Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,767]

Did Middle East device attack violate international law? Advocates want an investigation

https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-geneva-conventions-1d0044e23cdb902036884e66e8fea086

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights advocates are calling for an independent investigation into the deadly explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria, suggesting the blasts may have violated international law if the devices were fashioned as booby traps.

The explosions that have been widely blamed on Israel killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 3,000, including many members of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement.

The United Nations human rights office and some advocacy groups have cried foul, arguing that the strikes were “indiscriminate” because it’s nearly impossible to know who was holding the devices, or where they were, when they went off. But some academics insist the explosions were precisely focused because the devices had been distributed to Hezbollah members.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which aims to help protect civilians and other noncombatants in conflict and aims to stay neutral, said: “This was a unique operation, and it will take time to have all the facts to establish a legal opinion.”

The committee declined to comment publicly about whether the operation violated international humanitarian law, which is difficult to enforce and sometimes flouted by countries.

International law has never addressed the targeting of communication devices that people carry on their bodies. The Geneva Conventions, which provide a rule book for the protection of civilians during conflict, were adopted 75 years ago, long before pagers, mobile phones and walkie-talkies were in widespread public use. The legal situation is further complicated by the fact that Hezbollah is an armed nonstate group acting inside Lebanon, a sovereign member of the U.N.

“There must be an independent, thorough and transparent investigation as to the circumstances of these mass explosions, and those who ordered and carried out such an attack must be held to account,” the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said in a statement.

Did devices amount to booby traps?

The question of how to apply international rules to the attack seems to center mostly on whether a secret explosive embedded in a personal electronic device might be considered a booby trap. Israel has been blamed for targeted strikes and assassinations in the past, but a large strike using mobile communication devices is virtually unheard of.

A booby trap is defined as “any device designed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object,” according to Article 7 of a 1996 adaptation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Israel has adopted.

The protocol prohibits booby traps “or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the rules were designed to protect civilians and avoid “the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today.” She too called for an impartial investigation.

The convention also sets rules for the use of land mines, remnants of cluster bombs and other explosives. It bars use of other “manually emplaced munitions,” such as improvised explosive devices that “are designed to kill or injure, and which are actuated manually, by remote control or automatically after a lapse of time.”

The pagers were used by members of Hezbollah, but there was no guarantee that the members would be holding the devices when they went off. Many of the casualties were among members of Hezbollah’s extensive civilian operations mainly serving Lebanon’s Shiite community.

Laurie Blank, a professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta who specializes in international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, said the law of war doesn’t prohibit use of booby traps outright, but places limits on them. She said she believed the attack was “most likely lawful under international law.”

She said booby traps can be used to target enemy forces in or near a military objective, including the communication systems used by Hezbollah fighters.

“That said, it’s not clear that this is a booby-trap scenario. For example, if the attack is attacking the pagers themselves, then it’s not an issue of booby-trapping,” Blank wrote in an email.

Did ‘indiscriminate’ nature of attack make it illegal?

Experts said the pager explosions suggested a long-planned and carefully crafted operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

“There is no world in which the explosion of hundreds, if not thousands, of pagers is not an indiscriminate attack prohibited by international law,” Mai El-Sadany, who heads the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a Washington-based think tank, wrote on X.

“The pager holders were scattered across civilian areas, from shopping malls to crowded streets and apartment buildings to hospitals, surrounded by women, children and men,” she told The Associated Press. “An attack like this cannot anticipate what innocent passerby is in the impact area or what carefree child picks up the pager when it beeps.”

British lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who prosecuted former Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, said in an interview: “It’s pretty obvious here it’s a war crime. And we should call it out for what it is.”

But he noted criminal conduct on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict, alluding to rocket strikes by Hamas militants on Israel and casualties caused by Israel’s military operation in Gaza, where the Health Ministry says at least 41,000 people have been killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the latest war.

Rules require countries to ‘minimize’ harm

Amos Guiora, a professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, said the strikes were “justified in the context of self-defense,” but he acknowledged the risks of collateral damage against civilians.

“International law does not articulate a number as to what is legitimate or illegitimate collateral damage, it’s just to ‘minimize.’ The tragic reality of collateral damage is that innocent people will be harmed and killed,” he said. “I do have a sense on this one that there was a conscious effort to minimize it — with the understanding it will be never perfect.”

“This particular attack strikes me — whoever did it — is as pinpointed as pinpointed can be,” said Guiora, who spent 20 years in the Israeli military and advised its commanders in Gaza in the 1990s.

Israel has already faced heavy international criticism over its military response in Gaza and, more recently, in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

Back in May, the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Hamas leaders behind the attacks, over their actions in the war.

Israel ignored an order from the U.N.’s top court to halt its military offensive in southern Gaza after South Africa accused Israel of genocide. Russia, too, has ignored the court’s call for it to end its invasion of Ukraine.

Hamas has also been investigated. Human Rights Watch released a report in July that concluded Hamas-led armed groups committed numerous war crimes during the attacks in Israel.

Hezbollah has been linked to numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilians over the years, including in Argentina, Bulgaria and, of course, Israel.

