration, she was spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and present at the creation of two further disasters: the regime change war in Libya, which turned the country into a failed state, and the unrealistic “Assad must go policy”, which helped transform a peaceful uprising in Syria into a brutal civil war, creating one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 21st century. However, her most important accomplishment, for which she deserves an imaginary academy award for foreign policy blunders, was her handling of the Ukrainian file in her capacity as assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs under the second Obama administration. There, she organised the “Maidan coup”, according to the Russian narrative, where she brilliantly succeeded in bringing Ukraine under the western political umbrella and ousting Ukraine's legitimately elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. This overturned a previously agreed political deal brokered by European powers to avoid Ukraine descending into chaos. Famously, in a leaked call to the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, she said "Fuck the EU" at the time. Bloody and tense years followed, especially in the Donbas region, where fighting broke out between the new US-backed regime in Kyiv and pro-Russian forces in the east, and the relationship between Russia and the West deteriorated after the former, as a reaction, seized control of Crimea. There was a four-year pause in Nuland's career between January 2017 and January 2021, during which she did not deploy any ticking bombs. The reason is simple: she was not welcome in the new Trump administration. Unfortunately, under the new Biden administration, Nuland was back and she assumed the critical job of undersecretary of state for policy. With Nuland back, the Kremlin immediately concluded that there was no room for any understanding with the US. Discreetly, and largely unreported by mainstream media, western military involvement in Ukraine increased and so did Russian anger. It was a trend that, after all, had been ongoing since 2014, as recently revealed by the New York Times. Three years later, what Nuland leaves behind is nothing short of disastrous. She has accomplished an increased risk of a major global conflict that could affect three strategic theatres at the same time: Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. US moral standing has been severely injured, and, in the best case, the global rest are indifferent to US pleas and narratives. Western democracies are also facing moral bankruptcy in the rubble of Gaza while the International Court of Justice has accepted to inquire if Israel, whose right to self-defence has been uncritically supported for too long by the West, is committing a genocide. The only words of common sense are coming from Pope Francis who, in the case of Ukraine, has urged the international community to recognise how desperate the situation is and to consider peace negotiations to spare further casualties; even the pope was not spared shameful attacks on him from those distorting his words. In the Middle East, the picture is similarly gloomy. Like the Ukraine situation, the conflict in Gaza is reaching a stalemate, while the risk of escalation remains high, especially with a potential major conflict looming along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Meanwhile, US leverage over Israel has zeroed, and the Biden administration blindly perseveres in preaching its narratives of good and bad. Last year, when Wendy Sherman stepped back as US deputy secretary of state, Nuland was nominated as acting deputy secretary of state. Nuland was close to being crowned and it would have been the coronation of her career. But in what was probably one of its smartest decisions, the Biden administration picked the National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, for the job. Campbell had been the architect of another failed policy, Hillary Clinton’s pivot to Asia. Let’s at least hope that Campbell does not turn China into what Russia was for Nuland.
  6. I don't know who David Sack is, someone educate me. I wonder if he believes his BS or if he is simply a grifter paid by Russia.
  7. Orban has been there since 2010 and Fico and Slovakia are frankly irrelevant to the world. Slovakia wouldn't even be a country if it weren't for politicians seeking to move power away from the Czech Republic so its whole identity is we aren't Czech. And Germany has been pretty terrible in the war so a move away from its currently leadership has kind of an unknown feel. The concern you raise has more a feel of elected official self-preservation than any true concern for Ukraine.
  8. If fighting Russia by Ukraine attacking refineries and the world imposing sanctions on Russian oil is enough to drive all countries to the far right, the world has a lot bigger problems than Russia. And that is ignoring that Italy is far right yet has been pretty strong in the fight against Russia.
  9. Nah, what I was saying is that some people are just gooey.
  10. Unless Broughton develops lower mass, he won't be anything more than serviceable. Collins will be good. Bledsoe and Savea will need to step up. Mitchell and Bryant are unknowns and shouldn't be counted on. Edge will be a strength. DBs should be better at safety.
  11. Not surprisingly, allowing Russia to freely trade oil hasn’t worked swimmingly well but the world leaders were able to sound tough regarding sanctions. So let Ukraine do what it must. And if it brings high oil prices so be it. It won’t help Russia as much as you think when all its oil refineries are gone.
