Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,767]

Shared Zones of Interest

Harris and Trump’s foreign-policy aims in the Middle East proceed from the same incentive structures and presuppositions about U.S. supremacy.

https://prospect.org/world/2024-09-27-shared-zones-of-interest/

The aftermath of a bombing in the West Bank in August. Former Trump advisers have proposed a “One Jewish State” solution.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, if elected, are sure to produce vastly different outcomes on nearly every domestic issue in contention: women’s reproductive rights, taxation, public education, corporate regulation, the environment, and immigration. There’s far less divergence, however, on foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Like the Biden administration before it, a Harris administration may be softer around the edges, a “Trump lite” if you will, with rhetoric and sentiments favoring human rights and international law but no policies to back them.

There are two principal reasons for this. First, Harris and Trump’s worldviews are grounded in an article of faith that has undergirded America’s post–World War II foreign policy: maintaining U.S. hegemony and supremacy. There is full agreement, as Kamala Harris recently declared at the Democratic convention and reiterated in her debate with former President Trump, that the U.S. must have the “most lethal” military in the world, and that we must maintain our military bases and personnel globally. While Trump may have a more openly mercenary approach, demanding that the beneficiaries of U.S. protection in Europe and Asia pay more for it, he is a unilateralist, not an isolationist. At bottom, neither candidate is revisiting the presuppositions of U.S. primacy.

Second, both Harris and Trump are subject to the overwhelming incentive structure that rewards administrations for spending more on the military and selling more weapons abroad than any other country in the world. The sell-side defense industry has fully infiltrated the U.S. government, with campaign donations and a revolving escalator to keep Republicans and Democrats fully committed to promoting their interests. The buy-side foreign regimes have gotten in on the pay-to-play, ensuring handsome rewards to U.S. officials who ensure weapons sales continue. And all sides play the reverse leverage card: If the U.S. doesn’t sell weapons, China and Russia (or even the U.K. and France) will. There is no countervailing economic pressure, and little political pressure, to force either Harris or Trump to consider the domestic and global harms of this spending and selling.

In the Middle East, the incentive structure is at its most powerful, combining the influence of the defense industry and the seemingly bottomless disposable wealth of the Gulf States. And there are two additional factors—the unparalleled influence and control of the pro-Israel lobby, which rewards government officials who comply with its demands and eliminates those who don’t; and Arab control over the oil and gas spigots that determines the prices Americans pay for fuel. As a result, continued flows of money, weapons, and petroleum will ensue, regardless of who wins in November. Within these confines, there are some marginal differences in how Trump and Harris will approach specific issues in the region, but it is doubtful they will be significant enough to be dramatically consequential.

LET’S START WITH ISRAEL. Democrats have become increasingly divided over the Biden administration’s “unconditional,” “ironclad” support for Israel in the face of its yearlong onslaught in Gaza. It has forced self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden to throw a few bones to progressive and Muslim American voters, with heightened rhetorical criticism of Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment, a brief delay in restocking Israel’s diminished supply of bombs, and even sanctions against “bad apple” Israeli settlers who have terrorized Palestinians in the West Bank. A strong majority of Democratic voters now oppose military aid to Israel and support Palestinian rights and freedom.

Harris no doubt feels pressure to promise some recalibration of Biden’s policies, but she has largely confined this to expressions of sympathy for Palestinian “suffering.” She has reiterated the Biden team’s pleas for a cease-fire, but refused to support conditioning aid to Israel to achieve this. Her representatives at the Democratic convention went out of their way to make clear that there will be “no daylight” between her and Biden’s policies on Israel, and that like Biden, she will stick to “frank conversations” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And like every administration before hers, she will feel the sway of her pro-Israel donors much more than her voters once elected, making it unlikely that her policies will shift away from Israel to any consequential degree. There’s no reason to believe she will walk back Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, as the Biden administration has failed to do.

It may not be up to either Trump or Harris to choose a course of action on Iran, if Israel’s efforts to escalate to war succeed.

The Biden administration prioritized securing more Abraham Accords, a series of normalization measures between Israel and surrounding Arab states, in lockstep with Trump administration efforts. Whether Harris will continue this remains to be seen. But neither she nor her chief national security adviser, Phil Gordon, has said anything to suggest moving away from this goal. The war in Gaza has crushed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s dream of delivering Saudi normalization for Israel; but for Netanyahu’s savagery, his persistent rejection of a cease-fire, and his declarations that he will never agree to a two-state solution, this would already have been achieved. Both Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be saving such a deal as a bargaining chip with the next administration, but under these circumstances, the Saudi price will now be much higher.

The Biden team has already agreed to two outstanding demands: a bilateral U.S.-Saudi security agreement, and construction of a civilian nuclear plant, with enrichment to take place inside Saudi Arabia. But without tying them to Israeli normalization, it’s doubtful that the Senate will approve these terms. It’s conceivable that Trump will actually take a tougher line with Netanyahu than Harris, forcing him at least to accept a cease-fire, though not a “pathway” to Palestinian statehood, to secure Saudi normalization. But it’s just as conceivable that Trump pushes for a separate stand-alone deal with Saudi Arabia, as the Saudis have proposed.

THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE IN ISRAEL-PALESTINE where Harris and Trump will likely differ is on the move by Israel to formally annex most or even all of the West Bank. David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel in the prior Trump administration, has openly endorsed Israeli apartheid and proposed annexation of the West Bank, minus political rights for Palestinians living there. Friedman has stated that he plans to closely consult with Trump on this “One Jewish State” solution. Trump delivered everything else on Friedman’s wish list—including Jerusalem, Golan, the Abraham Accords, and moving Israel under the U.S. Central Command—the last time he sat in the Oval Office. He has also made clear that he sees Israel-Palestine not as a struggle to end apartheid and occupation, or to establish Palestinian self-determination, but as a real estate dispute between Jews and Arabs. “Israel is a tiny little spot compared to these giant land masses … I actually said, ‘Is there any way of getting more? It’s so tiny,’” Trump has said. It stands to reason that he would ultimately support Israeli annexation of the West Bank, as well as Israeli demands that “other Arabs” take in the Palestinian population.

A Harris administration, in classic Democratic fashion, would wring its hands, wag its finger, and ramp up rhetorical condemnation of Israel were it to move on annexation. But it’s doubtful that it would stop arms transfers or support U.N. Security Council sanctions for such an unlawful and dangerous act. If the horrors in Gaza have not been enough to persuade candidate Harris to demand even a mere suspension of U.S. weapons transfers to Israel, it’s doubtful that annexation would persuade a President Harris to do so.

Sadly, international law prohibitions on acquiring territory by force are now greatly eroded, thanks in no small part to the United States. The Trump administration not only recognized smaller Israeli annexations of Palestinian territory but Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The U.S. has completely ignored the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal and that it must remove its forces and citizens from the occupied Palestinian territories, so it’s hard to see how even more “illegal acts” would tip the Harris administration into abiding by international law.

Harris should have sufficient support to try to dissuade Israel from moving forward with annexation plans. Netanyahu may calculate that he can afford to be in the Harris doghouse for a few years until annexation becomes old news, and the forced displacement of Palestinians, alongside the accompanying humanitarian catastrophe, becomes the new news. It’s much easier politically to remedy humanitarian harms with aid than it is to fight and punish violations of a severely eroded law.

