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Last week during a court break Donald Trump woke up with a start and rushed to the telephone. People wondered,
why the panic, What for the rush. The number was dialed, "McDonalds, How can i help you?" Mr. Trump
said in a conspiratorial voice, "Could you tell me about your new chip policy. I hear
it's fantastic, and want to get some of the new ones tonto!"
20 ICC benefits --- Why back the International Criminal Court and the fight for global justice?
"brooklyn13, The ICC is one small effort in the fight for global justice.
Your saying it's a joke is thankfully of no importance to anyone."
1. It is a Global Court for the powerless - Around the globe, victims of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are demanding justice and redress. By making the ICC and Rome Statute system of international justice truly GLOBAL, individuals suspected of committing these universally abhored crimes can be held to account in courts of law around the world.
2. It is a Court of last resort - The ICC prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But only if governments don't do so first.
3. It gives us a path to global peace - Grave crimes threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world.
4. It is a symbol of hope – Throughout history, millions of children, women and men have been victims of unimaginable atrocities. In the 20th century alone, an estimated 200 million people died as a result of conflict, massacres and oppression. That’s around 1 in every 27 deaths.
5. It is independent and impartial - One of the main achievements and pillars of the Rome Statute is the independence of the ICC, including the prosecutor and judges, from governments and from the United Nations Security Council. The ICC Rome Statute carries with it safeguards against politically motivated investigations and prosecution.
6. It is mandated by the international community - By existing, the ICC is implementing its mandate as laid out in the Rome Statute, bravely fought for by the likeminde group of states. This is one of the most remarkable human rights and diplomatic achievements in history. 124 states are now members of the Assembly of States Parties. They must continue to defend the Court and provide it with support in difficult times.
7. It is supported states and civil society – The push for the ICC was driven by a ground-breaking alliance between states and civil society around the world. This is a movement to end impunity that has defied all the odds.
8. It is making progress - The ICC has made significant progress in holding high-level suspected perpetrators of atrocities to account. The Court has issued its first verdicts and thousands of victims are receiving reparations. It is true that the Court is not there yet - but it was only set up in 2002. We believe that by making the ICC stronger and ensuring states can fairly and genuinely investigate and prosecute crimes in their own courts.
9. It is a court for future generations - The ICC may stumble, but its full potential will be realized in the generation of our children.
10. It can contribute to preventing crimes - ICC investigations and prosecutions can contribute to a global effort to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes from happening in the first place.
11. It stands for equality of all before the law - Because of the cornerstone Rome Statute prohibition of immunity, for the first time in history, we can bring all individuals - including presidents, generals and rebel leaders - to justice for grave international crimes.
12. It is a victim-centered Court - Victims of grave crimes are the reason the ICC exists. In this unique system, they can participate in ICC proceedings and receive reparations, including through the Trust Fund for Victims, to help rebuild their lives.
13. It is responding to the calls of victims - Victims of grave crimes have said time and again they want justice, either through national judicial systems or through the ICC.
14. It sets justice standards – Through fair, effective and independent justice, the ICC’s investigations, trials and staff must set the standard for justice for grave crimes.
15. It protects women and advances gender justice – The ICC is leading efforts to develop an international framework to prosecute those responsible for horrific sexual and gender-based crimes around the world.
16. It protects children and advances justice for children - Children suffer terribly by crimes under ICC jurisdiction. Hundreds of thousands of children are also forced to take part in these wars. The ICC's very first verdict was against Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga for enlisting and recruiting children under the age of 15 to actively participate in hostilities.
17. It is a sound investment in peace – International justice is certainly not cheap in a world of ever rising prices. But consider this: the ICC $170 million yearly budget is a fraction of the costs of the conflicts that make justice and redress necessary. In 2015, governments spent $14 trillion on war.
18. It builds stable societies – Ratifying the Rome Statute brings states into a framework of international support to develop national laws and capacities to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
19. It increases access to justice – Access to justice is goal 16 of the new United Nations Global Goals, agreed to by all UN member states.
20. It involves states in its governance – Through its governing body, the Assembly of States Parties, the ICC provides forum for states to shape the future of international criminal justice and to advocate for reform. Each state has one equal vote.
That's what we think. How about you?
https://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/explore/20-icc-benefits
LOL That is interesting. Looked quickly at it two days ago, then last night didn't at all, just glanced at the expert picks, lets see ..
https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/power-rankings/2024/05/20/fantasy-golf-advice-tips-picks-charles-schwab-challenge-colonial-country-club .
Heh, English is another i missed in the rush. GL Hope we all scramble to four.
Biden Fared Well at Morehouse. So You Didn’t Hear About It.
May 20, 2024
"Along Trump’s journey to jail, Black Atlanta residents mix outrage with pride
[...]In interviews with The Washington Post, the people who lined the route grappled with putting Thursday’s events in the context of the community’s long and fraught history. To some, the sight of Trump being forced to submit to the booking process felt like a victory in the continuing battle over whether Black voters get an equal say. His efforts to “find” enough fraudulent votes to overturn the election, these people said, had felt like an attempted disenfranchisement that harked back to the Jim Crow era.
[...]Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
P - Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
[...]“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
P - Lima lives in a heavily Democratic community. President Biden won 90 percent or more of the vote in the precincts along this stretch of Lowery — a landslide, but results that reflected a small improvement for Trump compared with 2016. Lima said he believes there is enough evidence to convict Trump. But he isn’t convinced that the former president, who is the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, will face any consequences.
[...]Wells didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but said she started to support him during the covid-19 pandemic, when he signed bipartisan legislation that distributed stimulus checks and increased food stamp benefits. She said that money had a big impact in the Black community. She voted for Trump in 2020."
Biden’s speech wasn’t groundbreaking. But he did not take these talented 20-somethings for granted.
Joan Walsh
President Joe Biden speaks at commencement at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Biden renewed his call for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, while some participants donned Palestinian colors in protest at Israel’s war. (Christian Monterrosa / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trust me: If President Joe Biden had faced hecklers or worse when he gave the Morehouse College commencement speech on Sunday, you would know about it. It would have led every newscast and dominated headlines in every paper, another dire portent of his alleged troubles with Black voters coming in November.
Instead, Biden faced a low-key protest. He clapped for and shook hands with the valedictorian who demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, and otherwise fared well. So you probably didn’t hear about it.
I try not to cover the “Biden is treated unfairly” beat. It’s now a dog bites man story. But this was impossible to ignore. I covered many events with Vice President Kamala Harris this last week, and I heard from many reporters how on edge they were, as was the administration, about Biden’s reception at Morehouse. Some student activists had demanded that the administration rescind his invitation, and a few faculty members said they wouldn’t attend the ceremony.
So why wasn’t it a big deal when it went fine?
It’s the nature of news. We cover plane crashes, not safe plane landings. But I think Biden’s soft landing represents smart outreach to the Black community, or communities, that paid off. And that’s news.
On a visit to Atlanta, Harris talked to the Morehouse student government president about campus views on Gaza and what graduates most needed to hear from Biden. Steve Benjamin, his director of public engagement, went to talk to students and faculty last week.
If you’re cynical, you’ll call that pandering. I call it respecting an important constituency: young college-educated Black men—and their tuition-paying parents. And most reporters don’t pay attention to that kind of thing.
Morehouse President David Thomas did something important: He promised he wouldn’t call in police and arrest students. “We won’t allow…disruptive behavior that prevents the ceremony or services from proceeding in a manner that those in attendance can partake and enjoy,” Thomas told CNN Thursday. But he nodded to the alternative: “I have also made a decision that we will also not ask police to take individuals out of commencement in zip ties. If faced with the choice, I will cease the ceremonies on the spot.”
I know some students questioned whether that was truly freedom of speech, but it was so much better than what’s happened on other campuses. And the mere statement of policy, plus Morehouse tradition, kept things calm.
Biden’s speech wasn’t groundbreaking. But he did not take for granted that these talented 20-somethings knew anything about his history. He went all the way back from turning away from corporate law to becoming a public defender after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (King was a Morehouse man) in 1968. And again he told the story of his family tragedies, from losing his wife and young daughter just after his election as a senator in 1972 to losing his son and most trusted adviser Beau in 2015.
He praised the tradition of nonviolent protest still followed in the name of King, and acknowledged the quiet protests at Morehouse of his Gaza policies. Biden went a bit further than I’ve seen him in acknowledging the nightmare that our tax dollars have created there, reiterating his call for a cease-fire and decrying Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s interference with humanitarian aid.
“I know it angers and frustrates many of you, including my family,” Biden said. (It’s been reported that first lady Jill Biden has pressed him to do more to end the carnage, but he’s never before publicly acknowledged it.)
“But most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well.”
It bears mentioning that VP Harris took the administration a step beyond where it had been when she addressed the Selma anniversary gathering in March. It’s interesting that Biden stepped out at Morehouse.
Although Biden reportedly paused a shipment of weapons to Israel recently, it’s not believable that he’s done all he can to either end the conflict or increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. On the other hand, diplomacy is by its nature quiet. Maybe Biden was spinning. Maybe more is going on than we know.