[Vesper 28,767]

Trump and Vance Are Using One of America’s Oldest Racist Playbooks

By falsely linking Haitians in Springfield to the spread of infectious diseases, the GOP candidates are joining a long, terrible history.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/jd-vance-springfield-infectious-diseases/

One of the strangest moments in American presidential campaign history has to be Donald Trump’s insistence in his recent debate with Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in the Ohio town of Springfield. Of course, this racist garbage wasn’t true, but the former President and his vice-presidential pick could not help but repeat these false rumors day after day.

But as an infectious disease epidemiologist and an HIV+ scientist, what has really caught my attention is Ohio Senator JD Vance’s claim that immigrants were bringing communicable diseases, including HIV/AIDS, to Springfield, a town nestled between Dayton and Columbus in southwestern Ohio.

It’s easy to debunk these lies; there’s publicly available data at AIDSVu.org and the Clark County Combined Health District’s own webpage proving that Vance’s claims are nonsense. But why make such incendiary charges in the first place, if they are not true, particularly about your own constituents? I would assume there are plenty of other attacks to be made on their political opponents that at least are grounded in reality.

History holds a clue to what might be going on here. For generations, demagogic American politicians have linked marginalized communities—whether immigrants, people of color, or women–with infectious diseases. From the attacks on the Chinese community in San Francisco in 1900 when bubonic plague emerged in the city, and the roundup only a few years later of thousands of American women across the country under the Chamberlain-Kahn Act for ostensibly spreading venereal disease, these kinds of campaigns have happened throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, with HIV, Ebola, and Covid. Some of the most gruesome stories are largely unknown—such as the use of kerosene and a chemical called Zyklon B, made famous by the Nazis, to delouse Mexican migrant workers in El Paso from 1917 until well into the 1970s. 

In some cases, these incidents stemmed from the panic and paranoia of real outbreaks, in which infectious-disease control could act as a smokescreen for crackdowns on immigrant communities. But even the threat of disease could be weaponized to enforce political goals. Under the Chamberlain-Kahn Act, women could be arrested for any reason whatsoever; over 30,000 women were swept into detention during World War I, in a campaign that continued into the 1950s and was less about controlling sexually transmitted diseases than controlling women’s behavior and bodies.

What all these sorry tales have in common is that they are about determining who belongs here in the US, who is a “real American,” and who is an interloper. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has said, this is a “blood-and-soil nationalism that holds some Americans as more American than others. It is to say that there are some people who, on account of their origins or those of their parents and grandparents, cannot be full and equal members of the national community.” Trump and Vance’s claims go further than that: They are positioning immigrants as an imminent danger to the true Volk, the true people. In this construction, immigrants are a pathogen that must be purged, cleansed from the body of the nation.

All this should send shivers down your spine. Already, the impact of Trump and Vance’s false claims have been felt in Springfield, with hospitals, schools, city buildings, and a local university receiving bomb threats or canceling events out of an abundance of caution after other menacing e-mails.

Back in the early days of HIV, Senator Jesse Helms spewed a special kind of hatred against people living with HIV and members of the LGBTQ community. In the early 1990s, a spin-off of the activist group ACT UP decided they had had enough. They put a giant condom on the senator’s house with the words “Helms is deadlier than a virus.”

The impact of Trump and Vance’s attacks are creating a crisis in Springfield where there was none, terrorizing citizens of that small town and surely affecting their mental health, disrupting medical care, education, city services with bomb threats. HIV isn’t the problem in Springfield; it’s these two men who have decided to use a community for their own political ends and a press corps that can only wonder if it’s good politics.

[Vesper 28,767]

The Futile Search for Political Motives in the Second Trump Assassination Attempt

Both Democrats and Republicans claim Ryan Wesley Routh belongs to the other side. But his beliefs are incoherent—and all too American.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-second-assassination-attempt/

If a team of laboratory scientists were working round the clock to develop a life-form that encapsulated the political incoherence of would-be assassins, it’s hard to see how they could improve on Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect apprehended after an abortive attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life at Trump’s Florida golf course. As the basic elements of Routh’s recent life story come into view, it’s hard to ascribe any clear political through line to it. He voted for Trump in the 2016 election, was enamored of Tulsi Gabbard in 2020, and spent most of the pandemic as a Covid truther. Most recently, he entertained fond reveries of a Nikki Haley–Vivek Ramaswamy ticket, which represents an unlikely fusion not only of two former presidential hopefuls who despise each other, but also an impossible coalition. The two candidates respectively represented a flailing GOP establishment’s perennial effort to distance itself from Trump and a bid to repurpose Trumpism into a permanent revolution administered by the American tech-investment elite. Even in today’s Republican Party, it’s unlikely that Routh, a lifelong construction worker who was apparently living in Hawaii after several decades in North Carolina, would have found himself in demand as a political consultant. (Routh also cast a Democratic ballot in North Carolina’s most recent open primary, and made a number of small donations to Act Blue after 2019, totaling $140.)

