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Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 10:30
Jose Andres in the NY Times today: In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always. The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war. Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others. These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes. Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need. From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north.
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Thu, 04/04/2024 - 09:00
As grotesque as always Greg Sargent has the details and it’s truly awful: Donald Trump has invented a new criminological category he describes as “Migrant Crime,” and in Michigan on Tuesday, he seized on the horrible murder of a young woman, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant, to underscore the point. Some news accounts covered this by quoting GOP strategists, with one enthusing that this will win over “security moms,” as if Trump is engaging in something like a conventional campaign strategy here. But Trump’s ugly demagogic rants in Michigan, and others like it, deserve to be treated as a national scandal. The cherry-picking of isolated terrible crimes to smear migrants as a class is not something we would tolerate if it were directed toward other groups. Never mind what Trump is attempting to do politically. His deranged, malicious, hateful public conduct should be seen as the real story here. It should be covered that way. Trump’s appearance in Michigan has been overshadowed by the news that Trump may have lied about relatives of the victim, 25-year-old Ruby Garcia.
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Thu, 04/04/2024 - 07:30
A white supremacist in rural Oklahoma ran for city counsel and won in the last cycle. He attended the fascist Charlottesville march and when some people in the town found out about it they ran a campaign against him. They won. It’s possible to go too far even in hardcore right wing places like rural Oklahoma. I agree with Roy Edroso who pointed out: This is why it’s important to get the real views of conservative candidates out in front of voters. A lot of voters think these guys are just low-tax law-and-order types. When they find out what they’re *really* like, they turn against them. I hope that’s right. It would mean that the country isn’t as far gone as I thought.
Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 06:15

Ben Shapiro has positioned himself as a hero of the right, yet his stance on the Middle East and other issues has created a rift between him and some in his conservative base, who increasingly see him largely as an advocate for a single issue: Israel.

The post Its Not Just Candace Owens: The Right Is Turning Against Ben Shapiro and Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 06:00
Yet another corrupt connection to Donald Trump Who could have ever predicted? The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation. The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public. But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 04:56
The first part of this article explores how home ownership has become almost impossible for most aspiring first-home buyers and how that is creating a much more unequal distribution of wealth. A second part tomorrow will discuss the policy options to restore home ownership and thus a more equal and cohesive society. Housing affordability and Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 04:54
In the short term, no. But over the medium- to longer-term, the possibility of a Chinese ‘currency crisis’ – by which I mean an abrupt fall in the value of the renminbi against other currencies, prompted by large capital outflows, and possibly entailing large falls in the values of other Chinese assets – cannot be Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 04/04/2024 - 04:52
ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan has expressed alarm at the severe constraints on front-line policing in Canberra while showing great sympathy for principles of drug decriminalisation and raising the age of criminal responsibility. In a blistering final formal address as CPO, delivered to the ACT Chapter of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences, the Continue reading »