Mudguard
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Posts posted by Mudguard
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22 hours ago, Kalbear said:
They should probably mention that as one of their goals, then.
ETA: I also don't think that it's clear that that's where they'll declare victory. Given this Israeli government and their goals I don't think it's really clear when they'll stop at all, and it is significantly in this government's interests to prolong it for as long as they can.
Israel has been very clear about their goals in Rafah, their goals of "destroying Hamas", and that they plan to occupy Gaza indefinitely. With respect to Rafah, they claim that there are some remaining battalions that they want to dismantle. I should add though that I think it will be very difficult to declare victory, at least complete victory, without recovering all the hostages. Almost every time Netanyahu gives a speech it's about how they are going to achieve a great victory. Personally, I think it's laughable to call what they've done a victory, but it's obviously a part of his propaganda strategy.
Dismantling the Rafah battalions, at least to an extent that they will declare the battalions dismantled, won't take more than a couple months, if they can operate freely in Rafah (bulk of civilians evacuated). It shouldn't be any different than what they've done in Gaza City and Khan Younis.
It's clear that Netanyahu desperately wants to declare some sort of victory as soon as possible. He just can't stop talking about it, and he needs a political win. But I also agree that Netanyahu would like for the conflict, whether its with Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other party, to extend past 2026. Maybe he'll claim victory over the Hamas army/organized fighting force/whatever it's called, like how Bush prematurely declared victory on an aircraft carrier, and shift the narrative to rescuing the remaining hostages and hunting down Sinwar and other leaders still in Gaza during the indefinite occupation phase of his strategy. The resistance in Gaza post "victory" is likely to be very active, and maybe that'll be enough conflict for Netanyahu.
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10 minutes ago, DMC said:
As Kal just emphasized, one can easily argue this is already the case - and elucidating a distinction between the current status quo and “functionally defeated” is inherently fuzzy.
I agree that "defeated" is a fuzzy term. But it's clear that Israel is going to only "victory" after it goes into Rafah and conducts an operation there. I think that it would be difficult to declare victory if they don't kill or capture Sinwar.
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21 hours ago, DMC said:
You continue to ignore the fact the Hamas leadership is not in Gaza.
Sinwar and other military leaders are still in Gaza. Also, if Hamas is functionally defeated in Gaza and rendered an underground resistance movement, it's not going to matter that much to Israel that a handful of political leaders have survived and are located outside of Gaza. If Israel really wants, they can then assassinate those leaders too. It's clear that they have no qualms about doing so.
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13 minutes ago, DMC said:
No. If they did think that, they wouldn’t still be negotiating. And frankly, this would’ve been over by now if that was possible. There will always be an insurgent force in Gaza as long as it is occupied and blockaded. That should be pretty obvious.
This was never going to be a quick war, with the extensive tunnel systems, all the hostages, and the ability of Hamas terrorists to just put on civilian clothes and blend right back in with the civilian population. I agree that there will be a resistance in Gaza, whether it's residual Hamas members or a new organization, but the resistance isn't going to be the party in power in Gaza, at least not while Israel occupies Gaza.
15 minutes ago, Zorral said:Whether Hamas is extremely weakened or not, at this point there are millions who will never, can never, forget what Israel has done to their families and Gaza. This means even more powerful, and some very sophisticated, power or even powers, will emerge, dependent upon damaging Israel.
Israel has made itself more unsafe than it has ever been before -- this particularly is so because it's lost support from the rest of the world. Except US, but when stinkin' pile and his ilks take over, Israel -- fergedd 'bout it!
Yeah, the terrible Oct. 7th attack by Hamas, and the brutal response by Israel, just perpetuates the cycle of violence for at least several more generations. It's hard for me to see a good outcome from this. It seems like all the likely outcomes range from bad to worse.
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9 minutes ago, DMC said:
No.
OK. Do you think that Israel can defeat Hamas so that Hamas is no longer a power in Gaza? Just want to make sure this isn't a matter of semantics. To me, destroy and defeat are the same in this context.
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2 minutes ago, DMC said:
That they can actually achieve that goal, yes, it’s plainly false. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be any negotiations between the parties in the first place.
I don't think Israel can actually eliminate every single member of Hamas. But I think they can functionally eliminate Hamas as a power in Gaza, and that they can eventually eliminate Sinwar and the other leadership that remains in Gaza. It's clear that Israel's goal is to destroy Hamas as a group functionally, and not literally every single member. Do you think Israel can functionally destroy Hamas?