In some ways, Routh’s wild-swinging political sympathies proved weirdly prophetic: Gabbard, after all, is now an eager Trump supporter. But even that shift doesn’t square with Routh’s most ardent political obsession: support for Ukraine in its battle against the 2022 Russian invasion. In a 2023 interview with The New York Times for an article about Americans volunteering for the Ukrainian war effort, Routh said he had traveled to the country to try to enlist Afghan soldiers to fight in the war, and that he was prepared to “fight and die” for the cause of Ukrainian independence. Suffice it to say, that is not the position of Gabbard, whom Hillary Clinton famously denounced as a Russian asset during the 2020 presidential campaign, and who is firmly aligned with Trump’s own Putin-first worldview, particularly on the Ukraine war. In a self-published book called Ukraine’s Unwinnable War, Routh wrote that Iran would be justified in assassinating Trump, in part for his repudiation of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with the country. He also called for the assassinations of Putin and Belarusian Aleksandr President Lukashenko, and urged the United States to precipitate a nuclear confrontation with Russia. In the same tract, he wrote, “I get so tired of people asking if I am a Democrat or a Republican, as I refuse to be put in a category.”

It’s unlikely that Routh’s wish will be honored anytime soon. Right-wing news outlets are already claiming that Routh’s Mad Libs pronouncements about the nation’s politics “echoed” Democratic anti-Trump rhetoric—and Trump himself took up the same refrain as he launched a new bout of fundraising on the thwarted attempt on his life. Never mind that this is a theory of discursive influence right up there with the notion that dire prophecies are contained in backward-playing Beatles records; the claim feeds directly into the elevation of Trump into the status of movement martyr in the 2024 campaign, and will likely only gather greater force as Election Day draws nigh. Meanwhile, liberal commentators, not surprisingly, have downplayed Routh’s Trump-baiting outbursts and stressed the violent strains of MAGA rhetoric, while properly insisting that highlighting Trump’s real and present threat to American democracy is not an incitement to political violence.

Yet it’s hard not to think that this scrum for partisan advantage in interpreting Routh’s unhinged actions and thought processes misses a good deal of the larger point. Trump’s earlier aspiring assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, came from a right-leaning political background, but so far very little is known about his possible motivations, particularly since he was killed at the scene of the assassination attempt. But Crooks, like Routh, seemed to harbor an outsize image of the role he was destined to play in world affairs—an all too familiar strain of thinking among political gunmen, from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald to Arthur Bremer. For most of these figures—with the notable exception of Booth—ideology tends to be something of an afterthought, and certainly not the primary focus. The fantasies of assassins, successful or otherwise, mostly hinge on the craving to lurch with a single blow from fringe obscurity to the center stage of world-shaping historical agency.

In Routh’s case, this reverie was apparently filtered through a far more common and respectable form of violent fantasy—that of the wised-up solitary warrior defending America’s true interests in a dark and hazardous global order. There’s no evidence that he actually took up arms on Ukraine’s behalf while he cosplayed as a member of the conflict’s international brigade, but he clearly felt that the stakes of the conflict—which he repeatedly referenced as a fundamental confrontation of “good and evil”—licensed any and all forms of violent response, up to and including nuclear war. That extremity is thankfully not part of the diplomatic framework in the Ukraine war—though with US missile shipments to Ukraine poised to target installations deeper in Russia, that’s not as steadfast a guarantee as it should be. In the wake of Routh’s arrest, as in the case of Crooks’s June assassination attempt, we’ve seen a chorus of political leaders and policy intellectuals rush to assure us that our country settles political differences by ballots, not bullets. Yet in the theaters of conflict that Routh himself was drawn into, that is decidedly not so.

Just as his actions in Florida were presaged by a prior history of lethal weapons offenses, so were Routh’s geopolitical delusions fed by generations of American regime-change follies carried out at gunpoint. Instead of looking to Republican or Democratic messaging complexes for the last word on Routh’s demented golf-course assault, we might better heed the wisdom of Mick Jagger, seeking to finger the culprits of the most notorious assassinations of the 1960s: After all, it was you and me.

[Vesper 28,767]

Trump Shared Fake Image Claiming Kamala Harris Attended Diddy's "Freak Off"

Trump continues to launch sexual themed attacks against Kamala Harris

 

https://meidasnews.com/news/trump-shared-fake-image-claiming-kamala-harris-attended-diddys-freak-off

 

 

Trump shared a fake image which altered an photo of Kamala Harris with Montel Williams and his daughter Ashley Williams at the Eighth Annual Race to Erase Multiple Sclerosis in May 2001. Trump's meme replaces Montel Williams with an image of Diddy and seems to imply that Diddy, who was recently indicted for sex crimes, has two dates at his side, Montel Williams' daughter Ashley and Kamala Harris.

 

Diddy has been accused by the US Attorney's Office of hosting massive baby oil and drug fueled "freak offs" in which he would fly in sex workers from multiple states to engage in prolonged sexual activities with multiple people. Trump's meme implies Harris has been being sexually involved with Diddy and participated in his "freak offs":

 

Trump's reposted meme: "Kamala doing the Diddy? Madam Vice President, have you been involved with or engaged in one of Puff Daddy's freak offs?"

This week, Montel Williams called out a now deleted post of an unaltered photo claiming that he was Diddy. Williams stated, "Here they go again with 'all black people look alike.'"

