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I just wonder how long it would take for the Pakistani government to take "good care" of Khan a la Navalny. Not like Khan could be considered innocent / not guilty of any of those charges, but once again the timing seems to speak volumes in his specific case. I mean, Americans know very well what I'm talking about here.
MIDDLE EAST
How much more cynical can Lavrov still get on behalf of the Russian government?
Who living in a civilized world would ever justify hijacking planes or throwing molotovs!? 
5 Articles
Quote:The model means the price of the restaurant’s menu items would go up and down throughout the day due to demand, the New York Post reported Monday.
Therefore, hungry customers, who are already struggling under the weight of inflation, might be paying more for a meal during the lunch or dinner rush.
Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced the new system on a call with investors, noting the Ohio-based company will invest $20 million on high-tech menu boards that will be able to update prices in real-time without incurring additional overhead costs.
“As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase further supporting sales and profit growth across the system,” said Tanner, who rose to the chief role earlier this month.
People who recently spoke with the Today show about the matter were shocked when they heard the news. One man said he did not believe customers would pay more for the same item they could buy for less.
Quote:The State Department described these shipments in a fact sheet accompanying the announcement of sanctions against more than 500 individuals and entities linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Two entities designated for sanctions are a Russian company that runs a terminal at the port of Vostochny and the Russian naval facility at Vladivostok. Both were implicated in receiving the shipments of munitions from North Korea.
Fears that North Korea might help resupply the Russian army arose when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un visited Russia in September. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the cosmodrome in Vostochny, the same port city mentioned in the new U.S. sanctions package.
Kim pledged his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine during the meeting, and Putin promised to help North Korea develop its “satellite technology” — in other words, its long-range missiles. Analysts noted North Korea was sitting on a vast stockpile of old Soviet munitions that could be useful to the Russians in Ukraine, giving Kim something valuable to trade for the technology he desired.
The White House immediately accused North Korea of beginning arms shipments to Russia, including a copious amount of artillery shells. U.S. intelligence furnished photos of containers being loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship in Najin, North Korea, and then transferred to railroad freight upon arriving in Russia. The contents of those containers could not be definitively established with the declassified material released to the public.
By mid-October, the White House estimated 1,000 containers of munitions had made the journey from North Korea to Russia. On Friday, the State Department said that amount had increased tenfold.
Quote:The co-chair of Harvard’s antisemitism task force resigned Monday, reportedly because she did not have confidence that the university would implement any of the committee’s recommendations on ending Jew-hatred at the nation’s top university.
The Harvard Crimson reported:
Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun resigned from the presidential task force on antisemitism, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 appointed Sadun in January to lead the task force as a co-chair last month. Her decision to resign was confirmed in statements from Sadun and Garber on Sunday.
…
Sadun’s decision to resign is just the latest setback for Garber’s antisemitism task force, which has been dogged by controversy since its inception.
The committee’s other co-chair is history professor Derek Penslar, whose appointment drew criticism because of his anti-Israel views. The Wall Street Journal noted: “We don’t know what’s in Mr. Penslar’s heart, though we wonder what’s in his head. It seems obvious that he can’t lead a credible investigation into campus antisemitism if he [falsely] equates Israel with apartheid.”
Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from the committee in December, after then-Harvard president Claudine Gay testified in Congress that the question of whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policy would depend upon the “context.”
Quote:Biden, eating ice cream with the host of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Myers, said that he hoped for a “ceasefire” by next Monday. He did not specify whether he meant a temporary or permanent ceasefire, and both Israel and Hamas said there was no such deal.
Reports, in fact, emerged on Monday that Hamas had rejected the terms of a proposed framework for a deal, throwing cold water on the optimism that had briefly emerged over the weekend for an agreement.
In addition to predicting unlikely success in the negotiations, Biden divulged that Israel had offered to stop the war during the upcoming Islamic holy month of Ramadan — thus pinning an ally to a public position that had intended to be an offer, not a firm commitment in the absence of mutual agreement.
Arab and Muslim armies have often fought and even started wars during Ramadan, notably the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said Tuesday that there was no agreement with Hamas, adding that the terrorist group’s demands — including an end to the war and Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — were “outlandish” and from “another planet.” She quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday: “Hamas started out with just crazy demands. And, you know, it’s- it’s too soon to say if they’re- if they’ve abandoned them, but if they do abandon them and get into what you call the ballpark, they’re not even in the city. They’re in another planet.”
