
statsman
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Why? They were attacked by an invading force, that has an avowed (and written) goal of taking their land. When this war is over, Israel intends to leave Gaza. How can you call Israel an invading force?
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Do you realize that in both of those cases, investigations were held? In the latter case, there were criminal and civil trials? In the former, soldiers were disciplined and/or discharged (the investigation determined it was an error and not intentional. This can be googled). Does that make a difference to you? It does to me. “Fog of War” incidents happen, in every army and in every war. I think how armies and nations handle it after is important. I see two nations- Ukraine and Israel. Each trying to be independent, each adjacent to an aggressive neighbor that wants to absorb them and will stop at nothing to do so. Each aggressive invader (Putin’s Russia, Hamas) have disdain for the lives of their own citizens and those in the nation they are attacking). Each can be criticized for not meeting desired standards of liberal democracy, but each clearly more free than its neighbor(s). The only difference is that Israel is in a much stronger position of defense, for now. I support both of them in their wars against aggression.
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This is what I think- 1. There was a Jewish minority in the Levant. 2. After the failed Nazi Final Solution, there were a few million Jewish refugees in Europe. Refugees, in that the survivors of the camps had their homes taken from them and no one was giving them back. Many tried to return home, and new, non-Nazi pogroms killed them. (This is why it is so offensive for US collegiate protesters to yell at Israeli speakers, “Go back to Europe!” Those idiot students may not know that police in France and Germany currently warn Jews against being too obviously Jewish - it’s not safe- and they certainly don’t care). 3. In Response to centuries of European anti-Semitism, a Zionist movement arose. Zionism is a movement with a goal of a Jewish state, in the area of the Biblical Israel. After WWII, this sounded like a good idea to surviving Jews, who fled to the Levant, under British control. 4. The Balfour decision, sectarian fighting, massacres and attempted massacres by both sides, and finally a Jewish state of Israel. Jews in neighboring states dropped in population, voluntarily and involuntarily. 5. De-colonization by the British, and the forming of several independent states and kingdoms, most of which, over the next few decades becoming authoritarian Islamic states. 6. Expelled Palestinians became refugees, but with support of co-religionists, refugees that remained extant, with the goal of re-occupying the land now called Israel. 7. The ugly part- Israel is a liberal democracy, and it is a Jewish state. It has Muslim citizens with full citizen rights, with the exception that laws conform with Judaism and not with Islam, if there is ever a conflict. Israelis are keenly aware that if the Muslim population ever outnumbered the Jewish population, Israel will cease to be a Jewish state. To this end, Israel has immigration policies that very much favor Jews. A Jew from anywhere in the world can claim citizenship in Israel, often at Israel’s expense. Other potential immigrants, such as a close relative of a Muslim Israeli citizen, will find it nearly impossible to immigrate to Israel. (18% of Israelis are Muslim). 8. Those Palestinian refugees? Their leaders want them to move back in and reclaim the land where their grandparents and great grandparents lived. (I say “their leaders”, because rank and file Palestinians don’t get to vote on whether they’d like to make a go of it as a separate state(s) in Gaza and West Bank, or emigrate to Egypt or Jordan. They aren’t given those choices.). This is called “the right of return”, and it means allowing descendants of those expelled to move into Israel, as citizens of a new state or some new version of Israel. Because the Palestinian have been kept as refugees, through an informal cooperation of the world’s nations, there is a rough assessment of who and how many this would apply to. 9. Terror and wars aside- this is the big sticking point. Israel believes, right or wrong , that “right of return” is existentially a no-go. That is why the most liberal and amenable Israelis support a two-state solution, some even willing to cede real estate within the ‘73 borders, but are not willing to consider a “right of return”. 10. Palestinian leadership- for over fifty years, the most militant sections of Palestinian society have been well funded by outsiders (at times Russia, at times Saudi, more recently Iran and Qatar) that really have a goal of eliminating the Jewish state. (Ugly side note- top Palestinian leaders get filthy rich) 11. Gaza- Israel, since 1996, has controlled (with varying degrees of cooperation with Egypt, depending upon that nation’s politics at the time) entry of goods into Gaza. They do this because they find a lot of weapons coming into Gaza. 12. Hamas has controlled Gaza for 18 years. Half the Gazan population is under 18, their “education” overseen by Hamas. (Interestingly, a couple of weeks ago, there were minor Gazan protests against Hamas. A teen was nabbed by Hamas, tortured to death, and his body left at his family’s door.) 13. The war, and the cruel loss of innocent life. You know, the IDF has documented the tunnels and weapons of Hamas. Do you think they are lying, that the IDF dug all those tunnels, built all those crude rockets, purchased and stored all those munitions, buying from the same source as the Iranians do, to make Hamas look bad? Hamas stores weapons in Gazan civilians’ homes and has tunnel entrances in the homes of Gazan civilians. Hamas has military HQs in mosques and hospitals (they documented a torture dungeon in a major Gazan hospital). Why does the IDF fire at Red Crescent vehicles? Because Hamas puts militants in them. They actually have a protocol where an emergency aid vehicle has to check in with the IDF before entering an area, or they fire on them. I’m curious- have any of you studied the statistics on loss of life from the Syrian Civil War? I think that if you did, you would have a greater appreciation for the IDF’s approach.