MAGA Republican accounts previously used the unaltered photo of Kamala Harris, Montel Williams, and his daughter Ashley Williams to attack Kamala Harris in vulgar ways. 

In August, Williams responded to MAGA account using the photo of Kamala Harris dating him as an attack. 

MAGA accounts are now pushing the fake, altered image showing Diddy with Montel Williams' daughter and Kamala Harris to push their false attacks. And now Trump himself has amplified the fake image to his millions of followers.

This isn't the first time Trump has launched sexual themed attacks against Kamala Harris. In August, Trump shared an Alanis Morrisette parody song implying Kamala Harris traded oral sex for boosts to her career. 

Later that month, Trump also reposted a meme suggesting Kamala Harris exchanged oral sex for political power. 

 

One of the most common forms of misogyny women experience is accusations that they didn't earn the position they got, but that they "slept their way to the top." Trump latest attack on Harris by sharing this fake picture not only builds upon that, but could be an attempt project the spotlight away from Trump's association with Jeffrey Epstein to a false narrative linking Harris to the Diddy sex crime indictments. 

[Vesper 28,767]

MyPillow goes full Nazi with new sale.

[Vesper 28,767]

Finland’s far-right government runs down the welfare state

https://feps-europe.eu/finlands-far-right-government-runs-down-the-welfare-state/

20/09/2024

Finland has its most right-wing government since the 1930s, and this can also be seen in its economic policy. Massive cuts to social security and public service spending undermine the welfare state, and the government’s labour market reforms weaken employees’ negotiation power.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s right-wing government has been in power in Finland since the spring 2023 elections. Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) won the race with 20.8 per cent of the vote and agreed to form a government with the populist right Finns Party that was just 0.7 percentage points behind. They formed a majority coalition government with the support of two smaller right-wing parties.

The government can be called extreme right-wing, as a similar coalition has not been seen since the 1930s, when fascism also gained influence in Finland. This can also be seen in the government’s economic policy, which has been clear from the beginning: public spending on social security and public services is cut dramatically. This starts to harm especially those with low income and in need of social services. However, the fiscal consolidation has affected everyone except the richest, who have even received tailored tax reductions.

These budget cuts are not about small amounts. The government says it will consolidate public finances with 9 billion euros annually. This corresponds to about 10 per cent of the central government budget or 3 per cent of Finland’s gross domestic product (GDP). For many low-earning families, this means hundreds of euros less for living each month, and the queues for public health services have begun increasing.

However, in reality, the fiscal consolidation is significantly smaller – but still enormous – at approximately half of the 9 billion. The government exaggerates the figure with selective calculation methods. It has, among other things, re-classified about 1 billion euros of ordinary annual budget spending as ‘an investment programme’ and ignored it in the calculations. This blurring is because the government’s narrative relies essentially on the fact that it claims to bring Finland’s debt under control in the face of necessity.

The election campaigns of both main governing parties relied on debt scaremongering and the claim that they would turn the public debt into decline. Their central message was that the centre-left government of the Social Democratic Prime Minister Sanna Marin had made irresponsible economic policy. This is even though the debt growth during Marin’s government was mainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic, from which Finland came out among the best in the world in economic and health indicators. At the end of 2023, Finland’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 75.8 per cent. The ratio has risen clearly, especially after the financial crisis, but it is still below the average in both the EU and the euro area. Finland’s interest rate has also remained relatively low.

Despite these facts, debt scaremongering paid off and impacted the voters’ decision. According to many estimates, it was a key reason for the election result. Both the NCP and the Finns Party promised significant spending cuts before the elections, but there were also differences in their economic programmes. Respecting their populist roots, the Finns Party did not present the means to implement the massive spending cuts it promised. Instead, the NCP proposed cuts to both social security and service spending.

As a result, the government’s economic programme pretty much matches the goals of the NCP, whereas the Finns Party broke many key promises it made before the elections. For example, before the elections, party chair Riikka Purra, who later became finance minister, pledged her party would not accept any budget cuts that would affect those with low income. Nor did the Finns Party election programmes include proposals to cut spending on social and health services or education.

The government is undermining the foundations of the Finnish welfare state also in another way. Until the 2023 elections, the Finns Party appealed to the working class. Now, however, it has made a massive U-turn after the elections when drafting the government’s labour market policy. The government is implementing more than 20 reforms that will weaken the negotiating power of employees and trade unions. This will, in many ways, break down the Finnish labour market policy model built since World War II, where governments have negotiated all major reforms in cooperation with representatives of employees and employers. The labour unions have called the turn a scam as the current reforms were not of the Finns Party’s election programmes, nor, even, of the NCP’s. Instead, they were copied directly from the programmes of the employer associations.

It can be considered another broken promise that the government is not able to eliminate budget deficits despite the pledges both largest government parties made before the elections. According to the latest forecasts, the central government debt will rise as much as it did during the previous Marin government, but now even without a pandemic.

This is primarily because the government does not want to increase taxes on the rich, even though the highest-earning one per cent pay proportionally less taxes than lower-earning income groups. The capital accumulated by the rich is taxed at lower rates than high salaries. The taxes of the richest were even lowered a bit this year. This spring, the government decided to increase some taxes. However, they were primarily concerned with regressive taxes, affecting low-income earners proportionally more. From the beginning of this September, Finland’s general value-added tax rate rose to 25.5, the second highest in the EU.