Harris and Trump will also have different strategies to deal with the International Criminal Court’s ongoing prosecution of war crimes in Gaza. The ICC has indicted both Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, but has delayed issuing arrest warrants against them. Like he did before, Trump will move again to sanction the court’s prosecutor, staff, and their families, and may escalate further by demanding that other countries sanction the court, and even push them to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Harris, like Biden, is unlikely to take action against the court, but also like Biden, is likely to exert maximal pressure behind the scenes to stymie the prosecution. Trump would definitely, and Harris most likely, refuse to arrest Netanyahu should he arrive in the U.S. after an arrest warrant is issued, further diminishing the court’s standing as a global court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

NEITHER THE BIDEN NOR THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION achieved any of their oft-stated goals to “withdraw” from the Middle East and “pivot” to Asia. But Trump may be the stronger candidate in his ability to avoid broader entanglement in a regional war, given his willingness to act as the boss of the Middle East. He refused, for example, to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense after the massive 2019 attack on its oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais. A small group of Muslim American voters have said they will vote for Trump specifically because they believe that he alone can bring Netanyahu to heel and avoid a war with Iran.

While Biden notably ended the war in Afghanistan and has finally secured an agreement to remove U.S. forces from Iraq, he has entered into a new war footing in Yemen, attacking Houthi forces for blockading and raiding ships headed to or from Israel. Biden also massively expanded the deployment of American military forces to the region, and suffered numerous attacks on U.S. troops in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, primarily on behalf of Israel. And of course the Biden team has put the finishing touches on the defense agreement for the Saudi regime, prepared to deliver for free what Trump would likely extract more concessions for.

Where both administrations will converge is on continued arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Israel. While the Biden administration initially promised to halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, it caved to the built-in incentive system. While Trump has made clear his enthusiasm for maximal weapons sales for maximal profit, the Harris team, like the Biden team before it, will speak more softly but deliver similar results. Such weapons sales and support for abusive regimes in the region are perceived as a cost worth paying in the shared worldview that prioritizes U.S. military domination of the Middle East.

What remains a toss-up is policy on Iran. Harris’s lead national security adviser, Phil Gordon, played a leading role in supporting the nuclear deal with Iran during the Obama administration, and has written extensively on the failures of regime change efforts in the Middle East. Harris supported the Iran deal, condemned Trump for canceling it, and would likely want to pursue it again. But extreme anti-Iran sentiment among both Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats would pressure her against moving forward, particularly if the conflict between Iran and Israel continues to flare up. For now, at least, candidate Harris is treating any less pugilistic policy on Iran as an opening for political attack; on September 5, she criticized Trump on X for suggesting he would consider lifting sanctions on Iran. (His reasoning was that sanctions hurt the U.S. economy, encouraging de-dollarization.)

Assuming Trump remains guided by anti-Iran extremists, he will continue to oppose the nuclear deal, reinvigorate his “maximum pressure” policies, and likely support further surprise attacks on Iranian facilities and targets—like the extrajudicial execution of IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani and nine others—and even a low-level state of war. If Trump continues to free himself from extremists like John Bolton, however, he may well pursue an agreement with Iran, if only to prove he’s the president who can deliver the best deals.

But it may not be up to either Trump or Harris to choose a course of action on Iran, if Israel’s efforts to escalate to war succeed. If tensions in the region spiral, there will be no room for a new nuclear deal, and the only question will be whether or not the U.S. steps in to fully back Israel. For both candidates, that remains unclear.

In September 2020, on the eve of the presidential election, I wrote a similar piece evaluating what a Trump or Biden presidency would look like, writing that “Biden is expected to return to a more moderate, but fundamentally unchanged approach of prior administrations, which centres on close ties to Israel and arms sales that fuel the region’s arms race.” Four years later, with the very same values and incentives at play, a Harris term appears poised to follow the same course.

Foreign policy largely remains the province of an elite clique of decision-makers. None but the tiniest segment of the electorate prioritizes foreign-policy issues in their voting choices. But changing course from normalizing America’s very abnormal policies in the Middle East isn’t impossible. Legislative reforms can and should tackle the malign influence and infiltration of the defense industry and foreign states, just as open debate can reform outdated ideological commitments. Public opinion clearly desires a new approach; the only challenge that remains is forcing our own government to comply with the will of the people.

Edited September 27 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,767]

 

[Vesper 28,767]

the shit is likely going to hit the fan

Region braces for intensification after Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah’s assassination

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/28/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-hamas-war-news-gaza/

The Middle East was bracing for possible retaliation from Hezbollah or its allies after Israel and Hezbollah announced the death of Hasan Nasrallah, the militant group’s longtime leader. The Israel Defense Forces said it “eliminated” Nasrallah in a Friday strike on Hezbollah’s “central headquarters” that leveled several residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israel’s defense minister said the strike was one of “the most important countermeasures” in Israel’s history, as Hezbollah allies across the region called for a swift response. The U.S. State Department urged the departure of some employees and their family members from Lebanon as it warned of an “unpredictable security situation.”

In the hours since Israel’s Beirut strike killed Hasan Nasrallah, several international leaders and organizations have taken to social media to comment on the attacks.

President Joe Biden lauded Nasrallah’s death Saturday and wrote in a statement that the United States “fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself” against Iranian-backed militant forces. His administration has been brokering cease-fire talks for Israel’s operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

“It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability,” Biden said.

Leaders and political groups in the Middle East condemned Israel’s attacks in Beirut and mourned Nasrallah.

Iranian Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei declared five days of mourning for Nasrallah, state news outlet Mehr reported Saturday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrote in a statement Saturday that he is mourning the loss of Nasrallah and “the victims who fell as a result of the brutal Israeli aggression.”

Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri wrote in a statement Saturday that the assassination was “a cowardly act.” Hariri wrote that this incident has “plunged Lebanon and the region into a new phase of violence.”

 

Key updates

 

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of its leader, Hasan Nasrallah. In a statement Saturday it said...

 

Israel says it has killed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah

 

Hundreds sleep outdoors after evacuation orders in Beirut suburbs

[Vesper 28,767]

Trump’s “Vastly Overpriced” $100,000 “Swiss Watch” Is Probably Made in China, Experts Say

The former president's new timepieces are the laughingstock of watch aficionados, who cast doubt on their true origins — "as ersatz as the man himself."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/style/trump-watch-likely-made-in-china-overpriced-1236013728/

 

He’s hawked gold sneakers, commemorative coins and even a cryptocurrency venture in recent months, so Donald Trump‘s latest retail effort — to sell a pricey gold watch emblazoned with his name — should surprise no one. But timepiece experts aren’t impressed.

On Thursday, Trump debuted a pair of watches available for sale: a dive model dubbed the “Fighter” that is limited to 1,000 pieces and retails for $499 or $799 depending on style, and a seemingly high-end tourbillion design that is depicted as being crafted of 18-karat gold and embellished with diamonds on the bezel. Limited to 147 pieces, that model is listed for an astounding $100,000. All pieces display Trump’s name prominently on the dial, while the more expensive model features a sapphire caseback with his signature.

Word quickly spread among the status-watch community, which was overwhelmingly unimpressed. “This is cobbled together, patently unoriginal and vastly overpriced,” says Ariel Adams, founder and editor of A Blog to Watch, one of the industry’s most popular sites for timepiece information and education. “It’s very clear he’s working with a white labeler, which is nothing new. Anyone can go to a white labeler and say, ‘I want a watch with this case, this bracelet and these other details,’ and a white labeler will Frankenstein it together, put your name on it and sell it to you. But the price you sell it for is up to you. That the markup came from someone on Trump’s team is obvious here. Even the $500 piece from another brand would go for maybe $200.”

