News of the World
09-25-2024, 11:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2024, 04:51 AM by kyonides.
Edit Reason: Added something on Pelosi's Past Stock Trading
)
USA
Weird. I thought 
that it has been Biden and Harris who gave America's enemies what they wanted.
Let's travel back in time and read what happened back in October 17, 2022. Yes, almost 2 years ago!
INTERNATIONAL
Keep in mind that a real life example of terrorism like Petro has no stance here criticizing Netanyahu for defending his country from terrorist organizations funded by Iran. No country should be forced to accept the destruction of their nation at the hands of terrorists.
Not like Iran ever cared about meeting the deal's demands at all.
EUROPE
Kamala in Power
Quote:President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he delegated “everything” as commander-in-chief to Vice President Kamala Harris, including foreign policy and domestic policy.
The acknowledgment is significant because it contradicts Harris’s talking points. Harris has tried multiple times to distance herself from the Biden-Harris record.
“My approach is about new ideas, new policies that are directed at the current moment. And also, to be very honest with you, my focus is very much in what we need to do over the next ten, twenty years to catch up to the twenty first century,” Harris told Brian Taff of Philadelphia’s Action News 6 ABC on September 13.
“I’m obviously not Joe Biden, and you know, I offer a new generation of leadership,” she said, providing examples of what the Biden-Harris administration failed to achieve.
Fifty-seven percent of registered voters believe they are not better off under the Biden-Harris administration as they were four years ago under former President Donald Trump, RMG Research polling found in September. Only 25 percent of Americans rate the economic conditions under the Biden-Harris administration as “excellent or good,” a Pew Research survey showed.
While campaigning for Harris on The View on Wednesday, Biden appeared to blame Harris for the administration’s failure to reduce inflation, secure the southern border, and responsibly withdraw from Afghanistan.
“As Vice President, there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do and so I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy,” he said.
Biden’s statement exacerbated Harris’s conundrum: She cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.
NBC on Kamala & Iran
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” host and NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell discussed new threats by Iran against 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump that he was briefed on and stated that, according to people she spoke to, it is “safe to conclude that Vice President Harris is favored by Iran and that Donald Trump is favored by Vladimir Putin.”
While speaking with former Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Leon Panetta and former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Mitchell said there is “the threat against — the threat from Iran” that has been “credibly reported and confirmed by the community, that Donald Trump was just briefed [on], that there are new threats against him. We know about the former officials, and now, he is another, and that this is a new threat. At this point, it is — I’m told — safe to conclude that Vice President Harris is favored by Iran and that Donald Trump is favored by Vladimir Putin.”
Sherman responded that Harris understands that Iran is a threat and will be tough on them and Iran shouldn’t mistake the desire for diplomatic solutions with weakness, while Panetta said that Trump just gives America’s enemies what they want.
Weird. I thought that it has been Biden and Harris who gave America's enemies what they wanted. Senate Report on July 13's Assassination Attempt
Quote:A Senate investigative report on the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump revealed several glaring security errors made by the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), including the hours-long debacle of an agent overseeing the drone system trying to troubleshoot the devices by calling a toll-free tech support hotline.
The interim report, released Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, detailed how the USSS failed to secure the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally and the building from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks allegedly took shots at Trump.
Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI), Rand Paul (R-KY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) highlighted the 94-page document’s key takeaways in a statement, decrying how the agency “failed to clearly define responsibilities for planning and security.”
“USSS personnel responsible for planning in advance of the July 13 rally denied that they were individually responsible for any planning or security failures and deflected blame,” the bipartisan group of senators said, adding that “USSS Advance Leads told the Committee that planning and security decisions were made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for approval.”
The committee’s investigation has not only revealed that no specific person with the Secret Service has owned up to approving the failed security measures, but also exposed that not one agent entered or went onto the roof of the AGR International building where Crooks was perched prior to the shooting.
“USSS identified the AGR building as a concern due to the line-of-sight from the roof to the stage, but did not take steps to ensure sufficient security measures were in place,” the committee members found.
“USSS personnel, including the USSS Counter Sniper Team Leader, did not enter the AGR building or go on the roof prior to the shooting,” they continued. “One USSS counter sniper team, whose responsibility included scanning the area around the AGR building for threats, had an obstructed view of the AGR roof.”
The first time USSS agents entered the building and went onto the roof was after Crooks fatally shot one audience member, seriously injured two others, and grazed Trump’s ear.
The agency also failed to coordinate with local and state law enforcement, by not giving them “any specific instructions for covering the AGR building” and not ensuring that agents could “share information with local law enforcement partners in real time.”
“USSS did not adequately consider state and local law enforcement operational plans,” the senators stated.
USSS also denied specific requests for additional Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) capabilities and a Counter Assault Team liaison, the report found.
“A USSS Counter Surveillance Unit – which could have helped patrol the outer perimeter that included the AGR building – was not requested by USSS Advance Leads,” the senators added.
Trump on Assassination Attempts
Quote:Former President Donald Trump criticized the FBI for how it is handling the investigation into the assassination attempts against him, but he told the crowd in Mint Hill, North Carolina, “No threat will shake me.”
“As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve — but possibly do — Iran, but I don’t really know,” Trump said.
“Can’t be sure, because in the first case, in Butler, Pennsylvania — great place…” Trump said, noting that he is going back to Butler to “finish” his speech. Trump then turned to the FBI, noting that the federal agency seems to be having trouble investigating the assassination attempts.
“The FBI has been unable to open the three potentially foreign-based apps. And in the second case, the assassin had six cell phones in his car, yet the FBI has likewise been unable to penetrate their guard,” Trump said.
“They want to know, and I want to know, and the whole country and maybe the world wants to know, who is he calling? Who is he calling?” Trump asked.
“In the old days, the FBI and the DOJ used to capture people before anything happened. In current days, the upper echelon of the FBI is all talk while they focus on the sitting President’s political opponents,” Trump observed. “That’s what they’re doing.”
“All they focus on is their political opponent. But they must get Apple to open these foreign apps, and they must get Apple to likewise, open the six phones from the second lunatic … and open them immediately, because we have a lot at stake — whether it’s me or any other former president. They break into apps all the time. They had no problem breaking into the apps of the J6 hostages,” he noted.