The total support of the governing parties, especially the Finns Party, has fallen somewhat since the elections. Still, it is not certain that it could not recover before the 2027 parliamentary elections. Party chair Purra has already stated that the harsh spending cuts must be continued after this government’s term. The coming years will show whether the Finnish welfare state is about to be scrapped once and for all. The development of the rule of law in Finland has also stalled during the time of Orpo’s government. 

The left-wing opposition has plenty of work to do if it wishes to turn the tide. The hope should not be lost as the margins are low. The current government has never come close to the popularity of Marin’s government. It is also worth remembering that the election last year was tight. The Social Democrats fell short of victory by less than one percentage point, and the previous government’s parties got nearly half of the votes. Now, the party is leading the polls with the new chair, Antti Lindtman, who is trying to keep the lead until the elections in 2027.

[Vesper 28,767]

Orbán’s centaur state

https://feps-europe.eu/orbans-centaur-state/

20/09/2024

Viktor Orbán is well-known for his opposition to liberal democracy. He is also against the idea of the welfare state. For Hungary, this meant rising inequalities and decaying public services.

It is not uncommon for European politicians to implement welfare state retrenchment. It is rare for a prime minister, however, to openly declare their opposition to the idea of the welfare state as such. Viktor Orbán announced, in 2012, that “our program is to establish, instead of a Western-type of welfare state, which is not competitive, a work-based society”. What ensued was not the elimination of the welfare state, but its restructuring – the broad direction of which is aptly illustrated by French sociologist Loïc Wacquant’s characterisation of the kind of state neoliberalism brings about: a centaur state, “liberal at the top and paternalistic at the bottom, which presents radically different faces at the two ends of the social hierarchy: a comely and caring visage toward the middle and upper classes, and a fearsome and frowning mug toward the lower class”.

Whereas the Orbán-regime has been etatist in some policy areas, regarding price controls and state ownership of utility companies, its fundamental distributive logic can be succinctly summarised: the more you have, the more you get. The decrease in employment protection and the curtailment of the right to strike have favoured capital over labour. The corporate tax rate is the lowest in Hungary in the whole EU. In comparison to many other European countries, income inequality is still not very high. However, Hungary has seen the steepest increase in inequality among all member states, as indicated by the Gini coefficient, between 2010 and 2023.

The introduction of a flat personal income tax, alongside the elimination of low-income tax credits, has led to a remarkable surge in disposable income among the top 10 per cent, while the tax burden on those earning near the minimum wage has doubled on average. Consequently, the tax rate for the lowest earners is among the highest in Europe, while that of the highest earners is among the lowest. Considering both personal income tax and the highest value-added tax in Europe (at 27 per cent), households in the bottom 10 per cent of the income distribution pay a higher proportion of their incomes in taxes than the top 10 per cent.

Family and housing policies follow a similar distributive logic. Although there are generous tax breaks, grants and subsidised credits for home purchases and renovation available to families with children, they systematically provide more benefits to those with more secure employment, higher wages, more savings and more wealth than to those who are more in need. The maximum duration of unemployment insurance has been reduced to just three months, the shortest in Europe. Minimum income protection – the extent to which the government protects its citizens from destitution – is the lowest in Hungary. By conventional measures, the prevalence of poverty is not particularly high, but poverty can be exceptionally deep here: in terms of purchasing power parity, the actual income of those below 40 per cent of the median income is the lowest within the EU.

Historically, the Hungarian educational system has been one of the most inequitable in Europe, failing to ensure equality of opportunity by mitigating the effects of students’ socio-economic backgrounds. The subsequent Orbán governments bear responsibility for their inaction over the past 14 years of de facto political omnipotence and their explicit approval of the ongoing segregation of Roma students. The same applies to public health care, whose problems also predate the emergence of the Orbán regime but have continued to worsen largely unaddressed. Access to healthcare of acceptable quality has increasingly become contingent on purchasing power. The stark contrast between the intolerable conditions in many public hospitals and the obscene enrichment of pro-government oligarchs or the extravagant investments in stadiums has underscored that the issue is not that the country is poor, but that essential public services are underfinanced.

The main goals behind this are easily discernible, just as the absence of some of the traditional goals of the post-1945 European welfare states. The economic priorities of the Orbán-regime have been to reach and sustain high levels of employment, and to ensure ‘competitiveness’ through a capital-friendly labour law and tax environment. Welfare policy has followed two main goals. The first has been to ensure that the state incentivises labour market participation, a goal that has guided both welfare state retrenchments and some positive policy reforms, such as increases in the minimum wage and the expansion of preschool education coverage. The second has been a selective pro-natalist goal: to counteract the long-term trend of population decline by boosting fertility rates – not universally, but specifically among middle- and upper-class households. Reducing inequalities – whether of opportunity or outcome – has simply never been a goal of the regime. This is not quite in line with the preferences of the Hungarian electorate. Comparative data consistently show that the expectation that the government should reduce differences in income levels is particularly strong among Hungarians. 