As for the negotiations, I think a short term deal for some, but not all, of the hostages is possible. Also, Israel has incentives to go through the motions with the negotiations, even if they know that it's ultimately pointless, in order to appease internal groups that are demanding that they do everything possible to get back the hostages. It's going to take a while to recover the hostages by force, so they are going to have to keep participating in these negotiations, while continually blaming Hamas for being unreasonable for rejecting their proposals, in order to keep these groups at bay.
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Just now, Conflicting Thought said:
And to do that they need to genocide the palestinian people, awesome, and who is going to do something about israrl, wich country should occupy them to stop them.
To be clear, I don't support what Israel is doing in Gaza, but this is currently where I see things heading. Israel and Netanyahu in particular have every incentive to destroy Hamas, regardless of the cost to the Palestinian people. The only thing that would change this is if Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire, which I don't see happening. Netanyahu's coalition would collapse if he tried going down that route, and there has been no indication that they are even willing to consider a permanent ceasefire.
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3 minutes ago, DMC said:
You’re plainly under a wrong impression here. No point in arguing a flagrantly false premise.
What false premise? That Israel is going to destroy Hamas, which is their stated goal?
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1 minute ago, DMC said:
This is based on assumptions that don’t consider the stark reality that Israel’s actions have created willing and able replacements. Regardless, I’m not sure how a six week ceasefire as opposed to Israel’s explicitly intended next action leads to more dead Hamas.
They can’t force them, no, but they have the practical means to apply pressure. Hence, leverage.
That's why Israel needs to occupy Gaza indefinitely, to continually suppress these new Hamas replacement groups. Israel is well aware of this.
They have meaningless leverage, which is functionally no leverage. Hamas is facing an existential threat, and any meaningful leverage needs address that. Something that ensures the survival of the group, otherwise what is the point?
Which is why I can't see Hamas accepting the current proposal. Why would they agree to a proposal that leads to their destruction?
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1 minute ago, DMC said:
I don’t understand why you think the proposal will lead to the Hamas leadership’s destruction.
Egypt’s cooperation is critical to actually delivering the aid such an agreement would provide. Hamas may only care about that for selfish reasons, sure, but these aren’t hypotheticals I’m pulling out of my ass. There are very obvious and realpolitik reasons the state department is engaging with Egypt and Qatar as proxies.
The proposal will lead to the destruction of Hamas as an organization. Under the current proposal on the table now, the Hamas leadership currently outside of Gaza will live on, but be in charge of nothing. Israel's stated goal is to destroy Hamas, which they will be able to complete much more easily once they have all the hostages back. It will be trivial to flood all the tunnels, which they have already telegraphed that they want to do. After that, it will just be a matter of time for them to functionally eliminate Hamas from Gaza. They will have to essentially occupy Gaza indefinitely afterwards, which is something else they've stated that they will do.
Sure, of course the US needs to work through Egypt and Qatar, because we don't have a direct line of communication with Hamas. But I don't think either Egypt or Qatar has meaningful leverage that they can apply to Hamas to force them to accept the current agreement that is being proposed.
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Just now, DMC said:
…what I just said in Qatar’s case. Allowing their leadership to reside there. That’s just about as crucial leverage as you can get.
Yeah, I edited my post to address that. If Israel's proposal included a term that allowed leadership to exit Gaza safely in return for the hostages, that would be something, although everything I've read suggests Sinwar has no interest in leaving and would prefer to be become a martyr. But if that's not in the proposal, it's meaningless if they move their HQ to Egypt if Israel just destroys Hamas after they get all their hostages back.
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1 minute ago, DMC said:
Again, the leverage is via the intermediaries, namely Egypt and Qatar. Case in point, there is speculation Hamas leadership may be shopping for new headquarters due to frustration with Qatar’s pressure.
Again, my issue is with how you present your arguments as authoritative. Of course it’s not backed up by facts. That’s my problem, and you asked.
What leverage does Egypt and Qatar have that they are applying on Hamas?
ETA: I don't see a new HQ as meaningful leverage when the proposed agreement leads to their destruction.