Mentioning that the alleged attempted assassins’ apps could be foreign, he added, “They could also be something else, but we’ll never know until they’re opened. … And really, why is it that the father of the shooter in the Butler instance has one of the best and most expensive lawyers in the entire state of Pennsylvania? How did he get to this expensive lawyer?” Trump asked, deeming it “strange.”
Trump said if he were president and a former president and leading candidate faced these threats that he now faces — whether Democrat or Republican — he would “inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
Haitians Backed by Zuckerberg & Soros Want Trump & Vance Get Arrested
Quote:A group that campaigns for more Haitian migration asked judges Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, to arrest and file criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and JD Vance.
The call comes amid the duo’s criticism of the government-funded migration drive into the citizens’ jobs, homes, and communities.
The charges were requested by the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which has been backed for many years by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group, and by investor George Soros’ political campaigns. The jarring claim was loudly echoed by pro-Democratic media sites, such as NBCNews.com, who prefer to hide the ordinary civic and pocketbook damage of migration behind elite claims about racism.
“The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm,” the Associated Press wrote September 24:
Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio. Examples might be a grocery store charging a customer for a bounced check. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled.
Trump and Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, are charged with disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm that there is probable cause and issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance.
“Guerline Jozef, a co-founder and the executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, filed the charges on behalf of the group,” NBCNews reported:
“Over the last two weeks, both Trump and Vance led an effort to vilify and threaten the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio,” Jozef wrote.
…
“If anyone else had disrupted public service, made false alarms, and engaged in telecommunications harassment in the manner Trump and Vance did with their relentless and persistent lies—even after the governor and mayor said what they were saying was false, they would’ve been arrested by now,” Chandra said in a statement Tuesday. “They must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be.”
The lawfare follows the government-arranged delivery of perhaps 20,000 Haitians to the city, which has had a huge civic and pocketbook impact in the town of almost 60,000 Americans.
The inflow has been welcomed by business, political, and media leaders in Springfield, but is decried by ordinary Americans who are losing wages, opportunities, housing, safe roads, civic aid, and their stable community to the chaotic migration.
Trump on Zelensky
Quote:Former US president Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky of refusing to “make a deal” to end his country’s war with Russia.
“We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky,” the Republican White House candidate said in sharply critical remarks at a campaign rally in North Carolina.
“Every time he came to our country, he’d walk away with $60 billion,” Trump said, derisively describing the Ukrainian president as “probably the greatest salesman on Earth.”
“What do you have left now?” Trump sneered. “The country is absolutely obliterated.”
A face-to-face meeting between Trump, who has been highly critical of the aid Washington and the Pentagon have disbursed to Kiev, and Zelensky had been floated for the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York.
But the meeting is expected to be scrapped, according to US media, which reported Trump did not appreciate the interview Zelensky gave to The New Yorker magazine, in which the Ukrainian president said he believed the 78-year-old Republican “doesn’t really know how to stop the war.”
Trump’s remarks came shortly after Zelensky addressed the United Nations and accused Russia of plotting potentially catastrophic attacks on Ukrainian nuclear plants.
Trump claimed in early September he had a plan “guaranteed” to end the war but would not reveal it unless he wins the US presidential election.
He also repeatedly asserted he would settle the war between Moscow and Kiev within 24 hours — without explaining how.
In recent months he has been particularly critical of US funding for Ukraine and has called on Europe to step up its contributions.
When contacted by AFP, Trump’s team refused to confirm whether the meeting between the two men had been scrapped.
Nancy Pelosi's Husband & Visa
Quote:Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Visa stock, according to public records, just weeks before the Justice Department launched a lawsuit against the credit card company on Tuesday.
The finding raises concerns that many members of Congress trade stocks based on information unavailable to the public.
Seventy-six percent of voters believe congressional members and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” in trading stocks.
Paul Pelosi traded the stock before the DOJ launched a probe into Visa for allegedly monopolizing the debit card market, Bloomberg reported.
The New York Post reported the trade:
Meanwhile, Christopher Josephs, the tech entrepreneur who runs the “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker” on X, posted a screenshot of a congressional filing on July 3 which showed that the former House speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, had sold 2,000 shares of Visa worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
The disclosure form shows that Pelosi’s transaction is marked “SP,” or spouse — a reference to husband Paul, the San Francisco-based venture capitalist and real estate investor.
At the time Paul Pelosi sold Visa stock, there was no public indication that an antitrust lawsuit against the company was imminent.
...
Pelosi’s stock portfolio was up 65.5 percent in 2023, one of the best performances in Congress, an Unusual Whales analysis showed.
Some of the most notable establishment members to beat the market were:
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — up 65.5 percent
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — up 52.8 percent
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) — up 38.2 percent
Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) — up 25.3 percent
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — up 18.1 percent
Let's travel back in time and read what happened back in October 17, 2022. Yes, almost 2 years ago!
Quote:Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, exercised seven-figures worth of Alphabet stock call options days before House leadership unveiled a bill that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks.
The value of the stock purchase was between $1 million and $5 million, according to a certified congressional disclosure made by Nancy Pelosi on October 14. Members of Congress are only required to report the values of such trades in broad ranges.
Paul Pelosi exercised the Alphabet call options, which he purchased in December 2021, on September 16 — the day they were set to expire. (Alphabet is the parent company of Google.)
That date fell just a week before House leadership introduced a Nancy Pelosi-backed bill that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks.
The disclosure also notes that Paul Pelosi sold call options in NVIDIA and Micron Technology for a loss about a month after President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 into law.
On September 16, Paul Pelosi sold 50 call options (5,000 shares) of NVIDIA at a strike price of $26.86 per share, for a loss of $361,476.
That same day, he also sold 100 call options (10,000 shares) of Micron Technology at a price of $1.84 per share and a total loss of $392,575.
The disclosure of a financial loss is notable as Nancy Pelosi — or any member of Congress — rarely volunteers that level of detail about stock trades by themselves or their spouses. The last time Nancy Pelosi disclosed that her husband traded for a loss was in July, when Paul Pelosi sold $25,000 shares of NVIDIA stock for a loss of $341,365.
Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 with a goal of strengthening "American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the United States the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence."
Nanci Pelosi on US Congress
Quote:Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Democrats will win the majority in the House of Representatives in November and then vote in House Minority Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as speaker.