A marketing director of a well-known Swiss brand, who asked not to be named to keep his opinion separate from the company that employs him, agreed. “I belong to a collector group that maintains an ongoing group chat, and the initial reaction was that it had to be fake. After that, everyone was laughing,” he said of the more expensive piece. “When you look at all of them, they scream Chinese-made watch. None of them is worth the asking price.”

Indeed, even though the website touts “Swiss-made” when describing the watches, it’s not uncommon among manufacturers of lower-priced designs to manipulate that designation by purchasing some Swiss-made parts and assembling the watch in another country. By Thursday afternoon, several experts across social media pointed out that the more expensive watch’s tourbillon, a mechanism designed to improve accuracy and typically found in pricier timepieces, seemed to be sourced from both Switzerland and China. “Those blue screws on the tourbillon cage are a dead giveaway that it was partly made in China. You won’t find blue screws on a tourbillon made in Switzerland,” noted the marketing director. “And you can pick up a Chinese tourbillon for $100.”

“Fifteen years ago, if you wanted a Swiss-made tourbillon, it would be $50,000,” Adams confirmed. “But the Chinese came along with a lower-priced tourbillon, so today you can get a tourbillon watch for around $6,000. But it shouldn’t be confused with a tourbillon design fully made in Switzerland.”

Several other details also reveal a lack of quality. “The gem-setting looks very rough, while the indices on the dial also look set within the markers, not outset, which also looks very amateurish,” the marketing director noted. “And if you play the video, you can see dust on all the screws. It’s really terrible.”

“[The tourbillon watch] is as ersatz as the man himself,” added Adam Craniotes, founder and president of Red Bar Group, an international network of watch collectors that extends to 85 cities around the globe. “They can employ all the superlatives they want on their site, but [collectors have] already figured out that it’s a half-Swiss, half-Chinese tourbillon you can buy off the rack. Any value from this watch would only come from melting it down and selling the gold and diamonds.”

In addition to wording that might inspire an eye roll among serious watch collectors — “You’ll be wearing the absolute statement of success,” the tourbillon description notes — both models are also lacking information typically found on legitimate watch sites. The tourbillon model, for example, does not list the watch’s case size, a basic detail every wearer wants to know to ensure the case is suitably proportioned to his or her wrist. The total carat weight of the 122 diamonds on the bezel also isn’t listed. Adams says both omissions are likely intentional, an idea supported by a website note identical to one used when Trump was selling his gold sneakers: “The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.”

“By withholding specifics, they’re able to make preproduction changes while staying true to the description on their site,” Adams explained. “And being generous, those diamonds could cost anywhere from $10 to $30 each.”

Regardless of whether they’re interested in the lower-priced dive model or the tourbillon selling for six figures, interested consumers would be smart to peruse the site’s fine print. Also, like the gold sneakers Trump was selling back in February, the watches are being sold only as preorders, which absolves Trump and his merchandising team of any responsibility for paying upfront for the pieces — but it also means purchasers will wait to receive them, with delivery dates estimated to be “October/November/December” in the site’s FAQ section, with the added note that “Shipping and delivery dates are estimates only and cannot be guaranteed.”

“It’s basically a Kickstarter campaign, and not a very imaginative one,” Craniotes said. “They’ve taken design cues from already established watches and slapped his name on them. The red dial [on the diver style] I’m sure is a callout to MAGA red, but overall there’s just a sense of generic-ness and laziness about the whole venture.”

Craniotes’ mention that any value might only be derived from selling the gold and diamonds also can be justified by a disclaimer at the bottom of the site: “Trump Watches are intended as collectible items for individual enjoyment only, not for investment purposes.”

Adds Adams: “This is a fundraising scheme that we’ll be joking about in the future.”

An email sent via the website, requesting specific information about the watches, such as who was manufacturing them and where, was not answered. 

[Fernando 6,453]

16 hours ago, Vesper said:

the shit is likely going to hit the fan

Region braces for intensification after Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah’s assassination

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/28/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-hamas-war-news-gaza/

The Middle East was bracing for possible retaliation from Hezbollah or its allies after Israel and Hezbollah announced the death of Hasan Nasrallah, the militant group’s longtime leader. The Israel Defense Forces said it “eliminated” Nasrallah in a Friday strike on Hezbollah’s “central headquarters” that leveled several residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israel’s defense minister said the strike was one of “the most important countermeasures” in Israel’s history, as Hezbollah allies across the region called for a swift response. The U.S. State Department urged the departure of some employees and their family members from Lebanon as it warned of an “unpredictable security situation.”

In the hours since Israel’s Beirut strike killed Hasan Nasrallah, several international leaders and organizations have taken to social media to comment on the attacks.

President Joe Biden lauded Nasrallah’s death Saturday and wrote in a statement that the United States “fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself” against Iranian-backed militant forces. His administration has been brokering cease-fire talks for Israel’s operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

“It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability,” Biden said.

Leaders and political groups in the Middle East condemned Israel’s attacks in Beirut and mourned Nasrallah.

Iranian Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei declared five days of mourning for Nasrallah, state news outlet Mehr reported Saturday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrote in a statement Saturday that he is mourning the loss of Nasrallah and “the victims who fell as a result of the brutal Israeli aggression.”

Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri wrote in a statement Saturday that the assassination was “a cowardly act.” Hariri wrote that this incident has “plunged Lebanon and the region into a new phase of violence.”

 

Key updates

 

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of its leader, Hasan Nasrallah. In a statement Saturday it said...

 

Israel says it has killed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah

 

Hundreds sleep outdoors after evacuation orders in Beirut suburbs

What you think is going to happen?

A bigger war? Just Hezbollah? or other countries? 

[Vesper 28,767]

3 hours ago, Fernando said:

What you think is going to happen?

A bigger war? Just Hezbollah? or other countries? 

A lot depends on what Iran does.

[Vesper 28,767]

wrong forum, arff

Edited September 29 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,767]

The far right won the most votes in an Austrian election for the first time since the Nazi era

Far-right Freedom party finishes first in Austrian election, latest results suggest

Party wins 28.8% of votes ahead of centre-right People’s party’s 26.3%, according to near-complete count

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/29/far-right-freedom-party-winning-austrian-election-first-results-show

The Freedom party react to early results in the Austrian parliamentary elections on Sunday. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

 

The far right won the most votes in an Austrian election for the first time since the Nazi era on Sunday, as the Freedom party (FPÖ) rode a tide of public anger over migration and the cost of living to beat the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP).

The pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam FPÖ won 28.8% of votes, beating the ruling ÖVP of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, into second place on 26.3%, according to near-complete results.

The opposition Social Democratic party scored its worst ever result – 21.1% – while the liberal NEOS drew about 9%. Despite devastating flooding this month from Storm Boris bringing the climate crisis to the fore, the Greens, junior partners in the government coalition, tallied 8.3% in a dismal fifth place.

The Communist party and the apolitical Beer party looked unlikely to clear the 4% hurdle to representation. Turnout was high at about 78%.