But the main takeaway from his comparative Morehouse triumph is that his administration invested resources in understanding a core constituency and treating it with respect.
Let’s hope Biden and Harris are able to do that in many more Black communities before November.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-harris-morehouse/
Got in relishing bed just 15min. before it started last night, somehow forgot Morikawa.
It's no fun looking a twosome or threesome in the eye, like now, still is
better than zero and could easily have missed this one. Whew! GL
Wasn't going to take him then most all the experts did - again
-- so weakened. That he's on my bench was just pure luck.
conix, I should have said some, and you really are a jerk. Surely you read janice's reply,
and you should have before yours read our chat about what i said. From here ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174480297 .
yet all you did was
""It is understandable American blacks are upset about Biden's Israel stance. There is no doubt now that is hurting him."
You must not be a US citizen to post the above. Sorry--but a clueless opinion on your part."
No reasoning. No evidence. No nothing but your so unworthy opinion.
There is no doubt in my mind that a number of American blacks would see the injustice occurring in Israel as something unreasonable. Just as many American whites do.
And that Biden's response has not been enough, just as many whites do.
Personally i see Biden doing about as much as he could do under all the circumstances. And i hope as time moves on more understand that a Trump presidency would be much worse for Palestinians. IF that is at all possible just now.
B402, Incorporate janice's most important point, and ott it reads pretty good.
Israel's leaders today, not -- The Latest | In historic move, a Palestinian state recognized by Spain, Ireland and Norway
"Experts react: The ICC prosecutor wants Netanyahu and Hamas leaders arrested for war crimes. What’s next?
"Jaraparilla 🇾🇪 🇵🇸 @jaraparilla Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains the 3 pillars of Zionist delusion:
[...]
1. We are God's chosen people. Whatever we do is just.
2. We are the victims. Always.
3. Palestinians are not human, they are animals.
So much like the Nazis." "
Norway, Ireland and Spain say they will recognize a Palestinian state
By The Associated Press
May 22, 2024, 5:49 PM
VIDEO 1:25 International headlines from ABC News
Catch up on the developing stories from around the globe making headlines.
Norway, Ireland and Spain said Wednesday they were recognizing a Palestinian state, a move welcomed by Palestinians as an affirmation of their decadeslong quest while Israel recalled its ambassadors to the three countries.
Several countries in the European Union indicated in recent weeks they plan to make the recognition, arguing a two-state solution is essential for lasting peace in the region.
[Insert: That, of course, is President Biden's personal position also. ]
Some 140 countries have already recognized a Palestinian state — more than two-thirds of United Nations members — but none of the major Western powers have done so.
It was the second blow to Israel’s international reputation this week after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister. The International Court of Justice is also considering allegations of genocide that Israel has strenuously denied.
The moves come amid international outrage over the civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Among the ICC prosecutor's allegations was that Israel is using “starvation as a method of warfare.”
The U.N. said Wednesday that more than 900,000 displaced Palestinians lack food, water, shelter and other essentials for their survival. Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million Palestinians has been driven from their homes during the war, often multiple times.
Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
At least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Currently:
— Takeaways from AP examination of how two debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 originated
— Norway, Ireland and Spain recognize a Palestinian state in a historic move.
— What to know about the new European recognitions of a Palestinian state.
— The United Nations halts all food distribution in Rafah after running out of supplies in the southern Gaza city.
— Israel tries to contain the fallout after some allies support ICC prosecutor’s request for warrants.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war ..
.https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war .
Here's the latest:
BAGHDAD — Iraq received its first group of wounded Palestinians evacuated from Gaza on Wednesday, Iraqi health officials said.
The country's Ministry of Health said in a statement that 27 wounded Palestinians arrived along with their relatives — mainly women, children, and the elderly — from Egypt on an Iraqi military plane accompanied by medical staff. They will be treated at Baghdad Medical City, it said.
Deputy Health Minister Hani al-Iqabi vowed this would not be the last group of evacuees from Gaza to come to Iraq.
There have been no medical evacuations from Gaza since May 7, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday, after Israeli tanks and troops seized the vital Rafah crossing into Egypt. The crossing has remained closed.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Wednesday in what he described as a protest against the recognition of a Palestinian state by Spain, Ireland and Norway.
Ben-Gvir said he wanted to make a statement “from the holiest place for the people of Israel, which belongs only to the state of Israel.”
The contested hilltop compound is home to the Al Aqsa Mosque, which Palestinians consider a national symbol and view such visits as provocative. Ben-Gvir has frequently visited the site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, during tense periods. Tensions at the disputed compound have fueled past rounds of violence.
It was the latest act of defiance by an ultranationalist settler leader who has transformed himself over the decades from an outlaw and provocateur into one of Israel’s most influential politicians.
In his Cabinet post, Ben-Gvir oversees the country’s police force. As a key coalition partner, Ben-Gvir also has the power to rob Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his parliamentary majority and force early elections. He has threatened to bring down the government if Israel does not launch a full-fledged invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
CAIRO — The Palestinian Health Ministry says a main hospital in northern Gaza has been evacuated on orders of Israeli troops.
The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Awda hospital on Wednesday after surrounding the facility the past four days. There had been 140 patients, staff and others in the hospital and all but 38 of them left the hospital to nearby Gaza City, it said.
A day earlier, another hospital in the north, Kamal Adwan, had to be evacuated after coming under fire from Israeli forces, the ministry said.
The Israeli military did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The two hospitals are located in or near Jabaliya refugee camp, where Israeli troops have been waging an intensified assault for days against Hamas fighters who the military says had regrouped there.
Israel’s 7-month-old offensive in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has devastated the territory’s health sector. Around two-thirds of Gaza’s original 36 hospitals have been forced to shut down, and the rest only partially function.
UNITED NATIONS – The nearly 815,000 Palestinians displaced from Gaza’s southern city of Rafah by escalating hostilities and evacuation orders as well as about 100,000 people in northern Gaza lack essentials for their survival, the U.N. humanitarian office said Wednesday.
People need shelter, food, water and other supplies amid reports of ongoing Israeli bombardments and heavy fighting, especially in eastern Rafah and Jabaliya in the north, said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said Wednesday that those fleeing need
Over the past 10 days, OCHA said, nearly 150,000 people have registered for services provided by the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, in the central city of Khan Younis where thousands have fled from Rafah. It said UNRWA has seen a 36% increase in the number of people seeking shelter at its facilities there.
“Families are living among rubble in damaged schools and lack tents, essential services and vital supplies,” UNRWA reported.
OCHA said food distribution remains suspended in Rafah because of supply shortages and insecurity.
The humanitarian office said efforts are being made to establish additional kitchens to provide food to the hundreds of thousands in need in Khan Younis, Deir al Balah, where Palestinians have also fled, and Gaza City.
Meanwhile, OCHA said the U.N. World Health Organization reported that Kamal Adwan hospital — the largest partially functional hospital in the north — was reportedly hit four times on Tuesday.
In a social media post on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said efforts were underway to evacuate 20 health staff and more than a dozen patients who were still inside the facility.
WASHINGTON — The U.N. World Food Program was able to hand out a “limited number” of high-energy biscuits in central Gaza in recent days, marking the first aid brought in via the $320 million U.S. pier project that has gotten into the hands of people in need, a spokesperson with the program said Wednesday.
The small amount of biscuits distributed had been unloaded Friday, the first day of shipments from the pier, WFP spokesman Steve Taravella said.
High-energy biscuits are nutritionally fortified food that can be consumed without cooking or refrigeration, and are a staple of humanitarian distribution in crisis zones.
Israeli restrictions on land crossings, and fighting overall, have cut delivery of food and aid into Gaza to its lowest levels since the first months of the Israel-Hamas war, now in its eighth month.
The Biden administration led opening of the U.S. pier and causeway for a sea route to get aid into Gaza. International officials say all 2.3 million people of Gaza are struggling to get food, and famine has begun in north Gaza.
The U.S., U.N. and humanitarian groups stress that the pier can bring in only a fraction of the aid needed, and call on Israel to allow a steady large flow of trucks through land borders.
On Saturday, movement of aid from the pier project to aid warehouses in Gaza was halted for two days after crowds gathering outside the secured dock area stripped 11 of the 16 trucks of their aid cargo. One man in the crowd was shot and killed, in still-unexplained circumstances.
The WFP warned that the U.S. sea effort may fail unless Israel provides clearance and cooperation for alternate land routes and better security.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday he did not believe any of the aid from the pier had yet reached Palestinians in need. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said otherwise Wednesday, saying some aid had been delivered “specifically to the Palestinians who need it.”
JENIN, West Bank — Two days of gunbattles between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants in the northern West Bank city of Jenin have killed 11 Palestinians and injured at least 25 others, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Wednesday.
Jenin and the adjacent urban refugee camp have long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israel's occupation, and the tempo of raids by Israeli troops has increased during the war in Gaza.
Militant groups claimed at least eight of the dead as fighters: one from Hamas and seven from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said an unspecified number of its fighters were killed.
Associated Press journalists saw Israeli military vehicles and at least one armored bulldozer roaming Jenin's empty streets on Wednesday, firing tear gas and live ammunition as Palestinians burned tires and threw stones.