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During the Trump administration, Democrats and the media claimed that President Donald Trump had revealed classified information to Russians during diplomatic meetings — which he denied, though he was legally entitled to declassify anything.
Critics have speculated that Biden wanted to appease Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan ahead of Tuesday’s primary vote, where he is certain to win but faces a possible boycott by Democratic Party primary voters upset about the war in Gaza.
Quote:The New York Times, for instance, published a lengthy article on Feb. 25 celebrating the “resettlement” of 170 migrant families who have been moved from city-paid hotel rooms to suburban Central Islip and other areas where they are being given upwards to $2,500 a month in free rent.
One illegal from Venezuela, who moved from a Manhattan hotel — where she and her children had one room, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and a table and chair — into a spacious, two-bedroom apartment in the near eastern suburb, gushed about the program.
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Many landlords worry that they will be stuck with indigent illegals once the government subsidies end.
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Even as illegals are being handed free rent worth thousands, some New Yorkers are being expected to pay over a thousand dollars a month for an “apartment” that is barely bigger than a bedroom, one without a kitchen, and one that forces tenants to use a communal bathroom several yards down the hall.
While the above tiny room for $1,200 a month may not be the norm, other apartments that are not too much larger are going from $2,000 per month to more than $4,000 for cramped quarters with tiny bathrooms, little more than a breakfast nook for a kitchen, and small, narrow space connecting them.
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The federal government won an 8.7 percent profit of $37.5 billion from the resident population of 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers in the 15 years before 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a recently published report.
However, the same report also revealed that the migrants inflicted a 7.3 percent loss of $21.4 billion on the taxpayers who fund state and local governments.
HHS calculated the costs by comparing the $739 billion in taxes paid by migrants and their families to their $723.4 billion in government aid.
EUROPE
Macron's Pro WW3 Stance
Quote:NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg issued a denial that the alliance was planning to send troops to fight in Ukraine on Tuesday morning, following 24 hours of public discussion among member states on the move, which also triggered a dark threat from Moscow about their response to any such deployment.
The discussion came around an emergency meeting on Ukraine called by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, who appears the most publicly supportive of a NATO deployment directly against Russia. President Macron said yesterday that sending Western soldiers to Ukraine “could not be ruled out” and that “we must do whatever we can to obtain our objective”.
Noting there was no consensus in favour of going to war with Russia at the moment, Macron compared that reluctance to all of the many other ‘red lines’ crossed by NATO in the past two years, which had gone from European nations just giving Ukraine “sleeping bags and helmets” in 2022 to donating battle tanks and cruise missiles in 2023 and preparing to hand over advanced jet fighters in 2024.
“Nothing should be excluded. We will do everything that we can to make sure that Russia does not prevail”, Macron said, while expressing his belief Russia was preparing to take more territory not just in Ukraine, but in other countries too, reports The Times.
Presenting conflicting views on the subject are smaller nations like the Czech Republic, for instance, with their Prime Minister Petr Fiala saying on Monday: “[We are] certainly not preparing to send any soldiers to Ukraine, nobody has to worry about that.”
Sweden, not technically a NATO member yet but joining the alliance in the coming days, perhaps even before the end of the week, also put distance between itself and France’s bellicose views. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Macron’s views were a matter purely for his country, and France electing to get involved in a foreign war doesn’t force other NATO members to follow, given it is a purely defensive alliance.
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The outpouring of views was triggered by a claim by Robert Fico, president of NATO member state Slovakia and perhaps the alliance head of state most in favour of ending the Ukraine war by negotiation, a position unpopular with other states which see it as unacceptably beneficial to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Fico on Monday spoke of a “restricted” NATO document he had seen which “sends shivers down your spine”.
The paper, he said, implies “that a number of NATO and EU member states are considering sending troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.”
Inevitably, the discussion around NATO troops being deployed to Ukraine has elicited a response from Moscow. Seemingly unable to resist threatening enormous retribution, the Kremlin warned of a civilisation-ending nuclear war in response to Western interest in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday it wasn’t a matter of “probability, but rather the “inevitability” of a massive Russian retaliation against the West if its troops came to Ukraine.