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Oh, I am all ears. In October 7, Hamas, and nearby Gazan civilians, spirited away over 200 Israeli hostages. Please, enlighten me as to what Israel should have done.
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Not really. The only ones happy with the IDF killing civilians are Hamas, and their supporters in Qatar and Iran. Those IDF soldiers don’t want to be in Gaza. The remaining two dozen live hostages really don’t want to be there. If it wasn’t for October 7, they wouldn’t be there. How odd that there is no world pressure on Hamas’ backers.
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Why? There has been subsequent reporting on the story. IDF says that some of the dead were militants. There is a survivor that IDF released. From the reading, it is clear- the IDF will absolutely fire on marked aid trucks in combat zones. Why? Because they have often carried militants. That’s the situation. Were innocent aid workers killed here? Probably. Militants either disguised as aid workers or at least moon lighting as aid workers? Probably.
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I’d like to see a cash flow statement (edited) … and a pic of the sister noted in the post right above.
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Annual profit is of vital interest to tax accountants, and not many others. It is an accountant’s job to try to show as small of an annual profit as possible. One of the ways to do that is to depreciate assets, so that you can show them as expenses, reducing profit. I’ll also bet you that when Cuban bought the Mavericks from Perot, there was a nine figure sum called “Goodwill” that he has been amortizing. The Adelsons are now amortizing a ten figure number called “Goodwill”. Both of these can be true: The Mavs annually showed a loss. Cuban made a bunch of money off the Mavs. America, fuck yeah!
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Trev Alberts is still the biggest dumbfuck around.
statsman replied to Fondren & Main's topic in Football
That “Direct Institutional Support”- is that the university subsidizing athletics at TAMU? -
To be clear- I was not blaming the girls or suggesting they didn’t do enough to protect themselves. I was just throwing that out there as something to tell girls to do as a protective caution in the future.
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Something for girls to ask Uber drivers picking them up from party scenes- “What is my name?” Or “What is the name of your assigned rider?”
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Stopped at Ribbee’s last week, on Seminary just east of the interstate. They have a simple menu- pork ribs and seasoned fries combos, and beef ribs (old style, not huge with prime rib) with seasoned fries combos. I enjoyed it.
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Negative Recruiting Your Own School: The aggy Screenshot Megathread
statsman replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
20 years ago, for Aggie schadenfreude, I skipped past TexAgs to go right to AgTimes.com, for the hard stuff. There was a poster there who would go to some chicken wing place in CS every week, to be at the live taping of some local radio show called something like the “Belliucci Hour” (sadly, Agrimes is defunct, so I can’t find the right name), and relate inside team tidbits and provide “analysis”. Evidently, young Liucci teamed with some other guy with a name like Beliota(?) for weekly program insights. (Where is “Beliota” now? The College Station equivalent of wherever Ryan Secrest’s co-host from the first season of “American Idol”, I suppose). The point is- the guy has spent a ridiculous amount of his life sniffing jocks and describing the smell to hayseeds for pay. It’s a choice, I guess. -
There was a dynamic with the old SWC and Texas-based B12 schools (except the Ags), that is so old (over a century) that we took it for granted, and didn’t recognize how odd it was. That was how we would play regular away games in sites like Waco, Lubbock, DFW and Houston, where if the tickets were sold in an open market, Texas fans would easily dominate the attendance. Yet, because we shared a conference, they were allowed to limit Texas ticket allotments to a few thousand (and benefit from Texas fans seeking more tickets on the secondary market). There is no reason to do that anymore, and we shouldn’t do it anymore. A few years ago, TCU and LSU agreed to play a game in DFW, but LSU insisted it be played at ATT Stadium (Jerryworld). That made sense- LSU fans easily bought half the tickets. There really isn’t a reason Texas should play any games in this state in a stadium smaller than that, or Reliant.
