In all honesty I am not in a position to say yea or nay to Hegsteff being approved. I have not done a review of his career or past, on those scores I bow to Jessica Orsini. I note only what I stated before that the senators I heard were playing "Gotcha" which is not something to be proud of.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - 05:47 pm: Edit

Hegseth was picked to be a disruptor, someone to come in and force change. That, in the eyes of Trump, is more important than being 20 years older and the CEO of a billion dollar corporation that would push to keep the old ideas.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - 08:33 pm: Edit

For what it’s worth, I would have picked Jack Keane, not Pete.

It was shameful that senators kept asking Pete about stuff that never happened instead of focusing on his arguably insufficient resume. Their primary objection was to who nominated him.

It does appear that Pete will be confirmed.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 12:36 am: Edit

The EU pays 13 million euros annually to fish in Greenland EEZ.
I don’t know what others pay but it not going to total anywhere near $591 million.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 10:07 am: Edit

Keane would have done a fine job, if he's up for it (he's 81).

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 02:58 pm: Edit

Various annoucements coming out that a Ceasefire has been agree for Gaza - commencing 19th January 2025.

Seems the US ('Biden and Trump' teams acting as one), Egypt, Israel and Qatar - plus what ever 'team exists from Gaza' no doubt (as I not sure who from Hamas is left??) have agreed the deal.

Fingers crossed it holds and the 3 stages get completed.

One down - three to go (West Bank, Lebanon and Ukraine).

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 05:26 pm: Edit

Hamas will now start admitting the hostages are dead, or most of them, but will indicate that the Israelis killed them while Hamas was protecting them.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 12:32 am: Edit

Recent changes in the Knesset sidelined a group of eight hardliners (nominally led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir) who opposed any deal; their votes are no longer can bring down Netanyahu's government. As such, a deal that is substantially the same as the one that was laid out in May but was rejected (Ben Gvir has bragged about shooting down that one and others) was able to go through this time.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 12:42 am: Edit

So, Hamas still exist. Hard to believe after the IDF worked on the Gaza as some gigantic rototiller. Still, that was as I expected from start really.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 02:13 am: Edit

The deal agreed to follows the format of the one that's been bouncing around since at least May, but contains very significant differences (e.g., it does not "end the war").

Hamas has reportedly recruited 20,000 new warriors to replace the ones killed or jailed. They just need to smuggle in 20,000 Kalashnikovs.

The Israelis and Arabs all say that the only reason a deal happened now was the threat that Trump was going to do something really significant (including giving Israel a bunch of new weapons and a free hand) if no deal happened by Monday. If the May deal was going to be accepted as is, it would have been accepted last June.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 02:41 am: Edit

"(including giving Israel a bunch of new weapons and a free hand)"

If the deal was the same from 9 months ago..... I assume there would have been a flip side of risk to Israel - what would the Israeli's have been worried about?

(I can only guess 'recognition of a Palestinian State' was the worst outcome for Israel - but that does seem very unlikely, even if the US was that annoyed over something Israel has done?? So what would would Israel enough to take this deal?)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 02:46 am: Edit

Israel took the deal because the war has to end eventually and the political pressure to recover the hostages was not going to be patient much longer.

Israel would have taken THIS deal nine months ago if Hamas would have accepted it, but then, they would have accepted the original Biden deal if Hamas had. But in those months, Hamas was even more badly disrupted, Hezbollah was neutralized, Iran had its air defense network destroyed, and Trump forced Hamas to agree. Remember that just because the May24 deal and Jan25 deal were 80% similar, credit for forcing Hamas goes to the new US administration, not the old one. Under a different election scenario, Hamas would still be holding out for what amounts to Israel abandoning its war aims.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 02:52 am: Edit

A few things about the deal.

Israel gets 33 hostages, of whom 23 are alive, over six weeks.

THEN if the negotiations work out, they get the rest of the hostages over another few weeks.

Hamas has broken every deal it ever made.

Hamas is still there, not destroyed.

Hamas can always take more hostages.

The UN is still corrupt, incompetent (800 truckloads of supplies Israel allowed in have never been distributed), and totally anti-Israel.

The West Bank is still a hotbed of trouble -- it just doesn't have access to a pipeline of smuggled weapons and a steady supply of building materials that can be diverted from housing to tunnelling.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 06:08 am: Edit

Sky News, Australia, is reporting now that the hostage deal has been paused. the Israeli PM, announced that Hamas has backed out of the deal.

