WarGamer
WarGamer's JournalUkraine military seeks extra 500,000 soldiers - President Zelensky
This comes at a time when Russia is hitting the AFU hard, with 6 different active combat zones in the last week...
Oh well... Que Será, Será
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67767246
Ukraine's military wants to mobilise up to 500,000 extra people, President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed, as the war with Russia nears a two-year mark.
At a press-conference in Kyiv, he said his commanders were seeking "450,000-500,000 individuals", admitting this was a "sensitive" and costly issue.
He said he needed more details before backing the move, hinting that 500,000 soldiers were already on the front.
A refresher of WHY the Middle East is such a mess... history.
Hopefully no one calls Salon a right wing source.
U.N. voted to partition Palestine 68 years ago (2015 article), in an unfair plan made even worse by Israel's ethnic cleansing
The Partition Plan was never implemented, however. The very next day after it was voted on, the 1947-1948 war broke out.
In this war, Zionist militias systematically ethnically cleansed large portions of historic Palestine, sacking hundreds of Palestinian villages and expelling more than 750,000 people -- around two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population. Prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappé notes that, in Israel's Plan Dalet (also known simply as Plan D), "veteran Zionist leaders" created "a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." They dispatched military orders in March 1948, Pappé explains:
Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion -- the first prime minister of Israel and, until current leader Benjamin Netanyahu finishes his fourth term, its longest serving head of state -- saw no problem in using violence to force indigenous Palestinians off of their land. "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it," he said as far back as 1938.
https://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/u_n_voted_to_partition_palestine_68_years_ago_in_an_unfair_plan_made_even_worse_by_israels_ethnic_cleansing/
Just a suggestion on how to view the GOP impeachment thing.
I see a LOT of exasperated folks here rushing around asking for the evidence and the legal definitions...
This is NOT a Court of Law.
An impeachment is essentially a political maneuver. They say you can indict a ham sandwich, because a Grand Jury is presented a case from one side only with no countering witnesses or evidence.
You can impeach a ham sandwich too, at least open hearings.
Here's what's happening.
By launching a formal inquiry, the GOP House gains legal POWERS it didn't have previously regarding access to witnesses and documents that were previously withheld.
They will use the inquiry to go fishing.
The inquiry hearings are intended to serve several purposes.
1) Embarrass President Biden and his family
2) Draw an equivalence between Trump and Biden
3) Influence the 2024 campaign
So to put it in a nutshell... you're not going to see Constitutional Scholars on TV pointing to "offenses" that are impeachable...
Don't bother arguing legal minutiae and theory... this is simply a multi-month political commercial on TV for the next year.
What are the LONG TERM consequences of Israeli-Muslim World relations?
It's bad enough today. It was bad enough a year ago... or 10.
What's going to happen tomorrow?
Some delusional folks think that the IDF is going to "wipe out" Hamas and all will be well. That's laughable nonsense.
Eventually some will filter back into society and guess what happens to the 11-14 year old boys who've watched the Armageddon in GAZA the last couple months?
Yeah, they'll dedicate their lives to hate and murder, too.
Here's my own personal fear.
As the years roll by... the chances for a fringe group to get it's hands on a nuke grow annually.
The US and Russia both have nukes but we don't nuke each other because of mutually assured destruction.
It's a balance... folks in Cincinnati, Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh aren't fond of the idea of getting nuked just like the folks in Perm, St. Peter and Tyumen.
But Israel.
If an extremist group managed to attack Israel with a nuke... who does Israel or the US strike out at?
The Houthis? Extremists in Syria or Iran or Jordan?
Here's the problem.
Iran, for example, probably don't give a fuck.
a nuke in Tel Aviv and Haifa in exchange for a couple nukes in Iran? They'll take that trade. Their land mass is huge, Israel, tiny.
My fear is that we are headed to a great catastrophe... one that will make 10/7 look like a bar fight.
And I just don't know how it can be stopped. It's a momentum that's 75 years old at a minimum with roots back thousands of years.
And the playing field is a rock against a hard place. OBVIOUSLY no one is going to move Israel out of the area to make the neighbors happy. And the entire Muslim world is against pushing the Palestinians into the sea (figuratively) and they actually don't want to leave either.
I don't have a solution BUT I'm 100% sure the future holds MUCH worse things in this conflict unless SOMETHING can be done that makes BOTH sides happy.
If I knew that... I'd also have the right Powerball numbers for tonight.
Is criticism of Israel antisemitic?
https://www.annefrank.org/en/topics/antisemitism/all-criticism-israel-antisemitic/Criticism of the policies of Israeli governments is not necessarily antisemitic. For instance, anyone is free to reject or criticise the political decisions of Israeli governments concerning the Palestinian territories – this is not uncommon in Israel itself. However, denying the State of Israel’s right to exist does constitute antisemitism.