More on Navalny
Quote:Friends and allies of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday they could not find a public or private funeral agency in Moscow willing to host a ceremony because the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin warned them not to.
“We have called the majority of private and state funeral agencies, commercial entities, and funeral halls. Some say the premises are booked, some refuse to talk after they hear Navalny’s name,” said Navalny spokeswoman Kyra Yarmysh on Tuesday.
“At one place, they directly said to us that they had been ordered not to collaborate with us. No results a day after we started looking for a site for a farewell ceremony,” she said.
...
Navalny’s remains were finally handed over to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, on Saturday after she was kept waiting in the Arctic for more than a week.
Yulia accused Russian officials of “torturing” Navalny’s family and desecrating his memory by holding onto his body for so long. Lyudmila said government agents told her she could only have the body if she promised to transport it secretly and hold a private funeral because Putin does not want the opposition and unhappy Russians to turn Navalny’s ceremony into a massive political rally. The Kremlin dismissed these allegations as “absurd” on Monday.
Russian police have already arrested hundreds of Navalny mourners across the country, plus journalists who were covering their rallies.
On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported social media posts from Russia claiming that the Borisovskoye cemetery in Moscow has begun preparations for Navalny’s burial and has tentatively scheduled the ceremony for Friday. An unverified video clip showed the cemetery’s parking lot cleared of snow and filled with police vehicles.
Other posts on the chat site Telegram have suggested Navalny could be buried in the Khovanskoye or Troyekurovskoye cemeteries, also in Moscow.
Terrorists Arrested in Germany
Quote:But the ease with which a ‘most wanted’ member of a notorious ultra-left terror gang was able to live in Berlin for decades begs questions about the power of left-wing networks in the city.
Daniela Klette was arrested in Germany on Monday, as well as an unnamed male, in relation to attempted murder and a series of serious robberies between 1999 and 2016. Police had been hunting three suspected Red Army Faction (RAF) members since the 1990s, publishing alerts on some of Europe’s most wanted terror suspects and naming Ernst-Volker Wilhelm Staub, Burkhard Garweg, and Daniela Klette as Europe’s most wanted in 2020.
The RAF, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang, was active as a hard-left violent terror and crime association in Germany from 1970, and is thought to have been responsible for 34 murders, hundreds injured, and a host of robberies, hijackings, and arson attacks. While the RAF was initially thought to have dissolved in the 1990s, the DNA of the wanted trio turned up at the scene of an attempted raid on an armoured lorry carrying cash in 2015.
Germany’s Die Welt reported Daniela Klette, now 65 years old, had recently used an Italian passport with false name and earned money by giving private mathematics tutoring under an assumed name. Police broadcast an appeal for information on a popular true-crime programme on German television earlier this month and were inundated with tips. According to a spokesman at a press conference on the arrest today, the location of Klette came from a tip-off from the public, but that this was received before the television appeal was broadcast.
She did not resist arrest but a pistol, magazines, and bullets were found in her apartment by police, notes Sky News.
...
The RAF’s first attack was the bombing of a U.S. barracks in Germany in 1972 and led to a breathtaking range of operations, including car bombs against government figures, bombings of police stations, newspaper publishers, and embassies. Military bases were frequent targets, and in 1977 several RAF members were killed in an alleged attempt to capture U.S. nuclear weapons at a German army base in Giessen.
Mafia & A Catholic Priest
Quote:Rev. Felice Palamara had been celebrating mass in Cessaniti this past Saturday, a small town in the southern region of Calabria, when he noticed a rather peculiar smell emanating from the containers of water and wine — the smell of bleach.
“Palamara suspected something was wrong and immediately suspended the service and called the Italian national police, the Carabinieri. The police later determined Palamara’s cruets of water and wine had been laced with bleach,” per the New York Post.
The ‘Ndrangheta crime organization originated in Palamara’s region, and the priest believes that a mafia hitman tried poison him in retaliation for speaking out against the group.
