homura1650 @ homura1650 @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

For now. Unfourtuantly, that is not the way wars work.

First of all, Hezbolla is part of the Lebanese government (and has a more powerful military than Lebanon proper), so the chance of Lebanon supporting an Israeli campaign against Hezbolla is effectively nil.

Second of all, Israel is clearly on an escalatory ladder since October 7, and has shown no interest in getting off. The conflict between Israel and Hezbolla has been a thing since Hezbollas founding, and has escalated to wars before. However, this latest round of conflict is clearly an escallation of the war in Gaza. An escallation that both Israel and Hezbolla keep poking at.

Unless Israel changes its stance, this is not going to end with a war in Lebanon. Remember Iran? Back in April, Israel launched a largely unprovoked attack on Iran in Syria, killing a fairly high ranking member of Iran's military (along with others, including some Syrian civilians).

In addition to being a potential war crime (they bombed a diplomatic building, although there is an argument that the details make it allowed under intetnational law), this was also simply an act of war against Syria and Iran. 2 countries that Israel is not at war with, and which are clearly not interested in going to war.

Syrua let Israel off with a finger wagging. Iran let Israel off with a telegraphed missile strike that they knew had a high chance of being completely intercepted. Or at least they tried to, But Israel couldn't take the win, and so launched another strike against Iran. Similar to Iran, Israel calculated this one to be limited. However, unlike Israel, Iran took the opportunity to back off.

Netenyahu specifically has been trying to start a war with Iran for decades, and is now actively escalating with Iranian proxies.

From the US perspective, this is frustrating because this is exactly what we have been warning Israel about, and exactly what Israel has been ignoring us about. You could argue that October 7 and the subsequent war are a consequence of decades of Israeli policy combided with a tactical/intelligence failure allowing the specific attack to succeed.

However the current round of escallation with Hezbolla is a direct and predictable consequence of the strategic decisions that Israel has made in responce to October 7. Strategic decisions that the entire world had cautioned them against. Strategic decisions that senior IDF leaders have admitted cannot possibly achieve their objectives.

When this escalates into a full scale regional war with Iran, that will also have been a consequence of Israeli strategic decisions. And the US will again be asked to bail them out

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice

The axiom of choice asserts that it is possible to pick an arbitrary element from every set. Most of mathametics accepts this. However constructivist math does not.

Life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 190 years, and the defendent waves almost all of his appeal rights. All of that without needing to go through the efforst, expense, and trauma of a trial. The prosecutors were only able to get this deal because the case against them was so strong.

There is no law that says you can't have 17.

Yes there is. It is the Judiciary Act of 1869.

Line item vetoes are one thing (which I oppose, but can understand).

The veto in question turns "2024-25" into "2425"

Looking the the Wisconsin constitution, there seems to be 2 relevant sections:

The first is the authority for partial vetoes.

Appropriations may be approved in whole or in part by the chief executive officer.

In my opinion, this already does not authorize, the type of creative vetoing the governor tried.

However, the constitution goes on to clarify:

In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill.

It would take an obtusely literal reading of these provisions to allow for striking individual digits and puncuation marks to create new numbers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi_unannotated

They probably don't do grocery shopping or pay attention that closely to their household finances. My guess would be most of them have a spouse who is aware of the increasing prices.

Random anecdote time. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my parents and commented on how my fridge had a stupid amount of corn since the store was practically giving it away (post memorial day. They must have overestimated the holiday surge). The conversation went to how we couldn't husk the corn in stores anymore (post covid), and my dad was adament they changed the policy to increase the weight and therefore cost.

Except, at least around here, corn is not and has never in my life been sold by weight. He had just been in the grocery store so rarely that he does not know how corn is sold. Since they have enough income to absorb the cost, he probably wouldn't be aware of the increase if not for hearing about inflation on the news.

Because there has not been a draft since the 70s, where automatic registration was not feasible.

The entire logic of the Court's opinion rests on the fact that bump stocks still use a seperate trigger action per shot. They just cause the trigger to automatically trigger against a stationary finger instead of the shooter needing to manually actuate their trigger finger.

Is this an obtusely litteral reading of a law that was clearly intended to be more broadly interpreted? Probably. But it is a reading with a majority support on the court, so we are stuck with it until congress amends the law.

There is plenty of room to debate tradeoffs in patient care. However, the policy was to perform a check every 15 minutes overnight. Not great for sleep quality and, all else being equal, a net negative for mental health. However, it does prevent a long tail of serious negative outcomes (such as, potentially, this death). There are a bunch of healthcare circumstances where sleep quality is sacrificed in favor of other concerns.

In this particular case, in addition to all of the normal concerns the facility would have, this girl was:

• on a new medication
• nauseous
• unwell enough that she cut a phone call short to go to bed early (which sounds like was out of character for her)

Those are all red flags that her condition should be monitored closet than normal.

Hamas is a terrorist organization that "we" have almost no leverage over.

Israel is a democracy that we have significant leverage over.

Put another way, the "serious" calls for harder policy from the US to Israel is to condition some of the military aid. The reasom no one is calling for something similar with Hamas is that we are not giving Hamas military aid.

