Good for Sara Nelson. Public comment is all well and good, but when you overstep your boundaries, there are consequences.

Umm getting pregnant is an awfully huge side effect of any drug, but not surprised the medical establishment did not have impact on the fertility cycle/women on their radar before it shipped to mass market. D’oh!

@1: Thank you.

Since there's going to be a round of "Haha, you endorsed an uncommitted vote and only got 2 delegates!" and "What good are those uncommitted delegates anyway?" this morning, let's all take a look at two stories just a little ways apart. The Biden administration's tone on Gaza shifted significantly after the uncommitted delegates push in Michigan, and the continued push in other states. Regardless of the total numbers of uncommitted delegates, it sure looks like you can draw a straight line between that story and the US allowing a cease-fire resolution to pass the UN Security Council.

Yes, it's theoretically possible the administration's tone and policy would have changed anyway. But the optics of the situation are that the uncommitted delegates push changed US policy. And that has value.

"Antibiotics
in livestock typically
results in rapid weight gain,
which is useful for restaurants."

plus it looks Good
on their Patrons

if they don't get
a Superbug
from Hell
first.

chick-fill-Lay
you say?

omg
magas?

4: Yes, and the government of Norway formally declared war against Japan in July 1945 and Japan surrendered in August, so we can make a straight line argument that the Norwegians won the war in the Pacific. Thank you Norway!

what more Perfect
time for boeing to get
the Community on its Board:

Union Employees to start
Passenger groups too
the EU does it. Airbus
planes aren't falling
out of the Sky why
not here too?

what've go to Lose?

Stakeholders
over shareholders
ain't The American Way
but is the Terlet actually Better?

will They allow it
or is Capitalism
solely bent on
Destruction?

@3
Let’s be generous and say the Uncommitted Crusaders brought about a shift in the Biden Administrations stance.
Did it result in the desired outcome in Gaza?
No, because Netanyahu doesn’t care.
Maybe if Biden suddenly stopped the flow of money he’d listen. But Biden isn’t going to do that.
So go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, but you accomplished nothing.

@3: You understand the main issue was making the cease-fire contingent upon Hamas returning any hostages they haven’t yet killed, right? Once that was done, the United States withdrew opposition to the cease-fire resolution. (If Hamas delays implementation of the cease-fire by not releasing all hostages, I’m sure the cease-fire advocates will take to the streets to demonstrate against Hamas, right?)

@6, @8: The “uncommitted” crowd lives in a world where long-standing discord between bitter opponents get resolved immediately after — and only immediately after! — voters in some faraway place enact an obscure parliamentary maneuver.

@9 What the US does matters very much to the politics of the US. What the US does also matters very much to the politics of Israel and may or may not speed Netanyahu's demise as a political leader.

Go ahead and show the total civilian casualties from drone strikes by year. Since total drone strikes are near zero in Yemen since 2020 and in Pakistan since 2013, I'm expecting you'll find (once again) that you're wrong in implying that the drone war is continuing. Oh, and the last drone strike in Yemen was in 2023, and killed two militants and no civilians.

https://www.newamerica.org/future-security/reports/americas-counterterrorism-wars/the-war-in-yemen/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/428351/civilians-killed-from-us-drone-strikes-in-pakistan/

@10 Go ahead and provide some evidence for those statements. Ideally, you'd go ahead and pull the text of draft resolutions that failed, plus the resolution that passed. You know, because you demand that other people back up their assertions.

@11: Of course! Being a good liberal, always ready to help the less-fortunate, I’ll eagerly inform you on the most basic recent details of the matter upon which you freely chose to comment.

‘The U.S. objected to past cease-fire resolutions because the language did not also address the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Most recently, Russia and China voted to veto a U.S.-led resolution Friday for an "immediate and sustained cease-fire" that also condemned Hamas for the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

‘U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield pointed to the latest resolution's lack of language condemning Hamas as the primary reason the U.S. did not vote in favor of it. She blamed Hamas for the failure to achieve a cease-fire agreement, which has been under negotiation for weeks.