Masked protesters set up a replica rocket and a green Hamas flag as columns of acrid black smoke rose into the air. One Palestinian fell to the ground bleeding from an apparent leg wound, and was quickly swarmed by paramedics. Soldiers flew a small drone ahead of a vehicle and into the window of a building.
The Israeli military said Wednesday there have been “extensive exchanges of fire” since its troops entered Jenin on Tuesday to root out militants, and “uninvolved civilians were reportedly hit.” No Israeli soldiers were killed or injured.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 517 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, the deadliest period since the U.N. began recording data. Many were shot dead in armed clashes during military raids, others for throwing stones at troops, and some who posed no apparent threat.
UNITED NATIONS – Jordan, Kuwait and Slovenia have launched an initiative to support the beleaguered U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. The agency has been the main provider of humanitarian aid, education and health services in Gaza, however it faces intense Israeli opposition.
Jordan’s Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud announced the initiative on Wednesday surrounded by many diplomats, saying UNRWA has “a vital role in providing life-saving humanitarian assistance and human development services to generations of Palestine refugees” not only in Gaza and the West Bank but also in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
“We therefore believe it is important for countries to reaffirm their support for the work of the agency and its indispensable role in providing assistance and relief, and send signals of strong political support for UNRWA,” he said.
Hmoud said the sponsors would be sending a letter Wednesday to all 193 U.N. member nations inviting them to join the initiative.
Israel has accused UNRWA of employing staff with links to Hamas, which controlled Gaza and launched a surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people.
An independent review of UNRWA’s neutrality released in late April stressed the critical importance of the agency and found that Israel never expressed concern about anyone on the staff lists it has received annually since 2011. It said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to uphold U.N. principles of neutrality but cited serious gaps in implementation.
The review was carried out after Israel alleged that a dozen UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. A separate U.N. investigation into those allegations is ongoing.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador told reporters Wednesday that UNRWA needs political as well as financial support. He expressed hope that many countries will join the “urgent and timely initiative … supporting UNRWA and sending a meaningful message of solidarity to the Palestinian people.”
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is working with the World Food Program to help get distribution moving into Gaza, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said Wednesday at an Atlantic Council event. He did not provide further details.
“We’ve done the part of giving the aid to Gaza,” Brown explained. “But that same time we’re going to make sure we connect the dots at the end ... to get the distribution to be able to move forward.”
In the last few days the U.S. has worked with the U.N. and Israel to better coordinate and identify alternative routes for the convoys, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday. The U.S. military however would not have any role in securing the aid convoys.
Brown did not rule out that the U.S. could have a role in helping provide post-conflict security in Gaza, but said it would be important to involve countries who are best equipped and have the best working knowledge of the situation on the ground now.
When asked if U.S. forces would have a role, Brown said “not necessarily,” and that the U.S. would also likely assist by providing guidance based on their experiences in previous post-conflict operations, such as Afghanistan or Iraq. He did not elaborate.
The U.S. has provided crucial weapons and diplomatic support for Israel during the war in Gaza, and has senior military advisers working alongside the Israeli military. The U.S. repeatedly said no American troops went ashore in the operation to build a pier for aid off Gaza.
WASHINGTON — Gaza needs a daily flow of 600 truckloads of food and other aid into the territory to curb famine and address the growing overall humanitarian crisis there, the U.S. Agency for International Development said.
A new U.S. aid pier will only be able to provide a quarter of that aid, even once it’s operating at full capacity. The $320 million pier project on Gaza's coast was constructed to bring in more aid by sea, as Israeli restrictions and fighting hinder deliveries through land crossings.
International officials say all 2.3 million Gaza residents are struggling to find food to eat, and 1.1 million are facing catastrophic levels of food shortage.
The U.S. pier project began operations last week, and has since gotten 41 trucks carrying aid to aid groups in Gaza, USAID said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. Efforts to deliver more into Gaza were suspended for at least two days after Palestinians overran a convoy of aid that was leaving the U.S. project site Saturday, and a Palestinian man at the scene was shot and killed in unexplained circumstances.
The updated figure on the need in Gaza comes as the U.N. World Food Program says the flow of aid and fuel into the territory has fallen to its lowest point since the first months of the Israel-Hamas war, when Israel had cut off the flow of food, medicine, water and electricity to Gaza.
“Much more must be done to save lives and alleviate the widespread suffering of Palestinian civilians,” USAID said. The U.N. and nonprofit humanitarian organizations warn that the reduced flow of goods into Gaza has aid operations there on the brink of collapse.
USAID is helping coordinate intended distribution of the aid from the pier, working with the WFP and private humanitarian groups. As of Tuesday, 93 trucks have offloaded nearly 700 metric tons of aid at the U.S. and Israeli-controlled dock, and Israel is still inspecting cargo and the loading of ships on Cyprus, a hub for the U.S. operation, USAID said.
Aid officials previously have pointed to the pre-war average of 500 truckloads of goods a day getting into Gaza as the minimum needed.
UNITED NATIONS — Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, welcomed the historic but largely symbolic move by Norway, Ireland and Spain to recognize a Palestinian state.
“This European wave, hopefully, will be followed by other waves of support to the state of Palestine,” the ambassador told reporters. He also expressed hope that it would spur momentum for the state of Palestine’s admission to the United Nations as its 194th member nation.
The United States recently used its veto in the Security Council to block Palestine’s full admission to the U.N., saying admission must follow Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s far-right finance minister said Wednesday he would stop transferring tax revenues earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, a move that threatens to handicap the government’s already-waning ability to pay salaries to its thousands of employees.
Bezalel Smotrich said he was taking the move in retaliation, hours after Norway said it would recognize Palestinian statehood.
Under interim peace accords in the 1990s, Israel collects tax revenues on behalf of the Palestinians and transfers them to the PA, which uses them in part to pay wages.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Smotrich froze the transfers. In a wartime arrangement, Israel agreed to send the funds to Norway, which would then make the transfer to the PA. The internationally recognized PA administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Smotrich said Wednesday he was ending this arrangement and would request the return of funds back to Israel. “Norway was the first to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state today and it cannot be a partner in anything related to Judea and Samaria,” he said on X, using the biblical name for the West Bank.
According to the PA, Israel has withheld the equivalent of $1.5 billion since the war erupted. The government, the largest employer in the Palestinian Territories, has only been able to pay partial salaries since the war began.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government opposes Palestinian independence. Smotrich, a former West Bank settler leader, has been an outspoken voice in fighting Palestinian independence efforts and strengthening settlements built on occupied land.
VALETTA, Malta — Malta’s government is ready to recognize a Palestinian state “when such recognition can make a positive contribution, and when the circumstances are right,” the Mediterranean country’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Malta was among four EU states, including Ireland, Spain and Slovenia, that in March started discussions on a possible recognition of a Palestinian state. Ireland, Spain and Norway said Wednesday they were moving forward with their recognition.
In a statement, the ministry said authorities were monitoring developments in the Middle East to determine “the optimal timeframes” for a recognition.
“Malta has consistently persisted in its position in favour of a two-state solution that meets the aspirations of the people of Israel and Palestine, with Jerusalem as the capital of two states living side-by-side in peace and security,” Malta’s statement said.
BRUSSELS — The Belgian government was discussing whether to join three other European nations in recognizing a Palestinian state at its weekly meeting on Wednesday, and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that any recognition needed to have the right timing.
“You can recognize only once. So when we do it, it needs to come at the right moment when it has an immediate impact. I want an impact on two issues. I want an end to violence in Gaza. I want that the hostages are freed,” he told VRT network.
“The right perspective is: will it help the violence stop tomorrow or not?”
Belgium is in a delicate situation since it currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, giving any decision it takes added diplomatic weight.
ZAGREB, Croatia — Croatia is not considering the recognition of a Palestinian state at the moment, the prime minister of the European Union nation said on Wednesday.
Andrej Plenkovic said that “Croatia’s permanent position is based on a two-state solution but in a way that would lead to an agreement,” the official HINA news agency reported.
Croatia is the newest EU member after joining the bloc in 2013, after a war that followed the country’s split from the former Yugoslav federation in 1991. The former Yugoslavia had recognized a Palestinian state in 1988 and established full diplomatic relations a year later.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Justice Department says the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has no authority to seek arrest warrants against the country’s leaders because Israel is capable of investigating itself.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes linked to the war in Gaza, including intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Khan is also seeking warrants against three Hamas leaders over the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war.
Israel’s top justice officials — Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Prosecutor Amit Aisman— issued a statement on Wednesday calling the ICC allegations against Israel “unfounded.”
They said Israel’s legal offices “thoroughly examine all credible allegations of violations of the law by state officials, and enforce the law” adding that the ICC “lacks jurisdiction to conduct an investigation into the matter.”
Human right groups have long accused Israel of failing to investigate or punish its security forces over violence committed against Palestinians.
PARIS — France indicated that it isn’t ready to join other countries in recognizing a Palestinian state, even if it isn’t opposed to the idea in principle.