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3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:
Yes, this whole thing is awful. And while I agree w/ what you said there’s one minor point I disagree with. Given how dire the need for aid is in Palestine, they (they as in every country that jumped on this bandwagon, there are many) should not have withheld funds at all. They should have made a statement demanding a full independent investigation and warning of immediate withholding of funds if the case against UNRWA/its employees was made. Alas, too late now. Germany has resumed its funding and iirc this bill was voted down or not put forth in the house? This is probably all wrong but I do remember hearing about it but as usual it was buried and given no attention by the media. I also remember that b/c it didn’t go through it meant that at best the us funding could potentially resume next year? Or be voted/presented again next year? Sorry, that could all be wrong too!
Yeah, I would have preferred that we never stopped funding to begin with, but I can understand the reasoning behind a temporary pause. There should have been a demand for Israel to provide evidence for their broader allegations in an expedited manner, with failure to do so triggering an automatic restoration of funding. If they gave Israel a couple weeks or maybe a month to do that, I don't think the pause would have hurt operations, since UNRWA had money in the bank and couple operate for a while on their reserves. But it's been many months now.
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7 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:
The US is withholding funding to UNRWA since 3 minutes after Israel said UNRWA had loads of HAMAS people among its employees - a claim that was nonsense from the get and has been debunked since. Coincidentally, that accusation from Israel came 3 minutes after the ICJ taking on South Africa’s case of possible genocide.
ETA: I agree with you re HAMAS probably not seeing much in returning the hostages and the war resuming.
Yeah, I disagree with the US refusal to restore funding to the UNRWA at this point. I can understand a temporary pause given the initial allegation and report. I think there was credible evidence provided on a small number of UNRWA workers, maybe roughly 10 workers. But Israel has failed to provide any evidence to support their claim that more than a thousand UNRWA employees were Hamas. It's been months now, so it's well past time to dismiss that allegation and restore funding.
Many countries have restored funding. I'm not sure why the US is still refusing. I hope it's not to use as leverage in negotiations, because that would mean that we are deliberately contributing to the starvation of Palestinian civilians in an effort to apply leverage to Hamas, something I would find morally abhorrent.
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3 hours ago, DMC said:
Because the posts speak with a type of authority that is wholly bereft of informed analysis. The ceasefire deal on the table right now is not permanent and the Biden administration absolutely has leverage with Hamas via intermediaries. Otherwise the talks wouldn’t have advanced as far as they have.
I don't think the US has much leverage on Hamas. What leverage does the US have? We could restore funding to the UNRWA I suppose, but I don't really see much else that we can use as leverage. And withholding funding to the UNRWA to use as leverage would be morally questionable, so I hope we aren't doing that.
From Hamas' point of view, there is little reason to agree to a temporary ceasefire in return for all the hostages. Once they return all the hostages, Israel will have free reign to flood all the tunnels, and really go after Hamas without any restraints. Maybe there could be an agreement for some of the hostages, but not all unless there is a permanent ceasefire. Otherwise, they would be agreeing to their own destruction, which makes zero sense.
Since this last proposal doesn't include a permanent ceasefire, I don't think Hamas will agree to the terms. They'll just reiterate the same demands for a permanent ceasefire that they have repeated for months now.
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6 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:
Was a bit surprised to see headline in Huffpost that Putin didnt order a Navalny death according to U.S. intelligence.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-russia-navalny-putin_n_662f6b1ee4b09dcb783058ea
Its a distinction without merit imo. Even if he didnt "order" his death, he certainly made all the condition for his demise possible and holds responsibility for the death.
I would take these reports with a huge grain of salt. Unnamed sources and a lack of hard evidence don't provide me with any confidence in the alleged conclusion, which seems to me to be little better than mere speculation. I also question why this unnamed source would leak such information absolving Putin of a potential crime. I don't have access to the original Wall St. Journal report, but I can't imagine that this conclusion had a high degree of certainty behind it.
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13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:
Assuming they still exist.
I guess things haven't got so bad that there are not reliable purveyors of objective information about world political events. But the number of such institutions seems to be a lot less than it used to. Either that or the biases and ideological influences were always there but are more obvious now.
Yeah, even the so called reliable news sources can be wrong sometimes, and they can certainly have their biases. But at least they supposedly have an internal fact checking system in place, which is a big step up from posts on social media.
To me, citing a Twitter post is essentially no different than citing a random Reddit post as an authority or factual source of information. Sure, it could be accurate, but it could also easily be complete bullshit, and I have no interest in trying to fact check a Twitter post or any other type of post on social media. It boggles my mind that so many people get their news from Twitter, Facebook, Ticktock, etc. Even the NYT and other major news sources cited a Twitter post from an alleged ex-government image analyst for his conclusions on the Israeli strike on Iran. I hate this practice, but I see it more and more often.
