monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

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balanced views regarding the middle east

You cannot balance anything when Israels enemies want them totally destroyed. That would be genocide.

The International Monetary Fund has warned a trade war between the US and China risks making the world a "poorer and more dangerous place" in its latest assessment of the global economy.

The IMF has lowered its forecast for global growth this year and next.

It said that a full-blown trade war between the US and China would put a significant dent in economic recovery.

Its chief economist said further trade barriers would hit households, businesses and the wider economy.

"Trade policy reflects politics and politics remain unsettled in several countries, posing further risks," said Maurice Obstfeld.

Most recently, China announced new trade tariffs on $60bn of US goods, including products such as liquefied natural gas, produced in states loyal to the US President Donald Trump.

In a tweet, Mr Trump warned Beijing against seeking to influence the forthcoming US midterm elections.

"There will be great and fast economic retaliation against China if our farmers, ranchers and/or industrial workers are targeted!" he said.

US tariffs on $200bn of Chinese imports came into effect last month.

Global economic growth is now expected to reach 3.7% in 2018 and 2019, down from the IMF's previous prediction of 3.9% in July.

It said that risks to the short-term outlook had "shifted to the downside".

Downgrades to global growth also reflected predictions of a slower expansion in the eurozone as well as turbulence in a number of emerging market economies.

Crisis-hit Venezuela is expected to enter its sixth year of recession in 2019, with inflation predicted to hit ten million per cent next year.

Argentina, which recently agreed an IMF bailout, is also predicted to see its economy shrink in 2018 and 2019.

The US and China's escalation of trade tariffs is expected to hit growth in both countries in 2019, when the boost from President Trump's sweeping tax cuts will also start to wane.

Mr Obstfeld said the world would become a "poorer and more dangerous place" unless world leaders worked together to raise living standards, improve education and reduce inequality.

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Crisis-hit Venezuela is expected to enter its sixth year of recession in 2019, with inflation predicted to hit ten million per cent next year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45789669

At that point, the word 'money' has long since lost all meaning.

I wonder what the next big thing will be in the media's attack on their president.

You must be talking about Fox.

I don't even have a television.

The Hawaii Supreme Court last week became the latest state court to rule that legal presumptions of parentage apply equally to same-sex couples. While many other cases have involved separated couples in which one partner is seeking custody of the child they raised together, this case involved a parent trying to avoid parental responsibility.

The case revolves around “LC” and “MG,” a same-sex couple that had legally married in Washington, D.C. in 2013. LC’s military assignment required them to move to Hawaii, and later she was stationed overseas while MG remained in Hawaii and continued to pursue fertility treatment and eventually got pregnant via artificial insemination using a sperm donor. LC served MG with divorce papers a month before the child was born In November 2015, but they were still legally married.

LC asked the court to disestablish paternity, claiming she had not consented to the fertility treatment and insemination, but the Court was not convinced. Hawaii’s presumed parentage law, combined with its marriage equality law, define LC as the child’s legal parent because she and MG were still married.

In the decision, the Supreme Court highlights that there are many ways in which Hawaii law presumes that certain individuals are a child’s parents even without any genetic or biological connection. One of these ways is that the birth mother’s husband is presumed to be the father, regardless of whether a sperm donor was used or someone else is proven to be the father.

Hawaii’s marriage equality law likewise specifies that any language related to marriage be assumed to be gender neutral, so the presumption extends to a birth mother’s female spouse as well. “With those rights came responsibilities,” the Court wrote. “Perhaps the greatest of these are the responsibilities of parentage.”

The Court was not convinced that LC had taken the proper steps to withdraw her consent from the fertility clinic. Though she produced a fax withdrawing consent to the fertility clinic dated January 1, 2014, the time stamp on the received fax showed the date of December 9, 2015 — a month after the child was born.

Several other states have arrived at similar conclusions, including New York, Arizona, Maryland, and Mississippi. The U.S. Supreme Court likewise resolved such a dispute in Arkansas, concluding in the case Pavan v. Smith that a same-sex couple should have both names listed on a child’s birth certificate. Many of these disputes relate to couples who were together and whose children were born prior to marriage equality allowed them to be legally connected to their children.

