I mean, it makes sense. A lot of these retailers have their operations based in places that should be legitimately terrible for producing their specific products. Faking it is all they have.

What a POS Vance is.

Unfortunately, they’re instead deciding to double down in every way possible.

I’m posting this one rather than the Washington Post article directly because that one’s behind a paywall. There’s still a link to it in this article if you do have personal access.

Any article posted that is in any way negative on Harris, even if something she legitimately did wrong, gets massively downvoted in this federation. Kind of echo chambery, I guess.

Read the article. He’s been doing things recently. It’s clearly all just a show, but it could have an impact on voting results.

Oh, Trump’s stance on such subjects is utter trash. But the fact that he’s actually trying to make the appearance of support is going to matter in Michigan if Harris doesn’t do the same. That sort of ground game matters, especially to low-information voters that aren’t actively engaged in everything going on elsewhere in politics.

Not even a real bet to make. I mean: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/summer-reads/article/2024/09/09/how-the-sound-of-freedom-captivated-trump-s-conspiracy-fueled-base_6725321_183.html

That’s a really bizarre claim to make without any stated evidence. How would you even know that without having been in there yet? I presume this, much like ever other claim by the IDF (especially when they put out one of their terribly animated propaganda videos alongside it) that this claim is to give an excuse for future war crimes against the hospital?

There is one news piece I found from Australian media: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/oxfam-demands-gaza-aid-workers-killing-inquiry-as-doctors-decry-collective-punishment/0q8gtobjn

But, yeah, the lack of news coverage is surprising. But maybe because it’s Sunday? I’m willing to give until tomorrow to see if the coverage happens then.

It’s right there in the article.

According to Channel 12 reporter Yaron Avraham, on October 16 and 17, “the [Security] Cabinet deliberated for hours over the precise wording of the decision, with each draft being passed between the Cabinet room and Blinken’s room, a distance of a few meters away, inside the Kirya…. Eventually, around 3 a.m., they arrive at an agreed upon text that is read in the Cabinet room in English.”

Avraham’s account of the process was independently corroborated by a reporter for the competing Channel 13, who wrote: “The discussion with Blinken is conducted as follows: he is sitting in a room in the Kirya with his advisors and security team, while Security Cabinet holds the discussion; [Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron] Dermer goes back and forth and interfaces with him.”

Blinken, for his part, concluded the day with a triumphant speech taking responsibility for the restarting of humanitarian aid to Gaza:

"To that end, today, and at our request, the United States and Israel have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza – and them alone – including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians our of harm’s way. It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible.

We share Israel’s concern that Hamas may seize or destroy aid entering Gaza or otherwise preventing it from reaching the people who need it. If Hamas in any way blocks humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians, including by seizing the aid itself, we’ll be the first to condemn it and we will work to prevent it from happening again."

Then later on it says:

In a Zoom call with party members, Sa’ar declared “I’m currently of the opinion that humanitarian aid to Gaza should be halted immediately, until the formulation of a humanitarian aid [mechanism] which will not be subject to Hamas takeovers, nor the distribution of aid by Hamas to the civilian population.”

This policy, Sa’ar said, was already anchored in “a [Security] Cabinet decision that was made at the beginning of the war, which stated that the humanitarian supply from Egypt will be allowed as long as this supply did not reach Hamas, and that the supply that does reach Hamas will be thwarted.” According to him, the policy was endorsed by “The United States of America … in the talks that took place in the middle of October, including the talks with Secretary of State Blinken, who was visiting [Israel] and took part in discussions, mainly with the War Cabinet, on the subject of humanitarian aid.”

Further on regarding the WCK strike:

The Israeli military ended up putting the blame on Colonel Nochi Mendel, who ordered the strike, and has previously expressed support for halting aid provision to Gaza. Mendel’s punishment amounted to being let go from his military service, and going back to his prestigious day job as director of the Settlement Department at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

But the right wing Makor Rishon newspaper concluded, on the basis of conversations with drone operators involved in the assassination of the aid workers, that Mendel was only implementing the official policy jointly set by Blinken and the Israeli cabinet back in October: “The mission order made it clear that the IDF is instructed to thwart an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take over the aid trucks that entered Gaza. The IDF received this instruction from the Security Cabinet at the beginning of the war, sometime around October 18, 2023, following heavy pressure from the United States.”

You seem to misunderstand the claim being made. The article is stating that Blinken was involved in creating the policy that said Israel had the right to fire on anyone they deemed to have been compromised by Hamas. Blinken absolutely was involved in drafting and approving that policy.

After the multiple humanitarian aid bombings conducted by the IDF, Israeli politicians have been claiming that they’ve just been setting forth the policy agreed to by Blinken and the US. And there has been no evidence that Blinken or the US government as a whole has pushed back on that or changed their stance on the policy in question in the months since.

It’s an offshoot of The Intercept, which is quite easy to look up. The article seems to quite clearly point out that it is Israeli politicians claiming they had Blinken’s approval and backing for their actions. They are quite likely lying in retrospect, but the article does give all the information available on the topic.

It also links to other sources for every statement and claim in it.

But, hey, feel free to try and downplay the straightforward information presented in the article.

I really need some sort of interpretation of this, even to a minimal degree. What exactly is the debt of your birth that the government now owes you?

This group is probably better, but I’ve had some weird removals over at [email protected]. Like, the other day I posted an article about China’s banks cracking down on any loans being given to Russian companies. And the article was in the business newspaper Vedomosti and the mods removed it for being a “questionable source” and never replied when I asked them why.

Hopefully this meets reputable news source requirements, as Declassified UK is a well known investigative news group with a heavy focus on political UK corruption.

And? The point of Israel funding Hamas is that they would be able to continue attacking and thus let Israel continue disrupting the lives of Palestinians in both Gaza and West Bank, including expanding their illegal settlements. The entire point was to get excuses to keep destroying anything the PA tried to build as a government.

They’re also heavily funded with money from Israel, who wants them to keep fighting. Per Netanyahu’s own admission, Israel has been covertly supporting Hamas so that the PA can’t gain enough power to actually make a viable Palestinian state.

Sure, but the bigger issue, as noted from the quotes in my comment, is how can the IMF even do a real evaluation when Russia is almost certainly lying about its economic and trade figures? If the IMF does try to make a statement taking a definitive stance on Russia’s current economy, then we’ll all know the IMF is agreeing to push Russia’s bullshit.

“What recommendations does the IMF want to give Russia at the end of the consultation? How to better run a war economy?” one senior eurozone official told Reuters.

Tim Ash, a Russia analyst at the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, said in a blogpost: “Clearly while article IV reviews are about surveillance they are also about providing policy advice to countries as to where they are going wrong and trying to provide advice as how to improve their economic outturns.

“Inevitably therefore IMF officials, in making the trip to Moscow, will be helping Russia improve its economy and by so doing will be leaving themselves open to being accused of helping Russia in the conduct of the war against Ukraine.”

Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said: “A basic requirement for IMF membership is data transparency, which Russia clearly no longer satisfies on a number of fronts.

“Russia has stopped publishing lots of data and there are questions around whether the data it continues to publish are accurate.”

Brooks said the Kremlin was publishing trade figures that showed low income from oil produced in the Urals, even though the price of Russian oil has remained “quite elevated”. It meant the current account, which measures the net effect of trade and financial flows, would disguise the size of Russia’s war chest.

“Russia should be suspended from the IMF while these data questions persist,” he said.