Profiting from a rightwing surge in many parts of Europe and taking Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as a model, the FPÖ capitalised on fears around migration, asylum and crime heightened by the August cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna over an alleged Islamist terror plot. Mounting inflation, tepid economic growth and lingering resentment over strict government measures during Covid dovetailed into a huge leap in support for the FPÖ since the last election in 2019.

Its polarising lead candidate, Herbert Kickl, who campaigned using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, said he was ready to form a government with “each and every one” of the parties in parliament.

“We have written a piece of history together today,” he told cheering party supporters in Vienna. “We have opened a door to a new era.”

Nehammer called the result, which will send shock waves through Europe, “bitter” while his defence minister, Klaudia Tanner, admitted the debacle for the governing parties was a “wake-up call”.

Because it failed to win an absolute majority, the FPÖ will need a partner to govern. Unlike the other centrist parties, the ÖVP has not ruled out cooperating with the far right in the next government, as it has twice in the past in taboo-breaking alliances at the national level.

Nehammer, however, repeated on Sunday that a scenario in which Kickl, a former hardline interior minister, became chancellor was a non-starter, setting up a potential showdown in which the FPÖ would have to either jettison Kickl or take a backseat in government to win the ÖVP’s support.

The Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, called the result ‘bitter’. Photograph: Heinz-Peter Bader/AP

“We’ll see in the coming weeks which is more important to FPÖ voters – claiming the chancellor’s seat or Herbert Kickl,” the political scientist Peter Filzmaier told ORF, adding that exit polling had shown it was issues and not personalities that had motivated voters.

Kickl, a bespectacled marathon runner, was a protege of Jörg Haider. The former firebrand FPÖ leader and Carinthia state premier, who died in 2008 in a drink-driving crash, transformed the party founded by ex-Nazi functionaries and SS officers into the ultra-nationalist force it is today.

The Austrian Jewish Student Union has sued Herbert Kickl, party leader of the far-right FPÖ, for allegedly making anti-Semitic statements. [EPA-EFE / Daniel Novotny]

Migrant groups have expressed fear for the future in Austria, which critics say has failed to fully own up to its Nazi past and role in the Holocaust. Rabbi Jacob Frenkel of Vienna’s Jewish Council called the election a “moment of truth”.

At his final rally in central Vienna on Friday, Kickl drew cheers from the crowd railing against anti-Russia EU sanctions, “the snobs, headteachers and know-it-alls”, climate activists and “drag queens in schools and the early sexualisation of our children”. He hailed a proposed constitutional amendment declaring the existence of only two genders. But the biggest applause line remained his call for “remigration”, or forced deportation of people “who think they don’t have to play by the rules” of Austrian society.

Nehammer actively sought during the campaign to co-opt the FPÖ’s tough stance on immigration, which the far right hopes to bring to bear at the EU level using Austria’s outsized influence in Brussels due to its geographical prominence and strong alliances. Congratulations to Kickl poured in from rightwing populist parties across Europe including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

“The government has drastically reduced asylum applications,” the chancellor said on Thursday. “But we need more: asylum procedures in third countries before asylum seekers come through several European countries. And more: complete access to social welfare only after five years of residency in Austria.”

It was a remarkable comeback for the FPÖ, humiliated five years ago after the so-called Ibiza scandal in which Austria’s then deputy chancellor and party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, was caught on video at a Spanish luxury resort discussing a potential bribe from a woman purporting to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

The disgraced Strache and his parliamentary leader, Johann Gudenus, who had initiated the meeting, were forced to resign, triggering snap elections in which the ÖVP, then led by “wunderkind” chancellor Sebastian Kurz, triumphed. Two years later Kurz quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

The last term has been marked by a stunning reversal for the government, an ÖVP coalition with the Greens, even by the baroque standards of politics in this Alpine country of 9 million. The conservatives shed 11 points in support in that time, with the FPÖ leading in the polls since late 2022 and coming first in European parliament elections in June.

Coalition negotiations are expected to take several weeks before a new government is in place. Regardless of the outcome, the ÖVP seems poised to hold on to power, either in an alliance with the far right or an unwieldy, unprecedented three-way coalition with smaller centrist parties, similar to Germany’s unpopular government. A two-way alliance with the Social Democrats could eke out a wafer-thin majority but analysts said such a pact was unlikely.

Edited September 30 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,767]

Top Republicans disavow Trump’s ‘mentally disabled’ attacks on Harris

Lindsey Graham pushes back on ex-president’s remarks as Minnesota’s Emmer says ‘we should stick on the issues’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/29/trump-republicans-mentally-disabled-comments-harris

Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born “mentally disabled” and had compared her actions to that of “a mentally disabled person”.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump’s remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a “dark” speech.

“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN. “I’m not saying she’s crazy, her policies are crazy.”

Graham’s comments came as immigration and border security remained the top domestic issue on Sunday’s political talk shows. Trump made his comments during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday amid remarks on Harris’s actions on those issues as vice-president.

“Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said.

Trump added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer, a member of JD Vance’s debate preparation team, told ABC News: “I think we should stick on the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.”

But Maryland governor Larry Hogan struck back, telling CBS News that Trump’s comments were “insulting not only to the vice-president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities.

“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without,” Hogan added.

Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s comments, widely criticized as offensive, but said Harris’s record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president”.

Trump’s comments joined a long list of personal attacks against opponents that supporters at his campaign eagerly lap up. Democrats have their own reductive articulations, calling Trump and Vance “weird”.

But the use of mental disability to describe Harris’s faculties has been widely seized upon. Democrat Illinois governor JB Pritzker told CNN that Trump’s remarks were “name-calling”.

“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said. Eric Holder, the former Obama administration attorney general, said Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline”.

“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” he told MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”

Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, pointed out that many presidents had disabilities.

Town said in a statement to the Washington Post that Trump’s comments “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability”.

 

[Vesper 28,767]

 

 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/07/kamala-harris-for-president-endorsement

At the 1940 Republican National Convention, in Philadelphia, an uneasy affair marked by bomb scares, a British espionage scandal, and the imminence of global conflict, ten names were placed in nomination. On the sixth ballot, a corporate executive from Indiana named Wendell Willkie finally emerged as the challenger to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was running for a third term. Desperate to find a way to compete with F.D.R., a political colossus who had lately engineered the New Deal and ended the Great Depression, Willkie challenged him to a series of radio debates.

This was something new in American life. F.D.R. hardly feared the medium—he’d been delivering his homey yet substance-rich fireside chats to the nation since 1933—but he nonetheless dodged Willkie’s invitation, citing scheduling conflicts. In November, he crushed Willkie, and by the end of 1941 he was engaged in the struggle against fascism.

The 2024 election also comes at a moment of national crisis. This time, however, the threat to the country’s future—to its rule of law and its democratic institutions, its security and its character—resides not in a foreign capital but at a twenty-acre Xanadu on the Florida coast. For nine years, Donald Trump has represented an ongoing assault on the stability, the nerves, and the nature of the United States. As President, he amplified some of the ugliest currents in our political culture: nativism, racism, misogyny, indifference to the disadvantaged, amoral isolationism. His narcissism and casual cruelty, his contempt for the truth, have contaminated public life. As Commander-in-Chief, he ridiculed the valor of fallen soldiers, he threatened to unravel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and he emboldened autocrats everywhere, including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán. When Trump lost to Joe Biden, in 2020, he tried every means possible to deny the will of the electorate and helped incite a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill.

