Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.
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The acceptance of a plea deal is a remarkable about-face for a lawyer who, perhaps more than anyone else, strenuously pushed baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election in the face of extensive evidence to the contrary. If prosecutors compel her to testify, she could provide insight on a news conference she participated in on behalf of Trump and his campaign shortly after the election and on a White House meeting she attended in mid-December of that year during which strategies and theories to influence the outcome of the election were discussed.

Thank you dear sir for the great news.

Democracy Now! @democracynow
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Veteran Haaretz journalist Amira Hass has reported from the Occupied Palestinian Territories for decades and says the Israeli public is "drunk with the will to take revenge" on Palestinians, spurred on by a far-right government dominated by "extreme fascist settlers."

Joe Biden has appealed to Israel not to be “consumed” by rage in its response to the attack by Hamas, as the US president pledged stalwart support for Israel for its self-defence and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to allow aid into Gaza via Egypt.

Speaking in Tel Aviv towards the end of his one-day visit to the region, which did not include any meetings with leaders from the Arab world, Biden compared Israel’s predicament after the massacre of more than 1,300 of its citizens to the US’s crisis 22 years ago after the 9/11 attacks. His country had “sought and got justice”, but also “made mistakes”, he said.

Apparently Biden compared it to 9/11

Calls for de-escalation, even if well-meaning, are premature ... Israel needs the military latitude to re-establish deterrence and root out the nodes of terrorism. Israel did not ask America to de-escalate on September 12, 2001.

Let me be clear ... Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest. ... This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia ... That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.

You cannot think straight when you’re in pain. That’s truer still when the pain is combined with fury at those who caused it. There’s a reason we speak of “blind rage”: when anger descends, we cannot see what’s in front of us. And if that’s true of individuals, it’s truer still of nations.

That was the message Joe Biden brought when he travelled to Israel this week. Drawing on his own experience of multiple bereavements, he consoled Israelis grieving for the more than 1,400 civilians killed by Hamas in the 7 October massacre and those waiting for word on the 203 hostages, including young children and the elderly, still held in Gaza. In what has become his signature style, Biden shared in their pain.

But he also drew on his memory of how US leaders reacted to America’s collective trauma in September 2001, and here he offered something closer to a warning. “I caution you, while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11 we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

He did need to spell out that, in its fury at al-Qaida, the US did not simply hunt down that one network, but invaded the country that harboured it, Afghanistan, and one that had nothing to do with it, Iraq – both with devastating, lasting consequences. After 9/11, the US declared a global “war on terror” that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, brought al-Qaida into places where it did not previously exist – Iraq among them – and birthed a new and even darker terror, in the form of Islamic State.

It is a warning from recent history that should be preying on the minds of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s military commanders, as the hours count down to an expected ground incursion into Gaza. Israel and its advocates stress that the country has the right, indeed the duty, to defend itself against an enemy that proved its cruelty a fortnight ago. But this is to risk America’s post-9/11 error: convinced that a chosen course of action is legitimate, it’s easy to forget to ask if it is wise.

Already, in its rage, Israel has made decisions it may come to regret. Its mission should be clear: to ensure that Hamas is stripped of the capacity ever to repeat what it did two weeks ago. That means Israel’s war should be with Hamas alone, not the people of Gaza. And yet by imposing a near-total blockade on the territory, denying its more than 2 million citizens food, water and medicine, it has inflicted pain on the entire population – pain that will be only partially alleviated under the terms of a concession negotiated by Biden.

Such action falls foul of both morality and international law, but it also runs counter to Israel’s own interests – weakening overseas support at the very moment it should be at its strongest – and to its stated goal. Because if recent years have shown anything, it is that making life more hellish in Gaza does not loosen Hamas’s grip – it tightens it.

Coming after relentless bombing from the air, a full-scale Israeli ground invasion could be an even greater gift to the organisation, handing it exactly what it wants. Indeed, the extravagant sadism of the crimes Hamas committed in the sabbath of blood on 7 October – the rape, torture and mutilation – was surely designed to goad Israelis, to drive them so crazy with grief that they would storm into Gaza, blindly walking into the very trap Hamas had so carefully set for them.

That may be literally the case, with Israeli troops lured into tunnels and back streets that amount to one giant booby trap. On that terrain, Israel will suffer heavy casualties and it will inflict them – and both outcomes will suit Hamas just fine. The latter because they see a rising Palestinian death toll as an asset in the propaganda war; the former because it will validate their claim that it is Hamas alone, not the secular nationalists of rivals Fatah, who represent the true resistance against the Israeli enemy.