Hamas at the last minute demanded that they decide which of the prisoners held by Israel would be released. This was not agreed to, so Hamas (once again) reneged on a diplomatic agreement.

Big surprise.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 03:00 pm: Edit

Special Operations: Hybrid Warfare
January 15, 2025: NATO countries are alarmed at the recent spate of so-called accidental severing of underwater power and communications cables. The culprits were Chinese and Russian ships that were in the areas when the cables were cut. One of these ships was boarded and searched. Evidence of cable cutting was found. Chinese and Russian officials continue to profess surprise and ignorance of these acts of sabotage. Worse, all this is not new, it’s been going on for some time under the designation of Hybrid Warfare.
FYEO

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 07:55 pm: Edit

Jswile: in addition, Ben Gvir has loudly announced he will pull his Otzma Yehudit party out of the ruling coalition if the deal is passed, and Netanyahu is worried about the razor-thin Knesset majority that would leave him; Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party is threatening the same, and if they pull out, the gov't collapsed. The vote, which was delayed until late today to fix the Hamas issue, is now delayed until at least Friday.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 10:17 pm: Edit

The deal has been signed but the Israeli parliament still has to vote. As noted by my esteemed colleague Jessica Orsini, Israeli politics is incredibly complicated. Thirteen parties hold seats, three of which are alliances, so really sixteen. No party ever held a 61 seat majority. When forming a coalition, tiny parties with two or three seats sell their votes.

If the SFU was such a critter, one could see that the tiny F&Escort party would agree to vote for Al Beddow president IF he agreed to reduce the escort conversion cost for size 4 ships. Meanwhile, the ACTA party might sell its three votes to Al only if he agreed to finish doing the page layout for BOOK III. Albert could use those tiny voting blocs to bolster the 32 RPG seats of his party and the 25 votes of Jean’s Starline party to a slim majority of 61.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 11:48 pm: Edit

How much to make the Federation Flatbed CV(o) legal in Star Fleet History?

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Friday, January 17, 2025 - 01:01 am: Edit

The Israeli parliament (Knesset) is a single house straight proportional system with no minimum % to get in and nation wide elections, basically, if a party can get 1 more than 1 out of every 121 voters to vote for it, that party gets at least one seat.

American parties are broad coalitions, because a party needs something close to an absolute majority to win an election.

Israeli parties can be very narrow interests because you don't need many votes to get a seat, which splinters the electorate as you can vote for the "Make Talk Like a Pirate Day an Official National Holiday" party without worrying that you're wasting your vote if even a tiny slice of other people agree.

IIRC the German government also has a proportional system, and a problem with needing coalitions, but they also have a requirement that votes are by province, and you need to get at least 15% of a province's votes to get any seats at all from that province, so there can be regional parties, but tiny splinter parties can't win any seats.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 17, 2025 - 02:45 am: Edit

Actually an Israeli party needs 3.25% of the vote to get any seats.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 17, 2025 - 02:47 am: Edit

The Flatbed Party holds two seats but is part of the Vanilla Coalition of F&E parties.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 17, 2025 - 01:42 pm: Edit

The Israeli Security Cabinet has now signed off on the deal. They did so on the Sabbath, which underscores just how important this is.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich voted against it in the Security Cabinet, and are rallying like-minded factions in the Knesset as a whole to vote against it.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 17, 2025 - 01:45 pm: Edit

As for whether or not the gov't will fall: Ben Gvir remains committed to Otzma Yehudit pulling out of the ruling coalition if the deal is passed by the Knesset; Smotrich appears to be hedging his bets with regard to Religious Zionism, but what they do remains to be seen.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, January 18, 2025 - 02:16 pm: Edit

The full cabinet has authorized the deal; it's officially a thing now.

Ben Gvir stuck by his threat, quitting the cabinet and pulling the Otzma Yehudit party out of the coalition.

It appears that Smotrich reached an agreement with Netanyahu to achieve the war's objectives, including the destruction of Hamas, immediately after the first stage of the deal, and thus will not be leaving the gov't. Of course, that means that the second stage of the cease-fire has been pre-scuttled (which means it's unlikely that the first stage will last long, as the incentive for Hamas to maintain it has been thrown out the window).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, January 19, 2025 - 01:26 am: Edit

Saw a breakdown today. The Jan 2025 "Trump" deal is similar to the April 2024 "Biden" deal but is even more similar to the Dec 2023 "Netanyahu" deal.