In contrast, the Democratic Party’s nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris, has displayed the basic values and political skills that would enable her to build on the successes of the Biden Administration and to help end, once and for all, a poisonous era defined by Trump. Few, if any, of our readers will be surprised that we endorse Harris in this election—but many would have been surprised, earlier this year, that the choice would end up being between Trump and the Vice-President. The change in the Democratic candidate is the result, of course, of a debate of the sort that F.D.R. sidestepped.

During the past half century, these quadrennial confrontations have become a centerpiece of election season—a chance to glimpse the choice in real time, side by side. Aficionados may know the highlights of debates past: Ronald Reagan, at the age of seventy-three, joking nimbly that he would not “exploit” the “youth and inexperience” of his fifty-six-year-old opponent, Walter Mondale; George H. W. Bush glancing at his watch after Bill Clinton answered a question from the audience; Mitt Romney assuring the country that, far from being a sexist, he had, in fact, “whole binders full of women” he had consulted for his gubernatorial cabinet.

Yet no debates have been as unusual or as consequential as the two we have just witnessed. The first—on June 27th, in Atlanta, between Trump and President Biden—proved to be an unmasking. On a human level, Biden’s nationally televised disintegration was a poignant spectacle. Viewed more coldly, it was a gift. Had it taken place, say, after the Conventions, it might have been too late to force a reassessment.

It was hardly a secret that Biden has aged, growing markedly less robust, particularly in the past eighteen months or so. If he got through an interview or a (rare) press conference without incident, staff and supporters exhaled and treated it as a victory. But, rather than open the gate to a younger generation of Democratic candidates, Biden, his advisers, and the Party leadership stood in the way. They made it plain that a challenger would inevitably be defeated. Meanwhile, through spin and deft scheduling, the White House staff protected the President and hoped for the best. Tens of millions of voters, fearing another Trump Presidency, had little choice but to close their eyes and think of America.

But staying the course was, as the polls were suggesting, probably a doomed strategy. In an attempt to invigorate the campaign, Biden and his team took the risk of challenging Trump to an early debate. Perhaps a forceful, coherent performance would diminish the doubts about the President’s capacity to govern well into his mid-eighties. It was not to be. The debate, broadcast on CNN, was a humbling. Biden’s resting expression of slack confusion was almost as unnerving as his faltering efforts to make a clear and vivid case for his reëlection. When Jake Tapper asked him about the national debt, he delivered a wobbly reply that concluded, “Look, if—we finally beat Medicare.” After Biden gave a similarly jumbled response to a question about immigration, Trump said only, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” By Trumpian standards, this was a kindness. It was also the end of the Biden candidacy.

For the next twenty-four days, the President travelled a hard road from denial to acceptance. All of us face the assault of time, but few must reckon with mortality before the eyes of the world. Biden loves the job and thought he was uniquely positioned to defeat Trump once more. But finally, after absorbing discouragement from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Obamas, and others, Biden, in an act of grace, issued a letter concluding that it was “in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down.” In a separate message, he gave his endorsement to Kamala Harris.

The second Presidential debate, at the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, was an unmasking of another kind. For some time, observers have asked whether Trump, who is now seventy-eight, has himself suffered from some form of decline. On a given day, it is hard to determine if a particular insult, lie, or rant represents his usual malevolence or something else. Not long before the debate, Trump took to speculating whether it would be preferable, in the event of finding oneself on a sinking boat, to die by shark attack or by electrocution from the boat’s battery. (“I’ll take electrocution every single time,” he assured a grateful nation.) There is nothing he will not say. When a group of Proud Boys were convicted of conspiracy last year, he warned that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department were just getting started: “get smart america, they are coming after you!!!” Trump has defied multiple legal gag orders, attacking judges and jurors, and has even blamed the latest attempt on his life, a deeply alarming event, not on the would-be assailant or the easy availability of assault weapons but on the Democratic ticket.

For Harris, the debate presented an opportunity to expose Trump at his worst. All she had to do was to prick his vanity. Trump’s rallies were boring, she suggested. Military leaders thought he was a “disgrace.” Foreign leaders ate his lunch, considered him weak, laughed at him. With growing rage, Trump began howling from a familiar hymnal. America is a “failing nation.” Migrants are pouring in from “prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.” Indelibly, Trump picked up on a racist, J. D. Vance-endorsed conspiracy theory about Haitian migrants in Ohio and gave it his full voice:

In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.

Trump went on in this vein of fact-free bluster, bringing discomfort even to some fellow-Republicans. He had been calling Harris “dumb as a rock” and “unable to speak properly without a teleprompter” or even “put two sentences together,” while mocking her looks, her family, her racial identity, her personal life. He refused to pronounce her name correctly. Harris decided to flick all that lint from her shoulder. She left it to the moderators to correct Trump’s facts and the electorate to behold his lunacy. It was a performance that had the potential to lay bare Trump’s character for those voters who might not have been paying much attention. After the debate, Trump, of course, declared a “BIG WIN,” but he then issued a loser’s proclamation: “there will be no third debate.” Some days later, he had more to say about that night, particularly about an endorsement that came his opponent’s way minutes after the debate’s conclusion. On his social-media platform, he wrote, “i hate taylor swift!”

In the fall of 2016, the editors of The New Yorker published an enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary Clinton:

On November 8th, barring some astonishment, the people of the United States will, after two hundred and forty years, send a woman to the White House. The election of Hillary Clinton is an event that we will welcome for its immense historical importance, and greet with indescribable relief. It will be especially gratifying to have a woman as commander-in-chief after such a sickeningly sexist and racist campaign, one that exposed so starkly how far our society has to go.

The lack of sufficient caution remains, well, an astonishment. We all learned a painful lesson. Trump has never won the national popular vote, and the elections of 2018 and 2020 were setbacks for the Republicans; in 2022, the anticipated “red wave” failed to materialize. And yet in rural towns, in struggling deindustrialized cities, in the South and the Midwest, his popularity is broad and deep. His strength among Black and Latino men has grown. He has the ardent backing of tech billionaires like Elon Musk, right-wing legal activists like Leonard Leo, and no small number of Wall Street executives whose highest priorities are to prevent regulation and changes to their tax status. Coming out of the Democratic National Convention, and then the September 10th debate, Harris made extraordinary inroads with the electorate; she’s got the “vibes,” as this year’s cliché has it. But the race remains very close. In both 2016 and 2020, Trump outperformed the polls. No responsible assessment of the contest has the luxury of focussing only on the imperatives for a Harris Administration and gliding past the ramifications of another Trump Administration.

There’s every reason to think that Trump II would be far worse than Trump I. Twice impeached, found liable for sexual abuse, convicted of thirty-four felony counts, and facing many more state and federal charges, Trump would return to the White House in a spirit of vengeance. He would immediately set about betraying his oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution and wage battle against the independence of the Department of Justice in order to preserve, protect, and defend himself. He has made it clear that he would also use the powers at his disposal to punish his opponents. And this time there would be no advisers who would rein him in.

Trump is a menacing presence in American life, and most of his former associates know it. Of his forty-two former Cabinet secretaries, only half have endorsed him. More than two hundred staffers for four previous Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates have endorsed the Democratic ticket. High-ranking officials who once surrounded Trump—including former Vice-President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief of staff John Kelly, the former national-security advisers John Bolton and H. R. McMaster, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley—regard him as unfit, a threat to national security.