Pelosi said, “Why Don’t We just all agree, whoever wins, we are for the peaceful transfer of power. He’s trying again to just wed himself to this fake conspiracy theory about the election. But you know what? We don’t agonize. We organize. And we organize and make sure that Hakeem Jeffries has that gavel on January 6th. It’s very essential not only for the issues that we care about, our kitchen table issues, lowering the cost of prescription drugs that we have done, lowering the cost of healthcare, which we have done, lowering the cost of childcare, which we did, but we have to renew.”
She continued, “Hakeem will be speaker.”
Pelosi added, “The National Anthem says prove through the night that our flag is still there. You’ve heard me say that again and again. And we this is our night we have to prove through the night that our flag is still there. I’ll give you another Baltimore phrase comes from Horse racing. We’re here, we’re going to whip to the lead, and then we’re going to whip the lead to victory.”
Harris Campaign Attacked in Arizona
Quote:Arizona police confirmed on Tuesday that the Tempe campaign office for Vice President Kamala Harris was hit with gunfire.
“We can confirm that on 9/23/24, what appears to be damage from gunfire at … a DNC Campaign Office, was discovered,” Tempe police told NBC News on Tuesday.
Public Information Officer, Sgt. Ryan Cook confirmed that no injuries occurred and that the shots were fired during overnight hours.
“No one was inside the office during the overnight hours, but this raises concerns about the safety of those who work in that building, as well as those nearby,” Cook said.
Tempe police said they received calls from workers on Monday reporting what appeared to be “gunshots through the front windows of the office which is shared by staff members for the Arizona Democratic Party,” per NBC News.
The gunfire incident marked the second time in just two weeks that the campaign office had been hit with criminal damage — the first being shots fired from a “BB gun or pellet gun” on September 16.
“The apparent gunfire marks the second incident of criminal damage at that office in recent weeks, according to Tempe police, who said that just after midnight on Sept. 16 the office’s front windows were hit with what appeared to be a BB gun or pellet gun,” noted NBC News.
The gunfire incident occurred following two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump, which has led to heightened security concerns. Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have condemned all forms of political violence and have called for Americans to “lower the temperature.”
“As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” Harris said in a statement following the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life in September.
“I am thankful that former President Trump is safe. I commend the U.S. Secret Service and law enforcement partners for their vigilance. As President Biden said, our Administration will ensure the Secret Service has every resource, capability, and protective measure necessary to carry out its critical mission,” Harris added.
Pentagon Sending More Troops to Mid East
Quote:Additional U.S. troops are being rushed to the Middle East during a rise in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah terrorist forces in Lebanon that has elevated risks of a wider regional war, the Pentagon said Monday.
AP reports Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder would provide no details on how many additional forces or what they would be tasked to do. Their precise geographical region of deployment has also not been disclosed.
The U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops in the region. Just last month U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and told the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area.
As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. believes Iran or its proxies may launch a strike against Israel as soon as this week.
The new deployments come as Israel is preparing to conduct further operations and the State Department is warning Americans to leave Lebanon as the risk of a regional war increases.
“Due to the unpredictable nature of ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel and recent explosions throughout Lebanon, including Beirut, the U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available,” the State Department cautioned Saturday, as the AP report noted.
The push of more U.S. forces into the troubled Middle East came as Israel attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets on Monday in airstrikes that Lebanese health authorities said killed at least 274 people, making it the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly a year of conflict, CBC News reported.
INTERNATIONAL
UN General Assembly
Quote:Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro declared that neither Israel nor the United States are “the children of God” and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “criminal” in an unhinged speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
Petro, who called for a “world revolution” and for an artificial intelligence “global public authority,” accused the “richest one-percent of humanity, the powerful global oligarchy” of allowing bombs to fall in “Gaza and Sudan,” and denounced free market ideas for allegedly bringing about “the maximization of death.”
The bombs, according to Petro, are allegedly being brandished by “racists, supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race.”
“The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza. When Gaza dies, humanity will die,” Petro said. “It turns out that God’s people were not Israel, nor the United States, but the whole of humanity and the children of Gaza were just that, humanity, God’s chosen people.”
“[Benjamin] Netanyahu is a hero for the richest one percent of humanity because he is able to show that peoples are destroyed under bombs,” he continued.
Petro, an ardent communist and member in his youth of the M19 Colombian Marxist guerrilla terrorist organization, cut diplomatic ties with Israel in May in response to Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists of Hamas. The rupture followed Petro publicly comparing Israel to Nazi Germany for entering Hamas-controlled Gaza to prevent the terrorists from repeating the atrocities of the October 7 attack against the country.
The far-left president ranted that “no one listens” to governments such as his that demand an end to the “genocide” in Gaza, the “decarbonization” of the world, and his proposal of debt forgiveness in exchange for climate action. Petro claimed that governments with “the power to destroy life” are the ones that are heard instead.
The Colombian far-left president also criticized the free market and accused “the richest one percent” of opposing the end of using oil and coal and advancing the “climate crisis.” Petro claimed that the ones leading humanity “to the destruction of the atmosphere and of life” are those who shout “Long live liberty, damn it!” – using the campaign slogan of President Javier Milei of neighboring Argentina, a fervent anti-communist.
“They [“the richest 1 percent”] pay for the campaigns, they own the media, they are the ones who hide the truth from science, as in the movie Don’t Look Up, they are the ones who say what is thought, what is said, and what should be banned and silenced,” Petro said.
Petro also accused the “global oligarchy” of “economically blockading rebel countries” such as Cuba and Venezuela. Petro notably did not condemn the regimes of those countries for their extensive track records of human rights violations against their own people.
The Colombian president also referred to socialism and asserted that its “red flag,” which did not find its place in history, must now be of “all colors.”
“That word socialism today has another meaning. People are strong if we help each other. It is the basis of socialism,” Petro said.
Petro concluded his speech by calling for a “world revolution” and stressing the need to “build the greatest army of all time, composed of warriors of life” to overthrow the “global oligarchy.”
“It is up to humanity to fight the battle. It is time for the people to take the problems into their own hands. We must turn to the people. New leaderships will appear; the oligarchy will be overthrown. A new history is about to begin,” he concluded.
Keep in mind that a real life example of terrorism like Petro has no stance here criticizing Netanyahu for defending his country from terrorist organizations funded by Iran. No country should be forced to accept the destruction of their nation at the hands of terrorists.