  12. https://www.si.com/nfl/panthers/gm-report/whats-up-with-cj-henderson What's Up with CJ Henderson? The veteran corner has been inactive each of the last two weeks. Schuyler Callihan Jan 1, 2024 12:18 PM EST Carolina Panthers After struggling to make much of an impact in one season and some change in Jacksonville, the Jaguars traded former top-10 pick CJ Henderson and a fifth-rounder to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for tight end Dan Arnold and a third-round selection. For Carolina, the move made sense at the time. They were extremely thin at corner and it was a low risk, high reward kind of move. Unfortunately, the trade didn't pan out for either side. Arnold spent two years in Jacksonville, catching just 37 passes and has been a free agent for the entirety of the 2023 season. Henderson as shown flashes of being a respectable starting corner at times, but has had way too many pass coverage blunders for the Panthers' liking. He hasn't played anywhere near his draft status and because of it, Carolina declined the fifth-year option on Henderson's rookie contract back in the summer. "That it was a make-or-break year," Henderson said at the start of training camp when asked about his reaction to the declined option. "I got to go out and earn mine and my back is against the wall. I feel like that's when I do my best. There's an edge to me. A different edge." Over the past two weeks, the Panthers have made Henderson a healthy scratch. For a guy who is in the final year of his contract, that's not a good sign. According to Pro Football Focus, he has allowed 28 receptions of 36 targets, resulting in a grade of 44.7. It seems as if the Panthers already know they are moving on from Henderson and are trying to get a look at others who are on one-year deals.
  13. Well, in theory, Europe is at war as Russia impacts Europe and especially Germany more than it impacts us. But, many in Europe don't see it that way and would rather worry about 2% defense spending and cheap oil and re-elections than winning the fucking war before it comes to their borders. So, as much as we would like to blame the US, Europe needs to come to grips with the reality of the situation. And if they are fine with Ukraine losing then that is on them not the US. As much as I want the US to give more guns and money to Ukraine, if we don't do it then Europe must. We shouldn't have to bear the brunt of Europe's failures just because European countries want to keep defense spending below 2%.
  14. Germany needs to step up but they are tied to Russia so they don't really want to. Poland and the Czech Republic and Hungary and Sweden and Finland and Estonia, and Latvia and Lithuania are next in needing to step up. Hungary won't because they are tied with Russia. Poland and the Czech Republic have financial constraints. This shouldn't be a majority US problem although it is obvious that the US needs to step up. The countries who are most fucked by Russian aggression, though, need to figure out a way to step up to the plate. It is a good time for NATO to really push Europe to contributing more towards the world's defense and if that doesn't happen then the ones directly impacted need to do something. And quite frankly, Ukraine has got to figure out a way to get more men on the battlefield. Right now besides the lack of weapons, Ukraine is suffering from a manpower issue.
  15. I agree with what you said. My question is still on the importance of development. From a thoughtful approach, it should be obvious that we recruit body types and athletes with the right attitude a lot more these days than 30 years ago - These players often come from the inner city and don't have the training that suburban players get. So, development should be more important these days. OTOH, from an observational point of view, teams have proven that if you recruit the best athletes, you are going to compete for championships. There are a few exceptions like A&M but mainly those exceptions were for obvious reasons, like recruiting shitheads and druggies and dumbasses (people with the wrong attitude) or being one hit wonders (recruiting top players for a year or two only) or recruiting heavy some positions while ignoring other positions. A&M did all of those things so it is no surprise that they failed. Plus, they are aggies so they were doomed to fail. Anyway, I think the problem with the thoughtful approach is that there are many decent coaches out there that can develop players to some extent. So, it is hard to differentiate schools that develop better than others. And a lot of the development that we observe is more emotional like keeping drugs and country club attitudes away from the program than the physical development of players, like learning the position and becoming better athletes.