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné, in comments relayed by his ministry after he had a closed-door meeting Wednesday with his Israeli counterpart, said that recognizing a Palestinian state must be “useful” in pushing forward a two-state solution and suggested that doing so now won’t have a genuine impact in pursuing that goal.
“Our position is clear: recognition of Palestine is not a taboo for France,” he said. “This decision must be useful, that is to say permit decisive progress on the political level.”
He also said timing is important, arguing: “It must come at the right time so that there is a before and an after.”
“It is not just a symbolic question or an issue of political positioning, but a diplomatic tool serving the solution of two states living side by side, in peace and security,” he said. “France does not consider that the conditions were present now for this decision to have a real impact in this process.”
TEL AVIV, Israel — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a bureaucratic order that could allow Jewish settlers to return to three evacuated settlements in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Gallant said Wednesday he would attach three evacuated settlements to the local settler regional council, the first step in allowing the settlements to apply for building permits and allow Jewish settlers to return to the area.
Israel evacuated the settlements along with its unilateral pullout from Gaza in 2005. Since then, Israeli citizens have been officially banned from returning to those four settlements, though the Israeli military has allowed activists to visit and pray there.
In March 2023, the government repealed the 2005 act, paving the way for an official return to the abandoned West Bank areas in another setback to Palestinian hopes for statehood.
----------
[Insert: Israel's Supreme Court strikes down disputed law that limited court oversight
[...]JERUSALEM, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Israel's Supreme Court on Monday struck down a highly disputed law passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government that rolled back some of the high court's power and sparked months of nationwide protests.
[...]
Twelve of 15 justices ruled that it was within the court's parameters to strike down quasi-constitutional "basic laws". A smaller majority of eight ruled to nullify this specific basic law, which the court said "causes severe and unprecedented harm to the core characteristics of Israel as a democratic state."
P - Some Israeli officials have acknowledged that the internal divisions caused by the judicial overhaul - which seeped into the military .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hit-by-day-disruption-disputed-judicial-bill-nears-key-vote-2023-07-18/ .. and prompted Netanyahu to temporarily fire Gallant .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/party-pressure-mounts-netanyahu-pause-judicial-overhaul-2023-03-26/ , who had called to halt the reforms - may have factored into Hamas' decision to carry out its Oct. 7 killing spree.
P - Netanyahu's Likud party said the Supreme Court's decision was unfortunate and that it opposed "the will of the people for unity, especially during wartime". It did not discuss any possible steps it might take in its brief statement.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173546686]
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In May 2023, Homesh, one of the four evacuated settlements, was attached to the local settler regional council and a religious Jewish school was established there.
Gallant’s announcement Wednesday applies the same status to the former settlements of Kadim, Sha-Nur, and Ganim. The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, hailed the announcements as “a moment of historical correction,” adding that the move is “necessary for the highest level of morals and security for the State of Israel, especially after Oct. 7.”
Activists with the left-wing organization Peace Now, which is opposed to settlements in the West Bank, said the move was “extremely concerning,” but noted that the approval of homes could take years.
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia – Slovenia on Wednesday hailed the recognition of an independent Palestinian state by Norway, Spain and Ireland, but stopped short of immediately following suit.
Earlier in the year, Slovenia’s government launched a recognition procedure for a Palestinian state, but the small European Union nation has said the formal step will take place when it could best contribute to a lasting peace in the Middle East.
“The Slovenian government was the first of the group of countries that signed a special declaration … to start the process of recognizing Palestine, in which we expressed expectations — not conditions — for both sides,” Prime Minister Robert Golob said in a statement. He added that “Palestinians need more than just a symbolic gesture of recognition.”
“We would like to help to reform and empower the Palestinian Authority, which will represent its population in both the West Bank and Gaza and lead it to a two-state solution, which is seen by almost the entire world as the solution to lasting peace,” said Golob.
In Slovenia, lawmakers must give the final approval for the recognition of a state.
JERUSALEM — Aid groups say damage to water infrastructure and fuel shortages in southern Gaza have left some Palestinians surviving on as little as a half-liter (2 cups) of water per day. That has to cover drinking, washing and cooking, and is only 3% of the 15 liters per day that the World Health Organization says is needed for basic survival.
The International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians, which both operate in Gaza, say water-borne diseases have surged, in part because of the effect of water shortages on hygiene and sanitation. Kiryn Lanning, who leads the IRC’s work in Gaza, says staff visited a shelter where 10,000 people only received 4,000 liters of water per day. Another shelter, housing 8,000 people, had only 12 latrines, forcing over 600 people to share a single one.
Melanie Ward, the CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said she had seen “literal lakes of human waste” next to tents in Rafah. Doctors with the group say diarrhea and skin diseases are on the rise, and that children have died from dehydration and starvation.
Israel’s incursion into Rafah earlier in May has caused around 900,000 Palestinians to flee the southern city, with many seeking refuge in squalid tent camps with no plumbing and few services. It has also severely restricted the ability to provide aid in the south. Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing at the start of its incursion, forcing it to close. That was the main entry point for fuel, which is needed to power water infrastructure, hospitals and other infrastructure.
The United Nations suspended food distribution in Rafah on Tuesday, citing lack of supplies and security threats. Some 400,000 people are still believed to be in the city.
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey welcomed Spain, Ireland and Norway’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, calling it an important step toward the restoration of the “usurped rights of the Palestinians.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry also said the move would help “Palestine gain the status it deserves in the international community.” Turkey would continue with efforts to press more states to recognize it, the ministry said.
LONDON — Ireland has recognized a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Simon Harris said Wednesday.
Harris called the move, coordinated with Spain and Norway, “an historic and important day for Ireland and for Palestine.”
He said the move was intended to help move the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to resolution through a two-state solution. The Irish decision will formally take effect on May 28, the government said.
BARCELONA, Spain — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says that his country will recognize a Palestinian state on May 28.
Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist leader since 2018, made the expected announcement to the nation’s Parliament on Wednesday.
Sánchez has spent months touring European and Middle Eastern countries to garner support for the recognition of a Palestinian state, as well as a possible cease-fire in Gaza. He has said several times that he was committed to the move.
Earlier in May, Spain’s Foreign Minister José Albares said he had informed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken of his government’s intention of recognizing a Palestinian state.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Wednesday that the country would formally recognize a Palestinian state, saying, “There cannot be peace in the Middle East if there is no recognition.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed Norway’s recognition of a Palestinian state and called on other countries to follow. In a statement carried by the official WAFA news agency, he said Norway’s decision, announced Wednesday, will enshrine “the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination” and support efforts to bring about a two-state solution with Israel.
Gahr Støre said the Scandinavian country will recognize a Palestinian state as of May 28.
Norway is not a member of the European Union but mirrors its moves, and has been an ardent supporter of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestinians.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-norway-ireland-spain-make-coordinated-move-recognize-110458003
Jan 15, 2024 - MLK's words resonate with both sides of Israeli-Palestinian conflict
"brooklyn13, For you some context to that MLK quote:
WHERE MLK REALLY STOOD ON ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2019/03/where-mlk-really-stood-on-israel-and-the-palestinians/
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/where_mlk_really_stood_on_israel_and_the_palestinians.pdf
Noted it is from a friendly to Israel, and a further right than center author and site. MLK it appears never had anything really critical to say about Israel.
I hope this reminds you that stand alone quotes are not in themselves particularly satisfying."
Russell Contreras, author of
Axios Latino
Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios. Photo: Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty Images
All links
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in support of Israel and against militarism as he became a leader of America's Civil Rights Movement. Today, with the Middle East in turmoil, both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict say his remarks show that he'd favor them.
Why it matters: King's words from the middle of the 20th century often are cited to bolster contemporary political positions without historical context — and debates about the Middle East are no different.
Catch up quick: Almost immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, supporters of Israel pointed to King's words expressing support for the Jewish nation.
* Actor Amy Schumer posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) a video ..
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) October 31, 2023.. of King saying Israel had a right to exist and speaking out against antisemitism.
.. on oppressed people as evidence that he would have opposed Israel's bombing of Gaza.For the idiots who claim that MLK is “pro-Israel”, implying he would support what the government is doing to Palestinians right now. https://t.co/Zmw0Ne072m
— Collin (Ogbonna) Radi𝕏-Carter 🍉 (@ogbonna_collin) January 10, 2024
B402, conix's video was 27 minutes, i thought likely the full speech. Excerpt from your most welcome transcript:
However, during his speech, he did tell graduates of the historically-Black college that he heard their voices of protest and that scenes from the conflict in Gaza break his heart, too.
“I support peaceful nonviolent protest," he told students at the all-male college, some of whom wore Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs around their shoulders on top of their black graduation gowns. "Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.”
Aside from the war, Biden spent much of the approximately 30-minute speech focused on the problems at home. He condemned Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants and noted that the class of 2024 entered college during the COVID-19 pandemic and following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Biden said it was natural for them, and others, to wonder whether the democracy “you hear about actually works for you.”
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/full-remarks-president-biden-delivers-commencement-speech-morehouse-college/85-b22a9f38-8bff-46e5-ad68-616687bf3db1
Yet conix said his speech was about history and not today. How the hell do so many consistently get things so wrong. Part of the answer no doubt is that petty political thoughts get in the way of a more objective look at things.