“I’m sure that this act of intimidation has nothing to do with my parishioners because I have been here for 10 years and I have always had good relations with the people of the parish,” Palamara told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“We don’t allow anyone to do harm to the parish. Nobody can stop a town that deserves redemption and that wants to grow,” he added.
The ‘Ndrangheta is now believed to be the world’s richest organized crime group and has reportedly made “tens of billions of dollars from trafficking cocaine over several decades, and recently has been able to expand its reach across Europe as the Sicilian Mafia lost its influence,” according to the Post.
Who Blew Up NordStream 2? Denmark Remains Silent
Quote:Denmark on Monday joined Sweden in closing its investigation into the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines, with authorities saying they concluded there was deliberate sabotage but “not the sufficient grounds” to pursue a criminal case.
Danish authorities said the probe “has been both complex and comprehensive.” Copenhagen police, which carried out the investigation jointly with the Danish security service, said they were not able to provide further comments.
The underwater detonations on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany, occurred in international waters but within Swedish and Danish economic zones. Sweden earlier said that a state actor was the most likely culprit.
Denmark´s investigation was one of three into the explosions.
Sweden ended its probe on Feb. 7 on the grounds that it has no jurisdiction. It said the investigation´s primary purpose was to establish whether Sweden or its citizens somehow were involved. Swedish officials also said they handed over to Germany “material that can be used as evidence in the German investigation.”
Denmark’s decision to close the investigation was expected, Kenneth Øhlenschlæger Buhl of the Royal Danish Defense College told The Associated Press.
“The Swedes said they had a fairly good idea of who was behind it but have no jurisdiction over those they wanted to talk to,” Øhlenschlæger Buhl said. The Danes are saying “the same, just slightly different words.”
“I believe that the Germans cannot reach any other conclusion,” he said. “They may open the lid a little more, but not much.”
The German federal prosecutor´s office said Monday that its investigation continues and that it won’t provide more information.
ASIA
China Against Tibetans
Quote:Police have reportedly arrested over a thousand demonstrators, some of them beaten brutally enough by the police to need medical attention.
The peaceful protests began on February 14 after China announced plans to build a huge dam across Tibet’s Drichu River, which is part of the Yangtze River network. The Gangtuo Power Plant would be the latest in a string of hydropower projects built across the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region and Sichuan, the neighboring province into which Communist China folded some of the Tibetan territory it annexed in the 1950s.
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As one of the prospectively displaced villagers explained to China watchdog group Bitter Winter last week: “Relocation here does not mean that you are transferred to another nice village ready to welcome you.”
“We are told that we will have apartments but they are not ready,” the villager said. “Meanwhile, we are parked in camps that are kept under strict surveillance to prevent protest and are very similar to reeducation camps – although we have committed no crime.”
Other villagers and Tibetan activists accused China of using its billion-dollar dam projects to accelerate the destruction of Tibetan culture.
“Of course it is about making money, and big money at that, but I am sure there is more. Tibetans compelled to relocate are separated from their history, from homes where their families may have lived for decades or even centuries, from all their visible cultural and religious points of reference,” one of the protesting locals told Bitter Winter.
China Needs More Kids!
Quote:CPPCC adviser Xiong Shuilong said it was no longer appropriate to restrict family size because China’s birth rate is declining sharply enough to put its future social and industrial plans in doubt. The state-run Global Times quoted a few of his suggestions:
Xiong proposed to completely abolish the limits on the number of children residents can have and truly return the right to have children to families. At the same time, give unmarried or single parents the equal right to enjoy relevant support policies for childbearing, Xiong stated in his drafted proposal which is scheduled to submit during this year’s two sessions.
The political advisor also put forward suggestions on reducing social costs borne directly by enterprises due to female employees’ childbirth. The proposals include improving cost-sharing mechanisms for maternity leave, significantly reducing the social security costs borne by enterprises for female employees during maternity leave and extended prenatal check-up periods. For enterprises that hire women of childbearing age, certain income tax reductions can be granted, Xiong suggested.
He also appealed to local governments to provide subsidies for families with multiple children, and accelerate the building of public kindergartens and nursing homes, in order to relieve the burden of parents.
The Global Times anticipated demographics and family policy would be hot topics at upcoming national sessions of the CPPCC, the first of which is scheduled to begin “next week.” Individual provinces also have advisory committees, and several have discussed population decline recently.
