Let's say for the sake of argument that for some unfathomable reason, the US embassy absolutely HAD to be moved to Jerusalem. Given the tensions in the region, was it really necessary to hold a goddamn ceremony celebrating the event?? Could this not have been done quietly, with no fanfare, and little or no media presence?? Maybe just move the diplomats to the new building and go on with the business of whatever the hell it is that is done there without sending over Ivanka and Jared to hold what was essentially a ribbon cutting ceremony??
It could have been. However, the purpose of the move was a symbolic one (essentially recognizing Israel should be expanded from its original creation) and therefore a ceremony was appropriate. Given the recent narrative of the conflict from both sides (peace is impossible due to the attitude of the other side) the public nature of the US embassy move seems to suit all parties. - many Israelis will welcome a break in the general international condemnation of their country's actions, even if they don't fully agree with those. - Trump gets to keep another campaign promise. - the Palestinians are provided with a PR opportunity to focus attention on the conflict again and enable them to recruit more fighters.
I find it interesting that you individualize the Israelis using the word "many" (implying not all) and "don't fully agree" while you just write "the Palestinians" like they are a monolithic block. While certain elements of Hamas will probably have indeed seen this as a PR opportunity, I am sure that many Palestinians were honestly outraged, instead of seeing this as a huge PR opportunity.
That wasn't my intention, though I can see why you picked up on it. Actually as I was writing the post I originally wrote Hamas rather than Palestinians, but then thought I would need to expand on that and point out differences between the various factions, including foreign influenced ones. I didn't have time to do that then, but I agree I should at least have said 'some' Palestinians.
Mere days after Trump mysteriously bailed out the domestic fate of a Chinese phone company, the Chinese government has now invested $500 million dollars in a project in Indonesia DIRECTLY tied to the Trump Organization. Don't kid yourself, nothing remotely like this has ever taken place. This President is for sale in an entiely different way than any previous.
The GOP is everything they acused Hillary Clinton of being.
-Pay to play? Yes Trump is completely corrupt as shown by Michael Cohens 'pay for access to the president' schemes and Trumps Indonesian corruption NOT to mention his daily violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution and refusal to divest himself, use a blind trust, or release his tax returns. -drain the swamp? Steve Mnuchin, Scott Pruitt and other globalist are laughing at you. The corruption is completely unprecedented. -Hillary will get us into foreign wars! Yeah what's happening in Yemen, Syria and other places bub? Not to mention the march to war in Iran. -Remember Benghazi! Trump's 'benghazi' left four dead soldiers in Niger in an unauthorized action. -Whatabout her emails! Yeah Trumps attempts at secrecy and hiding everything from the public is better right? If the truth gets out he gets mad at leakers. That's a better way right? Then again there's also Mike Pence using a private email server in Indiana and refusing to release to the public what he did as a public servant. And at least six members of President Trump’s White House have used private email addresses while conducting government business.
Everything that Republicans say they are against you can bet that they are doing that includes a bunch of the most anti-abortion ones having mistresses getting abortions that they pay for and it includes several of the anti-gay ones being gay.
This is what happens when you announce a summit after conducting no actual acts of diplomacy and not putting the work necessary to understand what the hell you are doing. Above all, these people are lazy as shit:
And it appears at least in the interim that Trump got played EXACTLY as predicted, even though the Administration was already basically proclaiming the North Korean nuclear program dead and buried, and the beltway media fawned over the proposed summit. Once again, a total clown show:
Is there a Nobel Prize for incompetence?? Also, let's imagine why in the world North Korea wouldn't be interested in dealing with a government who just destroyed the Iran deal. Who could have predicted??
I agree there are no surprises in the latest statements from North Korea. However, that doesn't mean the talks are dead and I think it's still the right thing to continue with them. I think all the statements are clarifying is that Kim would need cast-iron security guarantees, rather than purely economic support, before giving up nuclear weapons - and given the fate in recent years of other countries that have given up their weapons that's hardly an unexpected position.
Of course Trump's wildly optimistic recent predictions of the speed and quality of an expected settlement make me very sceptical of his ability to engage in meaningful talks over an extended period, but I'd love to be proved wrong on that.
Trump was literally offering the same deal to North Korea that he just unilaterally violated with Iran: "Don't make nukes and we'll help your economy."