As the Mombian blog notes, courts have not entirely been consistent. Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s marital presumption did not apply. As that decision noted, Pennsylvania has far narrower parameters for determining child custody that are governed more by biology than the laws in the other states. Several justices wrote concurring opinions indicating that the ruling could maintain barriers for same-sex couples to be equally recognized as parents in some situations, but a future case would have to determine whether that is true.

These cases are a reminder that many loose ends remain in determining what equality under the law looks like for same-sex couples. Now that Brett Kavanaugh is seated as the ninth U.S. Supreme Court justice, there is no guarantee that cases like Pavan will continue to favor the LGBTQ community.

That the United States has a cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia has been established, and it remains to be seen whether the disappearance — and feared grisly death — of a dissident Saudi journalist will change that at all.

It’s been a week since Jamal Khashoggi walked into his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get the paperwork he needs in order to marry his fiancée, a Turkish national.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, he never walked out. He might not have even left the building in one piece.

The response from the United States has been extremely muted. President Donald Trump, who chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas official visit — and whose hotel in Washington, D.C. has benefited greatly from Saudi business — has not had much to say about it.

Nary a tweet, even.

So far, when asked, the president has only said that he is “concerned” (though not yet deeply so) and “doesn’t like hearing about it.”

The State Department, meanwhile, has called on Saudi Arabia to investigate itself in Khashoggi’s disappearance. But Turkish officials are now demanding to search the Saudi consulate.

The Washington Post, which published Khashoggi’s work, reports Turkish investigators believed the 59-year-old journalist was “killed shortly after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2 and his body was later removed from the premises, according to a U.S. official and sources close to the investigation.”

Earlier reports have indicated that Khashoggi might have been dismembered and carried out of the embassy in suitcases.

Saudi officials deny any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “baseless,” though they have failed to point to any evidence that Khashoggi walked out of the consulate (his fiancée had been waiting for him outside the consulate for hours) or point to any likely explanation of what has happened to the high-profile dissident.

Khashoggi has been an outspoken, if measured, critic of his government’s crackdowns in recent months. Under Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (knowns as MBS), the country has undertaken a series of detentions and shakedowns of some of its wealthiest and locked up its human rights activists.

MBS has undertaken a huge PR effort in the United States, doing a major media tour here in the spring, meeting with officials, reporters, and Silicon Valley bigwigs along the way. He made Hollywood deals and sold himself as a progressive — a “reformist” prince, a man who believed in change.

That was in April. Since then, Saudi Arabia has killed a busload of children in Yemen, remained involved in that country’s civil war, crucified an inmate, and continued jailing activists.

And while it has finally given women the right to drive (being the only country in the world that banned women from driving), Saudi Arabia still forces women to live under guardianship laws, allowing men to make nearly all major decisions for women.

Turkish media outlets have published CCTV footage which they say shows evidence of a plot linked to missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It shows purported Saudi intelligence officers entering and leaving Turkey via Istanbul airport.

Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi monarchy, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October and has not been seen since.

Turkish authorities say Mr Khashoggi was killed. Saudi Arabia denies this.

What else does the video show?
Broadcast by Turkey's TRT World channel and apparently garnered from security cameras, the footage shows vehicles driving up to the consulate, including black vans thought to be central to inquiries.

Groups of Saudi men are seen entering Turkey via Istanbul airport, checking in at hotels and later leaving the country.

Turkish investigators are looking into two Saudi Gulfstream jets that landed at the airport on 2 October. The video shows aircraft waiting on the tarmac.

Mr Khashoggi was visiting the consulate to finalise his divorce so he could marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

He is seen on the video entering the consulate. His fiancée waits outside.

Turkey's Sabah newspaper reports that it has identified 15 members of an intelligence team it says was involved in the Saudi's disappearance. Among them was a forensics expert, it says.