More of your transcript:
My city of Wilmington -- and we were a -- to our great shame, a slave state, and we were segregated. Delaware erupted into flames when he was assassinated, literally.
We’re the only city in America where the National Guard patrolled every street corner for nine full months with drawn bayonets, the longest stretch in any American city since the Civil War.
Dr. le- -- Dr. King’s legacy had a profound impact on me and my generation, whether you’re Black or white. I left the fancy law firm I had just joined and decided to become a public defender and then a county councilman, working to change our state’s politics to embrace the cause of civil rights.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/full-remarks-president-biden-delivers-commencement-speech-morehouse-college/85-b22a9f38-8bff-46e5-ad68-616687bf3db1
Compare that to Trump's chosen path. Which should any clear thinking voter who wants the best for America choose for president.
More...
The pandemic robbed you of so much. Some of you lost loved ones -- mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, who were -- aren’t able to be here to celebrate with you today -- today. You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race.
It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you.
What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?
What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave Black -- Black communities behind?
What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?
And most of all, what does it mean, as we’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure? (Applause.)
When I sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, in front of the fireplace across from my -- my desk, I have two busts: one of Dr. King and one of Bobby Kennedy. I often find myself looking at those busts and making decisions. I ask myself: Are we living up to what we say we are as a nation, to end racism and poverty, to deliver jobs and justice, to restore our leadership in the world?
Then I look down and see the rosary on my wrist that was out of -- my late son, he had on him when he w- -- died at Walter Reed, and I was with him. And I ask myself: What would he say? I know the answer because he told me in his last days.
My son knew the days were numbered. The last conversation was, “Dad, I’m not afraid, but I’m worried. I’m worried you’re going to give up when I go. You’re going to give up.”
We have an expression in the Biden family. When you want someone to know -- give you their word, you say, “Look at me.” He was lying to me -- he said, “Look at me, Dad. Look at me.”
He said, “Give me your word. Give me your word as my father that you will not quit, that you will stay engaged. Promise me, Dad. Stay engaged. Promise me. Promise me.”
I wrote a book called “Promise Me, Dad,” not for the public at large, although a lot of people would end up buying it. It’s for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to know who Beau Biden was.
The rosary on the -- my wrist, the bust in my office remind me that faith asks you to hold on to hope, to move heaven and earth to make better days.
Well, that’s my commitment to you: to show you democracy, democracy, democracy is still the way.
If Black men are being killed on the streets, we bear witness. For me, that means to call out the poison of white supremacy, to root out systemic racism.
I stood up for George -- with George Floyd’s family to help create a country where you don’t need to have that talk with your son or grandson as they get pulled over.
Instead of a trail of broken promises, we’re investing more money than ever in Black families and Black communities. We’re reconnecting Black neighborhoods cut off by old highways and decades of disinvestment where no one cared about the community.
We’ve delivered checks in pockets to reduce child -- Black child poverty to the lowest rate in history. We’re removing every lead pipe in America so every child can drink clean water without fear of brain damage, and then can’t afford to remove the lead pipes themselves.
We’re delivering affordable high-speed Internet so no child has to sit in their parents’ car or do their homework in a parking lot outside of McDonald’s.
Instead of forcing you to prove you’re 10 times better, we’re breaking down doors so you have 100 times more opportunities: good-paying jobs you can raise a family on in your neighborhood -- (applause); capital to start small business and loans to buy homes; health insurance, prescriptions drugs, housing that’s more affordable and accessible.
I’ve walked the picket line and defended the rights of workers. I’m relieving the burden of student debt -- many of you have already had the benefit of it -- (applause) -- so I [you] can chase your dreams and grow the economy.
When the Supreme Court told me I couldn’t, I found two other ways to do it. (Applause.) And we were able to do it, because it grows the economy.
And I -- in addition to the original $7 billion investment in HBCUs, I’m investing 16 billion more dollars -- (applause) -- more in our history, because you’re vital to our nation. Most HBCUs don’t have the endowments. The jobs of the future require sophisticated laboratories, sophisticated oppor- -- opportunity on campus.
We’re opening doors so you can walk into a life of generational wealth, to be providers and leaders for your families and communities. Today, record numbers of Black Americans have jobs, health insurance, and more [wealth] than ever.
Democracy is also about hearing and heeding your generation’s call to a community free of gun violence and a planet free of climate crisis and showing your power to change the world.
But I also know some of you ask: What is democracy if we can’t stop wars that break out and break our hearts?
In a democracy, we debate and dissent about America’s role in the world.
I want to say this very clearly. I support peaceful, nonviolent protest. Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them. I determined to make my c- -- my administration look like America. I have more African Americans in high places, including on the Court, than any president in American history -- (applause) -- because I need the input.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/full-remarks-president-biden-delivers-commencement-speech-morehouse-college/85-b22a9f38-8bff-46e5-ad68-616687bf3db1
Seriously. What sort of voter would choose Trump as a better president.
Thanks.
Like i said i haven't read any reddit of her and likely won't. That said i think all you said there sounds like good common sense. The type of comment you mention is sadly not at all surprising. Australia now is in the throes of trying to cool the domestic violence scene again. Many more men are waking to their own problems, and there are waiting lists for men now finally asking to get into help programs. Waiting list of months.
LOL Good point.
Biden talked about Gaza. That's not history, and in some minds anyway it's the reason he was there.
You're right in that i hadn't considered the extent of the Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement ..
May 2021 - The Complex Relationship between Jews and African AmericansThe Complex Relationship between Jews and African Americans
in the Context of the Civil Rights Movementin the Context of the Civil Rights Movement
Hannah Labovitz
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1271&context=ghj
Skimming that article helped. I do remember that MLK was a strong supporter of Israel, and in saying what i said i hadn't thought of that, so your
"Except that a great many Jews played major roles in the civil rights movement over the years. You have it backwards: they saw their own parallels in the blacks' struggle against prejudice. More recently, there's been more bad feeling against the Jews on the part of some blacks. I'm not sure of the reasons for that, but I think they're largely economic."
comment i had it backwards is fair. That however was going on 70 years ago. Today as you yourself say there and in your last
" Now, the hardline right-wingers have been in charge in Israel for the past 20 years. And that has an obvious downside."
is where i was at in saying what i said. Where would MLK stand today. Where do many blacks stand today. No idea on the percentages but am guessing MLK would find himself speaking against the injustice in Israel. And that many American blacks today would have more sympathy with Palestinians than with Israel.
Your point i had it ass backwards was a fair one though, i was missing what you said i was.
I think it's incorrect, even unfair, to see sanctions as creating a 'new axis of evil.' I know that new axis idea is a newly popular catchphrase but China has always supported N. Korea, and Russia has been closer to China for decades, so no surprise at the continuing and closer friendship.
On sanctions i'm not sure how otherwise to impress upon a regime displeasure at their practices. Sanctions didn't stop N Korea from developing nukes, but would you have invaded instead. And sanctions have been more targeted to individuals lately than they have been in the past.
I said it feeling that American blacks would see the Palestinian plight as having parallels to their fight for justice in America. And, though you guys would know better, i feel many would see Biden's Israel stance as being too supportive of Israel. Guess i should have said 'many American blacks', but that is why i said what i said.
Personally I think Biden is between a rock and a hard place with the election coming, and with his lifetime support of Israel. On balance i think he's doing as good a job as any pragmatic president running for reelection could do.
conix, You lie yet again. Is it you people can't help it. Until you last sentence your post was credible. Then i have no idea why you didn't resist fantasizing
"You are impressive as an Aussie to predict how big the landslide will be for Biden. Keep it up. We all need a smile."
about that. Fact is i have never predicted a Biden election landslide. I did suggest Trump loss of the popular vote would move from about 3 million in '16, about 7 million in '20 to roughly 11 million in 2024. I said that first i think before the Gaza war really took hold so probably should knock it back some. I only spoke of the popular vote, and have always included that with the EC deal you have the election would be close.
On those facts your last sentence there is a purposeful misrepresentation. I have never even suggested
Biden would win in a landslide. Hope i've been wrong, but I've never felt Biden would win by a landslide. .
It is understandable American blacks are upset about Biden's Israel stance. There is no doubt now that is hurting him.
Fact is though, and this is the message Dems have to get across: Any vote for Trump would be much worse for Palestinians. Any vote for another, taking away from Biden, would be enabling Trump, which would be far worse for Palestinians.
That's the message every voter should fully understand .
Yep, sanctions mostly i think the evidence is, hurt the people rather than
the leaders responsible for the sanctions being put on in the first place.
Do yourself a favor and don't make more dumb no-nothing statements about posters
here, as you did there against me. Check that impulse at the door of this board.
As you say some are thrown in over their heads. First day i sat and told them stories and how i got into teaching off a building site. No mathematics. And how education was important mostly because it kept more doors open. And how it was so much fun to be learning. Then i had them stand on their chairs. At the end of my term of teaching a couple of teachers had complained about too much noise from my room, but we all got away with it. And the kids enjoyed having me, a big part of the scene.