That was the Iran deal you just broke. You just made America appear untrustworthy.
The Iran deal was certified and verified over ten times by independent inspectors.
The US (and other allies) didn't actually give any support to Iran in that deal - they just allowed them access to their own assets and withdrew a program of sanctions. I had the impression what was being proposed for Korea was something much more active (more like the Marshall Plan post WWII).
-Hillary will get us into foreign wars! Yeah what's happening in Yemen, Syria and other places bub?
Why don't you ask Mr. Obama why he got us involved in those places? Our involvement in Syria began 2014 and our involvement in Yemen began in 2015.
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I wouldn't blame Trump, or even KJU, for the apparent downturn in Korean peace talks. Instead, I would blame the entrenched military leadership in the DPRK--they are afraid of peace, because if there is a lasting peace they won't be needed.
-Hillary will get us into foreign wars! Yeah what's happening in Yemen, Syria and other places bub?
Why don't you ask Mr. Obama why he got us involved in those places? Our involvement in Syria began 2014 and our involvement in Yemen began in 2015.
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I wouldn't blame Trump, or even KJU, for the apparent downturn in Korean peace talks. Instead, I would blame the entrenched military leadership in the DPRK--they are afraid of peace, because if there is a lasting peace they won't be needed.
Yes Obama did get us involved there. Among the many campaign lies Trump made he said he was going to stop that stuff, foreign interventions and wars, instead he's escalated and is escalating things. America First right? What's that got to do with Yemen and Syria?
And I would blame Trump for the downturn in Korean peace talks.
He should have postponed or canceled the Korean War games that provoked North Korea to break off communications with the South. You got to give a little to get a little right. North Korea is making the "watch us destroy our nuclear tunnels" gesture, you could at least postpone the War games.
The North Korea flub (and now the White House is legitimately trying to tell us that they never agreed to or expected a meeting, which is almost farcical) is a result of a State Department which has been decimated since Trump took office. They are caught off guard because Trump just decided he'd like to try this one afternoon. By contrast, the Iran deal took YEARS to come together. Moral of the story, if you want to do something, at least attempt to put in the work to make it feasible.
Meanwhile, over 2,000 pages of transcripts have been released, detailing interviews with all the people involved in that infamous Trump Tower meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was claiming to have dirt on Hillary (except she didn't). According to CNN, "the nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia". In other words, the transcripts wind up being 2,000 pages of nothing really terribly important--no one cares how much Junior wanted dirt on Hillary or how upset he was that Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss only the Magnitsky Act.
And I would blame Trump for the downturn in Korean peace talks.
He should have postponed or canceled the Korean War games that provoked North Korea to break off communications with the South. You got to give a little to get a little right. North Korea is making the "watch us destroy our nuclear tunnels" gesture, you could at least postpone the War games.
I suspect that you have a predisposition to want to blame Trump for *everything*. There is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, because plenty of people blame the current resident of the Oval Office for whatever problem is occurring at that moment.
Postponement of the war games/joint military action with South Korea should have been a JCoS call. Yes, they take direction from SecDef and the CiC, but surely *somebody* would have realized that war games might disrupt a peace process, especially given the DPRK's jumpy and paranoid nature.
Meanwhile, over 2,000 pages of transcripts have been released, detailing interviews with all the people involved in that infamous Trump Tower meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was claiming to have dirt on Hillary (except she didn't). According to CNN, "the nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia". In other words, the transcripts wind up being 2,000 pages of nothing really terribly important--no one cares how much Junior wanted dirt on Hillary or how upset he was that Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss only the Magnitsky Act.
This is the view of the Republicans on the Senate Committee, and is also based on the assumption that Don Jr. and the Russian lawyer are, you know, telling the truth. Chuck Grassley isn't gonna be the final say on this issue.
Meanwhile, over 2,000 pages of transcripts have been released, detailing interviews with all the people involved in that infamous Trump Tower meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was claiming to have dirt on Hillary (except she didn't). According to CNN, "the nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia". In other words, the transcripts wind up being 2,000 pages of nothing really terribly important--no one cares how much Junior wanted dirt on Hillary or how upset he was that Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss only the Magnitsky Act.