A long, bloody war is what Hamas and its Iranian backers – desperate to derail recent moves towards “normalisation” of relations between Israel and several of its neighbours, most crucially Saudi Arabia – yearn for. It will mean that, even if the infrastructure of Hamas is destroyed, the hatred that powers it will not be: on the contrary, it will grow in the hearts of a new, bereaved generation of Palestinians. Not for nothing did the scholar Hussein Ibish write this week: “In trying to fulfil the pledge to ‘eliminate Hamas’, Israel could well deliver everything Hamas is counting on.”

That notion might seem counterintuitive and yet, when it comes to Netanyahu himself, it is unexpectedly on-brand. Prime minister for most of the last 15 years, Netanyahu has been an enabler of Hamas, building up the organisation, letting it rule Gaza unhindered – save for brief, periodic military operations against it – and allowing funds from its Gulf patrons to keep it flush. Netanyahu liked the idea of the Palestinians as a house divided – Fatah in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza – because it allowed him to insist that there was no Palestinian partner he could do business with. That meant no peace process, no prospect of a Palestinian state, and no demand for Israeli territorial concessions.

None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

That catastrophic misjudgment alone should seal Netanyahu’s fate. Taken together with the fact that it was on his watch that Israel suffered the deadliest attack in its history, the greatest single loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, the verdict on Netanyahu should be clear. Most Israelis admit as much, accepting that once the current war is over, he will have to go.

But that is a curious logic. If he is so obviously culpable for the calamity of 7 October, if it was his serial strategic errors that created the vulnerability exposed and exploited so fatally on that day, what possible qualification does he have to lead Israel’s response now? Speak to Israelis, even on the right, and they will tell you that, as Yaakov Katz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, put it this week, “the government is not functioning”.
The basic duties of the state – whether rehousing the stricken families of the south or getting essential equipment to army reservists at the front – have been taken up instead by a range of civil society groups that have sprung up in the last two weeks. They are filling a void left by Netanyahu, who has overseen an era of cronyism and corruption that has turned the machinery of the state to rust.

For all these reasons, Israelis can’t wait until the war is over. Changing leaders in wartime is not unheard of: it worked out well for Britain in 1940. Admittedly, such a move is unlikely, given Netanyahu’s absolute control of his party. But Israel needs to be rid of the man who led them to this bleak crossroads, and to replace him with someone who will take the right path – one not paved by the country’s mortal enemies.

No.

Biden, like Sunak, and Kier Starmer is too committed to one side.

His feeble attemps to get aid into Gaza were desultory.

His immediate acceptance of Israel's excuse for the bombing of the hospital was appalling.

No wonder Arab leaders refused to meet him.

All the surrounding countries including Israel's allies believe Israel did it.

It seems to me that some people are too willing to let confirmation bias guide them on this very sensitive question.

Last night, President Joe Biden spoke to the nation from the Oval Office to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel. “[H]istory has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world keep rising,” he said.

“If we walk away and let Putin erase Ukraine’s independence, would-be aggressors around the world would be emboldened to try the same,” he said. “The risk of conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world—in the Indo-Pacific… [and] especially in the Middle East.”

Biden noted that Russian president Vladimir Putin has suggested he might like to take part of Poland, while one of his top advisors has called three other NATO allies, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Russia’s “Baltic provinces.” Russian aggression there would draw the U.S. into war.

Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, he noted, and “it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups” in the Middle East.

“The United States and our partners across the region are working to build a better future for the Middle East, one where the Middle East is more stable, better connected to its neighbors, and—through innovative projects like the India–Middle East–Europe rail corridor that I announced this year at the summit of the world’s biggest economies—more predictable markets, more employment, less rage, less grievances, less war when connected. It…would benefit the people of the Middle East, and it would benefit us.”

Biden explained that he was sending to Congress “an urgent budget request to fund America’s national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine. It’s a smart investment that’s going to pay dividends for American security for generations, help us keep American troops out of harm’s way, help us build a world that is safer, more peaceful, and more prosperous for our children and grandchildren,” he said.

That money, he said, would harden the Iron Dome that protects Israel’s skies after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that took more than 1,300 lives. But he also said that the U.S. “remains committed to the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and to self-determination. The actions of Hamas terrorists don’t take that right away”

He explained that he had discussed with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat as best as they can. The people of Gaza urgently need food, water, and medicine.” Biden secured an agreement for such relief when he visited Israel on Wednesday, but so far the route from Egypt has not opened, at least in part because Israel and Egypt can’t agree on a way to inspect the trucks to make sure they are not carrying weapons.

Ethan Bronner and Henry Meyer of Bloomberg reported yesterday that President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have pressured Israel more deeply than any recent administration, demanding they adjust their planned ground assault on Gaza to minimize civilian casualties and think about what happens when the assault is over. U.S. officials are worried that Israel’s response to the October 7 attack could prompt Hezbollah to join the war, scuttling the administration’s attempt to stabilize the region and drawing the U.S. further into the conflict.

But Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners who have backed further settlements in the West Bank are eager to exact revenge on the Palestinians there, killing at least seven in the last week. U.S. officials told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times that “the representatives of those settlers in the cabinet are withholding tax money owed the Palestinian Authority [that exercises authority over the West Bank], making it harder for it to keep the West Bank as under control as it has been since the start of the Hamas war.” Netanyahu, who has been charged with corruption and fraud, needs those partners in order to remain prime minister and thus stay out of jail.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening as Israel has launched extensive airstrikes, killing what U.N. observers estimate to be more than 2,800 Palestinians, including several relatives of former representative Justin Amash (Libertarian-Michigan) who had been sheltering in a church. It has also driven about a million people of the 2.3 million in Gaza from their homes. Hospitals are closed, and food and water are scarce.

Foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen of Diplomatic gave Biden credit for his attempt to calm the region, support Israel, and protect Palestinian civilians but was, she said, “very worried” that the conflict would drag out and “inflame & destabilize [the] region & spark blowback & it will be very very ugly.” The U.S. had not been able to get “a single truck of aid into Gaza, much less set up a quasi-safe zone…five days after it thought it had a deal to do so.” It is not helping that X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, is amplifying disinformation about the crisis.

The U.S. and governments in Europe have pressured Israel not to go into Gaza while diplomats in Qatar try to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. Today, Hamas released two dual U.S. citizens who had been held hostage in Gaza.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) took a different tack, noting that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (believed to be the group responsible for the hospital explosion in Gaza) received more than $130 million in cryptocurrency in the past two years, and researchers believe this is just a fraction of the total. Cryptocurrency funds crime and terror, they wrote: more than $20 billion in illicit transactions last year “that we know of.”

Those exchanges are currently unregulated, and Warren and Marshall have introduced the bipartisan Digital Asset Anti–Money Laundering Act to bring digital assets under the same rules that regulate traditional payment systems.

Today the administration asked Congress for a little over $105 billion in funding for national security. The package would devote $61.4 billion to support Ukraine (some of it to replenish U.S. stockpiles after sending weapons to Ukraine); $14.3 billion to Israel for air and missile defense systems; $9.15 billion for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Gaza, and other places; $7.4 billion for initiatives in the Indo-Pacific; and $14 billion for more agents at the southwestern border, new machines to detect fentanyl, and more courts to process asylum cases.

But Congress is currently unable to act. Seventeen days after the extremists in the House Republican conference ousted then-speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican civil war continues to paralyze the House. After key Trump ally Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) lost a second round of balloting on Wednesday, his allies apparently spent Thursday threatening the colleagues who didn’t vote for him.

Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) explained: “So far I've had four death threats. I've been evicted from my office in Colorado…because the landlord is mad with my voting record on the Speaker issue. And everybody in the conference is getting this…. Family members have been approached and threatened, all kinds of things are going on….”

The threats simply hardened Jordan’s opposition. He lost a third ballot today, with 25 Republicans voting against him, and in a secret ballot the Republicans took privately over whether to keep him as their nominee for speaker, only 86 voted for Jordan, with 112 against. The House recessed for the weekend, despite the mounting crises that need to be addressed.

Having a key lieutenant in the House speaker’s chair, where he could, among other things, smear Biden by pushing to impeach him in the months before the election, would have been a huge boost for Trump. That Republicans refused to get behind Jordan even when he forced them into a public vote and then threatened them, much as Trump threatened them to line up behind him in the past, suggests they are starting to fear Trump less than they have for years.

Three plea deals in the past two days have intensified Trump’s legal troubles. Two of his own lawyers, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, have pleaded guilty to some of the charges brought by Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis in the racketeering case against Trump and 17 others.

Yesterday, Powell pleaded guilty to trying to tamper with voting machines. In exchange for a lenient sentence, she will have to testify against others. As she was the person Trump considered tapping as a special counsel to investigate alleged voter fraud, she was at a key meeting with Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and former Overstock chief executive officer Patrick Byrne.

Powell’s unexpected jump to the prosecution side—she was lying about the election just this week—put pressure on others, and today Chesebro also flipped. He was allegedly the one who designed the false electors scheme, although he has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file false documents. In exchange for a lenient sentence, he has to turn over any evidence he has and testify truthfully against others in the case, including Trump.

In Michigan, a Republican man charged with participating in the false-elector plot also entered into a cooperation agreement yesterday, meaning he will talk to investigators and, if necessary, testify.

Finally, today, Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization, fined Trump $5,000 for violating the gag order he had imposed on October 3. Trump told Engoron that day he had taken down a social media post disparaging one of Engoron’s law clerks, but it remained up on his campaign website.

Engoron warned Trump that “future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him pursuant to New York Judiciary Law.”

IDF purposely put a missile into an apartment with sleeping women and children and killed them before in a "mistake".