The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said on Monday he had requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense chief and three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes. We talk to Douglass Cassel who specializes in business and human rights, international human rights law, and international law at King & Spalding. Microsoft on Monday debuted a new category of personal computers with AI features. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI on Monday said it was working on temporarily muting a synthetic voice that sounds a lot like that of actress Scarlett Johansson. And a spoon that makes low salt food taste saltier.
Day: May 21, 2024
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Everyone who closely follows politics knows that if Donald Trump were to somehow ever get back into power, it would be the end of the United States as we know it, and our nation would instead become some kind of neo-Nazi hellscape.
Anti-Trump people know it and are repulsed by it. Pro-Trump people know it and are excited by it. The problem is that a lot of uninformed people in the middle automatically dismiss it as hyperbole any time anyone compares Trump to a wannabe Hitler. No matter how true it is, it’s a tough sell to the types of folks who want to believe that there isn’t enough of a difference between the two sides that they feel compelled to pick one.
In that sense Trump just did us a favor when he posted a video which specifically refers to his “MAGA” vision for America as a “Unified Reich.” No really, this happened:
Trump posts a new ad foreshadowing a second Trump term that says he will create a “UNIFIED REICH,” echoing Nazi Germany pic.twitter.com/z4ZmMSWuRH
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 21, 2024
. . .
Now that Donald Trump is literally referring to his campaign as a Reich, he’s making it a lot easier for us to convince potential voters in the middle that he is indeed a wannabe Hitler. So thanks, Trump, for being really bad at this stuff.
The post Donald Trump’s psychotic “Unified Reich” bender appeared first on Palmer Report.
Australian voters’ expectation of intervention does not begin and end with renewable energy
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Buried beneath Jim Chalmers’ budget surplus and inflation tightrope is the hint of something more substantial; a bigger idea of government where tighter limits are imposed on the excesses of the free market.
After four decades of calculated abandonment, citizens are turning to government to intervene more forcefully in their market economies and take back some of the power that has been wilfully ceded to the amoral forces of global capital.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden told a Jewish gathering that he will ensure that Israel will have “everything it needs” to fight Hamas, a pledge that comes after weeks of tension between the governments over his pause on the delivery of large bombs.
“I’ll always ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas, and all its enemies,” Biden told a White House reception on Monday marking Jewish American Heritage Month. The crowd of several hundred in the Rose Garden cheered and applauded.
Biden also denounced the charges of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice, where a prosecutor said earlier in the day that he would be seeking war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Hamas officials.
“Let me be clear: We reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” Biden said, adding, “Contrary to allegations made against Israel in the International Court of Justice, what’s happening is not genocide.”
The comments come weeks after Biden alarmed some Jewish leaders in the United States by pausing the delivery of large bombs to Israel as its government prepared to enter Rafah, the city on the Gaza-Egypt border where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war sought refuge, and where Netanyahu says Hamas maintains a substantial force. Biden said he was concerned about Israel’s conduct of the war and its preparedness to protect civilians.
Biden has yet to lift the pause, but tensions appear to have diminished. Israel says hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have safely evacuated from Rafah. Jakes Sullivan, the national security adviser, this week visited Israel, and reports the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government shared from his meetings conveyed agreement on most issues.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and military chief of staff Herzi Halevi “briefed Mr. Sullivan on new alternative approaches to defeating Hamas in Rafah to address the concerns that have been expressed by the U.S. side,” the White House said of the meetings Sullivan held on Monday.
Gallant’s report said he “presented humanitarian plans undertaken in Gaza that complement operational activities on the ground. This includes significant efforts to evacuate the civilian population in Rafah, facilitating the provision of humanitarian services, and operating in a precise manner to avoid harm to uninvolved civilians.”
Sullivan has sought to tamp down talk of a strategic split between Israel and the United States, relaying to the press last week 10 principles governing Biden administration policy in Israel, emphasizing U.S. support for the Israel’s overarching war goals, the release of hostages still held in Gaza, and the elimination of Hamas as a force to be reckoned with.
Biden reemphasized that comity in his Rose Garden speech. “We stand with Israel to take out [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar and the rest of the butchers of Hamas,” he said. “We want Hamas defeated, and work with Israel to make that happen.”
Republicans have said the pause on the delivery of the large bombs is a betrayal of Israel, and last week the GOP-led House voted for a bill that would keep presidents from pausing weapons delivery to Israel without congressional review. The bill was symbolic and has little chance of becoming law.
Pro-Israel Democrats have adopted a strategy of saying that the support the Biden administration continues to provide Israel dwarfs the relevance of the pause of the bombs.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish New York Democrat who is majority leader, made that argument later Monday at a conference of the leadership of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“Under the president’s leadership and my leadership, $14 billion was given to Israel without conditions attached,” he said.
At the Jewish American Heritage Month event, Biden decried antisemitism and specified antisemitism on campuses, a key issue as pro-Palestinian protests roil campuses and in some cases devolve into attacks on Jewish students.
“In America, we respect and protect fundamental rights of free speech, protest peacefully. That’s America,” he said. “But there’s no place in any campus in America, any place in America for antisemitism for hate speech that threatens violence of any kind against Jews or anyone else.”
Biden met with the parents of an American-Israeli hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Later in the evening, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin also addressed the JDCA event.
Polin urged those attending to help keep the 128 hostages still believed to be in Gaza front of the American mind. “We all need to be fighting every day all day to bring them home,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Biden: Israel will get ‘everything it needs’ to fight Hamas; Gaza war is ‘not genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