This is the view of the Republicans on the Senate Committee, and is also based on the assumption that Don Jr. and the Russian lawyer are, you know, telling the truth. Chuck Grassley isn't gonna be the final say on this issue.
Today Don Jr. put out a statement about how he was totally forthright and honest Don in his testimony. Yeah right.
During the actual testimony his memory somehow failed him. Very goddamn often. His failing memory which he got from his father who claims to have one of the best memories of all time.
His dad used a blocked number. Jr. totally wasn't sure if the blocked number that called him, which Republicans have refused to investigate, might have been his dad but he didn't think so because memory.
Q. Does your father used a blocked number on his cellphone or on any phones that you call him on? A. I don't know.
Q. So you don't know whether this might have been your father? A. I don't.
And I would blame Trump for the downturn in Korean peace talks.
He should have postponed or canceled the Korean War games that provoked North Korea to break off communications with the South. You got to give a little to get a little right. North Korea is making the "watch us destroy our nuclear tunnels" gesture, you could at least postpone the War games.
I suspect that you have a predisposition to want to blame Trump for *everything*. There is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, because plenty of people blame the current resident of the Oval Office for whatever problem is occurring at that moment.
Postponement of the war games/joint military action with South Korea should have been a JCoS call. Yes, they take direction from SecDef and the CiC, but surely *somebody* would have realized that war games might disrupt a peace process, especially given the DPRK's jumpy and paranoid nature.
And as the commander in chief of the armed forces, even though he blames stuff on "my generals", he's got to own this. Yes an underling might have said something but do you think anyone could change his mind on anything without a $500 million dollar check? No.
I wouldn't blame Trump, or even KJU, for the apparent downturn in Korean peace talks. Instead, I would blame the entrenched military leadership in the DPRK--they are afraid of peace, because if there is a lasting peace they won't be needed.
I'm not sure I agree here--if the military had that much influence, they could have pushed KJU out and installed themselves by now.
And I would blame Trump for the downturn in Korean peace talks.
I don't, as this has been the pattern of North Korean 'diplomacy' for the past 70 years. However, Trump definitely made a mistake by celebrating a diplomatic victory before there was anything there.
He should have postponed or canceled the Korean War games that provoked North Korea to break off communications with the South. You got to give a little to get a little right. North Korea is making the "watch us destroy our nuclear tunnels" gesture, you could at least postpone the War games.
NK has framed these annual war games as a prelude to invasion every time they occur. Had we called them off KJU would have claimed--correctly--a diplomatic victory against the US and likely called off the summit anyway. Also, there are already a couple of published papers suggesting that the tunnels at the nuclear testing facility likely collapsed due to their last test. Essentially, NK is trying to frame their accidental collapse as an intentional peaceful overture.
Meanwhile, over 2,000 pages of transcripts have been released, detailing interviews with all the people involved in that infamous Trump Tower meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was claiming to have dirt on Hillary (except she didn't). According to CNN, "the nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia". In other words, the transcripts wind up being 2,000 pages of nothing really terribly important--no one cares how much Junior wanted dirt on Hillary or how upset he was that Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss only the Magnitsky Act.
I believe you're imposing some of your own biases here. The transcript agrees with what the Trump admin said about the contents of the meeting (or, more accurately, their current revision of the story). That the transcripts don't really add any new information means it won't affect whether Mueller views the meeting as appropriate or not, ergo no course change.
The part about "they contain nothing really terribly important" is mine--including the unnecessary double adjective; the part in the quotation marks right after the link is CNN's. In other words, my bias is mine...but I freely admit my bias and my opinion that the Mueller Investigation is going to wind up being a waste of time and money.
The fact that Trump (senior) may use a blocked number is not shocking. If he uses a blocked number to call his own son...well, that says something about how that man views his own son.
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On a completely unrelated topic....I just had to get on to all my posters over at my other forum because they started making the discussion personal again. *sigh* Every now and then the children cannot figure out how to avoid sniping each other verbally. They were actually starting to "quote" each other then edit the quote--that is definitely one behavior I won't tolerate from them.
