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Everything posted by bolverk
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"There are two peoples living between the river and the sea, not one, and they are entitled to separate states in which each of these peoples enjoys the full panoply of civil and human rights." Britain and France Have Pledged to Recognize a Palestinian State. What Would It Mean? The announcements reflect deep frustrations with Israel’s conduct in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, experts say. Britain on Tuesday said it would recognize a Palestinian state if Israel did not reach a cease-fire agreement on the war in Gaza by September. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s move followed France’s announcement last week that it would officially acknowledge Palestine statehood. Both announcements reflect the deep frustrations by both nations with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, analysts say, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and left a population of about two million in a state of extreme privation and hunger. They also came in response to Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank: Its military activity there has displaced Palestinians en masse this year, settlement plans have expanded, and violence by settlers against Palestinians has risen since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel ignited the war. That assault killed about 1,200 people and led to the abduction of about 250 others to Gaza. The announcements raise questions about what the recognition of a Palestinian state would mean and what it can actually do. Countries that have recognized the State of Palestine. If the UK goes through with it in September, you have to think Canada, Australia, and New Zealand aren't too far behind.
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Wordle 1,502 3/6 🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛ ⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #780 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🙂 Daily Quordle 1283 7️⃣4️⃣ 6️⃣5️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
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I've got about half the days in the forecast above 100. Fortunately, the humidity is pretty low out here. Speaking of which, I came across this summertime dew point map on Reddit and thought I'd share, just because.
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America's Foreign Policy & Other Shit Going On Around the World thread
bolverk replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Trump's trade policies might push Iceland into joining the EU. Could Iceland Join The EU? Reykjavik Eyes Accession Talks As Security, Trade Tensions Mount When predicting which country would be the next to join the European Union, the smart money seems to be on Montenegro given that it has been negotiating for years and has advanced the furthest of all candidates. Others point to Albania, which is currently making great strides toward Brussels as the next member. There are also some who think that Moldova -- a reform-oriented and ambitious country in the bloc’s eastern neighborhood -- stands a decent chance of becoming EU member state number 28 in the coming year. But the right answer may actually be Iceland. The Trump administration's overtures to annex the Danish territory of Greenland and the prospect of a trade war between its security provider, the United States, and its biggest trading partner, the European Union, have created unease on the North Atlantic island. The current Icelandic government, which came to power last year, has announced that a referendum will be held before 2027 on resuming accession talks with Brussels. Polls suggest a majority would support restarting talks. The country has been here before. It was badly hit by the 2008 global financial crisis, when three of its major banks collapsed. EU membership -- and especially joining the eurozone -- was seen as a way out of the crisis, and negotiations with the bloc began in 2010. Talks were suspended three years later by a newly elected right-wing government. By then, the eurozone was itself engulfed in the same financial crisis, so joining the club and adopting its ailing common currency was no longer seen as a panacea. In those three years of accession talks, Reykjavik opened most of the 33 accession chapters and closed 11. By comparison, the current EU accession frontrunner, Montenegro, has managed to close a mere seven chapters in more than a decade of talks. 'A Sovereign Decision' It’s not for nothing that EU officials believe that Iceland could wrap up the entire process in a couple of years if it was to resume its application -- which according to the European Commission still remains valid. It helps, of course, that the country is part of the European Economic Area (EEA), which means that it -- together with other EEA members Norway and Liechtenstein -- is already applying the EU’s internal market rules. When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited the island last week, she was quick to point out that the issue of future EU membership is “a sovereign decision that the people take here. So, it’s not a topic for me to comment on.” But, she added, “Iceland is familiar and integrated into the single market, we share values, we know each other very well, we are like-minded -- all this is an asset.” Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a European diplomat familiar with the topic was even more forthright. “It would be good if a Western European country would join the EU, especially after Brexit,” they said. “It would show that the club truly is attractive.” Integration would prove seamless, given that Iceland is richer than the EU average and -- with a population of 300,000 -- would be the smallest member state if it joined. While Brussels officially is trying to stay out of the Icelandic debate on membership, it is quietly doing everything to edge it closer. During her visit, von der Leyen promised a trade review to potentially upgrade the EEA agreement. She also struck a deal to protect critical infrastructure that is essential for Iceland, such as subsea cables, and started negotiations on a new security and defense partnership agreement, which would allow closer cooperation on cyber and hybrid threats. The partnership, expected to be ready by year’s end, is especially important for Iceland, which is acutely aware of the need for security cooperation, particularly as both Russia and China are becoming more active in the Arctic region. -
And it still wasn't enough to sate Putin's appetite to erase Ukraine. https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/trump-reportedly-offered-to-hand-crimea-and-1753644166.html Austria's Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said in an interview with Die Welt that Trump was ready to "hand over" Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Putin chose to keep fighting. The Minister said the situation is clear: Ukraine wants peace, while Russia does not. Putin would have already started negotiations to end the war if he were truly interested in peace. She said Trump had effectively offered Putin Crimea and several eastern regions of Ukraine, and even ruled out Ukraine's NATO membership. Yet, Putin chose to continue his war of destruction against Ukraine. Meinl-Reisinger also rejected claims that Russia holds an advantage on the battlefield. She reminded that the Kremlin is suffering massive losses in Ukraine, and Putin won't be able to ignore this forever. The Minister said that coffins will continue to pile up in Russia, and combined with the country's worsening economic crisis, it is becoming harder for the Kremlin to sustain the war. According to her, Putin realizes he is running out of time, which is why he is escalating the war with such brutal intensity.