Why have this discrepancy and the ever-more-obvious decay of public services not had a more significant impact on the popularity and electoral results of the governing party? I can only cover two parts of the explanation here. First, the government – through extensive, unscrupulous government propaganda – has been effective in centring politics on other issues, such as the supposed threat that George Soros, ‘Brussels’, ‘the migrants’ and the ‘LGBT-propaganda’ pose. Or, most recently, by convincing much of the electorate that the opposition (and again, ‘Brussels’) poses a threat to peace, and therefore the only way to avoid war is to vote for them.

Second, the available alternative was not convincing because of the unfavourable track record of the hitherto dominant opposition parties and because the liberal opposition has never consistently campaigned around material and distributive issues, but mostly focused on corruption and abstract notions of ‘Europe’ and ‘democracy’ instead. It remains to be seen what might transpire if an opposition were to emerge that is both willing to articulate and capable of credibly representing the widespread discontent with the dismal quality of public services, rising inequalities, and the material insecurity affecting broad segments of the population.

[Vesper 28,767]

Donald “America’s Hitler” (J.D. Vance Called Trump 'America's Hitler' Before He Became Trump's VP Pick) Trump Gives Supporters the Green Light to Blame Jews If He Loses in November

He did this at an event on antisemitism.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trump-gives-supporters-the-green-light-to-blame-jews-if-he-loses-in-november

 

 

Once upon a time, before he became Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance told his law school roommate he went “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole…or that he’s America’s Hitler.” Obviously, the Ohio senator has since disavowed every negative thing he previously said about Trump. But he clearly shouldn’t have, particularly when it comes to the Hitler vibes, given all the wildly antisemitic remarks Trump has made on the campaign trail—including the comment he made last night re: whose fault it will be if he loses in November. Spoiler alert: It’s the Jews!

That’s right: At a campaign event on Thursday that was—wait for it—about denouncing antisemitism, the GOP nominee for president told the audience: “If I don’t win this election…the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” The ex-president baselessly claimed that Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, “hates Israel,” while he is “the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.” He suggested that American Jews should be more grateful to him, saying, “With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24% of the Jewish vote…I really haven’t been treated very well, but that’s the story of my life.”

At another event the same day hosted by the Israeli American Council, Trump doubled down on blaming things on Jewish people, saying that if he loses the election to Harris, Israel will be destroyed and it’ll be the fault of Jews for “voting for the enemy.”

 

Blaming Jews for stuff was, of course, Adolf Hitler’s MO. The Nazi leader blamed German Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I, claiming the tiny minority had “stabbed Germany in the back”—language that sounds not dissimilar to what Trump had to say yesterday, and not dissimilar to the things he’s said and done re: Jews for years now. As a reminder, those words and actions include but are not limited to:

• Saying, “I think that any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat…should have their head examined.” (This is one of his go-to claims.)
• Declaring that a group of neo-Nazis had some “very fine people” among it
• Having dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a Holocaust denier
• Saying a man known for going on antisemitic tirades had “a good heart”
• Hosting a White House Hanukkah party that featured an evangelical pastor who once said Jews were going to hell
• Allegedly claiming that Hitler “did some good things,” and having to be told by his then chief of staff, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy”
• Attacking “liberal Jews” on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year
• Telling a room full of Jewish people that Jews who work in real estate are “brutal killers” and “not nice people at all”
• Suggesting Jews control the media
• Reportedly saying that Jews are “only in it for themselves,” following phone calls with Jewish lawmakers
• Saying Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and Judaism
• Reportedly wanting his military leaders to operate like “the German generals in World War II”
• Tweeting an image of Hillary Clinton’s face against a backdrop of $100 bills and a Star of David, along with the words “most corrupt candidate ever”
• Using Hitler-esque rhetoric, like calling his enemies “vermin” and claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”
• Suggesting that Jews only care about money
• Keeping a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed

Meanwhile, during his blame-the-Jews tour on Thursday, Trump had nothing to say about Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina whom the ex-president endorsed and who CNN reported yesterday once referred to himself as a “black NAZI” in comments online, among other things. (Robinson has denied he wrote the comments.)

[Vesper 28,767]

Israeli forces shove at least four men off West Bank roof, videos show

The Israel Defense Forces are investigating the episode, which it said went against “IDF values.” The United States has called for an investigation. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/20/israel-soldiers-west-bank-roof-bodies-video/

At least three Israel Defense Forces soldiers dropped, pushed and shoved four men over the side of a two-story building Thursday in the town of Qabatiya near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, a Post analysis of nearly a dozen videos and photos showed.

It was not clear if the men were still alive at the time, though their bodies were motionless. At least two were bound, and one was kicked off the roof of the building. The incident came after an Israeli raid targeting militants in the area that included at least one exchange of fire near the building, which sits just behind two school buildings.

The IDF, asked to comment on the footage, said in a statement: “This is a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers. The incident is under review.”

The IDF declined to comment further when asked about the military’s protocol regarding the movement of someone injured or killed by Israeli fire, why the soldiers shoved the people off the building or whether they checked for vital signs before shoving the people from the roof.