It's also not helped by the perception (at least to me as an outsider) that Netanyahu seems to derive all his domestic political power from constant conflict and what seems like an almost deliberate provocation and escalation in many instances. Take today for example. Anyone could have predicted the US moving the embassy to Jerusalem was going to cause a problem, but the juxtaposition of the celebration today and the slaughter taking place at the fence couldn't have been more stark. Frankly, it almost seemed like the killings were a part of the celebration. On the day when the US President's decision (motivated entirely by his political courting of the religious right) does away with any pretense of giving a shit about the Palestinians in any way, shape or form, Israel takes the gloves off, and meets slingshots and rocks with gunfire, killing 50, wounding thousands. And why not?? They have no one to answer to. We are going to hand them billions of dollars to keep their military supremacy in the region unquestioned. The embassy move was nothing but a massive "rub their nose in it" moment that served no strategic or long-term goal whatsoever. For Trump, it is simply a play to his base. For Netanyahu, it's the moment he's been waiting for his entire public life, the ultimate middle-finger to the Palestinian people. It's hardly a coincidence this is how it played out.
I know i'm fighting wind mills here, but just for the protocol..
Hamas Senior official admits 50 out of the 62 killed, are Hamas members
IDF special forces unit "Maglan", who were patrolling the Gaza border during the "demonstration", encountered a group of Palestinians approaching under cover of the smoke, to the border fence between Israel and Gaza. After the IDF forces tried to use anti-riot weaponry - the group of the 'protesters' Palestinians opened fire at the force, throwing grenades and pipe bombs.
The whole event was recorded by a Border Watch cameras in the following video:
Not that I think it would change anyone opinion, but I don't agree with the instant accusations of Israel "killing indiscriminately", without investing a minimal effort of trying to understand the situation, the details, forces at play, interests, and the full picture. Reality is much more complicated.
"If 62 were killed then 50 were Hamas!" that is in no way an accurate count - "if" - clearly shows the guy is guessing and has no idea what he's talking about.
No one is saying they are all totally non-violent. Many people are saying a woman throwing a rock 20 feet shouldn't be shot from a Israeli soldier 700 feet away on top of a wall. One cherry picked encounter doesn't mean they are all the same.
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The Senate voted to overturn the FCCs gutting of Net Neutrality rules.
Only three Republicans did the right thing and voted to protect your Internet freedom.
Unfortunately from here we need to rely on the Republican House and Trump would need to go along with the plan and the chances of that are zero. This crisis is entirely the result of the Republican majority appointed FCCs making.
Vote Democrat if you like your privacy online and a free and open Internet. Vote Republican to give Comcast and Verizon more control over you and get ready to pay for service packages like streaming packages and internet fast lanes.
Not that I think it would change anyone opinion, but I don't agree with the instant accusations of Israel "killing indiscriminately", without investing a minimal effort of trying to understand the situation, the details, forces at play, interests, and the full picture. Reality is much more complicated.
I agree that the issue is not one-sided, but there is a legitimate question as to the legal basis Israel is using to justify its rules of engagement that allow firing on civilian demonstrators even in the absence of an immediate threat to life. On the face of it that action would seem illegal even if the Israeli interpretation that the demonstrations are occurring in a war zone is accepted.
This article gives some background to the legal issues associated with the rules of engagement.
This article covers a petition by Israeli human rights groups to the Supreme Court asking for the rules of engagement to be declared unlawful and revoked. The Israeli government says that it has provided a legal justification for the rules of engagement to the court, but has refused to make that public. A decision on the case is pending.
If 50 of the 62 people were members of Hamas, that means 12 of them had nothing to do with Hamas. So, the attack killed 12 innocent civilians? That doesn't seem like good news to me.
Twelve innocent deaths is enough to wipe out my nuclear family as well as my two closest cousins, both of their husbands, and all of their kids, with only one of them left alive. If somebody offered to kill 12 members of my family in order to put 50 members of Hamas in the ground, I don't think I'd make the trade.
I mean, if the trade was killing 12 innocent people to save 50 innocent people, things would be different.
It's hard to say how many people this ended up saving. I looked at Wikipedia, and Hamas' rocket attacks killed 48 people over the course of 10 years, 2004 to 2014. No idea how many people they've killed outside of those attacks. As for the Hamas membership, I understand that the number of official members is unknown, but its supporters number in the thousands or tens of thousands.