Trump’s campaign has centered on immigration. His first-term abominations included family separation, the Muslim ban, and the decimation of the refugee and asylum system. Now he and advisers like Stephen Miller want to carry out mass deportations reminiscent of the Eisenhower Administration’s “Operation Wetback,” promising the creation of vast internment camps for undocumented immigrants. Such efforts would require the participation of the Department of Defense and the National Guard. These goals are not only unrealistic; they’re undemocratic.

There are more than eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the United States; at least sixty per cent of them have lived here for more than a decade. Under Trump, federal agents would target anyone they could, without clear guidelines or priorities. This policy would tear apart families, unleash fear in immigrant communities, and lead to racial profiling and discrimination.

A second Trump Administration also augurs economic disaster. His promised tax cuts would hollow out the government’s finances, especially if he manages to enact the escalating measures that he has promised while campaigning, such as making Social Security benefits tax-free. Then, there’s his plan to impose tariffs of up to twenty per cent on imports, plus much higher duties on anything made in China. According to credible economic models, this would bring a resurgence of inflation, raising the cost of living for those least able to afford it.

Trump’s effect on the judiciary would be no less alarming. In his first term, he appointed three Supreme Court Justices, who played an essential role in eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. Twenty-two states have since either restricted the procedure or banned it outright, and states in the latter category (including Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi) have some of the country’s highest rates of maternal and infant mortality.

Nor is this the only respect in which Trump’s judicial appointments have imperilled public health and safety. The judges he named to the federal bench have continued his campaign of regulatory sabotage. A series of recent Supreme Court rulings have invited polluting industries to challenge pretty much any rule, old or new, that they don’t like.

Despite such rulings—and despite a recklessly expansive opinion about Presidential immunity—Trump has sometimes complained that the Court remains insufficiently compliant. Three Justices are currently in their seventies; if Trump gets another round of picks, he is likely to make personal loyalty a deciding factor. Notwithstanding a constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” he has indicated that, once in office, he would dismiss federal criminal cases pending against him, and, with the help of a suitably pliable Attorney General, he would almost certainly fire the special counsel Jack Smith. “I have the absolute right to pardon myself,” Trump has said. A subservient Justice Department and judiciary could readily be enlisted in his vendettas: Trump—who has insinuated that Mark Milley should have been executed for disloyalty—has also said that he might well prosecute political opponents, including Joe Biden.

Trump’s record on the environment is the worst of any President in modern history. His Administration rolled back nearly a hundred regulations aimed at protecting the nation’s air, water, and wildlife. It dismantled Obama-era efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Trump’s Department of the Interior rushed to lease public lands for oil and gas drilling, and his Department of Energy worked methodically to weaken efficiency standards. A 2020 analysis by the Rhodium Group estimated that the Trump Administration’s actions would result in the release of an extra 1.8 billion tons of CO₂ by 2035, a planetarily disastrous outcome. And Trump has continued to scoff at climate science. Talking to Elon Musk, in August, he asserted that one impact of sea-level rise would be the creation of “more oceanfront property.”

Discussion about foreign policy in this election season has been, as always, limited at best. Trump’s pronouncements are either flip (“I don’t give a shit about nato”) or dismaying in both their specifics and their evasions. With respect to the horrific events of the past year in the Middle East—the Hamas attack on October 7th, in which twelve hundred people were killed and more than two hundred taken hostage, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, which has left more than forty thousand Palestinians dead and countless people displaced—Trump’s response is that it “would have never happened” if he had been in office. When he was in the White House, he presided over the signing of the Abraham Accords, which promised a new era in relations between Israel and more of its Arab neighbors but paid almost no attention to the rights and the future of the Palestinian people.

In the recent debate, Trump was asked simply if he wanted Ukraine to prevail against its invader, Putin’s Russia. Trump, who appears to prefer aggressive Russian authoritarianism to Ukraine’s evolving democracy, could not bring himself to answer in the affirmative and convey support for Ukraine’s struggle to preserve its sovereignty and independence. Indeed, Trump radiates contempt for Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who failed to deliver on Trump’s thuggish demand, in 2019, that, in exchange for weapons shipments already earmarked for Kyiv, he investigate the Biden family. Putin, who has shredded nascent democratic institutions and procedures in his own country to create a system based solely on his authority, is more Trump’s style.

Trump is no more assuring when it comes to China policy. Xi Jinping, whom Trump has recently praised as a “brilliant guy” who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” believes that the world is undergoing a realignment—“changes unseen in a century.” Once again, Trump seems uninterested. He has suggested that he might leave Taiwan to fend for itself in the event of a Chinese attack. The island should “pay us for defense,” he said. Trump warns of another world war, and yet here, too, his policies seem designed to encourage aggression and destabilize the international order.

In every arena, there is little question that a Harris Presidency promises far greater sanity and far greater humanity. As recently as three months ago, the Washington cognoscenti cast aspersions on her political skills. These quickly evaporated as Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, the shrewd and appealing governor of Minnesota, have rapidly proved to be effective campaigners. Their swift transformation of the Democratic Party’s prospects for November has been astonishing. Harris deserves enormous credit for stepping fearlessly into the role that fate has dealt her. In the face of a malign opponent, she has behaved with poise, conviction, and intelligence. Of course, her ability to carry out her policy ambitions would improve immeasurably with the election of Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. But, whatever the circumstances, her positions on the critical issues are rational, undergirded by a basic sense of decency, and often compelling.

Where Trump promises mass deportations, she has expressed support both for boosting border enforcement and for opening avenues that would lead to legal immigration. The refugee program, which is both a moral imperative and a pragmatic tool of U.S. foreign policy, has grown substantially during the Biden-Harris Administration. The government has also tempered interior enforcement, allowing the large undocumented population, particularly those with families and deep ties to local communities, to live without constant fear of arrest and deportation.

The Biden-Harris record on asylum at the border is mixed, partly because the policy solutions are far more complex. Harris has said that she would support a bipartisan Senate bill that drastically curtails asylum, and, in the current climate, support for that bill is politically expedient. But there is good reason to believe that, if elected, Harris could be pushed to combine increasing vigilance at the border with more policies that would provide relief to those in desperate need. She has been clear that she would protect undocumented families and find ways to bring a sense of compassion to the immigration system. Congress, to be sure, has been a barrier to any meaningful efforts at immigration reform; conservative courts, together with Republican state attorneys general, would try to limit what Harris could do by executive order. But the alternative is unimaginably bad.

On the subject of economics, Harris’s proposals have sometimes lacked detail, but they thoughtfully address concerns of working-class and middle-class Americans, with a particular focus on the cost of housing. President Biden, for his part, has made a concerted effort to reëstablish the Democratic Party’s bond with blue-collar voters. He has been unusually pro-union and pro-manufacturing. There’s a reason that, after the disastrous first debate, some of the most diehard Biden loyalists were on the Party’s left. The inflation that rose earlier in his term—and that his political adversaries have used to define his economic record—has now abated, while Biden can be credited with passing programs that directed federal spending toward badly needed infrastructure projects and green-energy projects. The U.S. is currently leading its peers in the rate of economic growth.

Owing to Senate opposition, Biden has struggled to follow through on his ambition to bolster the “care economy,” through paid family leave, child tax credits, and other measures. Although Harris has pulled back from Biden’s positions in certain areas—she favors, for example, a more modest corporate tax increase—these family-relief programs are the part of Biden’s agenda that she is most enthusiastic about. She will push hard for them, alongside her initiatives aimed at easing the housing crisis.