I assumed it was a one-off, a no reason assumption . Hope she just does what is comfortable for her.
conix, What specifically is so terrible about that speech of Biden's. 'We make history, not erase it. Black history is America's history.' Good stuff. If voters judge the two candidates on the content of their speeches, Biden would romp in. Toss in the relative number of times one has lied to American voters he would romp in by more. And on attitudes toward women. No contest there either. Guessing Biden will get about 11 million more votes than Trump. Course, yeah, the EC, but that's another story entirely.
I don't get it, what was wrong in your eyes with Biden's Morehouse College speech.
Well, i don't know anything about that and if she wants more exposure she'll handle it. Nothing wrong with tight jeans and a blouse on top if that's what you mean. If she is super conservative i'd be disappointed. I made it clear my comment on her was based on the one post. I hope she doesn't see all the venom which no doubt she would get. Agree there are lots of very nasty people out there. And it's clear what side of politics the great majority of them are on
conix, Reading through your conversation here with zab, fore and aft the one i am replying to here, my only thought was, for you to be saying the things you said to him was a real discredit to you. Unfortunately it didn't surprise, and i don't wonder why. You said zab said something, it is up to you to give the board evidence in support of your assertion not that zab is particularly concerned with it. When he denied saying, it you without missing a beat said he changed his mind. That was a very low moment for you. And still you haven't offered any evidence in support of your assertion. zab doesn't care, and no one else does either, so don't worry about finding the evidence you should have had before saying what you said now.
Fthoi, i searched zab's for "best president." Every reference to Biden is simply that he is a good president. With reasons 'cuz that's how zab is. Add that historians will likely rank him higher than so many today give him credit for.
And every single one of zab's post in there was measured, well thought out and decent. Your treating a guy who is obviously American to the most decent core is a disgrace.
Just a quick selection here ..
[...]I am please President Biden actually passed that Infrastructure Bill. Investing in bridges, roads, and airports are badly needed in America. Just thinking about how American's drive each day. I know around here; we are getting a couple of more bridges restored.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170859338
President Biden probably did the best Oil Trade of any President...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171049911
Now go back to your corner and wait till the next election. It is the only thing you can really do. President Biden is your President and is the President of the United States of America, and keep this thought real close, there is not a fucking thing you can do about it except come to this forum and whine each day.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171153114
This is America, and I have faith in this country, but it was shaken. We elected Bush, and then it elected trump.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171478447
Good for you, you brushed the floor off of yoursef, pretended you are a real American, and tried...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172416014
I expect more about an American President than a person who is testing at the laws that make this country great. Law and order are the backbone of any civilization, and America represents the best qualities that everyone in America and the world are looking up to. I want an an American President to not only live up to those high standards, but to make sure no one is above the law. Trump tramples on the laws, he hates the judicial system unless he can appoint the judges. Trump thinks he is special, he is not, he is just a flawed business person who exhausts the legal system. Why is Trump like that, that is wrong, and it's even worse for a president. A president should never being against the American legal system.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172525448
conix, Of course there were much more than those. In all the years you have done your best to poison and discredit this
place i have never seen you make a post as generously free of bullshit and empty comment as every one i have just read.
Yet you trivialize and ridicule him. A guy whose posts make yours look exactly the superficial water glider you are. And nasty at that.
Yep, whatever pasta i happen to have. LOL i don't understand this
"I feel really bad for you and your skeletal issues."
at all. Most, when the hair is reasonably cut, pick me for late 60s. Everyone
says i look much younger when it's not long. Heh, have no skeletal
issues at all now since a new knee. Certainly have never ever
had a skeletal issue related to food.
LOL Ooi, what in hell were you thinking about to say that??
WOW!! Hadn't heard how sickeningly desperate Trump has become. Vicious isn't a good enough word. Thanks.
Good to know, and sure hope you are right because it's the way it looks
from way down here, and is what i suggested to a guy in the pub yesterday.
Att: B402/brooklyn13 -- Iran oil sales are surging and Hamas is terrorizing. Is Biden to blame?
"Misinformed public - No, Trump would not have stopped Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
"UPDATES: Latest Russia-Ukraine updates: US warns over sanctions busting
"Ukraine clings to Bakhmut, top US official tells Russian counterpart Washington backs Kyiv all the way""
Related: B402, i don't give a fuck if you don't believe that i had it, fact is i did, and am now in the process of posting it. Actually just had a thought i should have said to you earlier ... LOLOL with all your fuckwits going on about Biden funding terrorism where, i wonder, are all your posts regarding Netanyahu's funding of Hamas. Even YOU must know it is Netanyahu which has been doing what you misinformation mongers are accusing Iran and Biden of doing.
How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel
"Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
Israel says it kills second Hamas commander in refugee camp, first evacuees leave Gaza
See also: Vengeance Is Not a Policy"
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174474005
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
The Fact Checker
October 25, 2023 at 4:41 p.m. EDT
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the former House speaker, departs a Republican Caucus
meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“We have to destroy Hamas, but you cannot do it without confronting Iran. They need to change their policies. Iran only had $4 billion in the foreign exchange when [Biden] took office. They now have $70 billion. Iran only produced 400,000 barrels of oil a day when they — when Biden took office. They now produce 3 million. They’re getting billions of dollars to fund terrorism around the world.”
— Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), remarks .. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/mccarthy-house-dysfunction-is-embarrassing-for-the-republican-party-and-the-nation-196158533683 .. on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Oct. 22
“What is so infuriating is, over the last 2½ years, Joe Biden and the Biden administration have flowed nearly $100 billion to Iran. … The biggest pot of money deals with the refusal of the Biden administration to enforce oil sanctions. U.S. law puts tough oil sanctions on Iran. Biden came in, immediately stopped enforcing them. Today, Iran is selling 2 million barrels a day of oil. That has produced $80 billion, roughly, in revenue. That is funding these Hamas death squads. That is funding the rockets. That is funding terrorism.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), remarks .. https://www.foxnews.com/video/6339669651112 .. on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Oct. 22
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Republicans have suggested that Biden administration policies toward Iran somehow financed the assault.
Originally, Republicans focused on the release of $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been held by South Korea — released in a deal to win the freedom of five American detainees — but that money had not yet been received by Iran. After the Hamas attack, the administration said it had prevented Iran from tapping the money.
So now there is a new talking point: that Iran has earned far more money from oil sales under President Biden than it did under President Donald Trump, and that, in turn, has funded terrorism. As Cruz put it in his television interview, “Understand, Hamas is a proxy for Iran. Without Iran, there would be no Hamas.”
For context, we should note that there is no evidence that Iran, which has suffered economically from sanctions over its nuclear program, is sending billions of dollars to Hamas. Trump’s State Department calculated in 2020 .. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Outlaw-Regime-2020-A-Chronicle-of-Irans-Destabilizing-Activity.pdf .. that Iran sends Hamas $100 million a year. So far, there is no report showing that the amount of funding from Iran to Hamas has increased under Biden.
Yet the administration’s policies certainly are fair game. Let’s evaluate whether the numbers cited by McCarthy and Cruz are correct and what, if anything, can be attributed to Biden’s policies.
The facts
The basic thrust of both comments is that, during Biden’s presidency, Iran has benefited economically. McCarthy’s numbers are mostly wrong, and Cruz’s appear exaggerated. But there is little question that Iran — the world’s third-largest holder of oil reserves and the second-largest of natural gas — is able to sell more petroleum products than it was during the later part of the Trump administration.
McCarthy — the former House speaker, whose spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment — said that “Iran only had $4 billion in the foreign exchange when [Biden] took office. They now have $70 billion.” We traced those numbers to a social media post .. https://x.com/RC_Greenway/status/1710725727480328522?s=20 .. by Robert Greenway .. https://www.heritage.org/staff/robert-greenway .. , who had been a Trump White House official involved in Iran policy and is now at the Heritage Foundation. He pointed us to a 2021 International Monetary Fund report .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/MECA/Issues/2021/04/11/regional-economic-outlook-middle-east-central-asia__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!BDVMdUQuaImmefcMiXIxriWPnDMylNthbmCE7zAIp11kojJq5tW_7rMONciBVBxuy0TWIlXCibJbcvSChkrQc6l39d5wg-bFDw$ .. showing that Iran’s foreign reserves in 2020, during the covid pandemic, were $6 billion. (So McCarthy was in the ballpark with $4 billion.)
But for 2023, the IMF estimates .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/MECA/Issues/2023/10/12/regional-economic-outlook-mcd-october-2023__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!DRpYSklRjRVCZ7DTy0Di5Ckd3_VmttKj96M6ag8K0LDc04A008S7xXtqUvkUFP6j-tXdyvn8nSaxML99S_uS_MgsxCtOEjWpag$ .. that Iran’s foreign currency reserves are $21.1 billion, not $70 billion. Greenway did not respond to a question about why he said it was $70 billion now.