I guess you could say the number of people saved is equal to 50 / Hamas membership * (48 + non-rocket deaths), which looks like it would come out to less than 1 person saved. For the purposes of minimizing innocent deaths, it would have be at least 12.
On a completely unrelated topic....I just had to get on to all my posters over at my other forum because they started making the discussion personal again. *sigh* Every now and then the children cannot figure out how to avoid sniping each other verbally. They were actually starting to "quote" each other then edit the quote--that is definitely one behavior I won't tolerate from them.
Yikes. I just don't get that kind of mentality. Not just the idea that you'd be willing to lie about somebody else's words in a political debate, but... more generally, why would you want to make an argument that was so weak that you could only defend it through deception? If you can't give other people a reason to believe something, why would you believe it?
Speaking in general (that is, I'm not using this to comment on the current debate on the violence in Gaza), people get really invested in their opinions and feel like they need to defend them. I think that's rather backwards. You can pick whatever opinion you want and change them at any time at zero cost. If your opinion is too hard to defend, just change positions.
These numbers would also mean that nearly 100% of everyone who wasn't a child who was killed was a member of Hamas. And I think by this point we'd know that terrorist groups love to claim members posthumously that had no connection to them whatsoever. And beyond that, it seems like in 99% of situations, we'd be told to not believe a word Hamas says. Except, it seems, in this case.
No one is saying they are all totally non-violent. Many people are saying a woman throwing a rock 20 feet shouldn't be shot from a Israeli soldier 700 feet away on top of a wall. One cherry picked encounter doesn't mean they are all the same.
A woman throwing a rock shouldn't be shot, it is undebatable , it is against any rule of engagement that I know of. This is the reason why Hamas is explicitly sending woman and children to the front, because they know that IDF doesn't shoot children and women. Not I say it, it is Palestinians who managed to cross the fence and were caught (I can share a link, its in Arabic so you probably won't understand), say it.
On Friday there was a report that a 7 (!) years old girl has reached to the Israeli fence. What was she doing there?
If 50 of the 62 people were members of Hamas, that means 12 of them had nothing to do with Hamas. So, the attack killed 12 innocent civilians? That doesn't seem like good news to me.
Twelve innocent deaths is enough to wipe out my nuclear family as well as my two closest cousins, both of their husbands, and all of their kids, with only one of them left alive. If somebody offered to kill 12 members of my family in order to put 50 members of Hamas in the ground, I don't think I'd make the trade.
Which one of us would make the trade?
12 innocent is bad news, I agree, but Israel did not choose to kill as many Hamas members as it can, on the expense of innocent citizens. There were over 30,000 demonstrators on Monday, among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who incite and exploit the crowds.
In the video I posted before, a gunfight was developed between Hamas militants and IDF force. This was in the area of the demonstrations. Stray bullets could easily hurt the crowd behind the militants. What the IDF force should have done? just let the Hamas militants infiltrate Israel? never mind the smoke screen there was from firing up tires.
This is the unfortunate nature of asymmetrical warfare. What interesting and sad, is that such tactics work only against countries that actually care about human life. Were it used against Syria/Assad or Egypt, they were all getting shot regardless if it is a citizen or a militant (while we are at it, Turkey has killed today 8 Syrian immigrants, that were trying to cross the border into Turkey - not for the first time)
Twelve innocent deaths is unfortunate, one innocent death is unfortunate. Israel best interest is to minimize the number of casualties, as it gains nothing from it but bad PR and demonization. Dead Palestinians serves Hamas best interest, as they know that Israel will be hurt from the backlash of the events.
The questions that no one here has been asking regarding the whole situation, ignoring or not focusing, are:
What led to those demonstrations in the first place?
Why those demonstrations, which has clearly a violent nature, consist little children and women?
What the Palestinians had hoped to gain, charging the Israeli-Gaza border fence and trying to infiltrate?
Why the demonstration weren't also on the shared Egypt-Gaza border?
Sometimes you need to focus on the cause, rather then the end result, to be able preventing such scenes in the future.