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Do you have a point? You clearly don’t understand the conversation. We were talking about UH Bleachergate, after which, Texas stopped playing UH, because, fuck them. Until the B12 invited them in, and absolutely made sure Texas would have to play them, there in Texas’ final year. I can link articles where Tech has complained to the governor about Texas not wanting to schedule them. Economics studies by Baylor about how vital those games are to Waco. I have no idea why you are upset by our off season talk.
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…as Brent Venable’s “Soul Mission” becomes “Sole Mission”.
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And then the fun really begins- a coaching search where it is clear that the HC shares authority with Nagy.
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Sure, but time will pass. University presidents have short tenures. ADs have even shorter tenures. Time will pass and some new AD at TCU or Baylor will get the idea of seeing about a home and home, you know, for old time’s sake. The appropriate response by a UT AD should be, “Our fans will need 50k tickets at your place. How do you plan to manage that?”
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My folks were dirt poor as kids in the depression, in Texas. My mom’s dad hopped a train to Oregon to pick fruit- it was work, and it was easier for other people to give them stuff if he was away. Neither family owned property. My dad’s dad made things worse by being a drunk, too. Grandma used to buy “sweet meat” (the internal organs that would otherwise be thrown away) from the butcher, because they were cheap. Dad, his two sisters, brother, parents and Grandpa Otto all lived in a two bedroom home, without running water. They kept chickens, of course, and when they killed a pig, they ate all of it (including the head cheese). Flour came in big bags, with floral patterns on the sides. Moms would pick them out for the pattern, because they would make clothes from the bag material. Dad said that whenever a drifter knocked on the door asking to work for food, Grandma would give him some (chore and meal). The food wouldn’t be any better than what the family ate, so it might just be bread drug through refried beans. The war made things a lot better. Grandpa enlisted in the Navy and they taught him to make x-rays in the Seabees. My mom’s dad moved them all to L.A. and got work in the shipyard.
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A lot of programs used being in the same conference as Texas as justification for thinking they were equivalent to Texas in program status. When the SWC folded, Texas was willing to play the “Left Behinds” located in Houston, for recruiting reasons. These games with UH and Rice were set up as two games in Austin for one in Houston. Then, UH showed in Bleachergate that they didn’t know their place, so they were dropped from the rotation. I know no one wants to play the UH’s, Baylor’s, TCU’s and TT’s anymore, but I’m sure after time passes, there will be talk about it again. My hope is that Bellmont insists that any game played in this state must be played in a stadium large enough to hold all the Longhorn fans in the area that want to go.
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This is an awesome listen… https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oklahoma-breakdown-with-ikard-and-lehman/id1509884894?i=1000702438423 The first part is the usual recap of spring practice- lines are more explosive off the ball, amazing S&C gains, young players about to become stars, the usual- but then, Castiglione comes on. He describes the plan for Nagy and Venables to cooperate. He describes how OU plans to cope with the landscape evolving in college football. It will warm your heart
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I don’t know that we were that poor, but we sure as fuck couldn’t afford braces. Also, I found the old FAFSA from when I was applying to UT- it was workable because of my National Merit Scholarship. My folks had $550 in savings, in 1981. Shit, I almost had that much, from working at Gatti’s. I remember realizing that almost all of my classmates grew up knowing they were going to go to college, and that it really wasn’t a big deal to them or their families. It was expected.
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We’d go for family “drives” on the weekend, supposedly as something for us all to do together. But we always ended up by some remote cornfield and dad would go into it and come back with an armful of corn. I think the family was with him for cover.
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It’s crazy. Ewers’ draft stock may have been higher last year? There were so many top rated QBs last year-Williams, Penix, Nix, Daniels, McCarthy, Maye- that he decided to return, but is it possible he would have been drafted in a higher round last year?
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Amazon Return Question- Disassembly?
statsman replied to statsman's topic in Can You Help Me With This?
Yeah, I’ve got the damned thing in my car. I figured on dropping by and trying. I was hoping someone had some insight like “yeah, they’ll take it”, or “no, you have to take it to another drop off”
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