The IMF also has an updated estimate .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/MECA/Issues/2023/10/12/regional-economic-outlook-mcd-october-2023__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!DRpYSklRjRVCZ7DTy0Di5Ckd3_VmttKj96M6ag8K0LDc04A008S7xXtqUvkUFP6j-tXdyvn8nSaxML99S_uS_MgsxCtOEjWpag$ .. for Iran’s foreign currency reserves in 2020: $13.8 billion. So rather than an increase to $70 billion from $6 billion — more than 1,000 percent — the foreign currency reserves have grown about 50 percent, to $21.1 billion from $13.8 billion. The IMF estimates that the reserves will be $24.3 billion in 2024. An Iranian central bank official this month .. https://en.irna.ir/news/85261868/Iran-s-forex-reserves-increasing-due-to-oil-non-oil-exports .. attributed the increase to the growth of oil and non-oil exports.
Iran’s reserves were $122.5 billion in 2018, according to the IMF, before new sanctions were imposed after Trump pulled out of an international agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Without success, Biden has sought to restore the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran — a policy that itself is a signal to oil markets that sanctions could soon be waived.
As for Iran’s current oil production, McCarthy said Iran was producing 3 million barrels a day and Cruz said Iran was selling 2 million barrels a day. Both numbers are correct, according to SVB International, a consulting firm .. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/irans-oil-output-exports-rise-washington-tehran-talk-2023-08-31/ . Mohsen Khojastehmehr, chief executive of the National Iranian Oil Company, said in August that Iran would soon be producing 3.5 million barrels a day.
But McCarthy gilds the lily by referencing 400,000 barrels a day in 2020.
First of all, that’s a number for oil exports, not production, so he’s mixing apples and oranges. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration .. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49116 , Iran’s oil production in 2020 was just under 2 million barrels a day. Second, the pandemic sent oil production and sales plummeting around the globe. Iran’s production in 2020 was the lowest in almost 40 years, the EIA said.
In 2019, before the pandemic, Iranian oil production was about 2.6 million barrels a day until May of that year, when sanctions waivers expired, and then fell to 2.1 million. As for exports, Iran sold about 600,000 barrels a day in 2019.
So clearly Iran had begun to sell more oil. Cruz, in his comments, directly implicates the administration: “U.S. law puts tough oil sanctions on Iran. Biden came in, immediately stopped enforcing them.”
Patrick Clawson .. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/patrick-clawson , director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s program on Iran and U.S. policy, said that’s not quite right. He said the Trump administration was unusually aggressive — a top State Department official even directly contacted the captains of tankers .. https://www.ft.com/content/20188064-cefb-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f .. carrying Iranian oil, offering millions of dollars if they would deliver the cargo to a neutral port — but he said in general, sanctions erode over time.
“It would have been tough for a second-term Trump administration to maintain the same level of effort as the first term,” he said.
In particular, China has become adept at evading U.S. sanctions by arranging for many buyers of Iranian oil to be small, semi-independent refineries known as “teapots.” Such entities accounted for about one-fifth of China’s worldwide oil imports, according to Reuters .. https://www.reuters.com/article/china-oil-quotas-teapots/chinas-teapot-refining-hub-seeks-to-stop-crude-quota-trading-idUSL4N2PB15K . “With their small size and limited business operations, teapots are both hard to uncover and not exposed to the U.S. financial system,” according to a report .. https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/blog/uncovering-chinese-purchasers-of-iranian-oil .. last month by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran.
The group estimated that Iranian oil sales to China totaled $47 billion in 2021 and 2022.
“With China’s increasing imports of Iranian petroleum, Chinese buyers may have concluded that the economic benefits of continuing to buy Iranian petroleum exceed the risks of potential U.S. sanctions,” the Congressional Research Service said in a report this week. It noted that China is able to obtain Iranian oil often below prevailing market prices.
Philip Verleger, an economist and energy consultant, said sanctions cannot be sustained unless a large number of countries are participating — and even then they will weaken over time. “The oil is going to move,” he said, unless the U.S. Navy starts boarding tankers.
The Biden administration rejects the idea that it is not enforcing sanctions. A Treasury Department official said an administration diplomatic campaign has ensured there are no new buyers of Iranian oil — he said sales are made to the same buyers that evaded sanctions under Trump — and thus Iran has been forced to rely entirely on black-market oil sales with a steep price discount.
The United States has also seized nearly 5 million barrels of petroleum product, he said. Last month, the Justice Department announced the first criminal resolution .. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-first-criminal-resolution-involving-illicit-sale-and-transport .. involving the illicit sale and transport of Iranian oil in violation of U.S. sanctions. In this case, nearly 1 million barrels of seized oil was tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Cruz said that “over the last 2½ years, Joe Biden and the Biden administration have flowed nearly $100 billion to Iran.” We asked a spokesman for data to back up that figure but did not get a response.
It’s possible that Cruz was referring to an estimate .. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/13/lax-sanctions-enforcement-has-yielded-a-windfall-for-iran/ .. this month by the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The organization said that Iran, because of “lax sanctions enforcement,” has earned $95 billion in oil revenue. The report attributed about $32 billion to relaxed or unenforced sanctions.
“Markets respond to signals, be they political and economic,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, co-author of the report. “Over a year and a half of unenforced oil sanctions meant that when enforcement began, however sporadically, in May 2022, the market did not see this as a measure of seriousness. Iran’s climbing export volumes means Tehran didn’t either.”
The Daily Signal, the news website for Heritage, estimated .. https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/18/not-just-6b-heres-how-much-money-biden-admin-freed-iran-hamas-terror-attack-israel/ .. that Iran has received about $71 billion more under Biden than it would have received under Trump. That estimate relies in part on the assumption that it “stands to reason” that a second Trump administration would have succeeded in keeping oil steady at $55 a barrel. That dubious assumption boosts the $32 billion estimated by FDD to $52 billion. (Monthly oil prices under Trump ranged from a low of $15.18 per barrel in April 2020, early in the pandemic, to a high of $67 in July 2018, according to the EIA .. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=f000000__3&f=m .)
Tyler O’Neil, the author of the Daily Signal estimate, said in an email that “it is, of course, impossible to predict exactly how oil prices would have changed had Trump remained president,” but he faulted Biden’s policies for contributing to higher oil prices. Under Biden, oil reached a high of $113.77 in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prices dropped to the $70 range in May and June but have spiked after the Israel-Gaza war .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/?itid=lk_inline_manual_52 .. erupted.
The Pinocchio test
There are several problematic elements to these statements. The numbers are off, especially McCarthy’s, and they exaggerate the extent to which Iran had managed to boost its oil sales and foreign exchange reserves. Cruz all but says that the Biden administration is responsible for all the money Iran has received from oil sales, when it’s virtually impossible to cut off a major oil exporter from worldwide markets. If you accept the FDD report, the figure that might be attributable to Biden’s sanctions policies would be $32 billion. That’s a big number, but not as high as $100 billion.
Whether any of these earnings can be traced to the funding of the Hamas attack on Israel is still unknown, but Iran makes no secret of its backing of the group.
We find ourselves on the cusp between Two and Three Pinocchios. McCarthy’s figures are so wrong that they are worthy of Three Pinocchios, but as a general matter, it is correct that Iran has recovered from the nadir of oil sales during the pandemic and now is selling more oil than before Trump imposed sanctions. Whether Biden is entirely to blame for that is up for debate, but Republicans could make that case without resorting to exaggeration. So we award Two Pinocchios.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/25/iran-oil-sales-are-surging-hamas-is-terrorizing-is-biden-blame/
You see B402, That article is abundantly fair to McCarthy and Cruz. As we are on Tornado Alley.
We do not lie and misrepresent as you and brooklyn13 do.
You are vicious. We are fair.
B402, You have to be kidding. brooklyn13 has not been nearly as critical of Israel policy as i have been of Australia's aboriginal situation over years. And to boot all that in light of the fact that Australian Aboriginals are much better off in Australia these days than West Bank and Gaza Palestinians are under the grip of Israel. No fucking walls, checkpoints or massacres for only three.
I would have posted the article before now if you hadn't made such a rude and stupid interruption. Now you will have to wait longer as it's lunchtime for me. Fuck you.
B402, i don't give a fuck if you don't believe that i had it, fact is i did, and am now in the process of posting it. Actually just had a thought i should have said to you earlier ... LOLOL with all your fuckwits going on about Biden funding terrorism where, i wonder, are all your posts regarding Netanyahu's funding of Hamas. Even YOU must know it is Netanyahu which has been doing what you misinformation mongers are accusing Iran and Biden of doing.
How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel
"Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
Israel says it kills second Hamas commander in refugee camp, first evacuees leave Gaza
See also: Vengeance Is Not a Policy"
The Israeli leader and Hamas are deadly enemies — and allies in opposing a 2-state solution
Evan Dyer · CBC News · Posted: Oct 28, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: October 28
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173146869
and in reply
Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza becoming a ‘graveyard for children’, UN chief says; 10,000 Palestinians killed, says Gaza health ministry
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173165637
and
‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174244023
The continued hypocrisy and misinformation moangering of you assholes is sickening.
Now, after a further stretch legs break, i will get back to the posting of the article i told you i had
seen before because i had seen it before. Yours was a very rude and ill-judged interruption.