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There's some pretty good not-so-subtle snark in this. https://www.thetimes.com/article/a16fff4b-ca9c-45c4-b85d-3168750dff7b?shareToken=aca77cceb9221c90f4b028c72286e055 Russian fans of heavy metal and goth music could face prison after the Kremlin’s top court outlawed the “international satanism movement” as an extremist and terrorist group — even though no such organisation exists. The Russian Supreme Court’s ruling came after appeals from the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, MPs and other officials. It means that anyone who is alleged to be a member of the non-existent movement could face up to eight years in prison. Critics said the ruling would increase the climate of fear that has gripped Russia since President Putin ordered tanks into Ukraine in 2022. In April, Andrei Kartapolov, a senior MP who heads the Russian parliament’s defence committee, told officials that satanism was a “direct threat to Russian statehood”. He also alleged, without evidence, that Russia’s satanists were funded by the West. Another pro-Kremlin MP claimed that he had received complaints from members of the public about the growing number of “satanic sex orgies” in Moscow and other cities. Although President Putin was once a KGB officer in the officially atheist Soviet Union, he now professes a deep Christian faith. He has described Moscow’s standoff with the West over Ukraine as a battle against the “outright satanism” of same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights. In January, Patriarch Kirill, the powerful head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said that he supported calls to ban satanism because it was an “ideology that destroys our national identity and weakens our people”. Kirill also said that Russian soldiers in Ukraine were fighting for values that were directly opposed to satanic beliefs. That is not true of all Putin’s troops, however. In 2023, as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to recruit convicts for the war, Russia freed from prison a member of a gang that killed four teenage girls in a ritual killing. Nikolai Ogolobyak and his accomplices fried and ate the hearts and tongues of their victims and stabbed one of them 666 times as a sacrifice to the devil, police said. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2010, but was pardoned by Putin after serving six months at the front in Ukraine. Human rights lawyers warned that the Supreme Court’s ruling meant that Russians who listen to heavy metal, goth and industrial music, which often use occult imagery, could be at risk. “Will they put people in jail for T-shirts with pentagrams and goat heads? We won’t risk saying for sure, but the practice of cases involving other fictitious ‘extremists’ can tell us a lot,” said Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer. The Supreme Court ruling, which is due to come into force next month, is expected to be applied retrospectively, meaning that people could potentially be prosecuted for social media posts containing satanic imagery that were made years ago. The full text of the Supreme Court’s decision has not been published, however, and it is unclear what images have been banned. In any case, the law is unlikely to affect Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and prime minister, who has previously spoken of his love for Deep Purple. The British rock group’s songs include Lucifer and Demon’s Eye. Russia has already banned what it calls the “international LGBT social movement” as an extremist and terrorist group, placing it on a par with Islamic State and violent neo-Nazi groups. The same designation has also been used in recent years to outlaw Alexei Navalny, the late opposition leader, and his nationwide network of activists, as well as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the same time, Russia recently removed the Taliban from its official list of extremist and terrorist groups, as it seeks closer ties with the de facto rulers of Afghanistan. Since taking power, the Taliban has banned girls from secondary and higher education and barred women from most professions. Coincidentally or not, Russia’s depiction of its enemies in Ukraine and the West as demonic figures comes as the Kremlin boosts its military ties with Iran, where the United States is routinely referred to as the Great Satan. Even some of Putin’s biggest supporters mocked the proposal to officially ban satanism when it was first floated this year. “I have to officially state that I am not worried at the moment about the ‘growing number of satanic sex orgies’,” Yevgeny Popov, a pro-Kremlin MP and state television presenter, wrote in April. “To my shame, I didn’t know that their number had increased.”
