Day 1015 War in Ukraine

Great weather with which to move around in Kherson as drones can’t hunt people during bad weather.

Russia launched 2,576 kamikaze Shahed drones against Ukraine in November. Putin wants to vastly increase the number of drones that Russia produces. As drones are inexpensive, Ukraine has developed inexpensive ways to fight them. “Using both mobile fire groups and EW, Borsari says that only around 5% of the drones” make it through to Ukrainian targets.

“House Speaker rejects Biden's request for additional $24 billion in Ukraine aid.” $2 billion of that would have gone to restocking US weapons so that we could give older weapons to Ukraine.

How does Trump plan to end the war in Ukraine? Getting Ukraine into NATO is “off the table.” Pressure on Zelenskyy seems very highly likely. People are highly skeptical as to how Russia can be pressured.

US insists that Ukraine draft more people. Blogger blasts this as hypocritical.

Russia used a missile on Dnipro that’s hypersonic and is capable of using nuclear warheads. It was a great propaganda success.

Tibilisi demonstrations – seventh night in a row. Calls for national strikes. Police going after opposition figures.

Russia assembling 300 boats to try and launch an amphibious assault on Kherson.

Russia trying to empty out Kherson using drones to attack civilians. Kherson civilians move around at night and during bad weather. Civilian casualty figures are horrible. Russians enjoy posting videos of drone attacks. The drones “have ranges up to 15km, fly at low altitudes and zip around at speeds of more than 100km per hour, making them difficult to track and take down.”

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/04/war-for-ukraine-day-1015-a-brief-wednesday-night-update/

 

Neighborhood meeting on proposed 76ers arena

The meeting concerning the proposed 76ers arena was held in a neighborhood church. Lack of parking meant it pretty much just got a local crowd of people who had walked to the meeting. Mayor Cherelle Parker played a very active role in presenting information and answering questions. Very lengthy meeting. I got there around 5:30pm, left after 8:00 and there were still many questioners left. A great deal of time, maybe an hour & a half, was taken up by the city administrations presentation. At one point during the presentation, an audience member made an accusation and the administration took about five minutes to explain that everyone would get their turn and that they would stay as long as necessary to answer everyone’s questions.

During the questioning, a member of a community group complained that the mayor had never met with her group. Parker went through a list of the groups that she had met with and suggested that somehow, the questioners group had been inadvertently left off the list. One of the problems that the questioners had was that they carried on at great length, were able to ask just one question and weren’t allowed any follow-ups. This was especially aggravating to one fellow who got an answer he didn’t like, tried to clarify his question and was told that he had used up his one question.

My recommendation is that questioners write their questions down beforehand, not so much to get every point in, but to make sure that their questions are as concise and as to-the-point as possible. Yes, it would be nice to have follow-ups. Perhaps a group could arrange for member #1 to ask a question, then for member #2 to say “Y’know, a previous audience member asked (---) and I’d just like to get a clarification about your answer…”

The city administration tried very hard to make the case that the area in which the arena would be built really needed the economic boost and that as the area was at the center of city traffic and as games would end after the regular traffic had departed anyway, that it was a good investment.