The only aid western countries are giving to Gaza (and, by nessesity Hamas) is humanitarian aid. And international law is very clear that conditioning that is not acceptable.

If you are Iranian elite reading this, then you have no business blaming Israel, since Hamas is the one in your sphere.

It is 34 counts, but still only a single crime. It is more analgous to robbing a single house once, but taking 34 items. Given how the bussiness records law are written, each false record is a seperate crime, but they were all done as part of the same scheme.

This is pretty common in criminal law. It is suprisingly difficult to commit only 1 crime.

Only anti-semite would acuse Bibi of lying.

Just ask the Israeli attorney general who, in 2019, indicted him on bribery and fraud charges.

And Israel obviously has the most moral military in the world. Just ask their minister of national security: convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir. Specifically, he has been convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. He also never served in the IDF, because the IDF thought he was too extreme.

The US has largly privatized regulation. Where most countries would have a government agency enforce the law, the US tends to give individuals the right to sue to do so. This means that the rewards need to be high enough to both incentize lawsuits, and make up for the cases that don't get brought.

In this case, according to the appalet court [0], the compensatory damages were only $175k. The rest of the judgment cane from $4m in punitive damages, and about $560 in attorney's fees.

[0] https://mediaassets.kshb.com/NWT/Sam/Opinion_WD85778.pdf

Just because someone says something does not make it true.

Opposition leader Lapid has indicated that he intends to support Netenyahu if his coalition falls apart due to the deal. Of course, such transactional support offers tend to be fical, and Netanyahu needs perpetual support in order to avoid jail on corruption charges.

Unfourtuantly, such a realignment (or, at least the threat of one) to a more centrist coalition is the only plausible path to a deal.

Kicking the can down the road in Gaza has been Israeli policy for over a decade. The strategy is called "mowing the grass". The idea being you can destroy the terrorist of the week's tactical ability to strike and buy Israel a few years of peace. Repeat this cycle every few years until ???, then magically resolve the issue.

This failed catastrophically on October 7, because the typical cycle of Gazan attack happened to allign with a catastrophic security failure on the part of Israel.

The question remains: what comes next. The US's complaint from October 8 on has been that Israel has no day-after plan. Without a day after plan, all that destroying Hamas will accomplish is have the next round be conducted by a terrorist group not called Hamas.

Every tactical move Israel makes today harms its strategic position for the day after plan. At the beginning of the war, some strategic concessions were needed to adress the very real tactical concerns. But there are massively diminishing returns.

So, the "Israeli" proposal Biden was talking about is not supported by Israel.

On this specific issue, I'm not even mad at Israel. The US is free to offer potential deals. But it does not get to unilaterally declare that one side has agreed to it.

The story would be different if Israel had a history of listening to the US and caring about its image. In that case, establishing a narrative that it is an Israeli deal would put pressure Israel to accept it; as the alternative would be to loose face internationally and embarres and hurt the credibility of their ally. Even in that case, it would be a tough call, because that kind of hard ball burns a lot of political capital. However, that is a moot point, as Israel has clearly demonstrated those concerns are not a major factor in its decision making.

As to the merits of Israel's decision to reject the deal. The complete military defeat of Hamas is a practical impossibility. At best, you will get a hollow victory where something forms under a different name.

Netenyahu does list a more restricted goal:

the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities

What you are left with is pure terrorism. No counterparty you can negotiate with. No internal counterbalance that cares about civilian concerns (aa week as those voices are already within Hamas). Just a loose knit enemy with no interrest other than violence, and no capacity to surrender.

Whats more, even in principle, Netenyahu's position is incompatible with any negotiation. A deal entered into with an organization that has no military or governmental abilities is worthless. Hamas would have no capability to enforce the deal.

Maybe I'm too used to deciphering GovSpeak, but the report does not obsolve Israel of anything.

The article quotes the report in saying:

[The department does not] currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance [in Gaza]

However, that is a very selective quote, that is not at all what the report says.

The actual quote reads:

While the USG has had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed significantly to a lack of sustained and predictable delivery of needed assistance at scale, and the overall level reaching Palestinian civilians – while improved – remains insufficient, we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance within the meaning of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.

Which translates into: "Israel is definitely obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid. However, since US law says that puts restrictions on us, we talked to our lawyers who found a way for us to say that they are not"

They are not even being subtle about it. The only way the state department could have been any clearer would be to say "current policy is a clear violation of the Foreign Assistance Act". And a US agency is never going to say that.

Blinken is releasing the reports thr president wants released. The actual intelligence is provided in classified reports provided to the president and some members of Congress. What gets made public is a policy decision that flows down from the top.

Short term yes, but it is a strategic risk long term.

Part of the reason Democrats are turning on Netenyahu (and, by association, Israel) is genuine policy concerns and grassroot pressure.

However, another part of his problem with Democrats is that he has spent the past decade inserting himself into US politics as a Republican alligned figure. That both makes Democratic politicians more willing to oppose him, and gives the Democratic base a permission structure for opposing him.