For the Harris campaign, the most emotionally galvanizing issue has been abortion. This will be the first Presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Close to ninety million women have registered to vote this November, and historical data show that women have favored Democrats over Republicans in every general election since 1992. As Vice-President, Harris has emerged as a leading voice on abortion, framing it powerfully as a matter of bodily autonomy and a right to health care. She has called for concrete policy changes, such as reinstating federal protections for abortion, and has never shied away from making forceful statements on the issue. In March, Harris toured a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, becoming the first Vice-President to make a public appearance at an abortion provider.

Leaders in the field of women’s health have praised her directness and see it as a welcome change from Biden’s wavering stance. (In this year’s State of the Union address, he failed to say the word “abortion” once, even though it was included in his prepared remarks.) As a senator, she sponsored bills designed to improve maternal health and guarantee access to contraception. In 2018, during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, she memorably asked him, “Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” She also sought to limit a state’s ability to ban abortion unilaterally. “If there are those who dare to take the freedom to make such a fundamental decision for an individual, which is about one’s own body,” Harris said of abortion rights at a campaign fund-raiser in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, “what other freedoms could be on the table for the taking?”

Harris has a reasonably strong environmental record, even if in recent months she has chosen to give it only modest attention. As California’s attorney general, she pursued several high-profile cases against polluters, including one against ConocoPhillips for endangering water supplies. In 2016, she sued the Obama Administration over a plan to allow offshore fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel. (A federal judge sided with Harris, and an injunction remains in place.) In the Senate, she promoted electric school buses and was an early co-sponsor of a resolution calling for a Green New Deal. Running for President in 2019, Harris, who has called climate change an “existential threat,” said that she would ban fracking for oil and gas. She has since reversed that position, but, as Vice-President, she cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new spending and tax breaks for clean-energy projects.

On foreign policy, Harris, who has spent many hours in national-security briefings, speaks the language of liberal internationalism, echoing Biden’s policies, from Ukraine to the Middle East. But she is of a different generation than Biden. We can reasonably hope that, as she maintains his commitment to traditional allies and alliances, she will also employ American leverage when those allies are acting heedlessly. With respect to Gaza, she has voiced support for two states for two peoples; she has reasserted Israel’s right to security while at the same time evoking the “heartbreaking” suffering of the Palestinian people, and calling for an immediate end to the war, with a resolution that would enable Palestinians to “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” But she also will need to act decisively in the United States’ interest when dealing with someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, who has frequently given American Presidents the back of his hand while benefitting immensely from American support.

With regard to China, Harris is likely to extend Biden’s posture of watchful, skeptical competitiveness. A former prosecutor, she often views foreign policy through the lens of international law, and she has rebuked China for expanding its territorial footprint. In 2022, shortly after her first meeting with Xi, when some leaders might have attempted to send reassuring signals, Harris did the opposite: during a visit to the Philippines, she vowed America’s support “in the face of intimidation and coercion in the South China Sea.”

Four years ago, in our endorsement of Joe Biden, we said that, while he was leading in the polls, we hoped he would displace Trump “by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish.” We know what happened: the margins, in four decisive states, were extremely narrow, and Trump refused to concede. Instead, he levelled wild accusations and filed dozens of lawsuits. When those failed, he called on his MAGA believers to march on the Capitol. This time around, the Trump campaign and various right-wing groups have already deployed deny-the-vote efforts around the country, particularly in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. There is every likelihood that, if Trump loses, the drama could go on for weeks or months after Election Day. He has made no secret of the fact that he is willing to use every lever, deploy every dirty trick, political and rhetorical, to bring the country to the brink once more.

And so the choice is stark. The United States simply cannot endure another four years of Donald Trump. He is an agent of chaos, an enemy of liberal democracy, and a threat to America’s moral standing in the world. Kamala Harris—who has shown herself to be sensible, humane, and liberal-minded—is our choice for the Presidency. At the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, a few weeks ago, the American people were able to see both the stakes of this election and the vast differences between the candidates.

The right choice—the necessary choice—is beyond debate. ♦

 

Published in the print edition of the October 7, 2024, issue, with the headline “Harris for President.”

Edited September 30 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,767]

🤪

According to rabbinic tradition, Saint Michael the Archangel acted as the advocate of Israel, and sometimes had to fight with the princes of the other nations (Daniel 10:13) and particularly with the Archangel Samael, Israel's accuser.

Their enmity dates from the time Samael was thrown from heaven and tried to drag Michael down with him, necessitating God's intervention.

The idea that Michael was the advocate of the Jews became so prevalent that in spite of the rabbinical prohibition against appealing to angels as intermediaries between God and his people, he held a place in the Jewish liturgy.

 

I deffo am a fangirl of

Edited September 30 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

21 hours ago, Fernando said:

What you think is going to happen?

A bigger war? Just Hezbollah? or other countries? 

The strategy of the axis of evil is this:
Trump wins in America, declares isolationism. Europe is driven further into chaos and disarray.
In Europe there will be as a result some left wing governments friendly to Hamash and some right wing neutrals like Orban.
This will help them escalate things and will certainly help Putin and nuclear Iran who are the masterminds behind everything.
The Palestinians are being taken for a ride just like they were taken for a ride in the six day war by the Soviets, but they are blind to this because of their centuries old antisemitism.
If Trump loses in America it's going to be a setback but at the same time they seem to be doing rather well in Europe, taking out countries piece by piece.
As for the disaster that has befallen them in Gaza and Lebanon, they don't care. The populations are docile and they had plenty of such things before.

All the Arabs are very antisemitic.
I have met quite a few. From Egypt, from the gulf states and from further out to the east.
From the more recent breed of islam fanatics I have no personal acquaintances - I 'm talking about before the nineties, when they were baathists.
But the islam fanatics are even worse as we all now.
 

Edited September 30 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,767]

Israeli tanks mass on Lebanese border as fears rise of ground invasion

 

The US issues last-minute appeal for restraint, saying an escalation in the conflict would not return evacuated Israelis to their homes

https://www.thetimes.com/world/israel-hamas-war/article/israeli-tanks-mass-on-lebanese-border-as-fears-rise-of-ground-invasion-93gdqrg5r

Israel appeared to be gearing up for a ground invasion of Lebanon as hundreds of tanks massed on the country’s northern border.

Soldiers carrying wrenches made final preparations to their armoured vehicles as plumes of smoke rose from wildfires started by Hezbollah rockets.

The United States issued a last-minute appeal to both sides for restraint, warning Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that war would not return 60,000 displaced Israelis to their homes in the north of the country.

Israeli reservists, savouring a final takeaway at petrol stations near the Lebanese border, were resolved to their task, energised by the news that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut on Friday.

“We must do what we must do,” said Yehuda, 28, a reservist engineer in an Israeli armoured brigade.

As the Middle East stumbled closer to regional war, Israeli planes bombed a Houthi port and power plants in Yemen, more than 1,000 miles from Israel, in retaliation for a series of ballistic missile attacks on Tel Aviv.

The aftermath of an Israeli attack on Nabatieh, Lebanon

RAMIZ DALLAH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES

Meanwhile, Israel continued its airstrikes in Lebanon, pummelling Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, as well as the Beqaa Valley. At least 100 people died on Sunday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

An Israeli strike in the early hours of Monday hit an upper floor of an apartment building in the Kola district of Beirut, Reuters witnesses said.