Quote:Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent over half of his very lengthy address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday criticizing Israel for its war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Erdogan accused the Israelis of genocide, compared them to Nazi Germany, and demanded the U.N. authorize “coercive measures against Israel” to halt the war in Gaza.
“The international community, and all of us in the human family, must fulfill our obligation to the Palestinian people without further delay,” Erdogan demanded.
Turkey’s Islamist leader claimed the U.N. has “failed in its founding mission” and become a “dysfunctional structure” because it has done nothing to stop “the massacre that has been going on in Gaza for the last 350 days.”
“They shredded the charter of the United Nations from the rostrum of the United Nations and shamelessly challenged the whole world,” he said of the Israelis.
“In Gaza, not only children are dying, but also the United Nations system. The values that the West claims to defend are dying. Truth is dying. The hopes of humanity to live in a more just world are dying, one by one,” he declared.
Erdogan blamed the U.N.’s inaction on Israel and its most influential supporters, although he never quite got around to calling out the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, by name.
“‘The world is bigger than five’ is my motto. International justice cannot be left to the will of five privileged member states of the Security Council,” he said.
Erdogan extensively regurgitated Hamas propaganda about the war in Gaza, absurdly insisting that almost all of the casualties were “women and children” deliberately targeted by Israel in a campaign of genocide.
“I call out to the United Nations Security Council: what are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza, to put a stop to this cruelty, this barbarism? What are you waiting for to stop Netanyahu and his mass murder network?” he asked.
Erdogan tried intimidating the “countries supporting Israel in an unconditional manner” by asking how long they could “carry the same of witnessing this massacre.” Later, he suggested all of the countries supporting Israel should be held accountable as accomplices to its alleged crimes.
Erdogan accused the Israelis of “disregarding basic human rights,” “trampling on international law,” and “practicing ethnic cleansing–- a clear genocide against a nation, a people, and occupying their lands step-by-step.”
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity,” he declared, asking the UNGA to authorize the use of force against Israel.
Erdogan also insisted Israel must pay “the bill for the billions of dollars of damage caused in the cities that have been destroyed, wrecked, and reduced to rubble.”
The Turkish leader restated his support for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said he would not rest until “those who gave the orders, pulled the triggers and dropped the bombs are held accountable for their crimes.”
Erdogan took time to salute the destructive and often violent pro-Hamas protests held in Western countries – an especially savory bit of hypocrisy, given how he deals with dissenting voices in Turkey, and has even ordered his security forces to assault them when on American soil.
“I would like to especially thank the university students and the youth,” he said.
Nowhere in Erdogan’s speech was there even the slightest mention of why Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza, and now Hezbollah in Lebanon. Erdogan mentioned October 7 – but he framed it as the beginning of Israel’s random and remorseless massacre of “41,000 people, mostly children and women.” He studiously avoided mentioning anything unpleasant that might have happened to some Jews on that day.
Erdogan did not even mention Hamas until almost 20 minutes into his speech and his sole reference to the Palestinian terrorist gang was to falsely congratulate them for supposedly accepting every ceasefire offer that came their way.
Erdogan went on to claim Israel deliberately scuttled any hope for peace by “sneakily killing its negotiating partner at the time it was closest to a ceasefire,” a reference to the July elimination of Hamas mastermind Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. Israel has not taken responsibility for the suspected bombing that killed Haniyeh, though its government is widely suspected of orchestrating it.
Erdogan effectively wrote the Palestinians a blank check for terrorism, seemingly including the October 7 atrocities, because they are “exercising their legitimate rights of resistance against this occupation and ethnic cleansing.” Erdogan has in the past repeatedly and explicitly stated, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization,” including shortly after October 7.
“The just resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupiers of their land is noble, it’s honorable, and legitimate,” Erdogan said, taking a moment to wave at his “brothers and sisters in the legitimate resistance in Palestine.”
Erdogan insisted the only possible resolution to the conflict was giving the Palestinians a state carved from Israeli territory, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Erdogan spent some time complaining about issues of particular interest to Turkey, praising the Turkish Cypriots and the BRICS economic collective, and complaining that part of Syria remains “in the grip of terrorism and separatist organizations,” by which he meant the Kurds.
Erdogan, who has styled himself as a defender of global Islam, complained that “Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism” are “creeping over the world like poison ivy.”
“Every week, attacks are taking place on our mosques and our holy book of Quran. In the middle of Europe, peoples’ homes are set on fire and their lives are taken because of their ethnic and religious affiliation,” he said, demanding the appointment of a special U.N. envoy to combat Islamophobia.
At the end of his long speech, Erdogan caught his second wind and launched a spirited attack against the LGBTQIAP2S+ movement, describing it as a threat to “the institution of the family,” which is a “pillar of society.”
“The disgrace staged at the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games has revealed the extent of the threat we face as humanity. A sporting event watched by innocent children and hundreds of millions of people of all ages and beliefs has been used as a tool for sexist propaganda,” he said.
The disgrace Erdogan referred to was a recreation of what many interpreted to be the Christian Last Supper with drag queens, bracketed by a transgender fashion show and a dance number simulating various forms of gay intercourse, including a threesome. Organizers claimed the feast was meant to portray a Hellenic pagan scene hosted by the ancient Greek god Dionysus.
“Those disturbing scenes of evil have wounded not only the Catholic world, the Christian world, but everyone who respects the sacred values,” he said.
Erdogan said the homosexual agenda has become “a war against the sacred and human nature,” a “multidimensional, comprehensive, and ruthless project of destruction.”
“Anyone who raises a voice against this annihilation project is silenced and targeted by hate campaigns,” he said, declaring that his government would not be intimidated.
“Turkey is determined to break this siege and resist the climate of fear. To this end we became a member of the United Nations Friends of the Family group. Inshallah, together with other member countries, we will not hesitate to defend the family, the human being, and human nature,” he concluded.
Quote:Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used his address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday to attack Israel on behalf of Iran’s terrorist clients in Hamas – an unsurprising, but perhaps slightly disappointing, tirade from an Iranian second-in-command who billed himself as a more compassionate, reformist leader.
Pezeshkian spent a few minutes touting his platform of “reform, national empathy, constructive engagement with the world, and economic development,” and promoting Shia Islam as a religion of “peace, justice, and universal tolerance,” but then began reciting Hamas propaganda about Israel’s supposedly murderous campaign in Gaza.