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16 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:
is that what wert did?
He cited a twitter post from some guy called AbuAliEnglish or something.
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7 hours ago, Gorn said:
I agree that being sceptical is a healthy attitude on today's internet, but I consider AP to be a reputable source:
Plus, if you want to verify for yourself, you can always purchase a Planet Labs subscription and go right to the source.
Saw something similar in the NYT.
That's good enough for me. I'd rather wait for reporting from a reputable news source rather than scouring Twitter for random tweets.
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7 hours ago, Werthead said:
US satellite photos now show that the radar control system for Isfahan's S-300/400 defence complex has been levelled. The Israeli attack did succeed in destroying the target as claimed.
Not convinced. First, why should I believe a Twitter post from AbuAliEnglish? Never heard of the guy, and as a general rule, I don't take anything from Twitter as factual. There's way too much misinformation on Twitter. He also cites a Saudi blogger for this photo, but doesn't provide a link to the original source.
The after photo is heavily photoshopped, with dramatically different level changes. Show us an image with similar color and light dark levels.
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3 hours ago, Werthead said:
Some analysis now that Israel was targeting the early warning detection radar in Isfahan which is tasked with picking up incoming missiles aimed at the Natanz nuclear facility. Unofficial US analysis is that the radar system was completely destroyed through three direct hits from air-launched cruise missiles. Iran's AA systems failed to engage until the missiles were practically on top of the target.
I saw a report that asserted this on ABC News, but none of the other major news networks that I looked at are reporting this. There should be satellite imagery of the destroyed radar base if this is true, so I remain skeptical. If we don't get satellite imagery in the next day or so, I would assume that the report is incorrect.
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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:
A story just popped up on Google saying that in Trump’s trial jury selection two corporate lawyers have been picked out of the 7 chosen so far. That could get really interesting. Traditionally lawyers are not chosen for juries.
I made it onto a jury as a lawyer. The area of law I specialize in was different than the relevant law in the case, and that looks to be the case in the Trump trial as well. I don't think it's a problem to have lawyers on juries. As a juror, I'd just be there as a fact finder and to answer the questions set forth in the jury instructions, just like any of the other jurors.
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7 minutes ago, ljkeane said:
If we're talking about a fission bomb it took the British about 5 years to build one after the US cut them out of sharing nuclear weapons technology. I'm sure Canada has people who know exactly how to make one so the limitation is having enough plutonium but if it took less than 10 years with 1940s technology I can't see it taking 10 years or more with current technology.
The UK had been working on their own nuclear bomb technology, and then worked in conjunction with the US for a time during WW2, before they were cut off by the US. From start to finish it took the UK more than 10 years to develop a nuclear bomb. And they had some of the top nuclear physicists of the time working on the project.
I don't think Canada and similar countries have access to any top secret nuclear bomb building technology. They have access to the same publicly available information that is available to everyone. Iran, for example, should have access to the same information that Canada has, excluding information the countries obtained through their own nuclear weapons research. If it was that easy to make nuclear weapons, Iran should have developed a bomb long ago.
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Just now, A Horse Named Stranger said:
I think the testing requirement isn't as high as it used to be. Computer simulations will go a very long way.
You might want a to do a test, to make sure it works as designed. But I'd argue you could get to a functioning bomb without a live test nowadays.
No chance in hell in producing your first bomb without any actual testing. Computer simulations are only as good as the models used in the simulation, and with an untested design, your first model is going to be pretty garbage. As you test your designs and get data, you can improve your models. The reason why the USA can rely heavily on models nowadays is because we did extensive real world testing and accumulated tons of data that we can use to refine our models.
- Prince of the North and Gorn
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2
International Events : How I learnt to stop worrying and love the-
in General Chatter
Posted
I don't see anything in that article, which is essentially the same as all the others I've read recently, that suggests that the US is backing a permanent ceasefire. All I see is that the US has stated that Hamas should accept the last proposal from Israel, which is a trade of all hostages for a temporary ceasefire. The only thing the US has asked Israel to do is to protect/evacuate the civilians in Rafah before they commence major operations in Rafah.
I also don't see anything that suggests that Netanyahu is considering accepting a permanent ceasefire. Acceptance of a permanent ceasefire would mean the end of his coalition, new elections, and the early end of his reign as prime minister.