How is Israel hurt by the backlash from the events?? Even if it has nothing to gain from the bad PR, they also lose nothing. The United States will make sure any attempts in the UN to even bring up the subject are shut down, and we'll keep funneling billions of dollars into their defense forces. I fail to see how Israel can possibly face any consequences at all when the US is in their corner. At all times on the world stage, Israel is walking around with a 500 lb. gorilla armed to the teeth as their bodyguard. Consequences are for other countries, certainly not the United States and Israel. We've both made abundantly clear for the last 75 years we don't think consequences exist for us, and, aside from 9/11, we have basically been correct.
No one has been more on the money in their reporting in the last year than Ronan Farrow from the New Yorker. Now, we have this chilling story about why Michael Cohen's financial records were released. And the indications from this story seem to be that there may be an inside job taking place scrubbing incriminating information related to the President's lawyer:
A woman throwing a rock shouldn't be shot, it is undebatable , it is against any rule of engagement that I know of.
The articles I posted before specifically cover this point. A woman throwing a rock, in a location she is legally entitled to be in (by Israel's own definition), can be killed under the current rules of engagement - that's why the Supreme Court has been asked to declare those rules unlawful.
The questions that no one here has been asking regarding the whole situation, ignoring or not focusing, are:
What led to those demonstrations in the first place?
You could argue that it was the creation of Israel as the current demonstrations were tied to that. While there's an element of truth to that I think it's too simplistic an answer. The demonstrations reflect the increasing polarisation between Jews and Palestinians (and that process is occurring inside Israel as well as outside it).
Why those demonstrations, which has clearly a violent nature, consist little children and women?
I agree it's a bit difficult for me to understand that, but then I have a comfortable life. If you feel that life is almost intolerable and there are no prospects for it getting better then it's reasonable for you (and your children) to be involved in protests against that. As an illustration of the fact that many people are at the stage where life seems almost intolerable, here's an article about the currently high suicide rate in Gaza. It's always been the case that a proportion of people who are suicidal wish to make a final statement by killing others (think about many of the gun attacks in the US we've covered in this thread, or the recent suicide bombings by families in Indonesia).
What the Palestinians had hoped to gain, charging the Israeli-Gaza border fence and trying to infiltrate?
I'm not sure it's credible to suggest that the attackers were really trying to infiltrate Israel by stealth - given the public nature of the demonstrations against a heavily manned and defended hard border. What they were doing was making a statement against the existence of that border in the first place.
Why the demonstration weren't also on the shared Egypt-Gaza border?
Because the perception of most Palestinians is that Israel bears responsibility for their oppression. I agree with you though that's not the whole story. Hamas' actions have often seemed to be designed to keep the conflict with Israel going and it was concerns over the role of Hamas that led Egypt to close their border with Gaza.
Comments
-Pay to play? Yes Trump is completely corrupt as shown by Michael Cohens 'pay for access to the president' schemes and Trumps Indonesian corruption NOT to mention his daily violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution and refusal to divest himself, use a blind trust, or release his tax returns.
-drain the swamp? Steve Mnuchin, Scott Pruitt and other globalist are laughing at you. The corruption is completely unprecedented.
-Hillary will get us into foreign wars! Yeah what's happening in Yemen, Syria and other places bub? Not to mention the march to war in Iran.
-Remember Benghazi! Trump's 'benghazi' left four dead soldiers in Niger in an unauthorized action.
-Whatabout her emails! Yeah Trumps attempts at secrecy and hiding everything from the public is better right? If the truth gets out he gets mad at leakers. That's a better way right? Then again there's also Mike Pence using a private email server in Indiana and refusing to release to the public what he did as a public servant. And at least six members of President Trump’s White House have used private email addresses while conducting government business.
Everything that Republicans say they are against you can bet that they are doing that includes a bunch of the most anti-abortion ones having mistresses getting abortions that they pay for and it includes several of the anti-gay ones being gay.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-contributing-500-million-trump-linked-project-indonesia/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/15/politics/north-korea-suspends-south-korea-talks-us-military-drills/index.html
And it appears at least in the interim that Trump got played EXACTLY as predicted, even though the Administration was already basically proclaiming the North Korean nuclear program dead and buried, and the beltway media fawned over the proposed summit. Once again, a total clown show:
Is there a Nobel Prize for incompetence?? Also, let's imagine why in the world North Korea wouldn't be interested in dealing with a government who just destroyed the Iran deal. Who could have predicted??