Pezeshkian railed against the Israelis for referring to their campaign of “genocide, the killing of children, war crimes, and state terrorism” as “legitimate self-defense.”
“They label hospitals, kindergartens, and schools as ‘legitimate military targets.’ They label the freedom-loving and brave people around the world who protest against their genocide as ‘anti-Semitic.’ They label an oppressed people, who have stood up against seven decades of occupation and humiliation, as ‘terrorists,’” he thundered.
Iran is the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism by a wide margin but, in Pezeshkian’s twisted worldview, his country merely supports “popular liberation movements.”
“We have been siding with the people across the world, who have flooded the streets in outrage against Israeli atrocities. We condemn Israeli crimes against humanity,” he said.
Like other terrorist-supporting leaders who spoke at UNGA, Pezeshkian made no mention whatsoever of the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians – including women, children, and infants – on October 7. He studiously avoided mentioning Hamas’ use of human shields, its terror tunnels, its criminal abuse of hostages, and its penchant for putting weapons in civilian locations.
Pezeshkian painted Iran as a helpless victim of “threats, war, occupation, and sanctions.”
“Iran has never initiated a war. It has only defended itself heroically against external aggression, causing the aggressors to regret their actions,” he claimed.
Of course, Iran constantly wages aggressive war against its neighbors and the West, but it uses cutouts and proxies like the terrorist Shiite militias of Iraq, the Hezbollah terrorist organization that has laid waste to Lebanon with Tehran’s support, and the Houthi pirates of Yemen, who have conducted reckless attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea.
Pezehskian mentioned none of Iran’s vicious proxy forces in his speech, nor did he accept responsibility for arming and training them.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all, and seek no war or quarrel with anyone,” the Iranian president claimed, at roughly the same time as reports were breaking that Iran brokered a deal with Russia to supply the Houthis with more dangerous anti-ship missiles.
Pezeshkian did briefly mention Russia, but only in the context of claiming that Iran wants “lasting peace and security” for both the Russians and Ukrainians.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran opposes war and emphasizes the urgent need to end military hostilities in Ukraine. We support all peaceful solutions and believe that dialogue is the only way to resolve this crisis,” he said.
Pezeshkian criticized former U.S. President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), without mentioning the Iranian cheating that prompted Trump to withdraw.
Pezeshkian also avoided mentioning recent complaints by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has ceased cooperating with its investigators while it races to increase its already treaty-busting stockpile of enriched uranium.
Instead, the Iranian leader blasted sanctions as inhumane, demanded the U.S. unilaterally lift all of them, and said his government is ready to “engage with JCPOA participants.”
Pezeshkian tossed in a complaint about Trump ordering the liquidation of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, without mentioning that Soleimani’s entire job was to destabilize other governments in the Middle East – the very activity Pezeshkian insisted Iran never engages in – or that Soleimani was killed in Baghdad while in the midst of organizing terrorist attacks on Americans with the aid of Iraq’s Shiite militias.
The Iranian leader pitched his closing remarks as a direct statement to the American people, implicitly either pleading with them, or threatening them, not to send Trump back to the White House.
“In order to build a better future world, Iran stands prepared to foster meaningful economic, social, political, and security partnerships with global powers and its neighbors based on equal footing,” he claimed.
“The appropriate response to this message from Iran is not to impose more sanctions, but to fulfill existing obligations to remove sanctions, benefiting the Iranian people and hence laying the foundations for more constructive agreements,” he concluded.
Not like Iran ever cared about meeting the deal's demands at all.
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed China’s peace proposals as insincere and even treacherous at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday, insisting only his own proposals can bring “real and just peace” to his people by ending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion.
Zelensky began his address to the Assembly by recalling the “terrifying report” he received a month into the invasion about Russian tanks firing at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia – which, he reminded his audience, is the largest nuclear plant in Europe.
“The Russian army stormed this facility just as brutally as any other during this war, without thinking about the consequences, possibly disastrous,” he said.
“This was one of the most horrifying moments of the war, when no one could know how Russian strikes on the nuclear facility would end, and everyone in Ukraine was reminded of what ‘Chernobyl’ means,” he continued, alluding to the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster, which occurred on Ukraine’s soil when it was part of the Soviet Union.
Zelensky repeatedly warned that Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia represents “the major source of radiation danger in Europe, possibly the world,” and demanded the facility be returned to Ukrainian control.
He extended that warning by musing that “smoke from fires in war-torn cities can reach other countries,” and accused Putin of committing “ecocide” by heedlessly causing massive environmental damage during his invasion of Ukraine.
“If – God forbid – Russia causes a nuclear disaster at one of our nuclear power plants, radiation will not respect state borders,” he said.
Zelensky said Putin’s vicious strategy was to wipe out Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, inflicting so much suffering on its civilian population that Kyiv might finally surrender.
“As of today, Russia has destroyed all of our thermal plants, and a large portion of our hydroelectric capacity. This is how Putin is preparing for winter, hoping to torment millions of Ukrainians – ordinary families, women, children, ordinary towns, ordinary villages. Putin wants to leave them in the dark and cold this winter, forcing Ukraine to suffer and surrender,” he said.
Zelensky accused other countries of helping Russia, name-checking North Korea and Iran – a “telling choice of friends,” in the Ukrainian leader’s opinion. He accused Russia’s allies of feeding it satellite data that helped the Russians target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Quote:Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has made an appeal to the U.N. Security Council and “global south” nations to force Russia to peace, accusing the country of “international crimes” and of targeting nuclear power stations.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the utility of talks to resolve the Ukraine War, saying all the nations of the world to come together to “force” Russia into peace. Addressing the U.N. Security council in a punchy speech, President Zelensky told its members — Russia is a permanent member of the council — that: “we know some in the world want to talk to Putin… but what could they possibly hear from them, that he’s upset because we are exercising our right to defend our people?”.
The Ukrainian leader accused Russia of “international crimes” including razing cities and villages, and said “have have proof” that Russia is targeting Ukrainian nuclear power plants, potentially an extremely serious outcome. “This war can’t simply fade away, this war can’t be calmed by talks”, Zelensky said, remarking of the Russian nuclear attack threat: “If Russia is willing to go this far, it means nothing you value matters to Moscow.”
