GrymEdm

Strawman much? Care to explain how you arrived at that accusation of dehumanization based on what was written about the technical details of missiles?

Nowhere did I say it was offensive. If you skipped the article and assumed, that's on you. Yes you are being pedantic because you're trying to discredit me on a technicality that does not have any merit to anyone who spends even 30 seconds reading the details I explicitly provide. By any reasonable definition it's a multi-billion dollar set of batteries that use missiles, and no one who reads the article thinks it's being used for offense.

Edit: I see that you changed the post to say it screams bias/agenda. My bias is against huge amounts of funding enabling the slaughter and starvation of some of the poorest and most desparate people in the world. Given that US military aid is at 17.9 billion since Oct. 7th, and the conservative death toll is over 42k + starvation, abuse, etc. that's not even hyperbole. My agenda with that post is to point out the escalation of US involvement which this deployment definitely is, and how it's happening simultaneous to the strongly worded letter. I'm fully willing to own both.

I'm not a weapons expert, the article I linked identifies what it's meant for by the 2nd paragraph, and if you want to be pedantic THAADs exclusively fire missiles. Unit cost: $1.25 billion per battery $12.6 million per missile. Same page has diagrams detailing the "THAAD missiles".

Also: "Although the actual figures are classified, THAAD missiles have an estimated range of 125 miles (200 km), and can reach an altitude of 93 miles (150 km). A THAAD battery consists of at least six launcher vehicles, each equipped with eight missiles..."

On the same week they moved a multi-billion dollar set of missile systems into Israel along with putting US troops on the ground there for the first time. The Biden administration and Congress in general have been issuing warnings and "expressing concerns" for almost a year now. Stories about blocked aid and US demands to fix it go back for months. Actions speak louder than words, and by now all credibility has been squeezed out of responses like this.

Biden is a self-proclaimed unshakable Zionist, the politically potent arms manufacturers are having a field day, and the US has been ignoring both international law and their own laws like Leahy for a while now. I'll believe this letter is more than just election season pageantry when the arms and money actually stops, not before (and I don't think I'm alone in that regard).

P.S. Don't let either party or relevant PACs off the hook, don't stop pointing out this BS, but if you're American still vote to keep Trump out of office for many obvious reasons.

I have zero proof of this so take it for the musing it is, but the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine can be used to view articles that have been taken offline (sometimes for political reasons). The IA is a very accessible way to prove that once something is on the Internet, it's out there forever. I used it in a recent post to show an Israeli newspaper article that argued Israel had a right to not just Palestine, but Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and other territories. It was taken off the newspaper's website a few days later, but IA had it.

This may explain why no one is taking credit, and there are no demands. Or it could very well be another reason, including people just being assholes.

Yeah, and what kind of psychos would want to restrict public access to books in libraries?!?! I'm not on the conspiracy train until there's proof and I agree with your post. Just saw a bit of irony there since a lot of North Americans are currently in the process of dismantling libraries.

Just to get it out of the way at the start - Hamas is terrible. They are violent fundamentalists and do not deserve support. Neither Israel nor Hamas are "good" and the only side that deserves support and recognition are the civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, suffering because of/under their evil regimes. Now on to the rebuttal.

Israel needs no "baiting" to kill or otherwise abuse Palestinians - it's their policy and has been for a long time. From the Nakba until today, the history of Israeli human rights violations, violence, lies, etc. is well-established. "Look at what you made me do" is such a typical excuse used by abusers that it's almost a trope. Moreover, Netanyahu's government deliberately kept Hamas in power as a useful bogeyman and an way to divide/foil Palestinian statehood. There is ample evidence that Israel has directly supported Hamas and other extremists for decades.

"Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists."

"In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

As far as the nature of the demands: "one-sided deals" is a matter of opinion, but "we need guarantees you'll actually leave, stop killing/injuring many tens of thousands of civilians, destroying hospitals/schools/aid, etc." seems like a pretty standard request at peace negotiations. Especially since Israel has repeatedly promised to continue to prosecute the war and establish long-term armed forces in Gaza.

If he can follow up on even a portion of what he promises, a 2nd Trump presidency will bring the USA to a halt at multiple levels like a car hitting a reinforced wall. The best version of a Trump presidency is him raging daily as he's blocked constantly by legal challenges and bureaucratic measures thus getting nothing done. The worst version is that he succeeds in his goals, reforms the USA into a right-wing autocracy and destroys things like checks/balances and separation of church and state.

There's nothing damning after the "but" though. What part specifically of "but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans" do you take issue with? That's the provable reality of the negotiations. I even call it unfortunate.

Israel has repeatedly stated their intent to continue the war in Gaza regardless of international approval. Netanyahu, among others, has stated intent to establish a long-term/permanent security presence in Gaza.

Since Oct. 7th the Israeli military has either directly killed or provided protection to lethal settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in over 500 deaths in a section of Occupied Palestinian Territory that theoretically isn't at war. So there's Israeli military presence, violence, and oppression of Palestinians even where Hamas isn't in control.

Hamas are not good guys by any stretch, but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans. In the face of continued Israeli aggression, disregard for international approval/law, and stated plans it's no wonder they're demanding that any deals have rock-solid guarantees on an enforceable timetable.

I almost never buy multiplayer-focused games anymore. Of course not all gamers are shitty, but enough are to matter. Having left those games behind I can see how they were taking more joy from my life than they added. If friends want to do private co-op that's cool, but it's also rarer now that we're all older.

As far as sales go, I love playing a year or two behind new releases. Patched games at a discount ftw and timing doesn't matter in single-player games.

Generalizations like "All X are Y" should be used VERY sparingly if ever, and are almost never correct or helpful when talking about large groups of people - i.e. an entire ethnicity. Jews are people like any other ethnicity, and as such span the whole range of ethics and personalities. I personally know a very ethical and kind Jew who does not deserve to be labelled as an asshole or anything similar, and I know of many more who also prove that claim wrong.

Moreover, being abused is not a valid excuse to be an abuser. A lawyer tells a story about his client who tried to justify his domestic violence by saying he was abused as a child. The judge responded to the effect of, "then you should know even more than most people how very destructive and wrong it is".