  16. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-90-hamas-gunmen-killed-160-suspects-nabbed-in-raid-at-gazas-shifa-hospital/ IDF: 90 Hamas gunmen killed, over 300 nabbed in raid at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday continued an operation against Hamas forces at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, with the military saying troops had killed more than 90 gunmen so far. The operation, which began early Monday morning, was being carried out by the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit, the 401st Armored Brigade, and other forces. Troops raided the hospital, the largest medical center in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli intelligence indicated that Hamas operatives, including commanders, had returned to the complex to use it as a command center for planning attacks against Israel and troops in Gaza. It was previously raided by the military in November. “Over the past day, the troops have eliminated terrorists and located weapons in the hospital area, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams and medical equipment,” the IDF said in a statement Wednesday morning. The IDF said that hundreds of terror suspects had so far been questioned at the hospital complex by field interrogators of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 and the Shin Bet security agency. In a video statement from the hospital on Wednesday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said troops had detained between 250 and 300 terror operatives at the medical center during the ongoing operation. He said another 300 suspects were also being questioned. “We are talking about many [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] operatives, including battalion commanders, Hamas operatives, including political officials,” Hagari said. “We will reach all the terrorists in this area. Our goal is to arrest the senior officials alive and bring them in for interrogation. Whoever fights against us will be killed,” he continued. Photos circulating on social media on Wednesday showed IDF troops detaining suspected Hamas operatives at the hospital overnight. Among those detained at Shifa and brought to Israel for further questioning was Mahmoud Qawasmeh, a senior Hamas operative involved in the planning of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel, the Shin Bet announced. In a statement, the security agency said Qawasmeh was “one of the planners and financiers of the infrastructure that carried out the kidnapping and murder attack” in 2014. From left to right: Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gil-ad Shaer, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, three Israeli teenagers who were seized and kiled by Palestinians on June 12, 2014 (photo credit: IDF/AP) The Shin Bet said he had been exiled to the Gaza Strip as part of the 2011 Shalit deal, where he continued to advance attacks in the West Bank, including shooting attacks in recent years carried out by Hamas cells. Hagari, in his statement, said the IDF was also providing food and water to the civilians sheltering at the hospital and brought in generators for Shifa’s ER. He said the operation at Shifa would likely last several more days. The IDF also released a video showing weapons recovered by troops at Shifa, and clips of the elite Duvdevan commando unit operating on the hospital’s premises. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the operation at Shifa, and a senior Hamas commander was slain in an exchange of fire with troops seeking to detain him. Israeli troops first entered the hospital early in the conflict, on November 5. The war was triggered on October 7 when some 3,000 terrorists stormed the border with Israel and unleashed an unprecedented attack on the country’s southern communities, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 253 hostages to Gaza, where more than half remain. The IDF also said Wednesday it had struck a Hamas tunnel shaft in northern Gaza overnight. The site was identified after a rocket was fired toward the southern city of Sderot on Tuesday. It fell short and landed inside Gaza. Also in northern Gaza, the IDF said it struck a six-man Hamas cell in the Jabaliya area. In central Gaza, the Nahal Brigade continued to battle Hamas operatives over the past day, and in southern Gaza, the 98th Division was battling the terror group in the Khan Younis suburb of al-Qarara, the IDF said. Also Wednesday, the IDF and Shin Bet announced that an airstrike in southern Gaza’s Rafah earlier in the week had killed senior officers in Hamas’s so-called Emergency Committee. In the strike carried out by fighter jets on Monday, Sayyid Qutb Hashash, Osama Hamad Dhahir, and Hadi Abu al-Rous were killed, and Muhammad Awad al-Malalhi was apparently wounded, according to the IDF. Hashash, Dhahir, and al-Malalhi were the heads of Hamas’s Emergency Committee in the north and east Rafah areas, and al-Rous was the operations officer of the Emergency Committee, the IDF said. The committee is a Hamas body tasked with maintaining public order and civil control in the Strip’s municipalities. The IDF said the officials were “responsible for organizing terror activity and communication with Hamas operatives on the ground” as well as aiding “the military wing of the terror organization to establish continued control. “The senior officers were the emissaries of Hamas leadership in Rafah, concentrated Hamas’s activity in humanitarian zones and were responsible for coordination with Hamas operatives in the field,” it said. The strike came after the IDF targeted Nidal al-Eid, the head of the Emergency Committee in Rafah last week, the military added. An IDF handout from March 20, 2024, identifying senior Hamas operatives in in an airstrike in Rafah in the Gaza Strip (Israel Defense Forces) More than a million Palestinians displaced by the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas have been sheltering in Rafah, which abuts Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel says one-sixth of Hamas’s combat strength — four battalions of rifle- and rocket-wielding fighters — is in Rafah and must be crushed before the war can conclude. But the prospect of a spiraling civilian toll has raised alarm abroad. With a new round of mediated talks underway in Qatar on a possible release of hostages, the White House said it would confer with Jerusalem before any troops or tanks move into Rafah. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said on Wednesday 104 Palestinians had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, bringing its official death toll since October 7 to 31,923. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 13,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Agencies contributed to this report.
  17. It seems pretty ideal. That way our budget looks better and Ukraine gets what it needs.
  18. Is there some sort of sweetheart deal where we offer Poland great prices and they ship their surplus to Ukraine?
  19. Yeah, I can't make heads or tails of that thing.
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