A group of House Democrats led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution Wednesday to halt the Biden-approved sale of $735 million in weapons to Israel.
In addition to Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) joined in introducing the resolution.
Antisemitic abuse in West Hollywood pic.twitter.com/QX6vqBHwuA
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) May 19, 2021
On Saturday, Israel announced that it had evidence that Hamas military intelligence assets were operating out of a building with civilian media offices — in essence, using the media as a shield. Because Hamas turned the building into a military site, it became a legitimate target under international law. So the AP and Al Jazeera lost their propaganda sites. Israel gave detailed information about notifying Biden in advance of the strike. However, on Monday, secretary of state Antony Blinken said there was no such evidence. Does this represent some kind of creepy and dangerous game-playing from the Biden administration?
The U.S. military exit from Afghanistan is beginning to look “just like Vietnam,” a key lawmaker warned Tuesday as questions grow about Biden administration’s short-term strategy to ensure U.S. civilian personnel and Afghan allies aren’t slaughtered by the Taliban and the long-term prospect that the country’s pro-Western government may collapse without international support.
A heated hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday underscored the mounting chaos surrounding the withdrawal of the remaining 3,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which President Biden has ordered to be completed no later than Sept. 11. Thousands more NATO and allied troops are also heading for the exits in the wake of Mr. Biden’s pullout decision.
The government will almost certainly fall but who cares?
The Pentagon is running a 60,000-strong secret army made up of soldiers, civilians and contractors, who travel the world under false identities embedded in consultancies and name-brand companies — without the knowledge of the American people or most of Congress — according to a report.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he hasn’t seen any evidence that Hamas was operating inside a media building in Gaza housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.
An Israeli diplomat said on Sunday that the government provided ‘smoking gun’ evidence to President Joe Biden about the high-rise its forces obliterated.
But Blinken appeared to go against their claims, said the U.S. is seeking additional evidence from and has demanded a full explanation from the Israelis.
A biomedical professor has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for carrying out a scheme to use millions of dollars in federal grant money to advance research in China, according to the Justice Department.
Zheng Songguo, a former professor at Ohio State University (OSU), pleaded guilty in November to lying on his National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications, in order to use $4.1 million in research grants to develop the fields of rheumatology and immunology for China, the department said.
Judging by what Iranian and US diplomats involved in the current talks to revive the moribund “nuclear deal” say, the widow of opportunity opened by Joe Biden’s victory in last year’s presidential election is likely to shut within the next few weeks.
The Iranian side claims that only an agreement reached while President Hassan Rouhani’s team is still in charge, at least nominally, would have a real chance of being pushed through the hurdles set against any international accord by the Islamic Republic. For the US side, however, the problem is that while President Biden is keen to clinch a deal in the hope of normalization with the Khomeinist regime, he cannot be sure that the Iranian team in Vienna would be able to deliver on any promises it makes.
A conservative estimate of the cost of a transition to “clean energy” is $1.7 trillion needed for mining of copper, cobalt, lithium and other rare earth and exotic metals and minerals. This transition will supposedly fuel electric vehicles (EVs) being cheaper than gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2027, and electric SUVs cheaper by 2026, according to BloombergNEF. Additionally, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a new report found renewable installations for energy to electricity “soared to 280 GW globally in 2020, up 45% from 2019,” with “renewables (solar and wind) accounting for 90% of global electric capacity installations in 2021 and 2022.”
Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime — the one that the US Department of Justice has called the “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.
There have been more than 130 incidents of unexplained brain injury known as Havana syndrome among US diplomats, spies and defence officials, some of them within the past few weeks, it has been reported.
The New York Times said three CIA officers had reported serious symptoms since December, following overseas assignments, requiring outpatient treatment at the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington. One episode was within the past two weeks.
The reported number of cases is about 70 more than had previously been acknowledged.
If you’re even just a little bit like me, you must be looking out at America today and wondering ‘what in the world went wrong’ to transform our once mostly-sane and mostly-free nation into what is has become today, what Susan Duclos recently called the ‘terrifying changes’ happening to our nation every day with the total banishment of ‘common sense’ from large parts of the country.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has called for a “new vision” for the military even if no one, including him, can explain what it is. Austin has been touting something he calls “Integrated Deterrence” a buzzword that seems to involve AI, the State Department, and some sort of new way of war. But mostly it means that war is a silly idea and that no one should fight wars.
h/t Marvin
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News’ 60 Minutes last week that the goal of the Biden administration was not to “contain” China, but to protect a “rules-based order” in international relations:
“Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and defend it.”
For American diplomacy, this is a significant admission that America no longer wants to lead the world, but gracefully back away as the world’s reigning superpower. Perhaps these clear signals will be seen by some western allies as merely noblesse oblige, a gentlemanly way of responding to the shoves of a bully.
Canadians wait 15 months longer on average for new and potentially life-saving medications compared to Americans and Europeans, according to a study released Thursday by the Fraser Institute.
The report by the fiscally-conservative think tank — Timely Access to New Pharmaceuticals in Canada, the United States and the European Union — found that for 218 new drugs approved in both Canada and the U.S. between 2012-2013 and 2018-2019, approval was granted an average of 469 days earlier in the U.S. than in Canada.