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Lindsey's getting primaried. https://apnews.com/article/dans-project-2025-graham-south-carolina-senate-781a780ee4cd701d0b1d52d19e7a2892
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If they don't make a show of it, they can't intimidate we the people.
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"I'm still miserable, prices keep going up, and he's selling us out to billionaires. Come to think of it, almost every single one of his policies is unquestionably bad for me, and the guy really is a dick. But, you know what? Overall I'm still happy with how things are playing out, because he's going after the browns." It's an impenetrable white supremacist cult. https://apnews.com/article/trump-approval-polling-favorability-presidential-approval-poll-f7eee34a49d2db7670577f4491e1caf0 WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Hildenbrand has noticed prices continue to rise this year, even with President Donald Trump in the White House. He doesn’t blame Trump, his choice for president in 2024, but says Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats who control his home state, California, are at fault. “You can’t compare California with the rest of the country,” said Hildenbrand, who is 76 and lives in San Diego. “I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the country. It seems like prices are dropping. Things are getting better, but I don’t necessarily see it here.” Voters like Hildenbrand, whose support of the Republican president is unwavering, help explain Trump’s polling numbers and how they have differed from other presidents’ polling trajectory in significant ways. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March found that 42% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s job performance. That is a lower rating than those of other recent presidents at the beginning of their second terms, including Democrat Barack Obama and Republican George W. Bush. The most recent AP-NORC poll, from July, puts Trump at 40% approval. While that is not a meaningful change from March, there is some evidence that Trump’s support may be softening, at least on the margins. The July poll showed a slight decrease in approval of his handling of immigration since earlier in the year. Some other pollsters, such as Gallup, show a downward slide in overall approval since slightly earlier in his term, in January. But even those shifts are within a relatively narrow range, which is typical for Trump. The new AP-NORC polling tracker shows that Trump’s favorability rating has remained largely steady since the end of his first term, with between 33% and 43% of U.S. adults saying they viewed him favorably across more than five years. Those long-term trends underscore that Trump has many steadfast opponents. But loyal supporters also help explain why views of the president are hard to change even as he pursues policies that most Americans do not support, using an approach that many find abrasive. Persistently low approval of Trump’s job performance Trump has not had a traditional honeymoon period in his second term. He did not in his first, either. An AP-NORC poll conducted in March 2017, two months into his first term, showed that 42% of Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” approved of his performance. That is largely where his approval rating stayed over the course of the next four years. The recent slippage on immigration is particularly significant because that issue was a major strength for Trump in the 2024 election. Earlier in his second term, it was also one of the few areas where he was outperforming his overall approval. In March, about half of U.S. adults approved of his handling of immigration. But the July AP-NORC poll found his approval on immigration at 43%, in line with his overall approval rating. Other recent polls show growing discontent with Trump’s approach on immigration. A CNN/SSRS poll found that 55% of U.S. adults say the president has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally, an increase of 10 percentage points since February. “I understand wanting to get rid of illegal immigrants, but the way that’s being done is very aggressive,” said Donovan Baldwin, 18, of Asheboro, North Carolina, who did not vote in the 2024 election. “And that’s why people are protesting because it comes off as aggression. It’s not right.” Ratings of Trump’s handling of the economy, which were more positive during his first term, have been persistently negative in his second term. The July poll found that few Americans think Trump’s policies have benefited them so far. Even if he is not a fan of everything Trump has done so far, Brian Nichols, 58, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is giving him the benefit of the doubt. Nichols, who voted for Trump in 2024, likes what he is seeing from the president overall, though he has his concerns both on style and substance, particularly Trump’s social media presence and his on-again, off-again tariffs. Nichols also does not like the push to eliminate federal agencies such as the Education Department. Despite his occasional disagreements with Trump, though, Nichols said he wants to give the president space to do his job, and he trusts the House and Senate, now run by Republicans, to act as a safeguard. “We put him into office for a reason, and we should be trusting that he’s doing the job for the best of America,” Nichols said. Overall views of Trump have been fairly steady since 2019 Trump has spent the past six months pushing far-reaching and often unpopular policies. Earlier this year, Americans were bracing themselves for higher prices as a result of his approach to tariffs. The July poll found that most people think Trump’s tax and spending bill will benefit the wealthy, while few think it will pay dividends for the middle class or people like them. Discomfort with individual policies may not translate into wholesale changes in views of Trump, though. Those have largely been constant through years of turmoil, with his favorability rating staying within a 10-percentage