Making a global appeal, and particularly to nations who aren’t already donors to the Ukraine war effort, President Zelensky made an address to nations like China, Brazil, and African states for help. Britain’s The Guardian characterised his words as a message to the “global south”.
...
He said: I invite all of you, all principled nations to join us in this process, all who truly respect the U.N. charter. We invite China, we invite Brazil, I have already invited India. We are working with African nations, with all of Latin America, Middle East, Central Asia, Europe, the Pacific region, North America, all. All are equally important for peace.
This is due to be a big week for President Zelensky. Beyond his set-piece speeches to the United Nations, he is due to use his time in the United States to meet with key U.S. leaders including President Biden to present what Zelensky has repeatedly hailed as his “peace plan”. As well as the U.S. President, Zelensky also visited a U.S. munitions factory making shells for the war and is due to speak with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, again on the peace plan.
One key element President Zelensky is expected to be working towards during his time in the U.S. is permission to use long-range missiles to strike Russian military bases deep inside Russia. Ukraine states these facilities are used to launch major air-strikes on Ukrainian cities that are far better defeated on the ground before they launch.
European backers are moving toward supporting Ukraine making these deep strikes into the Russian hinterland but Washington remains opposed, fearing escalation with Moscow.
President Zelensky is scheduled to address the United Nations again today in the morning session of the General Debate of the 79th Session, after 0900 New York time (1400 BST).
Quote:Argentine President Javier Milei used his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to deliver an enthusiastic condemnation of “globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda” and warn that the U.N. flagship Agenda 2030 is a threat to global freedom.
Milei introduced himself as a “libertarian economist … honored with the mandate of the presidency of the Argentine Republic” thanks to the “precipitous failure of over a century of collectivist policies,” marking a notable rift from many General Assembly speeches that amplify U.N. leadership messages on climate change, wealth redistribution, and silencing “misinformation.” Milei became president in December 2023, so Tuesday’s event was his first opportunity to address the forum.
Before delivered a list of damning facts about the current state of the United Nations, Milei applauded the institution for successfully preventing a third world war, the original purpose of its existence.
“We went from having two world wars in less than 40 years, which together took over 120 million lives, to having 70 consecutive years of relative peace and global stability,” he noted, “under an order that allowed the whole world integrate itself commercially, compete, and prosper.”
This “outstanding success in the history of nations,” Milei stated, brought about a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, which the president, an avid student of Judaism, read to the forum:
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
But the U.N. “started to mutate,” he continued, and became “a leviathan of multiple tentacles that wants to decide not just what every state or nation should do, but how all the citizens of the world should live.” The current U.N. is “a supranational government model of international bureaucrats who want to impose on the citizens of the world a determined way of life,” he warned.
Milei then launched into a searing condemnation of the recent United Nations record, condemning its support of Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns and its support of totalitarian regimes:
This is how we have seen how an organization that was born to defend the rights of man has become one of the principal advocates for the systematic violation of liberty – for example, with the worldwide quarantines during 2020 which should be considered a crime against humanity.
In this very house, which claims to defend human rights, bloody dictatorships such as those of Cuba and Venezuela have been allowed onto the Human Rights Council with not even the least reproach. In this very house, which claims to defend the rights of women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women allows entry to countries that punish women for showing skin. In this very house, systematically, they have voted against the state of Israel – which is the only country in the Middle East that defends liberal democracy, while showing simultaneously a total incapacity to respond to the scourge of terrorism.
“Crimes against humanity” is a catch-all term in international law for actions that, on a global scale, are prosecutable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Milei did not single out anyone to charge with the crime, but the context of accusing the United Nations of playing a role in supporting repressive quarantines points to the head of the U.N.’s World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was reelected to lead the agency uncontested despite his egregious failure in contain the novel coronavirus or holding China accountable for its destruction of relevant biological evidence and silence as the virus began spreading in Wuhan in December 2019. Tedros’ current main project is the development of a “pandemic treaty” that would greatly empower the W.H.O. to act above sovereign states in the face of public health emergencies.
Milei also used his speech to condemn the World Economic Forum (WEF), a venue he has visited to share similar condemnations of globalism.
“What also hasn’t helped is the tutelage of the World Economic Forum, where they promote ridiculous policies with Malthusian veneers, like the policies of Mission Zero, which harm above all poor countries,” Milei told the United Nations, “to policies tied to sexual and reproductive rights — when the birth rates of Western countries are collapsing, announcing a bleak future for all.”
Milei predicted that the world is “at the end of a cycle.”
“Globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda have crashed into reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to real-world problems — in fact, they never had them,” he declared. “If Agenda 2030 failed, as its own promoters recognize, the response should be to ask ourselves if it was not a poorly conceived plan from the beginning, accept that reality, and change course.”
The Argentine president concluded by summarizing the creed of his anti-collectivist, libertarian movement in Argentina.
“We believe in the defense of life — for all. We believe in the defense of the right to property — for all,” he listed. “We believe in the freedom of expression — for all. “We believe in freedom of religion — for all. We believe in freedom of commerce — for all. And we believe in limiting governments — all of them.”
Quote:The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, offered the U.N. General Assembly a succinct speech on Tuesday comprised of two parts: a victory lap on the overwhelming success of his campaign against criminal gangs, and a warning from “a friend” that the current trajectory of the Western world will lead to a “new dark ages of humanity.”
Bukele declared that “the free world is no longer free,” using examples including the erosion of freedom of expression, especially on social media, and rampant crime in major Western cities. He did not specify any particular instances of censorship or crime, but the Salvadoran president has in the past lamented the decline of major American cities such as New York and Baltimore stridently condemned attempts to prosecute American former President Donald Trump while he campaigns to return to the White House.
Bukele spoke on a packed first day at the General Assembly that included despondent remarks from outgoing American President Joe Biden, a 40-minute rant from Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and, immediately before Bukele, a rousing condemnation of globalism from President Javier Milei of Argentina – whose administration has turned to Bukele for advice on fighting crime.
The U.N. typically suggests a 15-minute time limit for speeches, though it does not cut off its high-level speakers if they cross the limit, as in the case with Erdogan. Bukele, going against the current, addressed the Assembly for about ten minutes.