In a dusty field close to the border, hundreds of Israeli Merkava IV tanks, armoured bulldozers and recovery vehicles were lined up beneath the setting sun. Israeli soldiers, hanging out of the back of buggies, bounced north towards the mountains of Lebanon.

The last time Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah fought them to a bloody stalemate over 34 days of fighting.

However, the Shia militia has been decapitated by almost two weeks of bombing that has obliterated Lebanese towns along the border, left 1,000 people dead and displaced another half a million.

“We let them build up again on our border after 2006 and that was a mistake” said Yuval 39, a British citizen and reservist infantryman, whose parents moved to Israel in the 1970s. He has spent four months fighting in Gaza with the IDF.

“Now there’s not a chance in hell we’ll let them sit on our border. I understand the world doesn’t like conflict. But whether it’s with airstrikes or a ground invasion, we need to move them.”

He added: “The soldiers are ready, the tanks are ready. We know they are waiting for us … I’m tired, but we’re here because it’s important.”

In Tehran, the Iranian foreign minister vowed revenge for the deaths of Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was also killed in Friday’s attack on Beirut.

“This horrible crime of the aggressor Zionist regime will not go unanswered,” Abbas Araghchi said.

Displaced families have had to sleep on the streets of Beirut

CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

Analysts said that Iran was unlikely to follow through on its threats and may not have the means to conduct an attack that would restore its deterrence against Israel. “Iran looks like it’s in quite a tight situation, in that it knows that any response will elicit a stronger counter from Israel,” Sanam Vakil, the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme, said.

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, warned Netanyahu that he risked a wider regional war by sending troops into Lebanon and said a large conflict would not return evacuated Israelis to their homes.

“An all-out war with Hezbollah, certainly with Iran, is not the way to do that. If you want to get those folks back home safely and sustainably, we believe that a diplomatic path is the right course,” he told CNN.

The Israeli military said dozens of ­aircraft struck Houthi targets in Yemen on Sunday as it expanded its confrontation with Iran’s regional allies. It was the second-ever Israeli strike on Yemen, killing four people and wounding more than 30, Houthi media reported, with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claiming to have hit targets in the Iran-backed rebels’ territory including weapon stores, power plants and a seaport.

The IDF said the strikes were carried out in response to the Houthis’ ballistic missile attacks on Israel, ­including one that was aimed at Tel Aviv’s international airport on Saturday upon Netanyahu’s return from New York.

“Our message is clear — for us, no place is too far,” Yoav Gallant, the ­defence minister, said after monitoring the attack on Yemen from a command centre about 1,300 miles away.

In Lebanon, 20 Hezbollah operatives were killed during Israel’s airstrike on Beirut on Friday, the IDF said. Lebanese rescuers continued to pick through the rubble on Sunday, and were said to have retrieved the body of ­Nasrallah.

Among the 20 were Ali Karaki, commander of the group’s southern front, Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Nasrallah’s personal security team, and the senior advisers and commanders Samir Tawfik Diab, Abd al-Amir Muhammad Siblini and Ali Nawaf Ayoub.

The IDF also declared the successful assassination of Nabil Qaouk, a senior member of Hezbollah’s political wing.

Hezbollah remained quiet, with no plans announced for Nasrallah’s ­successor. Reuters cited two security sources who claimed his body had been recovered from the blast site.

As tanks massed on the Lebanese border, reports suggested that Israeli generals may favour using special forces to conduct raids on Hezbollah strongholds rather than a sweeping offensive.

Densely populated areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs have been largely emptied since intense bombing began on Friday. The mass displacement of people has threatened a rise in sectarian tensions in Lebanon with Shia Muslim-majority areas disproportionately targeted, forcing residents to seek refuge in a number of Sunni and Christian-dominated areas. Government authorities have made appeals for national unity, with the army urging citizens “not to be drawn into actions that may affect civil peace”.

Israel began to muster its forces on the Lebanese border after this month’s pager attacks, redeploying the 98th ­Division, a contingent of 10,000 to 20,000 paratroopers and commandos, from Gaza to the north. It has called up reservists from the Etzioni 6th brigade and Northern ­Nahal 228th brigade, each consisting of 1,000 to 2,000 troops. Generals can also deploy the 7th Armoured Brigade, which has been wargaming a ground offensive on the border. But the mountains of southern Lebanon present a daunting battleground for an invading force and Hezbollah, despite the ­setbacks of recent weeks, has 45,000 ­soldiers at its disposal, many of them battle-hardened in Syria.

Netanyahu has vowed to return 60,000 displaced Israeli citizens to their homes along the Lebanese border and dismissed western calls for a ceasefire.

Najib Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, said that a million people, about a fifth of Lebanon’s population, may be internally displaced in what could be “the largest displacement movement” in the nation’s history. In a statement, Lebanon’s health ministry announced the deaths of 14 paramedics killed in airstrikes over two days and accused Israel of disregarding the Geneva conventions.

Edited September 30 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

47 minutes ago, Vesper said:

🤪

According to rabbinic tradition, Saint Michael the Archangel acted as the advocate of Israel, and sometimes had to fight with the princes of the other nations (Daniel 10:13) and particularly with the archangel Samael, Israel's accuser.

Their enmity dates from the time Samael was thrown from heaven and tried to drag Michael down with him, necessitating God's intervention.

The idea that Michael was the advocate of the Jews became so prevalent that in spite of the rabbinical prohibition against appealing to angels as intermediaries between God and his people, he held a place in the Jewish liturgy.

 

I deffo am a fangirl of

You don't know the truth about this.
Satan and the fallen angels are forbidden from doing supernatural things.
If they try then the angels of god will burn them - they know this and they don't.
But satan operates in other ways.
He takes advantage of the law of uncertainty that governs the universe.
The law of uncertainty is essential for the universe to function - the universe cannot exist without it.
Even if it causes bad things to happen, such as the premature death of some persons, it is essential.
So satan takes advantage of this, conspires and plots to destroy humanity.
Ultimately it does n't work for him but he enjoys temporary successes.
 

Edited September 30 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,767]

[Vesper 28,767]

2 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

You don't know the truth about this.

yes I do

there are no god(s)

there are no demons

there are no angels

Its all the stuff of children's fairy tales, but then bent and fit for purpose in the pursuit of power and domination, poisoned to the core by the erecting of various and sundry religions

The tools of sorrow are, to name a few, hate, fear, greed, misery, guilt, shame, torture and death.

 

[cosmicway 1,323]

5 minutes ago, Vesper said:

yes I do

there are no god(s)

there are no demons

there are no angels

Its all the stuff of children's fairy tales, but then bent and fit for purpose in the pursuit of power and domination, poisoned to the core by the erecting of various and sundry religions

The tools of sorrow are, to name a few, hate, fear, greed, misery, guilt, shame, torture and death.

 

Ignorant stuff.

[Vesper 28,767]

Just now, cosmicway said:

Ignorant stuff.

yes, yes it is

gods are the oldest, most vile invention of humans/hominids over the past several million years

the first, most ancient and primordial woo

it is all predicated upon the wilful suspension of disbelief, aka magical thinking

and that wilful suspension of disbelief opens the doors for all endeavours that are anti-human by their very nature

human beings are not the misshapen product of gods, gods are the misshapen product of humans