point range through the COVID-19 pandemic, a felony conviction and attempted assassination. To some of his supporters, the benefits of his presidency far outweigh the costs. Kim Schultz, 62, of Springhill, Florida said she is thrilled with just about everything Trump is doing as president, particularly his aggressive moves to deport anyone living in the country illegally. Even if Trump’s tariffs eventually take effect and push prices up, she said she will not be alarmed. “I’ve always had the opinion that if the tariffs are going to cost me a little bit more here and there, I don’t have a problem with that,” she said. Across the country, Hildenbrand dislikes Trump’s personality and his penchant for insults, including those directed at foreign leaders. But he thinks Trump is making things happen. “More or less, to me, he’s showing that he’s on the right track,” he said. “I’m not in favor of Trump’s personality, but I am in favor of what he’s getting done.”
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Ghislaine "Sgt. Schultz" Maxwell: "I know NOTH-ING"
bolverk replied to Gil Bang's topic in Cloak Room
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-genocide-gaza-rights-groups.html Two of Israel’s best-known human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, adding fuel to a passionately fought international debate over whether the death and destruction there have crossed a moral red line. The two groups were B’Tselem, a rights monitor that documents the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians, and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel. Their announcement was the first time major Israeli rights groups have publicly concluded that the Gaza war is a genocide, an assessment previously reached by some organizations like Amnesty International. In a report titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem cited the devastating effects of Israel’s war on ordinary Palestinians to support their claim: the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; the razing of huge areas of Palestinian cities; the forced displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s two million people; the restriction of food and other vital supplies. All together, the Israeli campaign has amounted to “coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,” the organization wrote. “In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” The debate over whether the war in Gaza constitutes genocide has also played out at the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel. The court has yet to rule on the matter. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately comment. Speaking at the International Court of Justice in January 2024, Tal Becker, a member of Israel’s legal defense, said that Israel was fighting Hamas, not targeting Palestinians wholesale. “What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts, and to do so in accordance with the law,” Mr. Becker told the court. Genocide has a specific definition in international law: particular acts carried out with intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. The accusation hits a painful nerve for Israel, a state founded after Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate European Jewry. Israel vigorously denies that its war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide, countering that Hamas seeks to destroy the Jewish state. Israeli officials have also pointed to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, which prompted the devastating Israeli response. The subsequent Israeli bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 59,000 people, including thousands of children, according to the Gazan health ministry. That toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants; at one point, the Israeli military chief said nearly 20,000 Hamas fighters had been killed in the conflict, without providing evidence. Yuli Novak, the director of B’Tselem, said that she was not seeking to minimize the “horrific attack” that Hamas had perpetrated on Oct. 7. But the assault had prompted an Israeli assault on Palestinian life in Gaza that had spiraled into genocide, she said. “The report we are publishing today is one we never imagined we would have to write,” Ms. Novak said at a news conference in Jerusalem. “But in recent months, we have been witnessing a reality that has left us no choice but to acknowledge the truth.” As part of the case for genocide, international law requires that there be proof of intent. In the report on Monday, B’Tselem cited a string of dehumanizing remarks by Israeli government officials, such as a statement by Yoav Gallant, a former defense minister, that Israel was fighting “human animals” in Gaza. Some Israeli politicians have also said that their goal is to drive the remaining Palestinians out of Gaza. Israeli leaders argue that the country has adhered to humanitarian law, that generals work closely with legal advisers who ensure compliance with standards, and that Israel has gone above and beyond what other Western countries have done in similar situations. Mr. Netanyahu has at times distanced himself from the most extreme statements made by his political allies. But for the vast majority of Gazan civilians, the past 22 months have been a desperate attempt to survive constant Israeli bombardment, find enough food and clean water for their families, and flee amid Israeli warnings to immediately evacuate or risk being killed. The growing number of Gazans now starving has contributed to rising criticism of Israel by some of its longtime allies. Israeli military officials often attributed the deadly impact of the war on Palestinians to Hamas’s strategy of fighting its insurgency by hiding among civilians. The Israeli rights groups said that alone could not explain the rampant death and destruction in Gaza. “Israel’s claim that Hamas fighters or members of other armed Palestinian groups were present in medical or civilian facilities, frequently without providing any evidence, cannot justify or explain such widespread, systematic destruction,” B’Tselem wrote.