" And , where is the confirmation? You are too well known for searching for confirmation biased
articles just to take your word for it especially for this is subject after what I just saw and posted..........."
I am not well known at all for what you accused me of there. You really are a shit. A dirty one at that.
B402, I don't make comments like that without being certain they are fair, without having seen some confirmation on them before.
Actually McCarthy and Cruz came out of it with only two Pinocchios, better than they often do. Will post it soon to a different post.
brooklyn13, Am not certain exactly what is wrong with you, but
"Right, it’s just asshole me. No structural racism in Australia, hey look over there, at Israel. Or somewhere else
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/04/1135827
https://nit.com.au/30-05-2023/6157/racism-continues-to-plague-the-lives-of-aboriginal-people
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/06/whatever-the-voice-votes-result-australia-has-a-racism-problem-we-must-tackle
“Racism is one of the most pressing social issues today. In Australia, racism remains historically and structurally entrenched, interpersonally pervasive, and has harmful consequences across various life spheres, spanning areas as broad as economic participation, justice and incarceration, and health and wellbeing”. e.g. Elias and Paradies Citation2021, Elias et
P - Meet you at the pub, mate, racism shmacism, not anybody I know. It’s funny how you just happen not to see any of the links I’ve posted about this. Ergo, I’m making it up "
over years i have, rather that ever denying the structural racism in Australia (which i don't) posted a number of articles like the ones you included above.
i have seen most all, if not all, the links you have posted here. So yeah, as anyone here who knows you as well as many do could attest, you really do make a lot of your misleading opinions about people here up.
All that said, of course, none of your material above has anything at all to do with Israel's much worse treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza.
PS: brooklyn13, Can you imagine a courtroom lawyer in defense of his client saying, " Where i ask you are all the other bank robbers, kidnappers, child abusers and wife-beaters who are running free out there!", to a jury. Can you imagine that. Now imagine the looks on jury members faces as they look at each other.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174464756
That's just one over the past few months of mine to you which you haven't bothered to deal with.
Agree on both counts. Hilarious and sad. In about year 9 we had an elderly lady for French who the word was had a nervous breakdown. Some of the kids in the class boasted we had caused it. I gave them hell for it, while at the same time by memory couldn't help laughing about it a bit too.
Without knowing more about her, i'd guess those kids are lucky to have such a good teacher. She looks kind, and obviously has a decent sense of humor.
Cohen telling Costello he was at wits end and didn't have anything on Trump would have been perfectly natural for him to do at the time. For one he would have been hoping Trump would help him out. And for two he would have expected Costello to share whatever Cohen said with Trump.
And that business of Cohen stealing money from Trump Org. because he didn't feel he was being paid enough should not matter to the guts of the case either.
Correct me if i'm wrong, as far as i know the defense has not been able to show that anything Cohen has said about Trump in the trial has been untrue.
Same here. The young 40s woman in charge of the pokie room at the General Gordon has a debt with a shark in Marrickville, she tells me. Haven't pried to the extent to know exactly how much, but from what she shares it's heaps. She had a gambling problem long time before she reached us. A decent young woman with a habit she can't yet control.
Yeah, fair comment. It's just me the Salman butchery of Khashoggi has him standing out.
It's no wonder Cruz has to rely on exaggerated numbers without real context to get his points across.
If he didn't he might come over as less an aggressive pig than the pig he comes across as.
Hip hip hooray for the EU - The world isn’t as messed up as you might think
"Europe Agrees to Give Russia's Billions to Ukraine"
Rick Newman·Senior Columnist
Mon, Apr 22, 2024 5 min read
VIDEO
Many many more links, chart
We live in perilous times, right? Wars threaten, chaos abounds, doom lurks...
Actually, no. We live in more or less normal times, even if the daily news makes it seem like apocalypse is always around the corner. In fact, there’s a remarkable amount of stability that keeps economies chugging along and living standards intact.
Citi researchers recently examined more than 100 years of geopolitical developments to assess where we stand now and what degree of risk global investors face. Their conclusion: Things aren’t too shabby.
“A common perception is that geopolitical shocks are becoming more frequent and severe,” a team led by Citi global chief economist Nathan Sheets wrote in a new report. “We find little support for this view. The world has seen an increase in geopolitical pressures in the 2020s compared with the relatively benign 2010s, but such pressures are hardly elevated relative to many previous decades.”
This might seem counterintuitive, given that Russia and Ukraine are fighting the biggest war in Europe since World War II while Israel and Iran have been openly bombing each other for the first time ever. Analysts warn of a new cold war .. https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/04/16/gps-0416-david-sanger-book-new-cold-wars.cnn .. pitting the West against a new “axis of evil” that includes Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. Here at home, the portion of Americans who think the nation is going in the wrong direction is at generational highs.
The data isn’t nearly that negative, however. Citi highlights a “geopolitical risk index” .. https://www.matteoiacoviello.com/gpr.htm .. devised by Federal Reserve economists Dario Caldara and Matteo Iacoviello to measure current conditions in historical context. Their methodology includes detailed searches of English-language media going back to 1900 meant to capture references to wars and other crises that disrupt normal economic activity.
Not surprisingly, geopolitical risk spikes the most during massive wars, with World Wars I and II setting the upper bound for the risk index. Other events that caused unusually high risk during the past 124 years are labeled on the following chart.
CHART
Not every war sends geopolitical risk soaring. The Vietnam War, which hit peak intensity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, doesn’t correlate with a surge in geopolitical risk, probably because it was contained to a corner of the world that didn’t much affect the global economy. Smaller skirmishes in the Middle East cause more global risks since they can affect the world’s oil supplies.
The average index reading for the entire period is 100. So how have we been doing lately? The most disruptive events of the 21st Century were the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, which pushed the index to 304, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which cranked it up to 245. For most of the time from 2007 through 2021, the risk index was below the historical average. (The 2008 stock market crash and the 2020 COVID pandemic weren’t geopolitical in nature, so they don’t register on the index.)
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine obviously shattered the calm. The risk index jumped from a muted 85 at the end of 2021 to 167 right after the invasion. Markets felt the pain, with oil prices jumping from $90 to $120 during the next few months before settling back below $100.
Ukrainian rescuers work in the courtyard of a residential building damaged as a result of a missile attack in Dnipro on April 19, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images) (ANATOLII STEPANOV via Getty Images)
As markets adapted to the Russian attack, the geopolitical risk index fell back into the normal zone until it jumped again after Hamas attacked Israel last October. But the index has since fallen from 137 to 104, as of March 1. That doesn’t account for the recent exchange of fire between Israel and Iran, but many analysts think that episode is over, with oil prices largely unaffected.
The upshot is that geopolitical risk is near ordinary levels compared with the last 12 decades. Yet people don’t feel like things are normal. Consumer confidence surveys are close to recessionary levels despite low unemployment, booming growth, and rising household wealth. President Biden’s approval rating is dismal, threatening his reelection bid.
What’s going on? Why are Americans so bummed out? Citi suggests one explanation is “recency bias ..https://www.schwabassetmanagement.com/content/recency-bias ,” the tendency to compare current circumstances to whatever is freshest in our memories. People don’t compare life in 2024 to the way it was in 2001 or 1944. They compare it to the last time they thought life was good, which might have been 2018 or 2019.
There are a variety of other reasons .. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/4-new-theories-for-why-everybodys-bummed-out-183920250.html .. why the national mood is gloomy. Social media allows deep “doomscrolling” that wasn’t really possible before. Fringy news sites thrive on peddling outrage and grievance to anybody inclined to it. Politics has become toxic, with politicians and voters alike attacking those who disagree with them. A bout of inflation during the last two years has shrunk some wallets and made small privileges dear.
In polls, Americans cite a chaotic immigration system, poor government leadership, and inflation as the nation’s biggest problems. But pollsters don’t usually ask people about what’s going right, and a few things are. The United States has become the world’s top oil and natural gas producer, making it far less captive to supplies from the volatile Middle East than, say, during the oil shocks of the 1970s. Inflation has stung during the last couple of years, but the Federal Reserve has brought it down quickly without the sort of back-breaking recession .. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82#;: .. it took to corral inflation in the early 1980s. Wars in Europe and the Middle East are unnerving, but American troops aren’t involved, and the nation’s costly excursions in Afghanistan and Iraq are largely over.
If you want to buck the trend and believe everything might be OK, the evidence will back you up.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-world-isnt-as-messed-up-as-you-might-think-170048030.html
The Trump mental condition no doubt is a mix of virus and cancer so what could the name of it be ..
there is cowpox so Trumpox fits, in more ways than one
https://viralzone.expasy.org/678
and there is prostate
https://www.cancer.gov/types/common-cancers
which would be the best for him as it could also act as a real safety measure for women.
So the name of the mental condition could be something like proTRox.
Considered nopro as he isn't, but that would conflict with the fact
that him getting prostate cancer would be a bonus for all women.
We're looking at it doesn't mean we are considering it. We don't consider every time we look. Sometimes we consider without looking. Mostly we don't consider when we look, that would take our attention away from our looking at it. I hope you and the rest of your liberal media will treat me better when i become the most deserving president for a 2nd time .