The IDF had said in a statement Thursday that its troops fatally shot four “terrorists” in Qabatiya that day as part of a “large-scale operation.” It did not respond to a request for comment on whether the four people killed were the men who were shoved off the roof.

Sometime before 12:19 p.m. local time Thursday, a man dressed in black and carrying a weapon moved quickly across the building’s roof, video published to X shows.

The person filming from a nearby window urges him, “Run away! Run away, run away!” Bursts of gunfire are audible, and the man falls to the ground. “They hit him with a rocket,” the narrator says.

By that time, at least one other man lies motionless on the rooftop, his arms awkwardly tucked under his torso.

Two additional bodies lie in a pool of blood on the rooftop. Soldiers roll one man over, revealing his hand and stomach covered in blood. Another fires his rifle into the other body. The group then rolls the bodies, kicking and pulling them, until they are closer to the roof’s edge.

It is not clear how much time elapses before a group of Israeli soldiers throws three bodies off the same rooftop. The clothing and general description of the bodies match those previously moved by the soldiers.

Over the course of a minute-and-a-half video, the soldiers lift a man wearing a white T-shirt upside down and hold him over the building’s edge. The man’s feet and hands appear to be tied, as he falls straight down without moving and a cord follows him. Then, the soldiers pick up a second person by their arms, swinging them backward and forward before dropping the flailing body over the edge. Together they roll a third body toward the edge, and one soldier kicks the body off the roof.

Video filmed later in the evening shows Israeli security forces lifting a fourth man with a ropelike object tethered to his ankle over the edge of the same building. The soldiers watch the body fall.

“The conduct shown in the videos is manifestly unlawful,” Adil Haque, an expert on international law at Rutgers University said. “Killing any person incapacitated by wounds, or mistreating their dead body, violates international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime in the context of a military occupation,” he added.

Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at Crisis Group who previously served at the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department, agreed, noting that “outrages against personal dignity — including against the deceased — can amount to a war crime,” in an occupied territory.

According to the IDF’s mission statement, Israeli soldiers must “maintain their humanity during combat and routine times. The soldier will not use their weapon or power to harm uninvolved civilians and prisoners and will do everything in their power to prevent harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.”

“Of course it’s against the ethical code of the IDF,” said Nadav Weiman, a former Israeli army sniper who leads Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation veterans’ group that gathers testimony from soldiers assigned to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “But that was thrown out the window years ago.”

Weiman noted that in Gaza, the IDF has been accused of mistreating Palestinian bodies in a number of incidents. The discovery of mass graves in the Gaza Strip in April sparked global outrage, including condemnation from the United Nations.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that officials had seen the video of Thursday’s episode. “We found it deeply disturbing,” he said.

Kirby added that should the video be “proven to be authentic, it clearly would depict abhorrent and egregious behavior by professional soldiers.” He said the United States pressed Israeli officials for more details and were promised a thorough investigation into the matter.

The conduct of Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank has previously been criticized by the international community, including by the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month called for the IDF to change its rules of engagement in the West Bank after an American woman was fatally shot by an IDF soldier. The IDF said it was “very likely” she was hit “unintentionally.” President Joe Biden called the killing “totally unacceptable.”

[Vesper 28,767]

Death toll rises to 37 in Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah commanders in Beirut

https://wapo.st/4ezwo6r

The death toll from the Israeli airstrike that killed at least two Hezbollah commanders and other members of the group in a Beirut suburb on Friday has risen to 37 people, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Saturday, and crews continued to search through rubble. Health Minister Firass Abiad said children were among the dead. The Israeli military and Hezbollah confirmed on Friday the deaths of senior members Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wehbe. The strike was part of a days-long Israeli assault on Hezbollah amid fears of all-out war, with both sides exchanging fire across the border Saturday, and the U.S. State Department urging Americans to depart Lebanon through commercial options while they’re still available.

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

Seeing as UK and US are supplying Ukraine with endless missiles and weaponry -would it be ok for Russia to flood the US and UK with exploding devices, phones, laptops ?

Would the media still be calling it 'ingenious' and a very 'smart move' ? Would commentators like Piers Morgan be joking about people being blinded and about people becoming 'eunuchs' ?

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

Trump says Jewish voters will bear ‘a lot’ of blame if he loses election as he complains about lack of support

Donald Trump said Jewish voters will be to blame if he loses the 2024 presidential election, as he complained about their lack of support for him.

The Republican presidential nominee was speaking at two events in Washington, DC, on Thursday night.

AP News

[Vesper 28,767]

Israeli forces shut down Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau

Al Jazeera said Israeli troops raided its Ramallah offices in the West Bank overnight. Israel said it shut down the bureau to protect its soldiers’ safety.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/22/al-jazeera-israel-ramallah-shut-down/

Posters of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh hang from the outlet's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)

 

 

Israeli security forces shut down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau in the West Bank on Sunday, the country’s latest action against one of the few news organizations providing nearly uninterrupted coverage of the war in Gaza and a surge in violence in the West Bank.

Footage broadcast on Al Jazeera’s Arabic network showed heavily armed Israeli troops entering the bureau on Sunday morning. According to the network, soldiers arrived around 3 a.m. local time and ordered employees to evacuate within 10 minutes, leaving any equipment behind. Al Jazeera said a 45-day closure order was handed to the Ramallah bureau chief, Walid al-Omari.