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It was not my finest hour. Wordle 1,500 6/6 🟩⬛🟨⬛⬛ 🟩⬛⬛🟨🟩 🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩 🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩 🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #778 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🙂 Daily Quordle 1281 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟨⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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A tariff of 15% has been agreed upon for all imports from the EU. Last year, the US imported $610 billion of goods from Europe. Assuming we continue to import that amount and this deal sticks, American consumers will pay an additional $91.5 billion in new taxes on those goods. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/world/europe/eu-trade-deal-trump-tariffs.html?smid=url-share
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No Meals, Fainting Nurses, Dwindling Baby Formula: Starvation Haunts Gaza Hospitals After Israeli restrictions on aid, hunger has risen across Gaza. Doctors and nurses, struggling to find food themselves, lack the resources to stem the surge. In several of the hospitals still functioning in Gaza, nurses are fainting from hunger and dehydration. Managers often cannot provide meals for patients or medical staff. Doctors are running low on formula for newborn babies, in some cases giving them water alone. And at least three major hospitals lack the nutritional fluids needed to properly treat malnourished children and adults. Those scenes were described in interviews starting Friday with seven doctors — four from Gaza, and three volunteers from Australia, Britain and the United States. All of them worked this past week in four of the territory’s main hospitals. After months of warnings, international agencies, experts and doctors say starvation is now sweeping across Gaza amid restrictions on aid imposed by Israel for months. At least 56 Palestinians died this month of starvation in the territory, nearly half of the total such deaths since the war began 22 months ago, according to data released on Saturday by the Gaza Health Ministry. As starvation rises, medical institutions and staff, already struggling to treat war wounds and illness, are now grappling with rising cases of malnourishment. Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards, where colleagues revive them with saline and glucose drips. Persistently short of basic tools such as antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are also running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients. In all four hospitals, the doctors described how they are increasingly unable to save malnourished babies and are instead forced to simply manage their decline. The babies are too weak to be flooded with nutrients, which could overload their system and cause them to suffer “refeeding syndrome,” which could kill them. In some cases, the fluids that the doctors can safely give to the babies are not enough to prevent them from dying. “I have seen ones that are imminently about to pass away,” said Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, an American surgeon who has been volunteering since early July at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. The babies were brought to the hospital “starving and malnourished,” Dr. Sleemi said in a phone interview on Friday, “and they haven’t been able to get them back from the brink.” Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who volunteered at the same hospital until Wednesday, described the shock of seeing a skeletal infant who looked only days old, but was in fact seven months. “The expression ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do it justice,” Dr. Maynard said in a phone interview on Friday. “I saw the severity of malnutrition that I would not have thought possible in a civilized world. This is man-made starvation being used as a weapon of war and it will lead to many more deaths unless food and aid is let in immediately.” cont'd Hanin Barghouth with her 3-month-old daughter, Salam, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza this week. At birth, her doctor said, Salam weighed roughly 6.6 pounds, and three months later, she weighs only 8.8 pounds — at least three pounds underweight. Dr. Ambereen Sleemi with a malnourished infant at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. Naeema Abu al-Foul with her 2-year-old son Yazan, in Gaza City on July 19. Their family could not find enough food to feed him, and hospitals have told them that they cannot provide inpatient care.
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What's the deal with the occasional glitch that sometimes strikes through all the text in a post? You didn't inadvertently hit the strikethrough button. But when you post, there's that line through all your text, and it's impossible to fix with an edit.