‘"We did not agree with everything in the resolution, for that reason we were unfortunately not able to vote yes," Thomas-Greenfield said. "However, as I've said before, we fully support some of the critical objectives in this non-binding resolution, and we believe it was important for the council to speak out and make clear that our cease-fire − any cease-fire − must come with the release of all hostages."’

(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/25/un-security-council-gaza-cease-fire-approved-resolution/73091449007/)

@12 Weird. So you asking that I provide links to back up my assertions is evidence of me acting in bad faith. Me asking you to provide links to back up your assertions is me being ignorant. How convenient for you. Must be nice to live in a land where you're always right and anyone who questions you is either stupid or wrong.

As for this not being a change? Well, that's not based in reality either. You see, there's significant changes in the language related to cease fires, while the language related to hostages has remained unchanged. This is the first time that the UNSC has demanded a cease fire. Both prior resolutions demanded release of hostages.

Resolution 2712 (11/15/23) would only go so far as to call for extended humanitarian pauses to allow for evacuation of civilians. Resolution 2720 (12/22/23) didn't even go that far. Resolution 2728 (today) specifically demands a cease-fire for the rest of Ramadan.

Remind me again who doesn't understand how this works?

https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n23/359/02/pdf/n2335902.pdf?token=cMw4D0keuIZib6WZav&fe=true
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n23/424/87/pdf/n2342487.pdf?token=ZGImTFCRaFwxZ2yrA1&fe=true
https://www.jns.org/full-text-un-security-council-resolution-2728/

And this resolution was so meaningless and so little change that Israel has canceled Netanyahu's top advisors' visit to DC.

Oh, and the Israeli ambassador to the UN decried the resolution because the demanded cease fire isn't conditional on the release of hostages. So apparently the link between the cease fire and the release of hostages is pretty tenuous.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/25/middleeast/un-security-council-gaza-israel-ceasefire-intl/index.html

@13: You’d challenged this statement: “…the main issue was making the cease-fire contingent upon Hamas returning any hostages they haven’t yet killed, right? Once that was done, the United States withdrew opposition to the cease-fire resolution.”

In response to your challenge, I provided a string of three consecutive paragraphs, which begins and ends with the statements, ‘The U.S. objected to past cease-fire resolutions because the language did not also address the Israeli hostages in Gaza. … “… any cease-fire − must come with the release of all hostages.”’ Apparently this just wasn’t enough, somehow.

Meanwhile, your proof that “uncommitted” had fuck-all to do with any of this consists entirely of self-important wishful thinking, plus the post hoc fallacy.

@15 And the Israeli ambassador to the UN thinks that the release of hostages is not contingent on the release of hostages. That's one of their major complaints. So that should be the first clue that you're wrong. The second requires you to actually, you know, read and understand the paragraph that you think backs you up. USA Today said:

'The U.S. objected to past cease-fire resolutions because the language did not also address the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Most recently, Russia and China voted to veto a U.S.-led resolution Friday for an "immediate and sustained cease-fire" that also condemned Hamas for the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.'

You said, "You understand the main issue was making the cease-fire contingent upon Hamas returning any hostages they haven’t yet killed, right? Once that was done, the United States withdrew opposition to the cease-fire resolution."

The resolution did not make the cease fire contingent on release of hostages. It demanded both a cease fire and release of hostages. If release of hostages was contingent, it would have demanded a cease fire after release of hostages. The distinction is important, if nothing else for Hamas' willingness to accept the cease fire deal. And you'll note that the first sentence of the USA Today paragraph quoted above doesn't say that the US wanted the cease fire contingent on release of hostages, just that the resolution had to address both.

What's worse, seeing an change in US policy that coincides in time with a change in political support within the party, or just making shit up? I'm going with the latter.

@17 Huh. A similar version of the same take showed up in another forum I frequent last week. Must be the talking points coming out. It's also a take completely divorced from reality. Maybe you remember a few protests in Seattle in 2004/2005 about civilian casualties in Iraq? Or was your system not activated then? Maybe the LLM just doesn't read that far back. Anyway, the Brown study divides the 900K direct war deaths up by conflict as follows. I've added notes about whether there were protests in Seattle against those actions.