While Chinese officials and state media tend to treat population decline as an annoyingly stubborn problem the Communist Party will soon address with the perfect mix of policies, foreign analysts believe China is approaching an event horizon of demographic decline from which no industrial nation has ever escaped.
More Charges Against Imran Khan
Quote:Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, already jailed on corruption and national security charges, was indicted on Tuesday on charges that he and his wife Bushra Bibi accepted parcels of land as bribes when Khan was in office.
The latest Khan indictment involves a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Al-Qadir University Trust established by Khan and his wife in 2018, the year he became prime minister.
The trust was supposed to provide funding for an Islamic school near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The school was named after an 11th-century Sufi leader and administered by Khan’s third wife Bushra Bibi, also known as Bushra Watto and Bushra Maneka, who cultivated an image as a Sufi mystic and faith healer. Khan frequently promoted the Al-Qadir University trust during public events and praised the efforts of Bibi, who he described as his spiritual guide and mentor.
Prosecutors allege that the university trust, which listed only Khan and Bibi as its trustees, was actually a scam created so they could be given large tracts of valuable land as bribes by billionaire real estate developer Malik Riaz Hussain.
The trust currently owns a hefty 60-acre parcel of land in Punjab valued at almost $25 million, plus another plot close to Khan’s residence in Islamabad. The university itself supposedly remains under construction, accumulating hefty “operational expenses” that do not appear to have been properly documented.
According to the prosecution, the quid pro quo for Hussain’s gift of land involved Khan using money from the Pakistani treasury to pay off $244 million in fines levied against Hussain by the British government. Hussain reached a civil settlement with the U.K. government to conclude a corruption investigation in 2019.
I just wonder how long it would take for the Pakistani government to take "good care" of Khan a la Navalny. Not like Khan could be considered innocent / not guilty of any of those charges, but once again the timing seems to speak volumes in his specific case. I mean, Americans know very well what I'm talking about here.
South Korea vs. Doctors
Quote:Trainee doctors and medical students began walking off the job a week ago in response to President Yoon Suk-yeol announcing a proposal to dramatically increase the number of doctors in the country. Yoon announced Seoul would increase the number of medical students by 2,000 in 2025 and increase quotas with the goal of adding an extra 10,000 medical students by 2035. Currently, South Korea’s medical schools take in 3,000 students a year,
South Korea has long suffered from significant shortages in health workers, particularly doctors, currently employing 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, one of the smallest doctor-per-person proportions in the developed world. The nation’s small population of doctors tends to choose lucrative fields such as plastic surgery, leaving emergency rooms and pediatric offices understaffed. The declining birth rate and rapidly aging population have also led the government to expect surges in the number of patients in fields addressing medical complications more common in the elderly.
“Increasing the medical school admissions quota by 2,000 is the bare minimum necessary measure to ensure the state can fulfill its constitutional mandate,” President Yoon said in remarks on Thursday, emphasizing the country needs “about 10,000 more doctors to secure an adequate number of doctors in areas with shortages of medical professionals to ensure fair access to health services.”
The doctors have walked out complaining that increasing the number of doctors in the country would mean more competition in the industry and potentially a decline in their salary.
As of Tuesday, the Korean Health Ministry documented the absence of 8,939 intern and resident doctors, about 72.7 percent of the nation’s total, from their jobs; 9,909 have resigned. Nearly 70 percent of medical students, representing about 13,000 people, have taken leaves of absence in solidarity, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.
MIDDLE EAST
Yemen & Russia
Quote:The prime minister of the legitimate, but powerless, government of Yemen arrived in Moscow on Monday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and encourage Russia to contain the threat of Houthi terrorism in the country.
The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are a Shiite terrorist organization that staged an attack on the Yemeni government and ousted it from the capital, Sana’a, in 2014. With the backing of Iran, the Houthis have managed to survive a nearly decade-old war against the internationally recognized government and expand their global influence through an ongoing terrorist campaign against international commercial shipping in and around the Red Sea.
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The few operations the Biden administration is undergoing to contain the Houthi threat appear unrelated to “Operation Prosperity Guardian.” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, specified in the announcement of airstrikes in Yemen this weekend that they were “separate and distinct from the multinational freedom of navigation actions performed under Operation Prosperity Guardian.”