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She's an extremely vocal and yet very confused person (arrogant ignorance, if you will), one of those kinds of people who you shouldn't take seriously but sort of have to because their financial success and social capital depend on destructive trolling. Oh, lookie here. The magazine, Tablet, that @Bevo tried to pass off a year or so ago as a credible and unbiased source, which published that easily debunked and laughably bad statistical "analysis," downplaying the deaths of Palestinian civilians, rewarded her online trolling with a fucking prize this past June.
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Not only does he have a very punchable face, but we actually have a patriotic duty to punch that Nazi in the face.
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Wordle 1,499 2/6 ⬛🟨⬛⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #777 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🙂 Daily Quordle 1280 6️⃣7️⃣ 5️⃣4️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
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Oh wow. Good catch.
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A strong majority in the UK now thinks it was a mistake. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/europe/trump-brexit-scotland-uk.html On a sunny June morning nine years ago, Donald J. Trump arrived at his golf resort in Scotland, the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union. At that time, he took credit for predicting Brexit and said it foretold victory in the insurgent presidential campaign he was mounting back home. On Friday, a second-term President Trump returned to that resort, Trump Turnberry, with a good part of what he said in 2016 now a reality. He had correctly claimed that the political forces that drove Brexit went beyond a single country. Five months after that visit, Mr. Trump captured the White House, having played to anxieties about immigration in ways that echoed the “Vote Leave” campaign. Yet in Britain, history has diverged from Mr. Trump’s vision in important respects. Polls show that close to 60 percent of Britons now believe Brexit was a mistake. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made mending relations with the European Union one of the priorities of his Labour government. The populist wave that Mr. Trump predicted would wash across Europe has ebbed and flowed, leaving a fragmented political landscape with a handful of populist leaders whose fortunes are mixed. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy is on the rise, but Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is struggling. “Populism is still a relatively limited phenomenon,” said Kim Darroch, who was Britain’s ambassador to the United States during Mr. Trump’s first term. “Brexit happened, but it’s very hard to argue, even by its most ardent proponents, that it has been anything other than a comprehensive disaster.” Still, in retrospect, he said, Mr. Trump’s 2016 visit came at a “turning point in history, and we haven’t seen how it’s all going to work out.” Mr. Darroch recalled that British officials were nervous that Mr. Trump, who had long been vocal about his support for Brexit, would land in Scotland before the vote rather than after it. With the polls showing a narrow margin, they worried that he would throw his support to the Vote Leave campaign at a critical moment. As it happened, the Brexiteers did not need Mr. Trump, winning by 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. On that Friday morning, as a dazed Britain digested the implications of Brexit, he played the role of cheerleader and political analyst. “I said this was going to happen, and I think it’s great thing,” Mr. Trump said, as he emerged from a helicopter to the serenading of bagpipers. “Basically, they took back their country,” he told an audience that included journalists and greenskeepers from the resort. “People want to take their country back, they want to have independence in a sense, and you’re going to have more than just, in my opinion, more than just what happened last night. You’re going to have many other cases where people want to take their borders back.” Mr. Trump said he saw a “big parallel” between Brexit and his candidacy. That view has been endorsed by political analysts, who regard the referendum as a canary in a coal mine for Mr. Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. In many ways, Scotland was the wrong place for Mr. Trump’s message. Scots voted by a wide margin to remain in the European Union. Two years earlier, in 2014, they had voted in a referendum to stay part of the United Kingdom. “He was talking to the non-converted,” Mr. Darroch said. Today, the regret about Brexit extends beyond Scotland. In a poll last month by the market research firm YouGov, 56 percent of people said leaving the European Union was a mistake, while only 31 percent said it was the right decision. Britain cycled through four Conservative prime ministers in the upheaval that followed the vote. Last July, the Tories were swept out of power by Mr. Starmer’s Labour Party. Mr. Trump himself remains stubbornly unpopular in Britain, particularly in Scotland, where he is viewed as an unreliable investor who clashed with neighbors at his other resort, Trump International Scotland, north of Aberdeen. But having returned to power, he is a commanding figure on the world stage. King Charles III has invited him to make a rare second state visit in September. And Mr. Starmer has assiduously cultivated him. He will visit the president at Turnberry on Monday before flying with him to Aberdeen. Mr. Trump has said little about the waning popularity of Brexit, preferring to focus on the trade deal he struck with Mr. Starmer in May. The president will even roll out the welcome mat for the European Union this time around, meeting on Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, to discuss trade negotiations between the United States and the E.U. It was not clear whether Mr. Trump would meet with Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., during this visit. Mr. Farage is his most conspicuous political ally in Britain and has ridden Mr. Trump’s anti-establishment mantra to new prominence. Regardless of whether that prompts Mr. Trump to take another victory lap this weekend, his defenders argue that the rise of Reform U.K. shows that the essence of his populist message has been validated in Britain. “All the push-polls in Christendom won’t change the fact that the U.K. has its sovereignty back and they will never rejoin the E.U.,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a former chief strategist to Mr. Trump.