So... looks like saying Nuttyahoo is a murderous cretin who is intent on flattening GAZA for political gain and vengeance in his heart IS NOT antisemitic.
Accusing the IDF of war crimes thus is not antisemitism.
Blaming Israel (gov't) for locking millions of people in an open air prison is NOT antisemitism.
Playing the ANTISEMITISM card is soooo common right now. It's the kneejerk response to ALL criticism of Israel by some folks... the same folks who equate pro-Palestine with Pro-Hamas
Hate on Elon and the CT all you want... watch it beat a 911 in a drag race. While TOWING another 911...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1730331223992472029?s=20Car guy all my life... heavily into drag racing for decades...
And holy shit.
0-60 in 2.6s and sub 11 second quarter mile
Meet the hottest new recording "artist"... Anna Indiana.
Complete AI. Video, AI. Voice, AI. Song writing, AI...
Not particularly good... but not as bad as about half of what I hear on "the Voice"
Remember, this is the dawn of AI. This music video is like Pong compared to Call of Duty video games...
Germany freezes new spending commitments as budget woes deepen.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-freezes-new-spending-commitments-budget-woes-deepen-2023-11-21/#:~:text=BERLIN%2C%20Nov%2021%20(Reuters),of%20a%20deepening%20budget%20crisis.BERLIN, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The German government has imposed a freeze on most new spending commitments in what officials on Tuesday said was a necessary step as Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition struggled to find a way out of a deepening budget crisis.
The government's spending plans were thrown into disarray by a court ruling last week that blocked the government from transferring 60 billion euros ($65 billion) in unused funds from the pandemic towards green initiatives, potentially starving some German industry of support to keep it competitive.
The verdict has compounded tensions in the loveless three-way coalition between Scholz's ruling Social Democrats Party (SPD), the pro-spending Greens and fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) over whether to suspend self-imposed limits on raising new debt.
Why the US didn't kill 12,000 civilians in 6 weeks of combat in Iraq
https://www.justsecurity.org/74619/avoiding-collateral-damage-on-the-battlefield/I'm far from an apologist for US military adventurism but what we're seeing in Gaza is simply medieval.
Importantly, it is the expected collateral damage and the anticipated military advantage that drive proportionality analysis. Thus, proportionality determinations are made ex ante, not post factum. The determinative factors are what the attacker knew, or should have known, regarding collateral damage and what military advantage the attacker reasonably expected to achieve; proportionality is not assessed based on the collateral damage or military advantage that eventuated, except as they bear on the reasonableness of the attacker’s analysis at the time the attack was planned, approved or executed. In practice, this is a highly subjective determination because it compares dissimilar values – collateral damage and military advantage – that are themselves hard to measure. As a result, while still important, the more protective rule on the battlefield is that requiring precautions.
Compliance with these rules by those conducting attacks is operationalized through guidance imposed by higher echelons of command, processes designed to assess the likelihood of collateral damage and identify ways to avoid causing it, and technologies that offer the attacker precision, greater clarity in the battlespace, and redundant capabilities. We turn to these next.
U.S. and coalition forces use rules of engagement (ROE) to restrict the application of force during armed conflict, in part to limit civilian casualties to the extent feasible (Operational Law Handbook, ch. 5). ROE are more restrictive than LOAC, for they also incorporate policy and operational constraints and are usually tailored to the specific battlefield environment in which they apply. The rules can restrict such matters as acceptable targets, the geographic range of operations, time of operations, and the use of particular munitions. ROE also sometimes reinforce LOAC provisions that might be of particular significance in certain combat environments, such as the prohibitions on the destruction of religious and cultural property when being applied in situations of internecine conflict. In many circumstances, they tighten them, as in the case of restricting operations against religious facilities being illegitimately used by the adversary to self-defense scenarios only.
Sacha Baron Cohen Slams TikTok: "Creating Biggest Antisemitic Movement Since the Nazis"
Everyone seems fixated on Twitter/X...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sacha-baron-cohen-amy-schumer-jewish-celebrities-tiktok-antisemitism-1235657209/
A score of Jewish celebrities are criticizing TikTok following a surge of antisemitic rhetoric going viral on the social media app following Hamas‘ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, which has culminated in some young people supporting 9/11 terror leader Osama bin Laden.
According to The New York Times, more than 30 influential people — including Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing and Amy Schumer — had an impassioned 90-minute video call with TikTok executives earlier in the week.
“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Cohen declared on the call, according to a video of the exchange. “Shame on you.” The Borat creator added that the service could “flip a switch” to silence such videos, and noted, “If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate.”
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