Of course Trump's wildly optimistic recent predictions of the speed and quality of an expected settlement make me very sceptical of his ability to engage in meaningful talks over an extended period, but I'd love to be proved wrong on that.
"Don't make nukes and we'll help your economy."
That was the Iran deal you just broke. You just made America appear untrustworthy.
The Iran deal was certified and verified over ten times by independent inspectors.
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I wouldn't blame Trump, or even KJU, for the apparent downturn in Korean peace talks. Instead, I would blame the entrenched military leadership in the DPRK--they are afraid of peace, because if there is a lasting peace they won't be needed.
And I would blame Trump for the downturn in Korean peace talks.
He should have postponed or canceled the Korean War games that provoked North Korea to break off communications with the South. You got to give a little to get a little right. North Korea is making the "watch us destroy our nuclear tunnels" gesture, you could at least postpone the War games.
Postponement of the war games/joint military action with South Korea should have been a JCoS call. Yes, they take direction from SecDef and the CiC, but surely *somebody* would have realized that war games might disrupt a peace process, especially given the DPRK's jumpy and paranoid nature.
Well, there's the fact that Trump Jr.'s lawyer tried to coordinate stories on Trump Tower meeting with organizer. You know so they don't accidentally tell the truth
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/387960-trump-jr-lawyer-emailed-trump-tower-participant-statement-about
Today Don Jr. put out a statement about how he was totally forthright and honest Don in his testimony. Yeah right.
During the actual testimony his memory somehow failed him. Very goddamn often. His failing memory which he got from his father who claims to have one of the best memories of all time.
His dad used a blocked number. Jr. totally wasn't sure if the blocked number that called him, which Republicans have refused to investigate, might have been his dad but he didn't think so because memory.
Q. Does your father used a blocked number on his cellphone or on any phones that you call him on?
A. I don't know.
Q. So you don't know whether this might have been your father?
A. I don't.
Haha yeah right. And as the commander in chief of the armed forces, even though he blames stuff on "my generals", he's got to own this. Yes an underling might have said something but do you think anyone could change his mind on anything without a $500 million dollar check? No.
The fact that Trump (senior) may use a blocked number is not shocking. If he uses a blocked number to call his own son...well, that says something about how that man views his own son.
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On a completely unrelated topic....I just had to get on to all my posters over at my other forum because they started making the discussion personal again. *sigh* Every now and then the children cannot figure out how to avoid sniping each other verbally. They were actually starting to "quote" each other then edit the quote--that is definitely one behavior I won't tolerate from them.
Hamas Senior official admits 50 out of the 62 killed, are Hamas members
Another of example of what happened on monday:
IDF special forces unit "Maglan", who were patrolling the Gaza border during the "demonstration", encountered a group of Palestinians approaching under cover of the smoke, to the border fence between Israel and Gaza. After the IDF forces tried to use anti-riot weaponry - the group of the 'protesters' Palestinians opened fire at the force, throwing grenades and pipe bombs.
The whole event was recorded by a Border Watch cameras in the following video:
http://videoidf.co.il/150518-HE-01.mp4
And this is what found on scene:
This is just one example...
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Not that I think it would change anyone opinion, but I don't agree with the instant accusations of Israel "killing indiscriminately", without investing a minimal effort of trying to understand the situation, the details, forces at play, interests, and the full picture. Reality is much more complicated.
Good Night.
No one is saying they are all totally non-violent. Many people are saying a woman throwing a rock 20 feet shouldn't be shot from a Israeli soldier 700 feet away on top of a wall. One cherry picked encounter doesn't mean they are all the same.
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The Senate voted to overturn the FCCs gutting of Net Neutrality rules.
Only three Republicans did the right thing and voted to protect your Internet freedom.
Unfortunately from here we need to rely on the Republican House and Trump would need to go along with the plan and the chances of that are zero. This crisis is entirely the result of the Republican majority appointed FCCs making.
Vote Democrat if you like your privacy online and a free and open Internet. Vote Republican to give Comcast and Verizon more control over you and get ready to pay for service packages like streaming packages and internet fast lanes.
This article gives some background to the legal issues associated with the rules of engagement.