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Oh, of course, rural Texas is batshit. What I'm getting at is the concentration of crazy Texas Republican Party leadership stuff, meaning the organized bizarros of NE Tarrant County.
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It feels like NE Tarrant County is the epicenter of GOP loony tunes land.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/us/politics/hegseth-pentagon-leadership.html In the spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided not to promote a senior Army officer who had led troops over five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Mr. Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that the officer had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. When Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II was cleared of the allegations, Mr. Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to change course again early this month, the officials said. This time, Mr. Hegseth maintained that the senior officer was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom President Trump has accused of disloyalty. Mr. Hegseth’s sudden reversal prompted a rare intervention from Gen. Dan Caine, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He urged Mr. Hegseth to reconsider, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Hegseth met with General Sims one final time but refused to budge. General Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesman, General Sims and General Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Hegseth’s role. The standoff over his promotion reflects an ongoing clash between Mr. Hegseth’s highly partisan worldview, in which he has written that the Democratic Party “really does hate America,” and the longstanding tradition of an apolitical military that pledges an oath to the Constitution. Mr. Hegseth’s actions could shape the military’s top ranks for years to come. His insistence on absolute loyalty, backed with repeated threats of polygraphs, also creates uncertainty and mistrust that threaten to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of the force, officials said. The tension between top military officers and their civilian leaders has been persistent since the earliest days of Mr. Trump’s second term, when senior administration officials ordered the removal of General Milley’s portrait from a Pentagon hallway. General Caine, who pressed Mr. Hegseth on General Sims’s behalf, got the job of Joint Chiefs chairman after Mr. Hegseth and President Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., his predecessor. Mr. Hegseth accused General Brown, who is Black, of prioritizing diversity over the combat effectiveness of the force. Also removed during the first months of the new administration were the first woman to command the Navy, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the first woman to command the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; Mr. Hegseth’s senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short; and the U.S. military representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield. All were dismissed as part of a campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion from the military and restore what Mr. Hegseth has described as a “warrior ethos.” cont'd
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Israel's own military came to the same conclusion. No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say Israel has long restricted or completely blocked aid to Gaza on the argument that Hamas steals it to use as a weapon of control over the population. For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza. But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter. In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population. Now, with hunger at crisis levels in the territory, Israel is coming under increased international pressure over its conduct of the war in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering it has brought. Doctors in the territory say that an increasing number of their patients are suffering from — and dying of — starvation. More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this past week of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The European Union and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip-feeding of aid” to Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents. Israel has largely brushed off the criticism. David Mencer, a government spokesman, said this week that there was “no famine caused by Israel.” Instead, he blamed Hamas and poor coordination by the United Nations for any food shortages. Israel moved in May toward replacing the U.N.-led aid system that had been in place for most of the 21-month Gaza war, opting instead to back a private, American-run operation guarded by armed U.S. contractors in areas controlled by Israeli military forces. Some aid still comes into Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations. The new system has proved to be much deadlier for Palestinians trying to obtain food handouts. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, almost 1,100 people have been killed by gunfire on their way to get food handouts under the new system, in many cases by Israeli soldiers who opened fired on hungry crowds. Israeli officials have said they fired shots in the air in some instances because the crowds came too close or endangered their forces. The military officials who spoke to The New York Times said that the original U.N. aid operation was relatively reliable and less vulnerable to Hamas interference than the operations of many of the other groups bringing aid into Gaza. That’s largely because the United Nations managed its own supply chain and handled distribution directly inside Gaza. cont'd:
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