Afghanistan: 176K Seattle Protests? Yes
Pakistan: 67K Seattle Protests? No search hits with protests specifically about Pakistan
Iraq: 300K Seattle Protests? Yes
Syria/ISIS*: 269K Seattle Protests? Yes
Yemen: 112K Seattle Protests? Yes
Other: 1K Seattle Protests? Hard to say since we don't know where they were.

Note that in Syria, US-backed armed groups killed roughly this number. The people they were fighting (ISIS and Assad) killed roughly 2 million people.

So you're complaining that the drone strikes in Pakistan didn't get their own protest, even though there were likely elements protesting strikes in Pakistan as part of the protests against involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Or maybe you're complaining that people who have seen wars where a lot of civilians getting killed might think that another war where a lot of civilians are getting killed is a bad idea. That clearly makes us all monsters. Why, we're trying to learn from history!

Pro tip: I've gone to infinitely more Iraq War protests than Gaza War protests. And there were millions of people asking "At what cost?"

@19 Why have the protests about the war in Afghanistan stopped? Golly, it's so hard to tell. Hmmmmmm. Let me think a moment. Aha! Maybe it's because the war is over? Naw, that's probably not it.

How effective were the protests at changing policy? By the 2004 election, W's job approval had dropped 20% since the post-9/11 peak. He barely pulled out a majority of the popular vote and the smallest winning total in the Electoral College for an incumbent since Wilson. By 2006, dissatisfaction with the course of the Iraq War was one of the top three issues that caused a major Democratic wave in Congressional and state elections. But you're also asking the wrong question. The protests didn't cause a change in public opinion. A change in public opinion mobilized people to the protests.

Remind me again when the last time a US president used the phrase War on Terror? Hint: Two presidents ago. And aren't you the one who's all het up about the need to kill all the terrorists? I think the old AI needs a little tuneup to be intellectually consistent.

The section about the ceasefire contains inaccurate information. Please issue a correction so that readers are properly informed.

First, it implies that the resolution says "permanent ceasefire" when the resolution actually says "lasting sustainable ceasefire". https://www.jns.org/full-text-un-security-council-resolution-2728/

Second, there was a request to change that section of text, but it came from Russia asking the text to be changed to "permanent", not from the US asking it to be changed away from permanent. The US did previously ask for a condemnation of the October 7 attack to be added to the resolution and abstained in part because it was not. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147931

@16: Ok, you seem to be completely hung up on my use of a big word that you don’t understand. So, in deference to you, I’ll avoid using it, and instead use simpler terms.

If the UN resolution calls for both a ceasefire and release of hostages, and Hamas does not release the hostages, then Hamas, not Israel, bears responsibility for any lack of ceasefire. Now, you and Kristo’ and the ambulance-blocking crowd simply don’t care, because there’s no way you’ll assign any blame to Hamas no matter what Hamas actually does, but from the point of view of diplomacy, world public opinion, etc., it will be Hamas, not Israel, which scuttled the UN’s ceasefire resolution.

Yes, Israel’s ambassador threw at temper tantrum at the US not-veto of a UN Resolution critical of Israel, but as you failed to notice, this non-veto did not cause Israel to withdraw from the negotiations in Qatar. Instead, they remained so that Hamas could reject an American proposal:

‘The breakdown in discussions occurred after Hamas rejected a potential U.S.-led compromise deal on Monday, posting a statement to Telegram reiterating its demands for, among other things, a “comprehensive cease-fire” and Israel’s “withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” which the group said Israel did not adequately address, according to the Jerusalem Post.‘

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesfarrell/2024/03/26/cease-fire-negotiations-hit-stalemate-as-israeli-team-reportedly-leaves-doha/amp/)

Thus, Hamas now takes the blame for the problems at the negotiations in Qatar, and will take the blame for any failure of the ceasefire, if it continues holding the women and children it kidnapped. (Why, it’s almost as if there was a successful American diplomatic effort to show good faith in Hamas at both the UN and in Qatar, so any failure at either would tend to isolate Hamas.)

But by all means, continue to recite, “post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” as you insist this was REALLY all about some obscure parliamentary maneuvering in a part of America regarded as hopelessly looney-left by most Americans (if, indeed, they regard it at all).

fuck the entire middle east; shit hole countries full of oil rich murderers and their victim mentality victims.

and fuck these pain meds