This article covers a petition by Israeli human rights groups to the Supreme Court asking for the rules of engagement to be declared unlawful and revoked. The Israeli government says that it has provided a legal justification for the rules of engagement to the court, but has refused to make that public. A decision on the case is pending.
Twelve innocent deaths is enough to wipe out my nuclear family as well as my two closest cousins, both of their husbands, and all of their kids, with only one of them left alive. If somebody offered to kill 12 members of my family in order to put 50 members of Hamas in the ground, I don't think I'd make the trade.
Which one of us would make the trade?
It's hard to say how many people this ended up saving. I looked at Wikipedia, and Hamas' rocket attacks killed 48 people over the course of 10 years, 2004 to 2014. No idea how many people they've killed outside of those attacks. As for the Hamas membership, I understand that the number of official members is unknown, but its supporters number in the thousands or tens of thousands.
I guess you could say the number of people saved is equal to 50 / Hamas membership * (48 + non-rocket deaths), which looks like it would come out to less than 1 person saved. For the purposes of minimizing innocent deaths, it would have be at least 12.
Speaking in general (that is, I'm not using this to comment on the current debate on the violence in Gaza), people get really invested in their opinions and feel like they need to defend them. I think that's rather backwards. You can pick whatever opinion you want and change them at any time at zero cost. If your opinion is too hard to defend, just change positions.
On Friday there was a report that a 7 (!) years old girl has reached to the Israeli fence. What was she doing there? 12 innocent is bad news, I agree, but Israel did not choose to kill as many Hamas members as it can, on the expense of innocent citizens. There were over 30,000 demonstrators on Monday, among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who incite and exploit the crowds.
In the video I posted before, a gunfight was developed between Hamas militants and IDF force. This was in the area of the demonstrations. Stray bullets could easily hurt the crowd behind the militants. What the IDF force should have done? just let the Hamas militants infiltrate Israel? never mind the smoke screen there was from firing up tires.
This is the unfortunate nature of asymmetrical warfare. What interesting and sad, is that such tactics work only against countries that actually care about human life. Were it used against Syria/Assad or Egypt, they were all getting shot regardless if it is a citizen or a militant (while we are at it, Turkey has killed today 8 Syrian immigrants, that were trying to cross the border into Turkey - not for the first time)
Twelve innocent deaths is unfortunate, one innocent death is unfortunate. Israel best interest is to minimize the number of casualties, as it gains nothing from it but bad PR and demonization. Dead Palestinians serves Hamas best interest, as they know that Israel will be hurt from the backlash of the events.
The questions that no one here has been asking regarding the whole situation, ignoring or not focusing, are:
What led to those demonstrations in the first place?
Why those demonstrations, which has clearly a violent nature, consist little children and women?
What the Palestinians had hoped to gain, charging the Israeli-Gaza border fence and trying to infiltrate?
Why the demonstration weren't also on the shared Egypt-Gaza border?
Sometimes you need to focus on the cause, rather then the end result, to be able preventing such scenes in the future.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/missing-files-motivated-the-leak-of-michael-cohens-financial-records
You could argue that it was the creation of Israel as the current demonstrations were tied to that. While there's an element of truth to that I think it's too simplistic an answer. The demonstrations reflect the increasing polarisation between Jews and Palestinians (and that process is occurring inside Israel as well as outside it).
I agree it's a bit difficult for me to understand that, but then I have a comfortable life. If you feel that life is almost intolerable and there are no prospects for it getting better then it's reasonable for you (and your children) to be involved in protests against that. As an illustration of the fact that many people are at the stage where life seems almost intolerable, here's an article about the currently high suicide rate in Gaza. It's always been the case that a proportion of people who are suicidal wish to make a final statement by killing others (think about many of the gun attacks in the US we've covered in this thread, or the recent suicide bombings by families in Indonesia).
I'm not sure it's credible to suggest that the attackers were really trying to infiltrate Israel by stealth - given the public nature of the demonstrations against a heavily manned and defended hard border. What they were doing was making a statement against the existence of that border in the first place.
Because the perception of most Palestinians is that Israel bears responsibility for their oppression. I agree with you though that's not the whole story. Hamas' actions have often seemed to be designed to keep the conflict with Israel going and it was concerns over the role of Hamas that led Egypt to close their border with Gaza.