“When I came for the first time to the United Nations General Assembly, in 2019, I know that not many people knew of El Salvador or had even heard talk about El Salvador,” he noted. If they knew about it, they only had bad references, as the most violent country in the world or the Mara country.”
“Five years after that first speech, I come here as the president of a country that now has a voice in the world,” he declared.
Bukele shifted his tone dramatically in this week’s speech from how he initially addressed the Assembly during his first speech in 2019. At that time, Bukele dismissed the forum as irrelevant, comparing it to Blockbuster video, and took a selfie on the podium to prove that the United Nations is so poorly respected more people would see the selfie than hear his speech. On Tuesday, Bukele treated the forum as relevant and used it to offer a warning, particularly to the Western world.
After celebrating the “undeniable” success of his campaign to eradicate MS-13, 18th Street, and other gangs that had taken over his country in five years, he suggested that El Salvador’s progress had occurred simultaneously with an ongoing decline in the “free world” that would lead the planet to doom.
“While the Salvadoran people became more optimist, the majority of people in the modern world become ever more pessimist,” Bukele observed. “And they have a point: the world has become divided, depressed, worried, hostile, and hopeless. And it has done it at an unprecedented pace.”
“The free world is no longer free. This is not an exaggeration,” he proclaimed.
“When the free world became free, it was due to its principles of freedom of expression, equality before the law, unity, and respect for private property. But once a nation abandons the principles that make it free, it’s only a matter of time untl it loses its freedom completely,” he suggested.
Without naming any particular nation, Bukele continued, “In some cities of the so-called free world, stores need to secure their products behind class doors with lock and key to avoid theft. And I’m not talking about expensive products, but simple things like chocolate bars and razors.”
He also addressed the leftist-led campaigns against free expression, particularly online.
“The largest social media platforms in the world were forced to censor their users at the demand of their governments,” the president said. “Citizens of Western states have been arrested for sharing posts on social networks. Governing parties have tried to ban their political opposition.”
“These are not accusations or conspiracy theories. These are provable and widely documented facts,” he added.
“You can’t claim the title of free world if your people are not even free to walk the streets without fear of being harassed, robbed, or murdered,” he suggested.
...
EUROPE
Ukraine Recaptured Russian Stronghold
Quote:Ukrainian troops engaged in hand-to-hand combat as they drove Russian forces out of a huge processing plant in the town of Vovchansk in Ukraine’s northeast that had been occupied for four months, officials said Tuesday.
The plant, a partly steel structure with some 30 buildings, had been a Russian stronghold in the Kharkiv border region since May when Russia sought to further stretch Ukraine’s weary forces by launching a fresh push in the area.
Taking back the plant was likely intended to demonstrate that Ukraine is not giving up the fight despite being outmanned and outgunned by the Russian army. The accomplishment coincided with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the United States where he is looking to ensure continuing foreign support for his country with the war deep into its third year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to grind down Ukraine’s appetite for the fight and sap the West’s support for Kyiv by drawing out the conflict. Russian forces have been creeping forward on the battlefield this year but the progress has been costly. The U.K. Defense Ministry estimates more than 1,000 Russian troops are being killed or wounded each day.
A statement from Ukrainian Military Intelligence said its units recaptured the Vovchansk plant after fierce fighting “in densely built-up conditions.”
The Russian onslaught has reduced Vovchansk, and many other Ukrainian towns and villages, to smoking piles of rubble and bombed-out residential buildings.
Germany: AfD Takes Control of Eastern Germany
Quote:The anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is officially the strongest faction in East Germany following the regional elections in Brandenburg on Sunday.
Despite a narrow defeat to the Social Democrats (SPD) in the north-eastern state of Brandenburg, the populist Alternative for Germany party can now boast having the most state parliament seats in the former East Germany. According to calculations from broadcaster NTV, the AfD control 138 seats in the East, surpassing the neo-liberal centre-right Christian Democrat Union following the vote in Brandenburg.
The CDU — the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel — will now only have 128 seats in the East. Before Sunday, both the AfD and CDU were tied at 131 state parliament seats in the socially conservative former Soviet controlled part of the country.
The shift in balance of power towards the right comes after the AfD’s victory in Thuringia, which represented the first time the party came out on top in a state election in its history with 32.8 per cent of the vote.
The populist party also secured a strong second-place showing in Saxony with 30.6 per cent of the vote. In Brandenburg on Sunday, the AfD secured 29.2 per cent of the vote, barely behind the SPD at 30.9 per cent.
Results in Brandenburg also confirmed the staying power of the upstart leftist-populist party of Sahra Wagenknecht, a political firebrand who broke from the Left party over her opposition to the war in Ukraine and mass migration.
...
Wagenknecht’s eponymous BSW party won 13.5 per cent of the vote in Brandenburg, besting the 12.1 per cent for the CDU, which continues to struggle to regain trust after former leader Merkel opened the floodgates to mass migration in 2015.
Despite aligning with the AfD on key issues, Wagenknecht has ruled out an alliance with the right-wing party, joining the so-called cordon sanitaire of establishment parties to block the AfD from joining any government, be it at the state or federal level.
Yet, with the collapse of support for the Green party, over failures of climate-inspired energy policy and continued support for mass migration, Wagenknecht may be seeking to replace the Greens as a coalition party of the Social Democrats. Such an alliance would likely come with a demand that the SPD finally reverse course on migration.
However, following disappointing results in regional elections and struggles in national polling, the governing SPD may be in a state of flux. Although Olaf Scholz has committed to running for a second term as chancellor, his party essentially abandoned him in the Brandenburg campaign. Rather than running on the chancellor’s record, the local Social Democrats focussed on regional leader Dietmar Woidke instead, refusing to even feature pictures of Scholz on any campaign material.
Social Democrat co-leader Lars Klingbei attempted to quell discussion about a leadership change, saying on Monday that there is “absolutely no wobbling… In the leadership of the party, the parliamentary group, among the state governors and ministers, there is no discussion about this in any place.”
Germany: Green Party Leadership Resigns
Quote:The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.
Announcing their early resignation, Green leaders Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang said that the party is in “the deepest crisis in a decade”.
Their decision to cede control of the party comes after yet another embarrassing defeat at the ballot box, with the Greens only managing to win 4.1 per cent of the vote in the Brandenburg elections over the weekend, falling below the five per cent threshold to be represented in the state’s parliament.
