Editors' preface: Who has rights to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River? Zionists cite biblical passages in which God awarded them Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, in perpetuity in his covenant with the children of Israel. Muslims make a counter-claim based in part on verses of the Qur'an that describe the Jews in terms of contempt and in part on rulings in Muslim law that reject Muslims relinquishing rule over a territory under Muslim rule to nonbelievers. But other Muslims cite different Qur'anic verses in support of the Jewish claim. The conflict has a religious quality that makes it the more difficult to resolve.
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
For thin-skinned Trump, every week is Shark Week
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/24/trump-rally-sharks-media-electrocution/
Trump’s apologists will say that this is just shtick to entertain his audience. (These same apologists keep telling us that Trump’s rants should be taken “seriously, not literally,” but whatever.) If we’re supposed to judge him on his chops as a Borscht Belt comedian, Don Rickles was funnier.
Monday, June 24, 2024
Here’s what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said about Donald Trump during his DA campaign
https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/apr/12/heres-what-manhattan-district-attorney-alvin-bragg/
In the lead-up to his 2021 election to become Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg spoke often about his record, which included litigation against former President Donald Trump. He did not make any campaign promises to indict Trump.
Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., in 2019 began investigating the Trump Organization’s role in hush money payments.
Bragg said during his campaign that he would continue his predecessor's investigation and hold Trump “accountable by following the facts where they go.”
New Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg pledges to focus on Trump investigations
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/20/politics/bragg-new-york-trump/index.html
The next Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg Jr., says he plans to personally focus on the high-profile probe into former President Donald Trump’s business practices and may expand the investigative team while keeping at least one senior prosecutor on the case.
Bragg, who will be sworn into office on January 1, said he hasn’t been briefed on the facts of the Trump case, which is before a state grand jury. But he indicated he has no plans to disrupt the investigation he’s inheriting even as he also wants to focus on his own agenda.
“This is obviously a consequential case, one that merits the attention of the DA personally,” Bragg said in a recent interview over lunch in Harlem.
Did Alvin Bragg Campaign on a Promise To Prosecute Trump? What We Know
While campaigning, Bragg said: "I have investigated Trump and his children and held them accountable for their misconduct with the Trump Foundation. I also sued the Trump administration more than 100 times for the travel ban, the separation of children from their families at the border. So I know that work. I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable."
He also said that he would continue with Vance's investigation and hold Trump "accountable by following the facts where they go."
US hasn’t withheld weapons for Israel, but it’s done fast-tracking them
The Biden administration in recent months removed emergency procedures that were in place to fast-track weapons to Israel toward the beginning of the war, an American official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Sunday.
The revelation helps explain the claim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began making last week that the United States has been withholding weapons shipments to Israel. The US has denied the assertion, explaining that it has only withheld one shipment of heavy bombs it was concerned Israel would use in the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah.
All other shipments have continued at a normal pace, the White House explained.
I Was The Target Of Racial, Homophobic Harassment by MAGA. I'm Still Voting For Trump |
I am done thinking. Trump has my vote in 2024. No matter what I think about the fringes that are still very much active in the Republican Party, I cannot let my negative experience with a few color the larger issues that are facing America.
Trump claims he made peace in the Middle East with Abraham Accords. That’s False.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, Donald Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said that when he was president, he brokered a deal to protect Israel.
"With the historic Abraham Accords, I even made peace in the Middle East, we're gonna have peace in the Middle East," Trump said at a Dec. 2 rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "So, for four straight years, I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe."
Trump has repeatedly said this since Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7.
"In reality, the accords simply elevated and formalized relations between countries that already maintained backchannel ties," said Omar H. Rahman, a U.S.-based research fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, a think tank in Qatar. "Moreover, none of the parties to the Abraham Accords were ever engaged in military conflict against each other, so framing normalization as peace is a gross misrepresentation of what the agreements actually achieved."
The Old Peace Treaties vs. the Abraham Accords
https://besacenter.org/the-old-peace-treaties-vs-the-abraham-accords/
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Unlike Israel’s earlier peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, the Abraham Accords involved Arab countries that do not border Israel, have never fought it on the battlefield, and are relatively unburdened by the Palestinian question. Accordingly, they were able to implement a “people to people” peace that eluded their predecessors.
Forget 'peace,' did Abraham Accords set stage for Israel-Gaza conflict?
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/abraham-accords-peace-middle-east/
The resulting Abraham Accords were, at least in the neoconservative world, considered a stroke of “genius.” Rather than finding a solution to the seemingly intractable question of Palestinian statehood, it simply sidelined it.
But the Palestinian issue could not simply be wished away, and the signing of the pacts created a set of contradictions that fueled the tensions that erupted October 7. The vast majority of the populations of Israel’s Arab neighbors opposed the accords, as did some leaders, like Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who charged that the signers had “lost their moral compass,” and Jordan’s King Abdullah, who declared that “no architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of this conflict.”
So did Palestinians themselves, across opinion surveys, with both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas calling it a “betrayal,” a “treacherous stab,” and “grave harm.” Hamas also called for “an integrated plan to bring down normalization.” Protests against the accords erupted in Morocco, one of the signers.
Assessing the Abraham Accords, Three Years On
https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/assessing-the-abraham-accords-three-years-on/
Given the domestic and regional effects, it is difficult to see how the Abraham Accords and their expansion can achieve peace or stability, even in the short term. A recent meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and his Libyan counterpart, Najla el-Mangoush, is a case in point; what were supposed to be under-the-table talks regarding normalization led to protests across Libya once they were exposed by the Israelis. Public outcry has even forced the Libyan government to accuse the foreign minister of grand treason.
The long term impacts of these dynamics are dangerous as well. Transnational repression does not remain confined to the region, and has already impacted activists and dissidents, even in the Global North. Internally, dynamics of domestic repression in Arab nations create unstable state-society relations, portending additional reactions in the future. The fact that these authoritarian dynamics are attached to ideas of “tolerance” and to Israel’s integration into the Arab world will be catastrophic for public opinion, making sustainable peace in the region even less likely.
Why incompetents become rich and powerful
Sefer Chasidim (549) Sometimes you will find rulers and rich and not because of their good deeds but because others humiliated them or their ancestors and their family because of some characteristic they have and God does not want people to be shamed so He made then rich and powerful.
Argentina: Less inflation, more poverty under Milei
https://www.dw.com/en/argentina-less-inflation-more-poverty-since-milei-took-office/a-69446583
Economist Hernan Letcher, director of the Argentine Center for Economic Policy, takes a more critical view. He believes the victims of Milei's deregulation policy and austerity measures are ordinary people, not what Milei has described as the "caste."
Warning signs for Biden’s Jewish support as war in Gaza drags on and antisemitism rises
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/23/politics/joe-biden-jewish-voters/index.html
Israel has often proved to be a vexing topic for Trump to speak about during his comparatively brief political career. Trump’s support among Jewish voters in 2020, at 30% according to Associated Press exit polls, was the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in decades.
The former president is frustrated he didn’t get more support from Jewish voters for the long-sought moving of the American embassy to Jerusalem and has many times made comments like the ones he made in April, saying that “any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel, and frankly, should be spoken to.”
He has offered no substantive alternative proposals for getting to a deal or long-term post conflict plan. He has not condemned antisemitic incidents, and often talks about hostages in reference to the January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters in prison, not the estimated 120 Israelis (including five American citizens) still being held by Hamas.
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