The ineffectiveness of the Biden administration has led the legitimate government of Yemen to seek alternative allies. On Tuesday, Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak, the recently appointed new head of the Yemeni government, met with Lavrov in Moscow to ask Russia for more support. Bin Mubarak chose Russia as his first destination for a formal international engagement, a gesture of respect to the Hamas-friendly regime of strongman Vladimir Putin.
Following the private meeting between Lavrov and Bin Mubarak, the Russian foreign minister condemned America and Britain for airstrikes against the Houthis, the main enemy of the Yemeni government. He did add that Moscow did not “justice shelling of commercial ships,” as the Houthis have been doing, but emphasized Russia’s discontent with attempts by America and Britain to contain the Houthi threat.
“We do not justify shelling of commercial ships, no matter how these shellings are justified. But we also cannot justify,” Lavrov said, “the aggressive actions that, under this pretext, the United States and the United Kingdom are taking against the territory of Yemen, without having any international mandate for this.”
Bin Mubarak, the Yemeni prime minister, focused his comments on lamenting that his government could not alone address the Houthi threat, according to coverage in Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik.
How much more cynical can Lavrov still get on behalf of the Russian government?
Saudi Arabia Not a BRICS Member?
Quote:Saudi Arabia never finalized its membership in the BRICS economic and political coalition, a South African diplomat confirmed to Russian media on Tuesday.
“Saudi Arabia is still going through its own processes,” South African Ambassador to Russia Mzuvukile Geoff Maqetuka said in remarks to the Russian news agency Tass, published on Tuesday. “One, as a nation state. Two, together with the BRICS shepherds. Saudi Arabia is not yet, has not yet endorsed.”
“We will see it as we move towards [the summit in] Kazan. As South Africa, we are ready,” he added. Kazan, Russia, is expected to host the 2024 BRICS summit.
Saudi Arabia is one of six nations that BRICS invited to join its alliance in 2023. Four of the other five — Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — accepted the invites, while the fifth, Argentina, rejected the invitation after the election of President Javier Milei in November. Maqetuka confirmed that the four new members are fully integrated into the coalition and Argentina has fully withdrawn from the process as of February.
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The alliance is tenuous, as several members have bilateral differences that routinely threaten the entire enterprise. India, in particular — a solid American ally that has engaged in military action against China on several occasions since 2020 — presents geopolitical challenges for the alliance as it pursues domestic policies meant to challenge China’s stranglehold on global manufacturing. Brazil became a problematic member during the tenure of conservative President Jair Bolsonaro, who came to office on the promise of containing Chinese influence but ultimately caved to economic pressure.
The relationship between South Africa and Russia experienced tensions since 2023, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for strongman Vladimir Putin and, as a member, South Africa would be compelled to arrest him should he visit. Putin did not attend the 2023 BRICS summit in South Africa as a result.
The addition of countries with major economic shortcomings — such as Egypt and Ethiopia — to the bloc could potentially complicate its operations and diminish its economic power. Of the four new members confirmed, only the UAE is entering BRICS with a robust economic portfolio, dramatically increasing the percentage of the global oil trade that BRICS countries command.
Palestinian Can't Understand Why Protesters Can't Throw Molotovs At Will
Quote:Prominent Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd is facing fierce backlash after complaining it’s unacceptable to commit acts of terrorism, such as hijacking and throwing deadly molotov cocktails, in support of Gaza.
In a viral X post on Monday, the popular Palestinian activist wrote:
You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.
The post appeared to be in the context of the Sunday self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force, who who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, as he yelled “Free Palestine!” and broadcast the act on the streaming site Twitch.
“If you are a soldier sacrificing yourself to protect US interest, you are a rational, noble hero. But if you sacrifice yourself to protest the genocide your country is funding, you are mentally ill,” El-Kurd wrote, seemingly dismissing mental health concerns expressed by others.
Similarly, many on the left have praised the airman’s suicide as an extreme form of protest, claiming he undoubtedly “had moral clarity.”
“Rest in power Aaron Bushnell,” wrote Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein.
Who living in a civilized world would ever justify hijacking planes or throwing molotovs!?
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
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My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