This was a repeat of similarly dismal performances in Thuringia, where the party also fell short of the threshold, and in Saxony, where the leftist party barely met the requirement, with 5.1 per cent of the vote.
Ricarda Lang admitted in comments reported by Welt: “New faces are needed to lead the party out of the crisis.”
The Greens, which currently make up one third of the “traffic light” coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have suffered a severe decline in popularity as the public’s attitude towards issues like mass migration and the green agenda have soured.
This trend has been particularly noticeable among young voters, with the Greens losing a staggering 74.1 per cent of its support among 16 to 24 year olds in Brandenburg, falling by 20 percentage points from 2019 to just seven per cent support among the age group. Meanwhile, the anti-mass migration populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) increased its vote share among young people by 14 points to 32 per cent.
While the German people have increasingly turned against the mass migration party, with recent Islamist terror attacks carried out on Mannheim and Solingen, forcing Chancellor Olaf Scholz to enact border controls and begin deportations of illegals back to Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban takeover of the country in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal of American forces in 2021, the Green party has continued to argue against limits on migration.
The intransigence of the party on immigration was criticised by popular Social Democrat leader of Brandenburg Dietmar Woidke, who narrowly defeated the AfD at the weekend elections after distancing the local party from the SPD-led government in Berlin. Woidke told German paper Welt that he would have “expected a more pragmatic attitude from the Greens, especially when it comes to migration,” adding that “you cannot make government policy against the clear expectations of the population.”
The Greens have also faced pushback for failures of its climate agenda, which has left the leading European economy vulnerable to external shocks, notably from the war in Ukraine and the drastic reduction in supplies of Russian energy. The coalition government also controversially decided to push forward with Green Party plans to entirely phase out nuclear energy amid the energy crisis, despite the success of the clean form of energy in neighbouring France.
Finally, while Green parties have traditionally been proponents of peace, the current Green party in Germany has been one of the leading advocates for sponsoring Kyiv in its conflict with Russia. Infamously, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, one of the top Green politicians in the country, declared in 2022 that the government would continue to financially support Ukraine “no matter what” the German voter thinks.
The electoral issues facing coalition parties are not contained to the Greens, however, with fellow traffic light partner, the neo-liberal corporatist Free Democrats (FDP) suffering even worse results in recent state elections than the Green Party, only managing to gain 1.1 per cent of the vote in Thuringia, 0.9 per cent in Saxony, and 0.8 per cent in Brandenburg.
...
UK: Starmer's Winter Fuel Cuts Rejected
Quote:Members of Britain’s governing Labour Party dealt Prime Minister Keir Starmer a blow on Wednesday, rejecting his decision to cut payments that offset winter heating costs for millions of retirees.
The vote on the final day of Labour’s annual conference is not binding, but it’s a setback to Starmer’s efforts to unite his center-left party around the contentious measure.
Since winning office in July, Starmer has cautioned that the dire state of the public finances inherited from the last Conservative government means he must make hard choices such as ending the winter fuel allowance, worth between 200 and 300 pounds ($262 and $393), for all but the poorest pensioners.
Trade unions that are among Labour’s funders and allies organized resistance to the cut at the conference in Liverpool, northwest England. They forced a vote on a demand for the decision to be reversed. It was narrowly passed in a show-of-hands vote amid cheers and jeers in the conference hall.
“I do not understand how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel payment for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched,” said Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, to applause from delegates. “This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and it needs to be reversed.”
The government has promised the withdrawal of the heating allowance will be offset by an above-inflation increase in the state pension and other measures to reduce poverty.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told delegates that the cut “wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make.” But she argued that “this Labour government has done more to help the poorest pensioners in the last two months than the Tories did in 14 years.”
Starmer tried to unite the party and appeal to a skeptical electorate in his first conference speech as prime minister on Tuesday, telling voters exhausted by years of political and economic turmoil that better times are on the way – if they swallow his recipe of short-term pain for long-term gain.
He said he would make “tough decisions” – code for public spending restraint and tax increases – to achieve economic growth to fund schools, hospitals, roads, railways and more.
Starmer acknowledged some of those decisions would be unpopular, but said: “We will turn our collar up and face the storm.”
UK: Starmer Wants to Meet Trump & Harris
Quote:Britain’s left-wing Prime Minister says he hopes to meet with both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris while he is in the United States this week, but his own ministers struggle to keep on message, laying on the criticism of Trump.
Sir Keir Starmer has flown to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, and hopes to use his time in the United States to get into the good graces of the future U.S. President, whoever that may be. Speaking to reporters on his flight, Starmer said: “As far as the candidates are concerned, if possible, it would be very good to meet both of them at some stage before the election. We’ll just have to see what’s possible”, notes The Daily Telegraph.
But Starmer may have an uphill battle ahead of him to secure these meetings, given as The Guardian asserts, he is “understood not to want to see one candidate without also meeting the other”, meaning a refusal by one could see the British Prime Minister coming home empty-handed. The problem for Starmer may be that even as he continues his months-long charm offensive towards the Trump team — the Labour Party’s natural alignment with the Democrats make such less efforts less important there — his own senior colleagues undermine it.
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Speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference this week, newly-appointed Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum Dame Angela Eagle spoke in the very specific language of the progressive left employed when they feel they are interacting among their own tribe, bemoaning the toxic “othering” of asylum seekers”, and right-wing rhetoric “creating a space, I think, for overt racism”.
It is difficult for newly arrived immigrants to “rise above the constant drumbeat of toxic anti-immigration, anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become emboldened, not only in Britain but across the western countries”.
Getting into her stride, the ‘Border security’ minister made her actual views on the utility of borders clear, remarking: “I mean, Trump does the same… If you look at some of the memes that he’s using with the wall stuff at the moment, it’s astonishing, quite the level of vitriol that it has created.”
The Trump camp made its displeasure known and bit back, with a spokesman reportedly saying of the comments: “Nobody knows who this random person is or cares what comes out of her mouth… Who is she and what does she do?”.
Politico notes Brexit leader and British Trump ally Nigel Farage looked askance at Eagle’s intemperate comments, observing: “Angela Eagle and the Labour Party are so scared of this subject that all they can do is throw abuse at anyone who is concerned at the unwanted changes to our country” while party leader Sir Keir — off on his charm offensive to America — declined to back up his colleague’s comments at all.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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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