None of the network’s employees were harmed in the raid, but some journalists were threatened with laser-pointed weapons, Al Jazeera said — preventing them from covering the operation. On Sunday, it said the bureau was sealed off with two large metal plates welded over the entrance, making it inaccessible. In a subsequent statement, the Israel Defense Forces said it had confiscated the broadcaster’s equipment.

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi confirmed that security forces raided the news organization’s main West Bank offices to “shut down the station” and enforce a closure order. In a statement on X, he accused the Qatari government-backed network of being a “mouthpiece” for Israel’s enemies and said Israel was acting to protect the safety of its soldiers.

FollowIn a statement Sunday, Al Jazeera condemned the raid as a “criminal act” and said it rejected the claims made by Israeli officials. “Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press is blatantly aimed at concealing its actions in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank,” the network said.

Al Jazeera is one of the few international broadcasters providing largely uninterrupted coverage of Israel’s war inside Gaza. International journalists have been unable to enter the Strip outside of the occasional embed with Israeli forces.

In a statement, Israel’s Foreign Press Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the move and urged Israeli authorities to reconsider. “Restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels, signals a shift away from democratic values,” the association’s board said.

Israel issued a similar closure order that shut down Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem operations in May and banned its reporters from operating inside the country. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the closure followed a unanimous vote by Israel’s war cabinet. He accused the network’s correspondents of having “harmed the security of Israel” and said “the time has come to eject Hamas’s mouthpiece from our country.”

Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been killed during the conflict, according to press advocacy groups. Several Al Jazeera journalists have also been killed in Gaza.

[Vesper 28,767]

11 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Seeing as UK and US are supplying Ukraine with endless missiles and weaponry -would it be ok for Russia to flood the US and UK with exploding devices, phones, laptops ?

Would the media still be calling it 'ingenious' and a very 'smart move' ? Would commentators like Piers Morgan be joking about people being blinded and about people becoming 'eunuchs' ?

now now

we all know it is ALWAYS ok if the jews do it

🤮

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

14 hours ago, Vesper said:

Israeli forces shut down Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau

Al Jazeera said Israeli troops raided its Ramallah offices in the West Bank overnight. Israel said it shut down the bureau to protect its soldiers’ safety.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/22/al-jazeera-israel-ramallah-shut-down/

Posters of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh hang from the outlet's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)

 

 

Israeli security forces shut down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau in the West Bank on Sunday, the country’s latest action against one of the few news organizations providing nearly uninterrupted coverage of the war in Gaza and a surge in violence in the West Bank.

Footage broadcast on Al Jazeera’s Arabic network showed heavily armed Israeli troops entering the bureau on Sunday morning. According to the network, soldiers arrived around 3 a.m. local time and ordered employees to evacuate within 10 minutes, leaving any equipment behind. Al Jazeera said a 45-day closure order was handed to the Ramallah bureau chief, Walid al-Omari.

None of the network’s employees were harmed in the raid, but some journalists were threatened with laser-pointed weapons, Al Jazeera said — preventing them from covering the operation. On Sunday, it said the bureau was sealed off with two large metal plates welded over the entrance, making it inaccessible. In a subsequent statement, the Israel Defense Forces said it had confiscated the broadcaster’s equipment.

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi confirmed that security forces raided the news organization’s main West Bank offices to “shut down the station” and enforce a closure order. In a statement on X, he accused the Qatari government-backed network of being a “mouthpiece” for Israel’s enemies and said Israel was acting to protect the safety of its soldiers.

FollowIn a statement Sunday, Al Jazeera condemned the raid as a “criminal act” and said it rejected the claims made by Israeli officials. “Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press is blatantly aimed at concealing its actions in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank,” the network said.

Al Jazeera is one of the few international broadcasters providing largely uninterrupted coverage of Israel’s war inside Gaza. International journalists have been unable to enter the Strip outside of the occasional embed with Israeli forces.

In a statement, Israel’s Foreign Press Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the move and urged Israeli authorities to reconsider. “Restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels, signals a shift away from democratic values,” the association’s board said.

Israel issued a similar closure order that shut down Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem operations in May and banned its reporters from operating inside the country. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the closure followed a unanimous vote by Israel’s war cabinet. He accused the network’s correspondents of having “harmed the security of Israel” and said “the time has come to eject Hamas’s mouthpiece from our country.”

Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been killed during the conflict, according to press advocacy groups. Several Al Jazeera journalists have also been killed in Gaza.

Disgusting. They only want their controlled media, to hide their crimes

As the saying goes ''Journalism is not a crime, attacking journalism is''

[IMissEden 20]

16 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Disgusting. They only want their controlled media, to hide their crimes

As the saying goes ''Journalism is not a crime, attacking journalism is''

Saw this in post previews and thought this was about democrat party 

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,919]

7 hours ago, IMissEden said:

Saw this in post previews and thought this was about democrat party 

Even though the vast majority of media leans democrat?

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

People forget Hezbollah was formed from Israel invading Lebanon before

Cant find the pics but the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 1982 where thousands of women, children were massacred by Druze and IDF militia.